Iron Lady Rusty Conscience

More and more people are saying this

About three in ten adults report not taking their medicines as prescribed at some point in the past year because of the cost. This includes about one in five who say they have not filled a prescription (21%) or took an over-the counter drug instead (21%), and 12% who say they have cut pills in half or skipped a dose because of the cost.

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/public-opinion-on-prescription-drugs-and-their-prices/

NYT has an interview with María Corina Machado. The main photo is her staring wistfully through a window:

Venezuela’s ‘Iron Lady’ Pleads With Trump to Save Her Country’s Democracy

Now, with President Nicolás Maduro accused of stealing the election and his government threatening her capture, María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s wildly popular opposition leader, has gone into hiding — alone.

In a series of rare, in-depth virtual interviews since she mobilized millions to vote against Mr. Maduro in July, Ms. Machado said she was holed up in a secret location somewhere inside her country. Because anyone who helps her could be detained — or might lead government agents to her — she said she has not had a visitor in months.

Nicknamed the country’s “Iron Lady” for her conservative politics and steely resolve, Ms. Machado is, she admitted, “longing for a hug.”

Her mother has urged her to meditate. She has not.

The rest of the article is her begging Trump and the “international community” to coup her country, concluding with “But I am willing to do what has to be done,” she said, “for as long as it takes to assert the truth and popular sovereignty," and then somehow you can hear “SPEAK ABOUT DESTRUCTION” fade in.

The NYT asks - Why Was There a Broad Drop-Off in Democratic Turnout in 2024? (archive)

Gaza - not mentioned, even though they talk about Harris getting fewer votes than Biden in Dearborn. Grocery prices - not mentioned. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Not mentioned.

Some analysts point out that Ms. Harris was simply the latest political casualty of a postpandemic global trend favoring challengers, no matter the incumbents’ politics, in places like Japan, South Africa, South Korea and Britain.

Mexico? Not mentioned, because then they’d have to point out that incumbent parties that have actually done something to help people out of poverty tend to win reelection.

Once again (as with “chronoworking”) I am forced to repeat that putting a Greek prefix on a Germanic rootword gives me hyperangst.

Remember that time the Washington Post gave Bernie Sanders a bunch of Pinocchios for saying that millions of Americans work multiple jobs, because only eight million do, and “millions” implies … more than that?

The only people I’ve heard defend Bush vs. Trump have done so with shameless national chauvinism.

Reelecting Bush in 2004, knowing what we already knew about the Iraq War and torture, was a much more telling indictment of the U.S. electorate than Trump’s comeback.

If I recall correctly it was after that, and Trump was saying the should have been accompanied by a full troop withdrawal.

I haven’t seen the clip in 20 years, though. I just tried to find it and CNN has an excerpt from what may have been the same interview, but they only include the part where Trump is joking about his hair. Important archival journalism.

In 2004 or so Trump was on Larry King Live giving advice about the Iraq War. He said “Declare victory and have a parade.” Larry King said, “But we haven’t won!” He said, “Doesn’t matter. Declare victory, and have a parade.”

deleted by creator

The Elliott Abrams endorsement is still up for grabs!

Similar happenings at the Los Angeles Times, as the article mentions:

The announcement came days after Mariel Garza, the head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board, resigned in protest after that paper’s owner Patrick Soon-Shiong decided against running a presidential endorsement.

Soon-Shiong is a pharmaceuticals billionaire.

No sticker

Not especially related, but I recently watched an old French movie with an actor who bore an uncanny resemblance to Justin Trudeau. And wouldn’t you know it, by the end of the film he was wearing blackface.

(I can’t find any photos that highlight the shared likeness, but it was Pierre Brasseur in Children of Paradise. He played a theatrical actor whose dream role was Othello.)

I agree. Like, we could get the number down by asking the question a different way, too, but ultimately the issue is that ~97% of votes will go to candidates who will increase the power, reach, and budget of ICE and the military.

Poll: https://www.prri.org/research/challenges-to-democracy-the-2024-election-in-focus-findings-from-the-2024-american-values-survey/

Axios summary:

Nearly 79% of Republicans favor putting undocumented immigrants in encampments, compared with 47% of independents and 22% of Democrats.
The vast majority of Americans who most trust far-right news (91%) or Fox News (82%) favor militarized encampments for undocumented immigrants, compared with 44% of Americans who do not watch TV news.

Among non-white Christians, around 47% of Hispanic Protestants, 42% of Black Protestants and 33% of Hispanic Catholics favor this policy.
39% of Jewish Americans and 32% of religiously unaffiliated Americans support the idea.

Jones says the Alien Enemies Act was used just 80 years ago in World War II and there are people still alive who remember it.
"So it's not unimaginable that it can happen again. This is not just rhetoric here. I do think it's one of the more disturbing things that we found."

52% of respondents said they favor allowing immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children to gain legal resident status — a 10-point decrease since the first time PRRI asked the question in 2018.
In addition, 51% of those surveyed support building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico — a 10-point jump since 2016, when the question was first asked.

Valiente Action Fund, for example, tells Axios it found that hard negative ads against Trump, showing how his policies would separate families, swayed some Black and Latino male voters who were previously supporting hard immigration policies.
"We have to tell that story, and not let Trump define immigration for our country," Valiente Action Fund executive director Maria Rodriguez tells Axios.

The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.82 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample.

This is all they give us other than party affiliation and religion:

The vast majority of Americans who most trust far-right news (91%) or Fox News (82%) favor militarized encampments for undocumented immigrants, compared with 44% of Americans who do not watch TV news and 36% who most trust mainstream TV news.

It’s a perfectly good sample size, you’re absolutely right, but @anarcho_blinkenist@hexbear.net raises good questions about whether it’s an appropriately random sample.

Edit: They use weighting to put things closer to what the general population actually looks like, but here’s what their unweighted numbers are:

Historically, 79% of Republicans = 100% of Republican senators, and 22% of Democrats = ~80% of Democratic senators, so it sounds like this is on track to get Patriot Act numbers in Congress.