The Race For 2024

[ZiprHead]

Inside the GOP Presidential Candidate Gift Card Ploy Turning Campaign Finance Upside Down

GOP Presidential Candidate Doug Burgum came up with a novel idea to get on the debate stage. It may or may not be legal.

www.thedailybeast.com

Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, is running for president. But he has a problem: Most voters don’t know who he is.

Burgum has a solution for that—to make a splash on the debate stage. But there’s another problem: The Republican National Committee requires at least 40,000 individual donors as one of its criteria for allowing a candidate on the debate stage, and Burgum is far from the household name who could gather all those donors.

So Burgum, once again, came up with a novel solution. He wants to give 50,000 campaign donors $20 all-purpose gift cards in exchange for a $1 contribution. It’s a million-dollar gambit that could work a lot more effectively than spending $1 million on a meager number of television ads.

But the clever strategy could create its own set of thorny problems, according to experts who say it may not be legal. Beyond that, the RNC may or may not find it meets their new donor requirements for qualification.

The Daily Beast brought the question to seven experts in campaign finance law. All of them agreed on one thing: They’d never heard of anything like it. But while conversations were peppered with words like “desperation,” “gimmick,” and “thirsty,” the experts were divided on the legality.

Some believe the scheme, while perhaps unsavory, does pass legal muster as a campaign expense. Burgum would not need to qualify for the debate if he weren’t a candidate, they said, so in that sense his expenses pass the FEC’s “irrespective test.”

Other experts, however, argued that the ploy appears to be a reimbursement scheme, which would violate the “straw donor” ban—contributions in the name of another person. And some said it could add up to an en masse conversion of $950,000 in campaign funds to personal use, which would be another serious violation.

 

[lpetrich]

Vivek Ramaswamy claims ‘pervasive censorship’ to blame for Capitol riot | The Hill

Ramaswamy, speaking with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the 2023 Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, echoed claims by former President Trump that the 2020 election didn’t cause the insurrection, instead saying “pervasive censorship” did.

“What caused January 6 is pervasive censorship in this country in the lead up to January 6,” Ramaswamy argued. “You tell people in this country they cannot speak. That is when they scream. You tell people they cannot scream. That is when they tear things down.”

“Until we look ourselves in the mirror and admit truth on that, we will not move forward as a country,” he added.

Evidence-free assertions.

Mike Pence won't call it an insurrection.

“All I know for sure having lived through it at the Capitol is that it was a tragic day,” Pence said. “I’ve never used the word insurrection, Tucker, over the past two years, but it was a riot that took place at the Capitol that day.”

Ron DeSantis tried to evade the issue.

“I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day,” DeSantis said. “Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing, you know, what happened. But we gotta go forward on this stuff. We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past.”

Chris Christie had a great response.
Christie bashes DeSantis’s Jan. 6 remarks: ‘Did he have a TV?’ | The Hill

“He wasn’t anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous answers I’ve heard in this race so far,” Christie, a former New Jersey governor, told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins late Wednesday.

 

[lpetrich]

Pence Raises Just $1.2 Million, Aide Says, in Worrying Sign for 2024 Bid - The New York Times - "The notably low figure raised new doubts about Republican voters’ enthusiasm for the former vice president, as well as questions about whether he will qualify for the first G.O.P. debate."

Mr. Trump said his campaign and his joint fund-raising committee had raised $35 million in the second quarter. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced he had raised about $20 million. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, raised $4.3 million for her campaign and an additional $3 million for her affiliated committees. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said his campaign had raised $6.1 million.

Even Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is largely self-funding his own hopeful campaign that began the same day as Mr. Pence’s, said on Friday that he had raised $1.6 million from donors, in addition to $10 million of his own money he has given to his campaign.

Mr. Burgum has been using gimmicks like offering $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people to donate at least $1 to his campaign, or the chance to win a Yeti cooler for a low-dollar donation, all in the hopes of making the debate stage.

 

[Worldtraveller]

For those who are confused about the topic of Epstein, I had people (falsely) accusing me of following Q-anon stuff, and as an example the people making the (false) allegations mentioned the pizza shop. I responded by pointing out that Q-anon was wrong, that it wasn't a pizza shop, it was a private island. I was not trying to tie Epstein to any past, present, or future presidential candidates. Nor was it a "dems are just as bad". It was stating exactly where Q-anon was wrong.

I was asked to elaborate about Epstein, because apparently some people here didn't know who he was or why his activities related those under discussion. That's when I posted the Wikipedia link.

Hey Elixir, you over looked this.

That also explains his recently-expressed love for gas stoves.

Especially gas ovens.
Yikes.

What a strange comment. Could you explain it in more detail?

Yes, could you explain that in more detail? Inquiring minds want to know.

I get it, your refusal to answer will be yet more evidence about how I don't answer questions. I wonder how long this will go before people accuse me of not answering the question I am asking Elixir.

I'll defend you on this Jason. I don't think you're moving towards Q cultism, however, Q cultism is moving towards US mainstream conservatism. In 2017 regular conservatives weren't calling their political enemies pedophiles and groomers. Only hardcore Q followers were doing that.

In 2023, GOP presidential candidates are platforming on this and Republican senators use these talking points on a daily basis.

The movie "The Sound Of Freedom" raked in 40M since opening and is doing better than the Indiana Jones flick. It's Qanon inspired and it's somewhat mainstream.

You're not moving towards Q, Q is moving towards you.

For the record. There's a difference between 'doing better at the box office' and people actually going to see it. There have been several (I don't know how many now) reports of people going to the theaters to see this movie, being told it was sold out, and peeking in only to see an empty theater, which means some rich assholes are buying tickets to make it look like it's doing much better than it is.

I suspect here in Floriduh, it might actually do ok.

 

[lpetrich]

Nikki Haley Is Losing Her Culture War Campaign

When Nikki Haley tried to fire up a crowd of New Hampshire voters in late May by slamming Dylan Mulvaney—the transgender influencer with whom Bud Light controversially collaborated—the presidential hopeful called Mulvaney “a guy, dressed as a girl, making fun of women.”

After dropping that line, Haley waited a patient beat for the applause. But the applause never came.

She's trying to get the transphobe vote, it seems.

The armor of a culture warrior just doesn’t seem to suit Haley, who boasts actual experience as well as potential to connect with demographics the GOP has lost.

But Haley has apparently calculated that she can’t win the primary without at least trying that armor on—even when the audience isn’t buying the act, or has any idea what she’s talking about.

Not much of a transphobe vote, it seems.

Among the half dozen Republicans who spoke to The Daily Beast for this story, Haley was compared to almost every fizzled front runner or disappointing nominee of the last decade, including Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, even Hillary Clinton.

One GOP strategist who does not work for any candidate likened her to Martin O’Malley, the now-obscure former Maryland governor who failed to break the Clinton versus Bernie Sanders duel in the 2016 Democratic primary.

“If she were VP,” the strategist continued, “she would be our Kamala Harris.”

Like the Jebs and Walkers before her, Haley is the exact kind of candidate who would have found success in a pre-Trump GOP. Once, she even hedged her bets on a post-Trump GOP, positioning herself to lead a party that left Trump behind.

But the Republican Party is still very Trumpie.

 

[lpetrich]

A Gigantic Fart Derailed RFK Jr.’s NYC Press Dinner: Report

Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threw a press dinner on Tuesday night that devolved into a shouting match between two elderly men—a bizarre conflict that reportedly ended with a prolonged bout of flatulence.

... Dechert said the following to Page Six about the incident: “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

So it wasn't RFK Jr.'s fart.

 

[lpetrich]

From the New York Post: RFK Jr. says COVID was 'ethnically targeted' to spare Jews with video of him saying that.

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy hedged.

In between bites of linguini and clam sauce, Kennedy, 69, warned of more dire biological weapons in the pipeline with a “50% infection fatality rate” that would make COVID-19 “look like a walk in the park.”

“We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons,” he claimed. “They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

 

[lpetrich]

His response:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Twitter: "The @nypost story is mistaken. …" / Twitter

The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews. In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered. That study is here: New insights into genetic susceptibility of COVID-19: an ACE2 and TMPRSS2 polymorphism analysis - PubMed

.@LevineJonathan exploited this OFF-THE-RECORD conversation to smear me by association with an outlandish conspiracy theory.

This cynical maneuver is consistent with the mainstream media playbook to discredit me as a crank — and by association, to discredit revelations of genuine corruption and collusion.

For example: 1. Government / Big Tech collusion to censor dissent on social media; 2. Fauci et al’s suppression of lab leak hypothesis; 3. Censoring of information questioning COVID vaccine safety & efficacy.

As I describe in my new book, “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” ethnically targeted bioweapons are real, and history makes clear there is no population who should be more concerned about a thing like that than people of Jewish and African descent. #Kennedy24

Let's not miss the bigger context here, which is the need to shift our national and global priorities away from bioweapons, and weapons of all kinds, to focus on peace, freedom, and prosperity.

That's what I just told Michael @shellenberger on the phone: "My point was that what they're doing is horrendous. Instead of being at war, we should be signing treaties for peace and for controlling bioweapons."

Shellenberger’s post today is worth reading.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Triggers Overdue Debate About China’s Secretive Ethnically-Targeted Bioweapons Research - "Loophole in Biological Weapons Convention treaty allows nations to conduct bioweapons research under cover of vaccine development"

 

[lpetrich]

RFK Jr.: COVID-19 ‘Ethnically Targeted’ to Spare Jews and Chinese

That study that RFK Jr mentioned in his denial: New insights into genetic susceptibility of COVID-19: an ACE2 and TMPRSS2 polymorphism analysis - PMC
originally at New insights into genetic susceptibility of COVID-19: an ACE2 and TMPRSS2 polymorphism analysis | BMC Medicine | Full Text

We found that the distribution of deleterious variants in ACE2 differs among 9 populations in gnomAD (v3). Specifically, 39% (24/61) and 54% (33/61) of deleterious variants in ACE2 occur in African/African-American (AFR) and Non-Finnish European (EUR) populations, respectively (Fig. 1b). Prevalence of deleterious variants among Latino/Admixed American (AMR), East Asian (EAS), Finnish (FIN), and South Asian (SAS) populations is 2–10%, while Amish (AMI) and Ashkenazi Jewish (ASJ) populations do not appear to carry such variants in ACE2 coding regions (Fig. 1b).

These are counts of variants, not of how much of these populations have those variants.

Specifically, several variants, including p.Met383Thr, p.Pro389His, and p.Asp427Tyr, have been reported to slightly inhibit the interaction between ACE2 and the spike protein of SARS-CoV-1 [10], which caused the first global SARS-CoV-1 outbreak. Only AFR populations carry p.Met383Thr and p.Asp427Tyr variants, with allele frequencies of 0.003% and 0.01%, respectively (Fig. 1b). The p.Pro389His only occurs in the AMR populations, with an allele frequency of 0.015%. The p.Arg514Gly is a low allele frequency (0.003%) variant in AFR populations

These variants are rare, typically 1/10,000 of each one's population. So even when there are several of them in a population, they don't contribute much to COVID-19 risk.

 

[lpetrich]

So RFK Jr. grossly misunderstood the paper that he linked to.

In any case, the fraction of deleterious ACE2 variants out of the total number of them in Caucasoid populations is Amish, Ashkenazi Jews 0%, Finns, South Asians 2% - 10%, and Non-Finnish Europeans 54%. Hispanics I omitted because they they are various mixtures of Caucasoid and non-Caucasoid populations.

Ashkenazi Jews are Eastern European ones, and by ancestry, they are half Middle Eastern and half Northern European. They were founded by a small population that moved northward from Italy in Germany in the Middle Ages, a population that intermarried with the local population, then stopped doing so. I've seen estimates that there were some 300 - 350 founding Ashkenazim, and this genetic bottleneck may have purged their population of deleterious ACE2 variants -- none of the carriers was among that population's founders. Something similar likely happened to the Amish.

 

[blastula]

RFKJ also said China is developing ethnic bioweapons and knows how much they are spending on it. And he says the US is too, and attaches it to the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy theory. He loves so many conspiracy theories because he's a malevolent, worthless dimwit.



And this Chinese bioweapons claim is old news for him.

 

[lpetrich]

Patrick Chovanec on Twitter: "The single study RFK Jr cites ..." / Twitter

The single study RFK Jr cites is a great example of how dangerous it is to read a scientific paper you're barely equipped to understand, out of context, and draw broad, highly politicized conclusions from it.

It identifies genetic risks factor that might facilitate Covid-19 among some populations more than others, but notes that this has yet to be confirmed among the actual patient population. Nowhere does it suggest intentional targeting of ethnic populations, a word RFK Jr used.

My own thought - and I am far from an expert - is that such intentional targeting would be extremely risky, given that this is apparently only one risk factor among many, plus the ability of any rapidly-spreading virus to mutate and adapt into something new.

Why would Chinese germ-warfare researchers work with Jewish conspirators to ensure that Jews are safe from their creations along with Chinese people?

 

[Harry Bosch]

RFKJ also said China is developing ethnic bioweapons and knows how much they are spending on it. And he says the US is too, and attaches it to the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy theory. He loves so many conspiracy theories because he's a malevolent, worthless dimwit.



And this Chinese bioweapons claim is old news for him.

Holy crap he's a loon. On June 19, he was polled as having more favorability than either Biden or Trump!

Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. beating Joe Biden in 2024 polls?

A new survey shows the long-shot Democratic candidate with higher favorability ratings than both Biden and Trump.

www.newsweek.com

Favorability dosn't always correspond with higher poll numbers. But yikes. It's a reminder that us on the left should be careful before mocking the loonies on the right (Q believers).

 

[Shadowy Man]

Patrick Chovanec on Twitter: "The single study RFK Jr cites ..." / Twitter

The single study RFK Jr cites is a great example of how dangerous it is to read a scientific paper you're barely equipped to understand, out of context, and draw broad, highly politicized conclusions from it.

It identifies genetic risks factor that might facilitate Covid-19 among some populations more than others, but notes that this has yet to be confirmed among the actual patient population. Nowhere does it suggest intentional targeting of ethnic populations, a word RFK Jr used.

My own thought - and I am far from an expert - is that such intentional targeting would be extremely risky, given that this is apparently only one risk factor among many, plus the ability of any rapidly-spreading virus to mutate and adapt into something new.

Why would Chinese germ-warfare researchers work with Jewish conspirators to ensure that Jews are safe from their creations along with Chinese people?

Obviously the Jewish globalist cabal is more powerful than the Chinese Communist Party. Duh?

 

[blastula]

DeSantis reduces staff as campaign struggles to meet fundraising goals – report

Fewer than 10 staffers were laid off, Politico reports, as more shake-ups within campaign are expected in coming weeks

www.google.com

Sources within the campaign reported an internal assessment that the campaign hired too many staffers too early.

“They never should have brought so many people on, the burn rate was way too high,” said one Republican source familiar with the campaign’s thought process to NBC News. “People warned the campaign manager but she wanted to hear none of it.”

More shake-ups within the campaign are expected in the coming weeks after two months on the presidential campaign, with DeSantis still lagging substantially in second place behind former President Donald Trump.

Even in DeSantis’s home state of Florida, Trump still has a 20 point lead over the governor, according to a recent Florida Atlantic University poll.

Poor guy.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now consider the feasibility of ethnic and racial targeting of bioweapons.

Understanding Human Genetic Variation - NIH Curriculum Supplement Series - NCBI Bookshelf - "In fact, research results consistently demonstrate that about 85 percent of all human genetic variation exists within human populations, whereas about only 15 percent of variation exists between populations."

Though that 15% includes the more visible sorts of differences, like what goes into such traditional racial classifications as  Caucasian race Caucasoid people include Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, and South Asians -- essentially Western Eurasians.

 Human genetic clustering and How A Troublesome Inheritance gets human genetics wrong | The Molecular Ecologist -- doing a cluster analysis reveals clusters which roughly match the traditional races of Negroid (sub-Saharan Africans), Caucasoid (Western Eurasians), Mongoloid (eastern Eurasians), Australoid (southern Indians, New Guineans, Melanesians, Native Australians), and Amerindoid (pre-Columbian Americas), though with some mixtures like in Central Asia.  Early human migrations has their branching:

Negroid -> out of Africa 70 kyrs: (southern: Australoid, northern: Caucasoid, Mongoloid -> Amerindoid; all pre-Holocene)

Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe - PMC - Europeans are a mixture of three immigrant populations: an Ice-Age population, a population of farmers that spread from Turkey over the early Holocene (Neolithic), and a population of horse riders that spread from Ukraine over the mid-Holocene (Bronze Age). That latter population brought with them the Indo-European languages.

Southern Europeans have mainly Neolithic-farmer ancestry, while Northern Europeans have mainly Bronze-Age horse-rider ancestry.

 

[lpetrich]

Let's look at Jews: they are divided into three populations: Ashkenazi (Eastern European), Sephardic (Southwestern European), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) ones. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have mostly Middle Eastern ancestry, while Ashkenazi ones have roughly half-half Middle Eastern and Northern European ancestry. In fact, Jews and Palestinians are genetically very close.

Thus, a bioweapon that spares Jews will spare all Europeans, Middle Easterners, and North Africans, and likely all South Asians.

A bioweapon that spares Chinese people will likely spare all other Eastern Asians, and likely all Southeastern Asians and original Americans.

So a Jewish-Chinese-sparing bioweapon would spare much of humanity.

 

[lpetrich]

DeSantis campaign sheds staff amid cash crunch - POLITICO

The decision to shed the staff comes as the DeSantis campaign has struggled to meet its fundraising expectations. Though the governor raised $20 million in the second quarter of this year, $3 million of that was earmarked for the general election. In addition, only about 15 percent of his donations came from small-dollar donors, a level he will likely have to enhance in order to keep up with former President Donald Trump, who has built a robust small-dollar network over the years. DeSantis’ campaign spent more than $1 million on payroll, payroll taxes, insurance and processing fees in the second quarter with roughly 90 staffers on the books.

Despite his fundraising difficulties, DeSantis remains firmly in second place in the GOP primary behind Trump, and Never Back Down has raised more than $100 million.

RDS plans to go to Iowa and visit all 99 of that state's counties.

 

[lpetrich]

RFK Jr.’s secret fundraising success: Republicans - POLITICO - "A POLITICO analysis shows donor overlap with DeSantis and Trump supporters."

Such crossover giving is unusual, but Kennedy is running on a platform that includes opposition to efforts to vaccinate against Covid-19, which is increasingly resonating with the Republican base. Though there has been an uptick in vaccine skepticism in recent years, the biggest increases tend to be among voters who identify as Republican.

Kennedy has also been a frequent guest on Fox News since launching his campaign in April, criticizing President Joe Biden on issues including the war in Ukraine and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tim Scott is the longshot candidate raising the most cash - POLITICO - "Breaking through the Trump-DeSantis logjam will be tough, especially if you can’t raise cash."

Campaign contributions from others: Trump: >$20 M, RDS $17 M, Tim Scott $6.2 M, Nikki Haley $5.3 M, Doug Burgum $1.5 M ($10.2 M from himself), Vivek Ramaswamy $2.3 M ($5 M from himself), Chris Christie $1.7 M, Mike Pence $1.1 M, Ryan Binkley $0.2 M ($1.6 M from himself), Francis Suarez $0.945 M, Asa Hutchinson $0.583 M, Larry Elder $0.468, Will Hurd $0.274.

Total of those other than DT and RDS: $21 M.

 

[bilby]

Let's look at Jews: they are divided into three populations: Ashkenazi (Eastern European), Sephardic (Southwestern European), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) ones. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have mostly Middle Eastern ancestry, while Ashkenazi ones have roughly half-half Middle Eastern and Northern European ancestry. In fact, Jews and Palestinians are genetically very close.

Thus, a bioweapon that spares Jews will spare all Europeans, Middle Easterners, and North Africans, and likely all South Asians.

A bioweapon that spares Chinese people will likely spare all other Eastern Asians, and likely all Southeastern Asians and original Americans.

So a Jewish-Chinese-sparing bioweapon would spare much of humanity.

Targeted bioweapons are very much science fiction at this point. As you point out, the genome simply doesn't have sufficient variation between ethnic groups, and almost all of the variation that does exist is in areas that are not particularly important for survival, and that are very difficult to target in any meaningful way; Adding to the problem is that humans are very well mixed genetically, and someone who believes himself to be a "genetically pure" example of a given ethnicity could well have genetic markers that are atypical of his ethnicity, making him vulnerable to weapons he believes himself to be safe from.

I won't say it's impossible for such targeting to be a feature of some future engineered virus; But it's not impossible in much the same way that uploading our consciousness to a computer is "not impossible" - I would be astonished if even a concerted international effort could achieve this in my lifetime, and any research program that was limited to a small number of highly trustworthy fanatics (as such bioweapons research would have to be) would take far longer to come close to any kind of workable approach.

It's a hugely difficult problem, and will quite possibly never be solved; Attempting to do it will likely result in failure, and potentially in disastrous failure; It very much falls into the category of "stuff we shouldn't try because we would get in serious trouble if caught in the attempt, and we probably couldn't succeed, and in the unlikely event that we did, we'd wish we hadn't".

I am pretty confident that all the world's governments who have the technology to even consider such a project are aware of this, even if the conspiracy theorists, un-bound as they are by a need to consider reality, are not.