Attribution: by Bill Day
Bill Day is a two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning, and his cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for FloridaPolitics.com
Laboring On
64 thoughts on “Laboring On”
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“Takin’Care Of Business” 11/2/25 #1973 #music #rock #videoshort
Attribution: Labor Day by Steve Greenberg, Freelance, Los Angeles
today’s dilemma for the working class expressed in a long article from today’s Guardian
This smokejumper says the US has lost its empathy. That’s why he’s running for Congress
Montana’s Sam Forstag says US working class is left playing a game of chance while neither party serves its interests
At around five o’clock on a winter evening in 2013, then college student Sam Forstag was driving through a snowstorm toward his third job of the day, making sandwiches at the Subway inside a Walmart.
“I was always late,” Forstag recalled with a laugh more than a decade later.
Halfway there, the gray sedan in front of him lost traction. It spun across the icy road and slid nose-first into a ditch. Forstag’s first instinct was to pull over. Growing up in a tight-knit community in North Portland, Oregon, and later in Montana, he had learned that when someone’s car ended up in a ditch, you stopped. You grabbed a shovel or you called a neighbor. You helped push the car back on to the road. That was simply what people did.
But he kept driving.
“I remember thinking, ‘I should stop – but I don’t have time,’” he said. He couldn’t afford to lose the job that helped pay his rent, car payment and groceries. He thought about it for the rest of that sandwich-making shift.
That memory has become part of Forstag’s political identity as a firefighter turned Democratic candidate hoping to flip Montana’s first congressional district in November’s midterm election. Once a scholarship kid at a Catholic high school, 32-year-old Forstag has built his campaign around a deeply personal argument: that the economic pressures consuming many Americans do more than empty their wallets. They leave people with less time and capacity to care for one another. That message has helped Forstag galvanize young and working-class voters in a district that has long favored Republicans.
“There are a lot of people in this country who don’t have the time,” he said. “It’s much harder to extend the kind of compassion your neighbors deserve when you’re working three jobs just to get by.”
He sees Donald Trump-era politics as a consequence of years of economic struggle that has shattered the lives of working-class people. And he believes that politicians such as the president exploit that desperation, he said, turning economic anxiety into anti-immigrant rhetoric and culture-war battles while voters’ material conditions continue to deteriorate.
“If your life is getting materially worse year after year, and you vote for the party out of power, that’s how democracy works. People who vote [for the opposition] are rightfully disillusioned and frustrated with the entire system because the system has not served them for too damn long,” he said.
But his own life story gives him reason to think there’s another way out. Forstag grew up in a single-parent household in which his mother, an intensive care nurse, worked overnight shifts to raise her children.
“I remember being a nine-year-old who was worried that Mom was working too much,” he said. On days when she had to work overnight, she would drop him and his sister at a friend’s house at about 6am. By the time school ended, she was often still at the hospital. Friends’ parents would drive him home, or he’d frequently ride his bike home: a $20 pink garage sale find, complete with sparkly decorations that were supposed to embarrass him when he’d lost a previous bike (“instead, I loved it,” he said).
But what he remembers most is not how hard his mother worked, but how after a full emergency room shift, his mother didn’t treat caring for others as extraordinary.
The fire inside
By the time he turned 30, Forstag felt he had finally found stability, a place to call home and, most important, his community. And it came through smokejumping, or parachuting into fire zones to put out the blaze.
Smokejumping was the first career that gave Forstag health insurance, a retirement account, and a paycheck steady enough to cover his mortgage and student loans.
For eight fire seasons, he and his crew dropped into remote terrain to battle some of the country’s most dangerous fires. The work was physically brutal and often dangerous, but the people who stood beside him became more than co-workers. Many came from backgrounds that felt familiar to him – working-class families, small town residents, people who depended on the job not only for a paycheck but for healthcare, retirement and a sense of purpose.
Then, after Trump returned to the White House in 2025, that sense of security began to unravel. Trump had campaigned on reducing government and appointed Elon Musk to lead the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which oversaw sweeping reductions in the federal workforce.
Among those affected were smokejumpers and other federal wildland firefighters in Montana. Friends and union colleagues who had spent years risking their lives fighting wildfires suddenly found themselves without jobs or health insurance. “That pissed me off,” Forstag said, voice trembling.
Forstag turned to the elected officials he believed were supposed to represent them but found little help from the people who publicly celebrated his industry’s service in the past.
“I was pissed off at [retiring incumbent] Ryan Zinke when he was holding his seat,” Forstag said. “When we were going through those cuts, we reached out to him time after time. And I got crickets. That’s a failure of representation. Meanwhile, that guy got $20m richer while sitting in office.”
While the Guardian could not independently verify Forstag’s specific claim about $20m, Zinke’s financial disclosures showed significant wealth accumulation while holding public office. Additionally, Zinke faced 18 federal investigations during his tenure as interior secretary, from March 2017 to January 2019, including into real estate dealings in his home town. The Guardian reached out to Zinke’s office multiple times for comment but did not receive a response.
For Forstag, the answer was not to abandon politics but to make government work for people like the ones he grew up with. Running for Congress, however, meant risking the first stable life he had ever built.
“I have to leave the only retirement I’ve got, that I’ve been building,” he said. “And leaving behind the only healthcare I have. I have to leave the only career I’ve got to risk it all on this.”
He spent weeks talking through the decision with friends from the National Federation of Federal Employees (NIFF), a union he led as vice-president. Eventually, he drove alone to one of his favorite lakes in Montana’s Swan Valley, a place so secluded that he refused to tell the Guardian its name. He camped there for the night, beyond cell service, trying to decide whether to abandon the first secure career he had ever known.
“I woke up in the morning and decided to do it,” he said.
Campaigning from the couch
The campaign that followed hardly looked like a congressional operation, though Forstag was almost immediately endorsed by the progressive senator Bernie Sanders.
Its headquarters was Forstag’s modest 900-sq-ft house in Missoula, a place he had only recently been able to afford. Staff members crowded on to a shared couch in the living room, making phone calls and texting voters. Volunteers pitched pop-up tents outside and turned the front yard into a makeshift office.
Aaron Derry, a 53-year-old physician assistant and lifelong Democratic voter and volunteer, was struck by the energy. “I’ve never seen so many young people show up,” Derry said. “I’ve never seen so many 20-year-olds.”
“My 22-year-old daughter, who’s away at college, called me and asked if I was on Sam’s team.”
Across western Montana, Forstag’s campaign drew an unusually young coalition of volunteers and first-time supporters.
But the frustration of young Montanans did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for Democrats or even awareness of Forstag. Lukas Kosel, 22, a recent Montana State University graduate, was preparing to leave the state for Baltimore, where he planned to pursue graduate studies in African American studies. Like Forstag, Kosel was raised by a single mother and loves Montana’s open spaces. But almost two months before the election, he hadn’t heard much about the candidate.
“I have to do research on him,” he said. “But I imagine he is like any other Democratic candidate” – and that’s not a good thing. “Much of my life, I have seen Democrats or Republicans doing the same things,” he said. “They have all the money to fund the war in the Middle East, but what about our student debt, our future prospects?”
That skepticism is precisely what Forstag argues his party has failed to reckon with.
“We have a national Democratic party that is refusing to open the doors of change to a lot of young people,” Forstag said. He believes Democrats must make room for a new generation of candidates willing to challenge both the party establishment and long-held political assumptions.
In some ways, Forstag fits neatly within that surging movement. He rejected support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), called for conditioning US assistance to Israel on what he described as “strictly enforced humanitarian requirements” and connected increases in military spending to quality of life at home.
“We’re in another war, in Iran, that nobody wants, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “That is not helping anybody’s life here in the States.”
Two-party criticism
In May, the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders came to Montana to campaign for Forstag, in an event that galvanized young voters across the state.
Four months after entering the race, Forstag defeated the Democratic establishment’s preferred candidate by nearly five percentage points, pulling off one of the biggest primary upsets in recent Montana politics.
Montana’s first congressional district stretches across the western half of the state, encompassing liberal college towns, fast-growing mountain communities and vast rural counties that have long favored Republicans. While Trump remains deeply popular across much of the district and endorsed conservative radio host Aaron Flint to succeed Zinke, Democratic strongholds such as Missoula and Bozeman have made the seat a genuinely competitive congressional district in Montana.
Again and again, Forstag returns to the same argument: Democrats have spent too much time debating ideology and too little time listening to the economic frustrations shaping everyday life in places like Montana.
“And I find that so damn frustrating,” he said. “Six months ago, everybody said affordability is the thing to talk about. Well, where the hell have y’all been living for the last 10 years? Here in Montana, every time I go to a bar, that’s what people are talking about. ‘My rent went up $100.’ ‘Mine went up $150.’ This isn’t new. Somebody just came up with a buzzword for it.”
A poll conducted in late April and early May showed that 62% of Montana voters reported difficulty affording healthcare, and 61% struggled with gas and transportation costs. Those anxieties are not unique to Montana. A March Gallup poll found that 51% of Americans worried about the economy “a great deal”. Another poll found that 77% of Americans rated the economy poorly.
“One party was saying the economy’s better than you think it is,” he continued. “The other was saying the system’s broken. Unfortunately, the latter was lying about everything they were going to do to fix it.”
Though focused on his Republican opponents, Forstag is critical of how the left operates too. He believes progressives became too focused on cultural battles at the expense of material concerns. He wanted the energy of the left without what he saw as its blind spots.
Some voters share the concern. Mary Brower, 62, a retired high school teacher in Bozeman and a lifelong Democrat, believes Forstag has struck a chord with younger voters. But she worries about the limits of progressive politics in Montana.
“I just worry that Sam will be seen as too liberal,” Brower said. “Most Montana voters are still more centrist. Even though he’s in favor of a lot of liberal causes, I think he’s got to walk the center line as much as possible while still being honest and authentic.”
But earlier this month, Forstag won the endorsement of the Blue Dog Coalition, the moderate and centrist Democratic caucus in the House, an endorsement that unsettled some of his progressive supporters.
And the Montana Democratic party chair, Shannan O’Brien, said Forstag’s message reflects a broader frustration with politics as usual.
“People are ready for a change,” she said. “People are exhausted hearing the same thing in Washington over and over again, and they heard something different from Sam.”
O’Brien’s defense of Forstag comes at a moment when the national Democratic party is facing growing tensions between its moderate, establishment wing and a newer generation of younger, more progressive candidates. In recent cycles, many progressive insurgents have ousted moderate incumbents, prompting some establishment Democrats to criticize what they see as a dangerous populist shift.
How big is this tent?
Forstag’s economic message and his willingness to engage with Republicans have resonated beyond his Democratic constituents. More than five Republican former and current legislators have endorsed him.
Brian Putnam, a former Republican legislator from Kalispell who represented one of Montana’s most Republican-leaning districts, is among them.
“I was in the Montana legislature for the 2021 session as a Republican, and that’s where I met Sam,” he said. Despite their different parties, Putnam respected Forstag, who was lobbying at the time for the ACLU. “He’s a straight shooter,” Putnam said. “He’s a guy you could come to and ask about something, and whether it’s good for him or not, he’s going to give you the correct answer.” What impressed Putnam most was Forstag’s ability to work across party lines.
Endorsing Forstag put Putnam at odds with his own party. But he believes Montana Republicans should reject Trump’s approach to politics. “I disagree with a lot of Trump’s policies,” he said. “I don’t think that Trump actually has policies. He has whims and things.”
Still, even after endorsing Forstag, Putnam remained skeptical of parts of his campaign. He worried that endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might pull Forstag too far to the left.
Aaron Flint, Forstag’s Republican opponent, has sought to portray him as a radical.
“Is it radical that you should be able to work one good job and afford a roof over your head?” Forstag said in response. “I don’t think any of that’s radical. I think those are fundamental to what the American dream actually is.”
As the election comes closer, Forstag has less than two months to make his final case to skeptics.
To win in November, Forstag will need to rebuild the coalition that had carried Jon Tester in 2024 to victory in the district – a coalition of libertarians, right-leaning Democrats and working-class Republicans.
One of those libertarians is Zach Lund, a father of two. A Montana native who works as a chef, Lund, 41, said his biggest concerns are civil liberties, military spending and what he sees as an increasing unwillingness to hold powerful people accountable.
“You can’t have the largest sex-trafficking case in the history of the United States and not arrest anybody,” Lund said, referring to the Epstein investigation. “What kind of country is that?”
“I feel like a lot of people in the country who leaned libertarian are watching the police state come from the very party they thought was going to promote smaller government and personal freedom,” he said. Lund does not plan to vote in the upcoming election. “A lot of times, lately, promises are made, and then they don’t follow through,” he said. “You kind of feel like, ‘This isn’t what I voted for.’ You kind of get sick of getting burned. It’s hard to have that trust in politicians.”
Forstag sees in voters like Lund – those wary of politics and the government, consumed by the rising costs of daily life – a version of the young man he once was, driving home on an icy winter evening after working three jobs, too exhausted and financially strapped to stop for a stranger whose car had slipped into a ditch.
That moment has become more than a memory to Forstag. It is the question that has shaped both his politics and his campaign: what happens to a democracy when ordinary people become so consumed by survival that they no longer have the time, hope or the compassion to care for one another?
“The American dream was not ever supposed to be something that was a game of chance,” Forstag said. “It was supposed to be something that was open to everybody.”
In November, Montana voters will decide whether they believe him.
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What is Actually Clicking: September 7, 2026
— Human Prompted and Edited. Machine Drafted (Gemini Pro).
These are the stories driving the most traffic right now—not necessarily the stories we think you should read, and not always the most recent. Sign Up Here to receive daily briefs.
About murder suspect Flavio Alcantara Dias, whom one of our commenters brought to the discussion yesterday, I found at least three misleading DHS claims that FOX News dutifully repeated without independent confirmation:
“Illegal immigrant”: DHS says he entered illegally in 2019, but leaves out crucial context: an immigration judge terminated the government’s case to remove him in 2024. That did not necessarily give him legal immigration status, but there was no longer an active removal proceeding against him.
“Criminal history”: DHS cites previous arrests for DUI and aggravated assault. Neither DHS nor the independent reporting I’ve found establishes that those arrests resulted in convictions.
“Biden released him”: DHS’s own account says an immigration judge granted Dias’s motion to terminate his immigration proceeding. Calling what followed a Biden “release” makes a judicial ruling sound like an affirmative decision by Biden officials.
Sources:
Folha de S.Paulo
Boston 25 News
WCVB NewsCenter 5
I had to look up Free-range parenting and found out it is simply the way children were raised 50 years ago. I can understand being fearful in our modern society as we are inundated by news stories, but children do need to learn to make independent decisions.
————
Free-range parenting is a style of child-rearing that promotes independence and self-reliance with limited direct parental supervision, tailored to a child’s age and maturity.
Key Characteristics – Unstructured Play: Encourages kids to engage in outdoor activities, bike riding, or neighborhood games without packed, minute-by-minute schedules.
Gradual Independence: Teaches children basic safety rules and then allows them to handle age-appropriate tasks like walking to a local park or riding public transit.
Natural Consequences: Allows children to experience small failures or bumps along the way so they build real-world resilience and problem-solving skills.
Anti-Fear Mentality: Rejects hyper-vigilant or fear-based overprotection, focusing instead on realistic assessments of actual safety risks versus rare or exaggerated media fears.
Breaking in Massachusetts: DHS says a murder suspect was an “illegal immigrant” with a “criminal history” whom Biden “released.”
We checked. The story gets shakier with every claim—and it’s part of a pattern.
Correction to jerkoff trying to rename things again.
Meme
Ahhhh, Labor Day…..the one day of the year where the workers are…um…mentioned.
From the official White House page on X – Total insanity
In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2096764958713274657/video/1
part of the reason is these parents don’t have their own lives and have to be involved in every aspect of their kids’ lives, like get a hobby
Coming in chat 11am ET today: Do we like Mondays?
it’s because there’s a green lantern show on hbo, i know because someone asked if i was watching it, funny that person is the target demographic for that tweet
today’s meme…
Why are the best songs about working in country music.
A few of my favorite blue collar working songs.
1921 Victrola
that reminds me. my grandparents had one very much like that
Today in the Diner…
Dr. Amy Acton Attacked & Fetterman Staff
2. Trump-a-Palooza Flops While AfD Rises
3. Fetterman Defectors & Acton’s Attacker
Dr. Amy Acton survives an attack at the Canfield Fair, while John Fetterman faces a staff revolt on X and Trump-a-palooza struggles in Dallas.
It is getting downright wild out there on the campaign trail. Dr. Amy Acton was attacked by an armed man at the Canfield Fair in Ohio, and it turns out the attacker’s brother has ties to the Jon Husted campaign. While we wait to see how the political echo chamber spins that one, the dysfunction continues in Pennsylvania as a group claiming to be former John Fetterman staffers launched a rogue X account to air out the senator’s dirty laundry.
Over in Dallas, the first-ever Republican midterm convention dubbed Trump-a-palooza is apparently having trouble giving away tickets, with lawmakers dodging RSVPs like they have to wash their hair. Meanwhile, we look overseas at the rise of Ulrich Siegmund and the far-right AfD party in Saxony-Anhalt, proving that the populist playbook of blaming immigrants and the media translates perfectly into German.
We also cover the reality of free university education in Germany, Maine Senate President Troy Jackson dropping a solid ad on Canadian border tariffs, and a trip down memory lane covering the fall of the Berlin Wall for the Orlando Sentinel before heading back to Stetson University College of Law.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
01:46 Ulrich Siegmund AfD Saxony-Anhalt
07:42 Dr Amy Acton Canfield Fair Attack
18:07 John Fetterman Staff Revolt on X
27:39 Trump-a-palooza Woes in Dallas
36:19 Free University Education in Germany
43:27 Troy Jackson on Canadian Tariffs
48:47 Stetson University College of Law
51:56 Mad Men Smoking & Flock Cameras
— Human directed and edited. Machine drafted (Gemini Pro).
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/amber-alert-issued-girl-14-044427982.html
The search for a father and his 14-year-old daughter following last month’s discovery of a dead infant in Monterey County has turned into a rescue operation, with authorities emphasizing that the teen is a victim.
On Sunday, authorities issued an Amber Alert for the teen, who they believe gave birth to her father’s child on the side of the road.
*Only after public outcry did they decide that the 14-year old was a victim.
Below is the report from last week:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/baby-found-dead-california-road-031624800.html
A manhunt is underway for a man authorities believe is the father of both a newborn baby found dead on a California road and the 14-year-old who gave birth to that baby.
Monterey County authorities received a disturbing report on a recent Saturday morning: An infant had been discovered on the side of a county road next to a strawberry field.
The baby’s body showed signs of traumatic injury. Detectives believe the 14-year-old mother gave birth on the side of the road before placing her newborn on the ground. Then, authorities said, the girl fled.
The teen is now suspected of murder and authorities are searching for her and her father, who is suspected of several felony violations.
*She was a victim of SA, and then she became a victim of this country’s twisted views.
Poem for the day:
Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
By Martín Espada
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.
Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/venezuelan-billionaire-us-investigated-money-100502036.html
Venezuelan billionaire the US investigated for money laundering now has a Pentagon oil deal
The billionaire who helped broker the Trump administration’s sweeping long-term oil deal with Venezuela was until recently a target of U.S. money-laundering investigations involving funds embezzled from the state-owned oil company PDVSA. Now, after assisting U.S. authorities ahead of the capture of authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, Alejandro Betancourt is Washington’s key partner in an unusual oil agreement with Caracas.
…the U.S. gains access to about one-fifth of Venezuela’s crude reserves for decades. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital takes a 35% stake in North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), Betancourt’s company and a known crude producer in Venezuela. The State Department gets the right to buy 20% of NABEP’s oil at cost, and preferential access to the remaining 80% of output.
The deal marks a striking change of fortune for Betancourt, who four people familiar with U.S. policy in Venezuela said was key to U.S. strategy and planning in the lead-up to the January 3 operation that removed former President Maduro from power and flew him to New York to face charges of drug-trafficking, which Maduro denies.
Craig,
There are several of the working victrola’s for sale from $800 to $2000 depending on condition and whether they have a record collection included.
FETTERMAN STAFF MUTINY → Former aides launch a rogue X account to air his dirty laundry.
Should Shapiro primary him?
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
And of course Trump left the crooks in charge rather than installing the opposition.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/03/venezuelan-opposition-leader-questions-us-oil-deal-with-illegitimate-regime
what the ivy league political insiders get wrong is that Fetterman is a good representation of middle Pennsylvania, not like they’re hanging out in places like York or McKeesport
*Covet above, original below.
jamie posted a tweet of some guy expressing disbelief at trump support and you know he’s in a monied liberal bubble with other privileged high achievers
get out in the streets
the new party of antisemitism isn’t going to take control just fyi, them young gaza supporters aren’t going to turn out just like they didn’t in 2024
fetterman knows it, his young lib staffers don’t
*Live, and recording studio version:Union Maid
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/moscow-not-ruled-trilateral-meeting-084216515.html
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that Moscow has not ruled out a trilateral meeting between the presidents of Russia, the U.S. and China, state news agency TASS reported.
*Is this the part where they divvy up the world into thirds amongst themselves?
Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-semetism.
a rose by any other name
you can tell that to the PA Jewish community and maybe you’re right and maybe not but they’ll equate the two regardless
gotta win elections
“anti zionism” literally translates to “anti israel” and that’s not going to win elections
only ultra ultra orthodox and ultra liberal jews are anti zionist, pretty small demo you’re addressing there
for the record i am neither pro or anti, US out of the middle east, let them all kill each other fuck it
trump’s told us a thousand times we don’t need their oil so why is he engaging in that theater
get him out and then us out
(it’s because he wants to be an oil baron and has said so expressly)
Copycat Killer Mom?
Prosecutors say Corie Walsh wrote obsessive text messages about the Lindsay Clancy trial just hours before allegedly killing her son and attempting suicide.
Elon University is a private university in Elon, North Carolina…was founded by the Christian Connection, which later became a part of the United Church of Christ. -wiki
*Remember, Darby (the rapture guy) is the root of Christian Zionism.
https://www.chafer.edu/CTS-Journal-For-Zions-Sake-Darby-and-Christian-Zionism-by-Paul-Wilkinson
As he stated in his exposition of
Romans 11:25–32:
“God’s covenant to take away Israel’s sins is sure. It shall be accomplished when Christ comes; for, note, the apostle speaks of Christ in Zion in a time yet to come.… The final restoration of Israel will be on the ground of the promises made to the fathers, “for his mercy endureth for ever.”
yeah that guy and those 5 rabbis
lol
you’re too fuckin’ deep down that hole, come to the light
If you have enough time and interest, this shows why we are ok with the school system and why it’s not the end if our kids can’t go to Gymnasium
-> university.
Ashton came with her husband who found a job in bicycle engineering. She then made her phd at a German university (sth. Cityplanning(?)) and now she has these well researched videos once a week.
and he thinks they win the midterms by focusing on him
https://abcnews.com/US/anger-revenge-resentment-deeper-drives-husbands-kill-wives/story
About 34% of U.S. women killed in 2021 died at the hands of an intimate partner.
Only about 6% of the men killed in the U.S. in 2021 died from intimate partner homicide.
https://archive2.news.brown.edu/2007-2015/articles/2014/02/filicide.html
Among offenders, while fathers were about equally likely to kill an infant, they were more likely to be the alleged murderer of children older than a year, especially when the children were adults (fathers were the offenders in 78.3 percent of those cases). Overall, fathers were the accused murderer 57.4 percent of the time.
we are having a world war over seaside condos and oil whether you like it or not
i don’t 😭
thanks trumpers
ACTON ATTACKER’S GOP CONNECTION:
Turns out the assailant’s brother worked for Republican Sen. Jon Husted. The right wing echo chamber goes silent.
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
Spent the weekend ignoring politics and embracing distractions like cutting the grass, tooling around in the boat, watching NCAA football, listening to a band play good stuff from the 60s, 70s and 80s half assedly, dancing with Mrs. P and drinking a few adult beverages. Love to have Merle’s pedal steel and lead guitarist in a band. Those boys can fricking play the shit out of their instruments.
Susan Collins and Troy Jackson have now both agreed to four televised debates:
Oct. 6 — WGME
Oct. 8 — WMTW
Oct. 13 — WABI/WAGM
Oct. 15 — News Center Maine / Maine Public / Portland Press Herald
https://apnews.com/article/kansas-megachurch-pastor-senate-adam-hamilton-5fae30f196215aa8dd4ccaa760ae2d6c
Raphael Warnock has done it. Adam Hamilton wants to follow as a pastor-US senator
Warnock has continued to preach regularly as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since his election as Georgia’s first Black senator in 2021.
Hamilton has made clear that if he wins, he would like to continue as senior pastor — preaching 12 to 18 times a year — at the Church of the Resurrection. With roughly 25,000 members in the Kansas City area, it’s the nation’s largest United Methodist church.
This year, several members of the clergy from each major party have been nominated to run for the U.S. House. The Democrats include the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a prominent Baptist pastor in Dallas, and two women currently serving in Iowa’s legislature — the Revs. Lindsay James, a Presbyterian chaplain, and Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor.
On the Republican side, at least three current or former pastors – all evangelicals – have been nominated: pastors John Elleson, running in a Democratic stronghold in Illinois; Mark Harris, seeking reelection in North Carolina; and former pastor Tim Walberg, seeking reelection in Michigan.
Even worse when it’s math
https://www.pollsmax.com/senate/kansas/forecast/
Polling Data >
Time-weighted and partisanship-adjusted polling average from an aggregate of all polls conducted for the general election.
Roger Marshall* 47%
Adam Hamilton 43%
*It will take a lot of pissed off farmers to get Hamilton over the finish line.
https://www.newsweek.com/longtime-gop-staffers-abandon-republicans-to-work-for-democrats-12381150
Longtime GOP staffers abandon Republicans to work for Democrats
In Kansas, Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton has hired Austin Gilpin, who has previously worked for Republicans in the Sunflower State. In a statement provided to Newsweek, Gilpin said Marshall “chose his party and his president over Kansas, and over decency.”
Gilpin previously worked for the Kansas Republican Party, GOP Representative Ron Estes, and America Rising, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also worked on former GOP Governor Sam Brownback’s 2014 campaign, his LinkedIn shows.
In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has announced that his campaign hired Jacob Smith, who worked for Republican Senator John Cornyn.
Smith is serving as Talarico’s deputy policy director after spending five years working for Cornyn as a deputy legislative director and policy adviser.
Smith previously told Newsweek after his hiring was announced that Talarico “speaks to the needs of everyday people who day in and day out work too hard for too little.”
“Ken Paxton is the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas who would sell their futures to the highest contributor just to hold onto power. I’m encouraging all my fellow Republicans who know Ken Paxton is unfit to serve in the Senate to finally hold him accountable at the ballot box,” Smith said.
Dallas has a 9/11 firemen’s stair climb.
KC has the exact, same thing.
Weird.
Marshall, Hamilton campaigns confirm State Fair U.S. Senate debate
Representatives from each campaign said a debate between the two candidates will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 12. The Hamilton campaign said the debate would last until 3 pm.and would be broadcast by WIBW radio and the Kansas Radio Network.
that map is the best argument for abolishing the Senate altogether
Colorado First Responders run up the Manitou Incline in their full gear on 9/11.
https://www.newsweek.com/house-republicans-repeal-17th-amendment-elect-senators-save-act-12137446
A group of Republican representatives is pushing to repeal the 17th Amendment, which gave voters the right to elect their own senators, amid a feud between House and Senate Republicans over the SAVE Act.
The bill was introduced by Representative Keith Self, a Texas Republican and member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and so far has eight cosponsors as of Monday afternoon. It would end the direct election of senators and require that senators be selected by state legislatures.
Prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1912, state legislatures selected senators for each state.
The Senate, he said, was designed to “protect state sovereignty and act as a check on federal overreach. If senators are supposed to represent their states, then the states should choose them.”
When they did the 17th amendment they should have included direct election of president or at least direct election of the electors.
We the people can vote for president only because legislatures let us. They can take back that power anytime they want. That’s what Bush v Gore confirmed:
GERMANY’S FREE UNIVERSITY:
Compare our hundred-grand debt traps to their pocket change semesters. Our German chatter explains.
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Winterlinde did a whole video above about their schools
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