Sacramento area community musical theater (esp. DMTC in Davis, 2000-2020); Liberal politics; Meteorology; "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul," and Albuquerque movie filming locations; New Mexico and California arcana, and general weirdness.
If her findings are certified, which may take several years, Oliveira will become the youngest person in the world to officially discover an asteroid, breaking the record of 18-year-old Italian Luigi Sannino.
"She really has an eye. She immediately spots points in the images that look like asteroids and often advises her classmates when they are not sure they have really found any", said Heliomarzio Rodrigues Moreira, Oliveira's astronomy teacher at a private school in the city of Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, which she is attending thanks to a scholarship.
Joe the Plumber wanted to see a movie, and we settled on Shang-Chi, because we didn't know anything about it.
We went to the IMAX theater in Elk Grove in mid-afternoon, and discovered we were the only people in the theater.
I was sad to learn it was a movie in the Marvel Universe. I hate the Marvel Universe. You have to know extraneous details about the Universe first in order to understand the movie, but it was already too late.
More or less OK movie. I liked Akwafina in her role - the girl sidekick, just like in Crazy Rich Asians.
Good special effects. The plot was so tired, though - the Empire Strikes Back again, and again, and again.
Remember way back when, say, in August, when Republicans were sure that the Afghanistan evacuation would be the top issue for them in the 2022 midterms? Sensible people knew that ending an unpopular 20-year war wasn’t going to stain Biden’s legacy for long—I just didn’t count on it happening so soon.
...Republicans are doing everything they can to downplay their march toward fascism by hyping phony concerns such as “cancel culture,” masks, and critical race theory. It hasn’t been working. Keep in mind that the huge margins we saw in 2018 were due to the extreme anger against what the GOP was doing to their fellow citizens. As a result, Democrats came out in droves, and an unprecedented number of women were elected to office—almost all of them Democrats. This year, the attack on women in Texas is far worse than anything that happened three years ago.
The GOP is counting on low Democratic turnout in the midterms, and if that fails, voter suppression and gerrymandering—which admittedly we need to do a much better job of fighting. ... Doom-and-gloom Democrats are dreading the upcoming midterms, but I am actually looking forward to them. There are many reasons to be optimistic, and I’ll point out a few of the races I’m anxious to help.
...As far as gerrymandering goes, Democrats are right to be pessimistic but likely blowing the effects way out of proportion. The fact is, the red states being gerrymandered have already been gerrymandered to their breaking points.
...States like Texas, which have been gerrymandered to death for the past 16 years, have to figure out what to do with all those new liberals moving into their cities. They have to go somewhere. However, a state like New York was last redistricted when the GOP was in control of the state Senate. This year, the Democrats are in firm control and could take five to seven seats from the Republicans. New York Governor Hochul has already said she has no problems with gerrymandering the hell out of the Empire State to make up for the GOP assaults elsewhere.
Ironically, the Republicans might have had more seats to play with if not for their blatant racism. The Commerce Department, which conducts the census, did the bidding of Trump’s white nationalists to undercount minority votes—especially with the Latinx population. The thinking here is that counting them would help the Democrats. Unfortunately, this racist strategy meant they undercounted in states like Florida, Arizona, and Texas. This means that these states aren’t getting the seats they deserve, and since the Republicans have the trifecta in these states, they aren’t available for the GOP to gerrymander. Oops.
...When the National Voter Registration Act—known as the “Motor Voter Act”—was signed into law in 1993, Republicans cried that it would kill their party. It didn’t. They won the majority the following year. If you make registration and voting more straightforward, all that happens is that the pool of less partisan people is more likely to vote, which cuts both ways.
The biggest target of the GOP’s war on democracy is getting rid of, or at least significantly curtailing, mail-in voting. Yet, a recent study conducted by a team at the Public Policy Institute of California found that while it increased turnout, it didn’t make electoral outcomes any better for the Democrats. Their models indicated that access to mail-in voting increased turnout for Republican candidates, who did quite well in 2020. It was pretty popular with rural populations, and especially the elderly. Older voters, which have historically trended Republican, used vote-by-mail ballots more than any other group. Gov. DeSantis even begged Trump to lay off attacking voting by mail in Florida, which the Republicans count on. Trump reversed himself, but only in Florida.
...If you thought the SCOTUS ruling on Texas’ abortion law was bad, wait until June. The justices will take on Roe v. Wade directly in late June of next year with a Mississippi law that seeks to overturn it. I can’t stress enough the pitfall for the Republicans here. Since no one in politics can see past the next few days, no one is talking about this now. Just wait. Right-wing media, like Fox, is still telling people that young voters are obsessed with Afghanistan. Oh, Fox.
In reality, there is no good way out for the Republicans here. SCOTUS may finally overthrow Roe v. Wade, as the right-wing conservatives are pushing. If they do, I promise you the backlash will be enormous. Younger voters have taken abortion for granted, and most want it legal in all circumstances. If you want every Democrat to come out for the midterms, this is how you do it.
On the flip side, if the conservative justices don’t overturn Roe v. Wade, the backlash from angry conservatives will be just as grave. They have been promised this action for decades, and I cannot stress the betrayal they would feel with a 6-3 majority. There won’t be that enthusiasm that Republican legislators are counting on from their base to overcome the voting obstacles they installed this year, but that certainly won’t be an issue on the Democratic side.
SAN DIEGO — California Republicans, stinging from their lopsided loss in this month’s recall election, sought to regroup and focus on the upcoming midterms at their party convention this weekend.
Typically a boisterous gathering, the three-day meeting in San Diego was among the grimmest in recent memory.
...Yet there appeared to be little public introspection. Republican leaders pointed to the Democrats’ overwhelming advantage in voter registration and fundraising.
...Critics noted that over one million fewer pro-recall voters turned out compared to the 6 million Californians who voted for President Trump in 2020.
“The million-dollar question is: How do you turn the ship around? Is it even worth it? Can you turn it around?” said Ray Perez, the vice chairman of the Yolo County GOP, who has been critical of state party leadership’s messaging and communications with voters. “We’re not going to win a gubernatorial seat overnight. Can we win things that are within reach, which is an assembly seat. … I honestly don’t know. I don’t think so, but I want to be wrong.”
A panel of GOP lawyers said conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots and rigged ballots suppressed the pro-recall vote.
“There are very good people who have surprisingly bought into that — my vote doesn’t count in California, so therefore I’m not going to vote,” said Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County GOP, during a panel called “Jim Crow 2.0 or Common Sense: The National Debate Over Election Integrity Laws.” “In any sport, if you don’t go on the field, you will not win. And politics is a contact sport, it is a team sport and we have to have everybody voting.”
...Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who was once largely viewed as the GOP’s best candidate for statewide office and received the support of 9% of voters, met privately with delegates.
He blamed the recall’s failure on the race ultimately becoming about “personalities,” an unnamed dig at Elder, rather than issues that are frustrating Californians on both sides of the aisle, such as homelessness, the cost of living and crime.
