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Wednesday’s Forum
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16 responses to “Wednesday’s Forum”
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For the obsessive numbers geeks (I resemble that remark!).
Harris County early vote tracker
On the second day, Tuesday, 99,911 people voted in person, the most on the second day of any midterm in records going back to 1998. The previous high was 64,781, in 2018.
Through two days, 204,570 people have voted in person, the most at this point of any midterm. The previous high was 127,969, in 2018.
On the first day of early voting, 104,659 people voted in person in Harris County, the most on the first day of any midterm in records going back to 1998. The previous high was 63,188, in 2018. Harris has 407,717 more registered voters than in 2018; as a share of them, the first day was 3.8%, against 2.7% in 2018.
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Through Tuesday, Oct. 20, 8.5% of Harris County’s registered voters had voted early. That’s ahead of 2022, the last midterm, which was at 5.6% at the same point. Against the six midterms before that (1998–2018), it’s ahead of all of them.
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Your Trump corruption article of the day:
The Secret Terms of Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Deal
In late August, President Donald Trump announced what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history.” Since then, the full text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington, D.C.
ProPublica has reviewed a copy of the 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed for the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The document reveals carefully constructed terms that favor U.S. interests at every turn and cements the power of a small group of people handpicked by the Trump administration to govern and profit from the deal. The role of the Venezuelan government and the potential benefits to its people are largely absent from the text.
One of the most criticized aspects of Trump’s announcement has been his choice of a partner: Alejandro Betancourt, a globe-trotting Venezuelan oligarch who has faced money-laundering investigations in three countries.
The Trump administration is taking a 35% stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by acquiring shares in a Barbados-registered parent company. The deal document provides little information about the owners and investors behind the parent company, who could receive enormous wealth from the arrangement.
The agreement also safeguards Betancourt’s position as chief executive of NABEP and says the U.S. government will work with the parent company to appoint a powerful seven-member board to govern the venture for an initial 15-year term. Those aspects of the deal, according to people with knowledge of how it came together, were designed to prevent future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the enterprise.
Summary:
Reporting Highlights:
• Corporate Firewall: The oil deal is designed to prevent future U.S. presidents and Venezuelan leaders from changing or dismantling the enterprise.
• Hidden Investors: Some of the Trump administration’s partners could remain anonymous, hidden behind a parent company based in Barbados.
• The Long Run: It could be many years before the company produces enough oil to be a statistically significant share for the United States.
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Relevant to another thread but may be of general interest too: A chart showing the states that are over and underrepresented due to the Electoral College. It’s not as cut and dried as you may think.
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I found historian Phillips O’Brien’s Substack clarifying. He offers ten points he thinks must be understood to appreciate our current foreign policy situation under Trump. It really is this bad.
1. At no time was Trump anything but completely committed to getting Putin the best deal possible.
2. As much as Trump is committed to Putin, he loathes Zelensky.
3. There was indeed an Anchorage “Formula”. (Which would have doomed Ukraine.)
4. Trump does not care at all about people dying, in the slightest.
5. Trump Does Not Care About Any Strategic Issue Regarding Iran—Only His Personal Reputation.
6. Trump despises the US military, diplomats and civil servants who work for him and looks upon them as tools.
7. Trump will never break with China; he is both scared of the Chinese and keen to make money off them.
8. Trump loathes European democracies, but will never leave NATO fully.
9. Trump really does want Canada as the 51st state and Greenland in a US empire.
10. Trump does not give a crap about states in the Middle East.O’Brien elaborates on these points at the link.
On top of foreign policy, Trump and the GOPs have also screwed up the economy. And if we’re really, really lucky Dems will get 51 seats in the Senate and the opportunity to pass nothing over the filibuster and the veto.
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Looks like I have bad link. Sorry. Try https://open.substack.com/pub/phillipspobrien/p/time-for-a-reality-check?r=noop6&utm_medium=ios
It really is worth a read
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I do not understand what is going on in Republican politics right now. The Vivek Ramaswamy campaign ad was reprehensible, and a number of Republicans backed away from it. JD Vance has just doubled down on it. Trump lost his sh!t yesterday in a presser and yelled at more than one reporter. The White House–using an official account–trashed one of the reporters again today, using a slur related to Downs Syndrome.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has not-so-subtly threatened Congress.
Yeesh.
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I do not understand what is going on in Republican politics right now.
It’s a crash out. In 2018, Trump’s position and Republican polls improved slightly in the final weeks. Now it’s the opposite. Dems are suddenly posting double-digit generic ballot leads and matching Obama-era highs in party ID, while Trump is more unpopular than ever — moreso than before the 2018 midterms and worse than after his Jan 6 terror attack. And worse than Biden’s nadir.
Per the NYT, President Trumpflation has the worst midterm approval rating since 1946.
This movement towards Democrats appears to be happening both so fast and so late that state and local polling likely won’t catch the full effect before election day, not unlike what happened to Hillary after the Comey letter. Those red undertow predictions from a month back seem quaint. A blue tsunami is more likely than that.
Republicans are crashing out and lashing out in response.
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A couple of days ago, Japan launched a probe to Mars. What makes it different, is that it will attempt to land on Phobos and bring back samples to Earth.
Japan’s space agency has already managed to bring back samples from asteroids. that’s much easier, as asteroids don’t come attached to a big gravity well the size of Mars, while Phobos does.
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The Wall Street Journal now running stories that they don’t bother to verify or vet. Cripes.
