The Fat Cuban Horse agreed to a buyout of Klay Thompson's contract. The former Splash Bro. has been a target since the Giannis trade and is expected to sign with us.
I disagree with DSA fundamentally, on socialism, but one thing they are is democratic.
Some perfectly fine Democrats have been defeated in primaries by Lefties. These are loyal, cobalt blues, nothing purplish about them, in Congressional Districts safe from challenge by Grand Old Phascists, in entire states where the Democrat would be favored to win the Senate seat. In some cases these Democrats have been incumbents. They have proven their nous time and time again, including in Trump's two impeachments. They wore their impeachment votes as badges of honor. Still they were primaried from the Left, in some cases lost. Why would that be? Let's hear from an incumbent Dem.:
"Members now realize that it's [impeachment] not that big of a deal. It's old hat...Especially when you can't deliver."
You don't get an "A" for effort any more; "Resistance" doesn't cut it any more. You need to win. After Trump's second presidential win, some incumbent Resistance Democrats faced angry constituents who demanded "blood in the streets", even their blood when they went back to their districts. The impeachment incumbents were shocked.
What this means is that Republican voters have lost faith in democratic theory, where the democratic process legitimizes the outcome; in fact, it is the only legitimizing process. It means that Republican voters from 2016 to present and increasing numbers of Democratic voters have lost faith in the two political parties to deliver them results. Republicans have totally abandoned democratic process. Democrats have not, but want results. Small d democratic theory is that you can't win every time, you have to compromise, and you have to accept the results of free and fair votes. As Hubert Humphrey once stated, "Dukakis thinks as long as the pipes are shiny it doesn't matter if shit comes out". That was an American-context critique of democratic theory. Sheepish political scientists would point to broader examples, such as the elections in Germany in the 1930's. No, the Nazi Party never won a majority of seats in the Reichstag, but like in Germany at the time, like in Israel throughout its history, close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and parliamentary democracies. The theory in parliamentary democracies is that pluralities force compromise and you get a muddier, but better, representation of the whole electorate. So, although political scientists don't like to mention it, Adolph Hitler and Benjamin Netanyahu were the results that proved that democracies work. You can see why poli sci's don't like to talk about that.
Coming back to America, we have a quasi first-past-the-poll representative democracy. At the presidential level you do have to win a majority of electoral votes, but to accommodate the smaller, slave-holding states, you can win the electoral college and the presidency without winning a majority of the popular vote. Voila! Donald Trump. The pipes were shiny in 2016 and 2024. We still got shit. And, like in Germany and present-day Israel, shiny democratic pipes may result in the death of Democracy in America.
When all that you want to do is win and you can't, the focus is on the process of democracy as the culprit. Trump would not have accepted the legitimizing democratic process in 2016 had he lost the Electoral College (he did lose the popular vote); Trump, and a majority of congressional Republicans, did not accept the democratic process in 2020; they would not have accepted it in 2024; they might not except it in 2026. To him and them, only the result mattered. Meanwhile, Trump never, in three elections, got a majority of the popular vote.
When one side doesn't accept democratic process and the other side does, you have an unfair fight. The rise of Democratic Socialism is a response to Trumpism, but DSA is wholly committed to democratic process. They want to abolish the Electoral College to make Democracy in America more democratic. DSA is also as wholly committed to results as Trumpism. Democrats of all shades are fed up with the unfair fight. DSA offers them a democratic alternative within the Democratic Party. Resistance isn't enough, "especially when you can't deliver."
.jpg)
Shatiya Hardin, Gary Ind. resident 25 years Gary has been without power for nine straight days after an August 11 storm. 🥹🫶
.webp)
Welcome to Florida, the Democratic Socialist State 🙄
Sound on. Off my triumph a half hour earlier, Eleven was spoiling for a rematch with war-like tunneling under the bed covers. But when I gave it to her, 11:05, she was so skittish, owing to my new strategy of not giving her advance warning with ominous knocks and finger drumming, that she folded like a paper suitcase and gave me a pitiful white flag meow. In the second at 11:08 she holds her position till I jump out and then she skedaddles. She'll get on to me. She's the most fun I've had in years and years.
Eleven and I just got done playing our nightly "I'm gonna get that kitty" surprise game and she was MAD at me because I won. I changed my routine and she really was surprised! After we were done I lay down on the bed. She came into the bedroom and GLARED at me. 🤭No fake, I laughed so hard my back hurt.🤣
Early in his second term, Trump told his team that Harp "was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids," according to Regime Change, a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
“All of you will go off and make money,” Trump said, according to the book. “She’ll never leave me.”
Haberman and Times reporter Jonathan Swan also wrote in their book “Regime Change,” released in July, that Harp left “adoring” and “intimate” letters to Trump that “raised the eyebrows of the Secret Service during the campaign,” Swan told CNN last month.
Preston [Harp, brother], 38, who now lives in Nicaragua, said he believes his sister sees Trump as "a kind of father figure" because their real father, (https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/natalie-harp-brother-says-trump-105252843.html) Robert Harp, who died by suicide in July 2020, had moved away from what Preston described as the "doctrine of U.S. exceptionalism." [Preston said Natalie's relationship with Trump was] "very unhealthy".
Mr. Trump has dismissed concerns about Ms. Harp, whom he calls “sweetie” and treats like a daughter, according to people close to him.
Donald Trump's executive assistant Natalie Harp is the woman behind his overnight Truth Social sprees, The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-truth-social-late-night-posts-167cb47a) reported Tuesday.
Once, when Mr. Trump was playing golf in Scotland, she ran behind his cart to keep him up to date with positive stories and social media posts.
In 2023, Ms. Harp sent a series of letters to Mr. Trump that unnerved people around him, according to a half-dozen people with knowledge of them.
"You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one of the letters, which were seen by The New York Times. The letters’ authenticity was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them.
“I don’t ever want to let you down,” Ms. Harp wrote, thanking Mr. Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”
In another letter, she told Mr. Trump that she wanted to get back to “that synergy” she used to have with him, where “we’d talk about everything and nothing.”
“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”
President Trump took aim at Oman, a U.S. ally that has been mediating the talks, as efforts to end a war he started have faltered.
Memorandum of Misunderstanding Kaput: 60-Day Period for Full Agreement With Iran Expires
The White House Criminal is incompetent in everything except crime.
.jpeg)
