Monday, July 29, 2024
Mantle n Berra - Mickey n Yogi Stuff
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Pablo Picasso Self Portrait
Pablo Picasso
Self Portrait
The Greatest Artist of The 20th Century
.
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Trump Fuck You Coffee Mug n Shirt Gifts
TRUMP Fight Tee Shirt LimitedEdition Historical President MAGA
Big Lebowski Stuff Shop
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Donald Trump Saving America Tee Shirt
"SAVING AMERICA"
No Faith in Kamala Harris
"NO FAITH in KAMALA"
Kamala Harris had one great day in her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign: her first.
Then came a rapid collapse.
The freshman senator who announced her candidacy in January 2019 before 20,000 cheering supporters in Oakland, California, dropped out in December before a single vote had been cast.
By the time she quit, Harris lacked money, a message and a cohesive campaign operation — all ingredients of a successful candidacy.
It was a hard fall for someone whose youth and biracial identity evoked the appeal of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama.
“I have mixed emotions about it,” her rival and the eventual winner, Joe Biden, said upon hearing she had withdrawn from the Democratic nomination contest. He called her a “first-rate intellect.”
Now, Harris is set to get another shot. As the sitting vice president, she is a leading candidate to succeed Biden after his exit from the race, receiving his immediate endorsement. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November showdown with Donald Trump.
“I know there are people working behind the scenes who think she may not be the best one suited to take us to victory,” said Maria Cardona, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel, speaking before Biden's withdrawal. “If that is seen as a full-on, inorganic tactic that is being led by senior people within the Democratic Party, there will be a civil war inside the Democratic Party the likes of which we will not survive.”
With only a few months to wage a campaign against Trump, Harris couldn’t afford to repeat the mistakes that tanked her last presidential bid. There would be little time to recover. Hers would need to be a virtually error-free sprint to Election Day.
When Harris gave that announcement speech before a hometown crowd five years ago, her prospects seemed dazzling. A Monmouth University poll released the week after she entered the race showed her running third in a crowded Democratic field that eventually numbered more than two dozen. With 11% support, she trailed only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom had run presidential races before.
Harris had earned her bona fides as a former prosecutor and had distinguished herself in Senate committees as a feared interrogator who could pick apart a witness’s testimony.
A pro-Harris super PAC prepared an ad that showed her grilling Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and two Trump-era attorneys general, William Barr and Jeff Sessions.
It never aired. On the day the $1 million ad buy was supposed to begin running, Harris dropped out.
Making the leap from state to national politics proved daunting for her. Rivals like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had spent much of their adult lives steeped in policy.
Harris hadn’t mastered policy questions that dominated the Democratic debates. She had originally backed Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan, but later released her own version that carved out a continued role for private insurers.
She quickly faced incoming fire from the left and center of the ideological spectrum.
Sanders’ aides denounced her proposal as a “terrible policy.” Biden’s campaign joined the attack, warning that she would undercut Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.
“She was trying to figure out where she landed in the primary field on a bunch of issues,” one of her former California campaign advisers said. As a state official, Harris “hadn’t had to deal with that level of nuance.”
Another policy stumble marred what seemed to be her breakthrough moment. In a debate in June, she attacked Biden for opposing school busing in the 1970s.
Harris mentioned a “little girl” in California who had been bused to school every day. “That little girl was me,” she said. Within hours of the exchange, her campaign triumphantly started selling “That little girl was me” T-shirts for $29.99 apiece.
But after the debate, she struggled to offer a consistent answer to whether she believed federally mandated busing should be used to integrate schools.
A Biden campaign aide seized on the equivocation, tweeting that she was “tying herself in knots trying not to answer the very question she posed” to Biden.
This time, instead of facing off against fellow Democrats, Harris would be able to elevate one to serve as her running mate. She would have a plethora of promising choices to balance the ticket, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, all of whom won in places where Trump performed well.
Admirers say that Harris has grown in the job. Early in her campaign, she traveled to South Carolina and spoke to a group of Democratic women.
“The woman that I met in early 2019 was not as confident and was significantly more tentative in the way she presented herself to potential voters,” Amanda Loveday, a senior adviser to a pro-Biden super PAC called Unite the Country, said before Biden withdrew.
While affirming she wanted Biden to remain at the top of the ticket, Loveday said of the vice president: “The woman I met back then is very different from the woman I see on TV today. She’s grown as a leader and she has developed more confidence.”
Both Harris’ government office and the Biden-Harris campaign declined to comment for this article before Biden's withdrawal.
A campaign is akin to an expensive startup business on a national scale. It needs an inspirational candidate, but it also relies on a unified staff. Harris didn’t have one. People close to the campaign say that lines of authority were blurred between Harris’ sister and campaign chairwoman, Maya Harris, and other advisers who’d worked on her state races but weren’t blood relatives.
In November 2019, a campaign staff member wrote a letter, obtained by The New York Times, that depicted a campaign in crisis.
“Campaigns have highs and lows, mistakes and miscalculations,” wrote Kelly Mehlenbacher. “But because we have refused to confront our mistakes, foster an environment of critical thinking and honest feedback, or trust the expertise of talented staff, we find ourselves making the same unforced errors over and over.”
By that point, Harris was running fifth, her poll numbers down to 6%. Money was dwindling, accelerating the downward spiral. That fall, Harris’ campaign laid off staff and moved others from her national headquarters in Baltimore to Iowa to save money.
Any hope of reviving her candidacy with a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses in January was short-lived. On Dec. 3, Harris dropped out. She emailed staff that she “simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
A Harris sequel would look nothing like the original, former advisers said. She’d be buoyed by a Democratic Party that would coalesce behind her, desperate to defeat Trump. Donors who’ve bailed on Biden might take a fresh look at the race with a younger candidate atop the ticket.
She would also likely inherit the parts of Biden’s campaign that are working — like the massive field and data operations that are designed to drive voter turnout. While Biden’s most senior aides would likely be gone, many rank-and-file campaign staff with long resumes may choose to remain.
Harris’ background as a prosecutor could prove advantageous in a future debate. Rather than sparring with fellow Democrats over health care and education policy, she would be boring in on Trump’s criminal conviction in Manhattan.
“Literally everything” would be different, starting with her pitch to voters, a longtime Harris adviser told NBC News. “It is a three-month sprint and not a two-year slog.”
#NobodyWantsKamala
#KamalaNO
Trump Reacts to Biden Withdrawal President
TRUTH MEDIA
Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was! He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement. All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t - And now, look what he’s done to our Country, with millions of people coming across our Border, totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. We will suffer greatly because of his Presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Biden Bows Out Presidential Race 2024
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Trump No Tax on Tips Slogan
DONALD TRIMP
On The CAMPAIGN TRAIL
"NO TAX on TIPS" !!!
How would it work?
One bill introduced by Republican lawmakers proposes to exempt tips from only federal income tax. Employers would still be required to withhold payroll taxes on them, and they would still be subject to any applicable state taxes. How would it help workers? Minimum wage laws allow tipped workers to be paid as little as $2.13 an hour with the expectation that tips will bring their total earnings up to at least the threshold of $7.25 for other workers. Eliminating taxes on tips would presumably leave more cash in their pockets, essentially allowing tipped workers to take a tax deduction equal to the amount of their tipped income. Workers’ advocates say service staff have struggled to make ends meet since 2020, when many lost their jobs during Covid lockdowns. Workers were in short supply when restaurants and bars reopened in 2021, prompting large raises, signing bonuses and other perks. Conditions largely remained the same however, frustrating workers, according to Ben Reynolds, a union organiser with independent labour union Restaurant Workers United, which represents employees in four states.
Wage growth for leisure and hospitality jobs peaked last year at a 12-month moving average of 7.2 per cent in January 2023, above the average of 6.3 per cent for workers overall. Tax policy experts point out that exempting tip income would not help the majority of low-wage workers, although it would present opportunities for people to game the system by asking to be paid in tips instead of with a traditional salary. Out of the lowest paid quartile of wage earners in the US — those earning less than $17.66 hourly — only 5 per cent receive tips, according to an analysis by Yale University’s Budget Lab. “Working in a grocery store you make the same total compensation [as a server], but all of their income is subject to taxation because they don’t receive tips,” said Lautz at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “There’s a fairness concern there.”
What would it cost? Cutting taxes on gratuities would have a “relatively small impact on the big picture” because tipped workers were a small portion of the US tax base, said Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think-tank. Yale’s Budget Lab estimates that tipped workers comprise just 2.5 per cent of the US labour force. An estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that it would reduce federal revenues by a minimum of $150bn-$250bn over 10 years — although that figure could rise if more workers start getting paid in tips. The proposal would still add to the government’s projected $22tn deficit over the next decade, York warned. It also comes ahead of a legislative battle over the expiration of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that could result in new reductions that further reduce federal revenues.
What are the political considerations? Tipped workers are a crucial voting bloc in Nevada, one of seven swing states that will decide the presidential election, and reducing taxes has long been at the core of Republicans’ economic pitch to voters. But the idea has also gained some bipartisan traction. Nevada’s senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, are the first Democrats to support the proposal. They said in a statement that it would provide economic relief to the states’ middle-class families. US President Joe Biden previously suggested eliminating the lower minimum hourly wage for tipped workers, forcing employers to pay them full wages in addition to the tips they receive. Workers would probably welcome the tax cut, but some might have preferred other reforms to the industry such as consistent shift scheduling, said Reynolds of Restaurant Workers United.
Trump Talks About attempt on His Life
"NO TAX on TIPS"
NO WARS & Other THINGS
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) -Donald Trump described on Thursday how he narrowly survived an attempt on his life, telling a rapt audience at the Republican National Convention in his first speech since the attack that he was only there "by the grace of Almighty God."
"I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear," he said during a 14-minute account, a thick bandage still covering his ear. "I said to myself, 'Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet."
When he told the Milwaukee crowd that he was "not supposed to be here," the delegates chanted back, "Yes you are!" With photos of a bloodied Trump showing on screens behind him, Trump praised the Secret Service agents that rushed to his side and paid tribute to the volunteer firefighter who was killed, Corey Comperatore, kissing his fire helmet.
The former president struck an unusually conciliatory tone during the speech's opening moments, when he formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the Nov. 5 election.
"I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America," he said, in a marked shift in tenor for the typically bellicose former president.
But he swiftly pivoted to well-worn attacks on the Biden administration, which he said was "destroying" the country. He claimed without evidence that his criminal indictments were part of a Democratic conspiracy, predicted President Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, would usher in "World War Three," and described what he called an "invasion" of migrants over the southern border.
In the meandering remarks that followed - at 90-plus minutes the longest convention speech in history - Trump abandoned the message of unity he had promised to embrace in favor of his usual mixture of bombast and grievance, repeating his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election.
Trump asserted, as he has throughout his political career, that only he was capable of saving the country from certain doom.
"I could stop wars with a telephone call," he said.
The speech capped a four-day event during which he was greeted with adulation by a party now entirely in his thrall.
The convention's primetime program of speakers reflected the nominee's background as a reality television star: mixed martial arts executive Dana White, musician Kid Rock and pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, who fired up the crowd by tearing his top in half to reveal a sleeveless red Trump campaign shirt.
Trump's entrance was befitting of a pro wrestler - a screen lifted slowly to reveal him standing in front of massive lights arranged to spell out his last name, before a projected image of the White House appeared behind him.
In a statement, Biden campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon said Trump had presented only problems, not solutions.
"It was Donald Trump who destroyed our economy, ripped away rights, and failed middle class families," she said. "Now he pursues the presidency with an even more extreme vision for where he wants to take this country."
BIDEN 'SOUL SEARCHING' ABOUT HIS CAMPAIGN'S FUTURE
Biden was meanwhile "soul searching" about whether to drop out of the race, one source said, after senior party figures, congressional allies and major donors warned him he could not win following a halting debate performance on June 27.
Biden, 81, was isolating at his Delaware home after contracting COVID-19. His doctor said he was experiencing mild symptoms.
Trump devoted much of his speech to attacking migrants, a theme that has always animated his presidential campaigns.
"They're coming from prisons, they're coming from jails, they're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums," he said, before citing by name several Americans who were murdered by suspects in the country illegally.
There is no evidence foreign governments are intentionally sending such people to the U.S. Academic studies show that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
The speech broke Trump's own 2016 record for the longest delivered by a nominee, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California in Santa Barbara. His 2020 convention address, delivered at the White House, was the third longest ever.
After Trump concluded, his family and that of his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, walked onto the stage as balloons dropped from the ceiling. His wife Melania Trump, who is rarely seen on the campaign trail, joined him on Thursday for the first time this week.
Vance, at 39 half Trump's age, is widely seen as the ideological heir to Trump's Make America Great Movement.
"J.D., you're gonna be doing this for a long time," Trump said. "Enjoy the ride."
TRUMP TIGHTENS HIS GRASP ON THE PARTY
Some of the eclectic group of speakers - including conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who received a huge ovation, and Trump's son Eric - employed divisive language in denouncing the Biden administration.
The head pro at Trump's Florida golf club, John Nieporte, praised Trump's skills on the course and claimed the former president had won 21 club championships.
"Joe Biden? Zero," he said, evoking the surreal moment from the presidential debate when Trump and Biden argued over which of the two candidates had a better golf game.
With his grip on the Republican Party never tighter, Trump will be in a much stronger position than in his 2017-2021 term to follow through on his agenda if he wins the election.
Biden has faced increasing pressure from heavyweights in his party to cede his position at the top of the ticket. Former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have told him he cannot win in November, according to a White House source familiar with the matter.
After weeks of insisting that he will remain in the race, Biden is now taking calls to step aside seriously, and multiple Democratic officials think an exit is a matter of time, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate - Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer - have told Biden directly that he will not only lose the White House but also endanger their effort to win back the House, according to reports in multiple news outlets.
Senator Jon Tester, who faces a challenging reelection battle in Montana this year, on Thursday became the 21st congressional Democrat and the second senator to publicly call on Biden to drop out.