The victory marks a major political shift for the three-member Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s massive oil and gas industry, overseeing everything from pipeline safety to natural gas rates. […] Despite his victory, Republicans will retain a 2-1 majority on the commission, meaning Rosenthal will face limits on his ability to implement his priorities without support from his Republican colleagues.

It’s his safe space.

No, asshole, we want generational change. GTFOH.

Convenient how these past-minute changes only affect a heavily Democratic area, and gives plenty of room to allege “irregularities” when poll workers are directed to a place they’re not familiar with that was set up at the last minute. Not to mention the confusion amongst everyone who’s going to show up at the wrong place and have voting take significantly more time than they anticipated.

Behind closed doors, very little of this went over well with the state’s other Republican Party bigwigs, many of whom were furious at Ramaswamy for doing something that could imperil the elections of others on the Ohio GOP ticket

Yeah, they didn’t care about the ad, just that it could drag them down with him.

I mean, what else can they do but keep on? They’ve lost a lot of the American public, but if they lose the American Congress, that’ll really start to hurt.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I’m with you - I’d still be pissed!

My cousin is still carrying her Halloween grudge against her sisters. This is like her only Halloween story, and it goes like this:

"I was like maybe 8 years old? It was some age when both candy and presents were really important to me. And I got chicken pox just before Halloween. [nb: This was before there was a vaccine.] I begged my parents, but they wouldn’t let me go out trick-or-treating; their concession was that they’d send my sisters out with a spare pillowcase.

"Only on their way home, my sisters stopped a couple houses up the street and dumped all three pillowcases into piles on the sidewalk, and then proceeded to ‘exchange’ all my chocolate for their Bit 'o Honey’s and Mary Jane’s.

"They got home and I eagerly went for my candy, only to be confronted by this travesty of all the bad candy. I complained to my parents, who told me to be quiet and just be happy that I got any candy at all.

"A couple months later, both my sisters got chicken pox as well. Except by then it was Christmas, so my grandparents said it was horrible to be sick over Christmas and bought them both extra presents.

“Anyway, that’s my childhood grudge that I’m never letting go of: that when I was sick, all my good candy was stolen, and when they were sick, they got extra presents.” And then she always ends it: “So - what’s your childhood grudge that you’re not letting go of?”

Same reason a bunch of Trump officials will start leaving next year (for personal reasons, to spend more time with their family, to pursue a wonderful opportunity, etc): if they leave now, it’s easier for them to line up jobs elsewhere in the right-wing universe. If they wait until after Election Day, there’ll be a bunch more people competing for the same positions. This way, they can get in early.

Costa Rica doesn’t have an army. But it does have a moderately militarized police force.

Considering that he only left recently, I feel like “probe” is implying a level of examination that likely hasn’t happened yet. I feel like “police inquiries” would be more appropriate here.

the meeting was speedily publicized by the White House with photos and a video, without consent of the participants, and less than two weeks away from the midterm elections.

Imagine being so naive to believe that it wouldn’t be politicized - or that the White House believed in consent.

So? It’s better than the shit the Republicans have passed.

For transcripts of YouTube videos (where available): If on mobile browser, switch to desktop mode. Press “show more” under description, then “more” under the longer description, then scroll down to transcript and press “show transcript”, then scroll again for the actual transcript. (It’s on display in the bottom drawer of a locked filling cabinet stored in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.)

And yeah, ugh!

It’s the one where Trump announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed a ceasefire on each other’s energy infrastructure. A ceasefire that Russia and Ukraine both immediately denied existed or was in effect. When a reporter asked Trump about the energy-infrastructure ceasefire and where/how it had been negotiated, he literally said something to the effect of, “It exists because I said it exists, I just declared it.”

My feeling is that Putin had people tell Trump that Putin would be grateful (sell cheap diesel that Russia got from Iran, pump up the right-wing botfarms, arrange a shiny gold medal) if Trump got Starlink restricted, now that Ukraine was hitting Russia’s dual-use infrastructure so hard. And Trump mentioned it to Musk, and Musk took Starlink down for Ukraine.

So when questions started getting asked, Musk said he didn’t order it (because Trump made that call), and Trump said he didn’t order it (because he works like a Mafia boss, “be a shame if something happened …”), and since everything was back-channeled, no one else knows what was going on.

We have anticipated shenanigans in this election because we always experience shenanigans in elections in Texas

Doesn’t speak well for the people running the elections then, nor the people who put them in place. Perhaps they should just change over the entire government there.

Just to clarify the headline: he went to a No Kings protest to document the government’s response to the protest and was hit in the eye by an ICE projectile. This was state violence against a citizen, not protestors attacking a counter-protestor or agitator.

You’ve had five years to secure the border, and Texas Republicans have had decades to do so. If you haven’t secured it by now, maybe you should try a different approach.

It’s not (only) about trying to boost his poll numbers for the election, it’s about power: declaring the emergency allows him to somewhat bypass the legislature, letting him do things he wants to do without much oversight or restraint. What’s that saying about “if you let the government have extra powers in an emergency, it will always declare an emergency to do what it wants”? Yeah, that.

Trump supporters are notoriously difficult to reach

Funny. That used to be the younger generations bc cellphones and not picking up in general. Now it’s the older generations with their copper landlines?