In other words, the process gives us the appearance of fraud. That is built into the system, which allows vote-counting of mail-in ballots a week past election day as long as they are postmarked on that day (and “postmarked” is rumored to be interpreted as including a handwritten note), and which features mail-in ballots to everyone on the rolls plus liberal ballot-harvesting.

For example:

California has some of the most permissive — if not the most permissive — vote-by-mail laws in the country. Every active registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot before each statewide election. Because the state has refused to allow the Department of Justice to review its voter rolls, there’s no way to know how many registrations belong to deceased individuals, voters who have moved, duplicate records, or were actually fraudulent registrations to begin with. …

Additionally, California accepts ballots that arrive as late as one week after Election Day. Although the law requires those ballots to be postmarked on or before Election Day, claims circulating on social media suggest that even a handwritten date may be enough to meet that standard, raising further questions about the state’s ballot-counting process. For obvious reasons, this is impossible to confirm.

That time frame is inherently untrustworthy and should never be allowed, unless perhaps for absentee ballots from military personnel. Why would anyone implement a system like that, with so few ways to check on it? Hard to believe it’s for any reason other than to make it more possible to cheat if necessary, once the counters know how many ballots they have to create in order to make up the difference. And with the universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, it’s even more suspect.

So either there was an amazing bona fide surge for the most far-left major candidate in the mayoral race, Raman – hard to believe – or there was cheating here. And the argument made by the left, that late-arriving mail-in ballots in California always go for Democrats, is unconvincing. Do such ballots go disproportionately for Democrats compared to the earlier mail-in ballots? More importantly, do they go for the non-frontrunner – the person in third place? And if so, does the phenomenon occur even when there is no threat from a Republican or a candidate the Democrat establishment doesn’t want – in other words, when there is no reason to manufacture votes? In the case of this LA mayoral primary, there wasn’t so much a late surge for Democrats as a late surge for Raman in particular, the third-place candidate prior to that, and the one who is most to the left.

Because only the top two vote-getters in the California primary advance to the general, if the counters of votes wanted to push Pratt out of the running, they had two choices to eliminate him. The first choice would be to help the frontrunner and incumbent Bass reach 50% and win outright; if a candidate gets over 50% in the primary that person is the outright winner and there’s no further voting [CORRECTION: This appears to be incorrect information, and therefore this option was not available]. But Bass was about 13 or 14 points away from 50% on election night, so that was probably a bridge too far. Too many votes to manufacture. But Raman and Pratt were only five or six points apart on election night. Much easier to make up that difference and set up an obligatory Democrat/Democrat twosome. And that’s what has happened.

Bass had been consistently beating Raman in the ballots arriving by Election Day. And then suddenly Raman beats Bass in the later ballots. See this:

The big tell about Los Angeles Mayor right now is not that Nithya Raman has gained massively on Spencer Pratt. It’s that she’s gained on Karen Bass *while Bass’ share actually declined* in two full days, Thursday PM to Saturday PM.

Bass and the Normie Dem Adam Miller both dropped slightly in share while Raman essentially took all the net gains.

Thursday Left, this morning Right. Raman gained 3.1 points on Bass. Conventional wisdom was that late voters would’ve consolidated around the incumbent, not bolt for the upstart extremist.

More here:

A candidate who was getting around 20% of the vote is suddenly getting 40% of the vote, and those votes are coming at the expense of Spencer Pratt.

Not her Democrat opponent, whose vote percentage has remained steady.

Not a “Democrat” surge; a Raman surge.

I’m not sure where this guy gets his information, but it’s certainly interesting:

As @BoredElonMusk & the data show, Raman’s late mail in ballot surge was fueled in large part by ballots from Skid Row.

Tens of thousands of homeless whose ballots are sent to central addresses (not the sidewalk) & can be filled out/returned by someone else.

There’s also this:

Many have been asking me describe the potential signature verification loophole for Los Angeles mail in ballots.

It says: “If a voter is unable to sign, the voter can make a mark witnessed by one person.”

Here, the person drew a happy face & “witnessed” it with a scribble. That scribble isn’t validated as being a real person. No name, nothing.

While a happy face may draw scrutiny, a plain line would not.

This could hypothetically enable mass harvesting where the voter never fills out, signs or even sees their own ballot.

We should be told how many ballots show up without the voter’s signature.

A hundred, two hundred years ago, a lot of people couldn’t even sign their name. Today? No excuse for this except in extremely rare circumstances. Combined with ballot harvesting, it’s an obvious travesty. And yet how can the fraud be proven in such a situation? It can only be inferred, but there’s no way to check on who made that mark.

More numbers here:

Mail-ins arriving before Election Day:
– Bass: 38.1%
– Pratt: 27.9%
– Raman: 20%

Mail-ins arriving after Election Day:
– Raman: 37% (+17% surge)
– Bass: 34.9% (-3% drop)
– Pratt: 19% (-9% drop)

In addition:

Add to all this a fact that many have not considered: you don’t even need to manufacture ballots after election day. All you need to know is the approximate results beforehand (Raman comes in third), and fill out the harvested ballots from the homeless, apartment buildings, and fake voters, ensuring that the correct result is overturned after the election is held. You have over a week to get them in, so you can even wait until the polls close and initial results come in and still get that vote counted “legally.” …

Most of the “cheating” can be done legally, save for the actual filling out of the ballots, which is practically impossible to detect. Simply have the harvested ballots ready to fill out when the initial results come in on election night, vote the ballots, and send them in. No magic USB drives necessary. No video trail. No paper trail. No examination of the ballots. …

As far as I can find, which is not admittedly definitive, there is no case where a third-place candidate far back vaults into first place in ballot counts days after the initial results come in. It beggars belief, violates common sense, and depends on the belief that late-breaking voters surged to a candidate everybody knew was rightfully dead and buried. That pattern is never observed in the wild. …

But it is the pattern necessary to kick Pratt off the ballot, giving Karen Bass a clear and easy path to victory over a candidate few people like, and nobody is enthusiastic about, and with the charisma of a rock.

I don’t see any remedy possible for this particular election. One very slight comfort (very slight) is that, if Pratt had been allowed to get on the ballot against Bass in the general, I think it’s highly likely he would have lost the election. I suppose it’s theoretically possible he could have won if he ran an amazing campaign in the next few months. But we haven’t been allowed to find out; it was too dangerous to let us see what he was saying, or to have another debate where he might show Bass up to be a fool. And the Democrats couldn’t even risk the remote possibility of a Pratt win.

However, for the future, there’s this possibility:

The case before the Supreme Court is Watson v. Republican National Committee. The question is direct: When Congress established a national Election Day for federal elections, did it mean ballots must be received by Election Day — or merely mailed by Election Day?

During oral arguments in March, Justice Samuel Alito warned that confidence in election outcomes can be seriously undermined when the apparent result on election night is later flipped by a large batch of late-arriving ballots.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh likewise pressed attorneys on whether history supports requiring ballots to be received by Election Day. Their questioning reflected broad skepticism from the court’s conservative majority.

Sacramento should be paying attention.

Most Americans understand Election Day to mean the deadline. California’s system tells them otherwise.

When vote totals keep changing for days after the polls close, suspicion naturally grows — because the process looks like it has no real endpoint.

I would say it has no objective endpoint other than 30 days after Election Day. It does have a goal, though – which is to select and then elect the preferred candidates of the Democrat powers-that-be.

The article mentions that, even if SCOTUS decides that Election Day is the final acceptable day for mail-ins, that rule would only apply to federal elections. State and local elections could still use the old method – which means the primary rules for governor and mayor would not change, as far as I can tell.

Once states go this way, it’s very hard to reverse the trend. And that is part of the design.

ADDENDUM:

A similar reversal has been starting to happen in the governor’s race; see this. Will Hilton make it into the general? I submit that it looks better for him than it did for Pratt. I think it’s more difficult to commit enough fraud to matter on the level of an entire state election unless the percentages are very close to begin with. On the state level, there are too many red areas which are not amenable to Democrat vote-counting control, plus the sheer number of faked votes needed is higher. So maybe Hilton will hang in there – although if he doesn’t, it would not surprise me either. It would be third-place Steyer who would have to outperform both Becarra and Hilton as time goes on.

The post On the LA vote-counting process that is giving LA two leftist Democrats to choose from for mayor appeared first on The New Neo.

Does that mean there’s cheating? Maybe. There’s certainly a strong desire to win coupled with a less-than-convincing devotion to assuring that the will of the voters will be carried out no matter what the outcome. The mail-in ballots that can come in late, the drop-boxes, the rabid leftist partisanship, all combine to create at the very least a lack of trust in the system on the part of anyone on the right.

And so it was almost a foregone conclusion that this would be happening, and that it would seem suspicious whether it is or not:

… [T]he race for second place in the mayor’s contest is moving in a direction that should concern Spencer Pratt supporters, and anyone who thinks Los Angeles needs to move toward a more centrist, common-sense course.

Friday afternoon’s update added roughly 140,000 ballots countywide, with about 42.7% from within the city of Los Angeles.

Mayor Karen Bass remains firmly in first place with 34.98% of the vote. The real drama is the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. …

Raman gained 23,115 votes in Friday’s update, compared to 10,711 for Pratt and 20,419 for Bass. In a single ballot drop, Raman netted 12,404 votes on Pratt. …

Put another way, she received more than twice as many votes as Pratt in this batch.

The upshot is that Pratt may fall to third place as more votes come in. And if he’s in third, he won’t be on the ballot. California’s voting system is designed to give voters a November choice of leftist and more leftist, rather than Democrat and Republican. But realistically, even if Pratt holds onto second place, at present he is only getting about a quarter or third of the vote compared to a combined Democrat/leftist vote that constitutes a definite majority.

Why anyone would vote for Bass or Raman is beyond me. I understand that Democrats will vote for Democrats. But these two have had their chances and have failed to help the city. If I lived in LA, I think that even if I were a Democrat I’d give Pratt a chance.

The post Pratt falling in Los Angeles tallies appeared first on The New Neo.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offered the amendment. The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections and require voters to present photo identification at the polls.

The four Republicans who voted against the amendment were Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Collins I understand. She has to vote this way to try to keep her Maine seat, and if she loses it Maine will almost certainly elect a Democrat. Also, if it was just Collins voting against this, it would have passed.

The other three? No excuse, and yet predictable.

The post Not saving the SAVE Act appeared first on The New Neo.

Ace describes some of the claims thusly:

NYT: “Ex GF of Platner Says He Knew All About “My Totenkopf,” Used Physical Force Against Her, Bragged That He Would Rape His Male Enemies, “Not in a Gay Way,” But to Show “I’m Dominant” …

Most of the Democrats refused to address this except to say that Platner’s reformed, and that he needs to beat Collins and is poised to beat Collins and that this will give them a Senate majority, as though that would justify anything. And of course, in their eyes it would.

Fetterman was one exception, however (although here he’s addressing some previously-revealed offenses of Platner’s):

“[Platner] is a guy that had a problem with me, how I dress, but he seemed to have no problem posing in a towel at a disgusting website that consistently had serious problems about that kinds of depravity,” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity. …

“Let me make a deal. I’ll tell P-Hustle, I’ll wear a suit every day, if he releases all those texts and messages that he’s had,” Fetterman said. P-Hustle is a reference to the account name Platner reportedly had on his Kik account. …

Fetterman replied [when asked if there were more lies to come from Platner], “Well, he lied to everybody. He said that there wasn’t any after his Nazi tattoo situation. And now there’s more and more of the things. So he’s already lied about that.”

Fetterman added, “So I assume, you know, it’s like they say, for every ranch you see in Texas, there’s 50 that you haven’t seen. So I’m sure there’s plenty, a lot of more ranches in P-Hustle’s life.”

I think the Democrats actually would like to rid themselves of Fetterman, or at least muzzle him. But he’s not up for re-election until 2028, and they won’t replace him then unless they find someone they think can win in Pennsylvania.

But I digress.

The story behind the Times story about Platner’s girlfriends actually seems to have been even more Byzantine than I originally suspected. Take a look:

But these allegations [of girlfriend abuse] are buried [in the Times story] under mountains of campaign flack bullshit and then packaged as “intimidating” and “unsettling.” Normal people have another phrase for it: domestic abuse.

That characterization is by design.

Let me be clear: the New York Times story was not journalism. It was a soft catch-and-kill operation. It was a favor to Platner’s campaign, a disservice to readers, and an insult to the women who say they were hurt by him.

One of those victims, Lyndsey Fifield, is my friend.

Fifield has been attacked by the left as not credible because she’s on the right politically – therefore, of course, lying. Believe all women – if they’re Democrats.

More:

The term ‘catch and kill‘ refers to a shady practice where a public relations firm or consultant works with a friendly news outlet that was pitched or ‘stumbled’ upon a negative story about a client to effectively ‘catch’ and then ‘kill’ the story — or delay it until it no longer has impact.

A ‘soft catch and kill’ works similarly, though it mostly involves the publication still running the story in a timely manner, but the details are softened or buried deep in the narrative to soften the bite. …

In fact, for the first third of the New York Times expose, they focused on women provided to the newspaper by the Platner campaign — who, of course, sang the degenerate former bartender’s praises. And frankly, that is all many readers will come away with, because that is about as far as their attention span lets them get into the narrative. Which is, again, the point.

I didn’t know that “catch and kill” terminology, but that’s the sort of thing I meant by “getting ahead of the story.” In other words, the friendly outlet shapes it before an unfriendly one does.

This is the part that wasn’t apparent from the story itself:

Prior to publication, I’m told that the Times spoke to two women who had credibly accused Platner of sexual assault. This detail was revealed to Fifield — likely in an effort to encourage her to divulge more of her story. Those women’s allegations never made it into the story. They were effectively ‘killed’ by the Times’s editors and by Platner’s attorneys, I’m told. …

Even more telling, and perhaps a tip of the hat to the nature of this soft catch and kill, is the fact that numerous Democrat aligned influencers and operatives were essentially flooding the zone on social media in the hours before the story was published. Somehow, they knew that one of the women was an activist in the conservative movement — a detail that surmisably came from the New York Times or from the Platner campaign, or both, ahead of publication. Others appear to have known details that were cut from the story.

Then there’s Fifield herself (see this describing and quoting a series of tweets of hers on X) [my emphasis]:

Fifield explained that in early April, the New York Times contacted her and she told them she was not interested in discussing her story. The reporter told her there are other women coming forward about Platner’s conduct. “ They said but wait—there are other women. Women terrified to tell their stories, too, and you need to band together. WE will help you. We will protect you. Men can’t keep getting away with this,” she wrote.

You could say that the Times was another abusive, lying boyfriend. Don’t ever believe what they promise [my emphasis]:

After seeing former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s downfall, she reversed course. She told them her story and even “let them take pictures of my diary pages.” She sent screenshots of her message exchanges with Platner.

“I explained very clearly that, like many women abused by their partners, I had not told anyone about his violence at the time—I had covered for and defended it. I accepted his earnest apologies. They said that’s fine because the diary entries and my on the record story was enough,” Fifield wrote.

The reporters connected her to other victims and she told them they were “doing the right thing” even though they had misgivings. Fifield also realized that Platner was in a relationship with one of the other victims while she was dating him.

She further explained that she felt guilty about having remained silent for so long, but at some point, she decided she couldn’t continue to keep this under wraps. “I couldn’t stay silent as he continued to lie and lie and lie. I want my daughters to boldly speak out if they’re ever abused as I was,” she wrote. …

“After the story went up I began to ask them … wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)?

“Why does it say “nobody could corroborate” when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?”

The piece was obviously written in a way that would discredit her and/or make it easy for the left to attack her. She was naive, but it makes sense that she wanted to tell her story. It was a mistake to tell it to the Times – but then again, if it had appeared in an outlet on the right, it would also have been discredited because the only true “truth” appears in the leftist MSM.

ADDENDUM:

More here, including this from Fifield:

It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.

As Fetterman said, there are probably “a lot more ranches in P-Hustle’s life.”

The post Think the <i>NY Times</i> story about Platner’s ex-girlfriend’s complaints was an anti-Platner hit piece? Think again. appeared first on The New Neo.

In the blue state of California, one can assume that the Democrats will win (by hook or crook, as it were). But hey, you never know. The irrepressible Pratt wants to put up a fight:

Spencer Pratt has confidently claimed he’s already looking ahead to a November runoff as election results Tuesday night showed him comfortably in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

“She knows it’s on. I hope she’s ready,” Pratt said on Tuesday. “I literally could not be more excited.”

“I am ready for whatever God puts in front of me,” he said. …

“We have five months to put the best team the city could ever dream of,” Pratt said. …

As election officials continued counting ballots, Pratt made clear he was already looking to the months ahead and a potential showdown with Bass.

“We can do debates every Friday if she’d like,” Pratt repeated. “As many debates as Mayor Bass would like.”

I bet she would like zero; she didn’t do well against him in the first debate. What are his chances of winning? I’d say very very slim, but not zero.

In other California news, this loathsome character won his primary and almost certainly will win the election:

San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener dominated early returns in the bitter showdown to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, claiming victory in the primary contest.

Wiener won 43.4% of votes in the first batch of returns posted Tuesday night — with Pelosi’s pick Connie Chan and lefty tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti trailing behind at 28.5% and 13.5%, respectively.

Why do I call him “loathsome”? He’s one of the most far-left politicians in California, and that’s saying something. I’ve written about him before, for example in this post. And as the Democratic nominee in that particular district, he will win and be going to Congress.

The post California dreaming appeared first on The New Neo.

I’m especially curious about the LA mayoral race and Spencer Pratt. Here’s a poll, for what it’s worth:

A recent poll by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times shows a closely contested race among the top three candidates, while 11 other candidates are trailing significantly. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, has Bass leading with 26% support among likely voters. Raman follows closely at 25%, with Pratt at 22%.

All are within the margin of error. Interesting.

For the governorship, we have this:

Multiple polls found the crowded race has narrowed to a three-way contest between Democrats Xavier Becerra, a former health secretary and state attorney general, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host.

With its lack of cinematic or political stars, California’s gubernatorial race was atypical from the jump. But a mid-April scandal upended it, essentially allowing candidates to restart their campaigns. Still, Tuesday’s primary could bring unexpected results because more voters than usual held on to their ballots until the final stretch of the competitive race.

Polls for that race show this:

Three key polls were released in recent days and all three of them found former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra several points ahead of both Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton and investor Tom Steyer. PPIC has Becerra at 23%, IGS has him at 25% and Emerson shows him 28% of the vote. No other candidate received more than 22% of the vote in any of the polls.

Hilton is at 21% and Steyer at 22%.

The post It’s California primary time appeared first on The New Neo.

The term originated in the late 19th century. These voters would allegedly “vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican”, or, “vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket”.[1] The term is now more generally applied to refer to any Democrat who will vote a straight party ticket under any circumstances. The South Carolina Democratic Party and Mississippi Democratic Party, among other state parties, continue to use the phrase to refer to committed members of the Democratic Party in the “Yellow Dog Club”.

I submit that it’s outdated; it’s way too mild. For example, see this:

Susan Collins:
1) Voted to convict Trump of impeachment
2) Voted against Amy Coney Barrett & Pete Hegseth
3) Backed limits on Trump's military power
4) Wants to nuke his "Anti-Weaponization Fund"

And more. If *she* is your evil right-wing extremist, words do not mean anything. https://t.co/dLQakRiAkS

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 1, 2026

Perhaps they should be called “Platner Democrats,” although that doesn’t roll too trippingly off the tongue. But “the messier Platner turns out to be the more I hope he wins,” because Susan Collins (one of the few moderates left in Congress) is evil – well, that is much of the current Democrat Party in a nutshell.

As far as Platner goes, if you haven’t kept up with the latest revelations about him, see this and this at Ace’s.

Another example of a Platner Democrat is Jessica Tarlov and apparently the Democrats of Maine:

“There are Democrats who have concerns, and some of them are speaking out about it,” she conceded. “This was the first weekend that I feel like Democrats were really pushed on the Sunday shows. Dana Bash was doing that as well with Andy Kim from New Jersey, who wanted to talk about what’s going on at Delaney Hall. And she kept bringing it back to this. Listen, Graham Platner, his wife is not a professional political spouse, and Graham Platner is not a professional politician himself. And you’re seeing that come to light.”

I’m not sure how not being a “professional politician” is supposed to absolve you from having a Nazi tattoo for nearly twenty years, for making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments online, for having a sorta-potty fetish, and for maintaining an account on a chat app used by sexual predators, but hey, that’s apparently the argument Tarlov is choosing to make.

“Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills to win,” Tarlov continued. “He got her to jump into this race because someone like a Jared Golden didn’t want to get in. And that didn’t work. Mainers have consistently said, ‘We know who Graham Platner is and this is what our choice is at this point.’”

Not all Democrats feel this way. But of those who are objecting to Platner, is it because he’s a terrible person (in addition to having virtually no political experience) or because they think he may lose?

The post “Yellow dog Democrat” has become an outdated term now that Platner’s the Maine frontrunner appeared first on The New Neo.

Platner claims that Susan Collins voted to send him to Iraq; he says that explicitly in the video at the link. He also says the US “destroyed” Iraq, but when I last checked, Iraq was still a functioning country and doing at least somewhat better than it was before the war. As for Afghanistan – which he also says the US “destroyed,” it’s about the same as it was before the war, with the Taliban in charge.

But about Collins:

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins made a mistake when she voted to “send him to Iraq.”

“We destroyed Iraq and we destroyed Afghanistan, and all the suffering, all the killing, all the dying, all the displacement — we, the United States, did that. And that I’m ashamed of.”

“The anger that I feel is for the people that sent me,” he said.

Sounds a bit John Kerry-esque, doesn’t he?

Collins replies:

“The fact is, that was Platner’s decision to serve,” Collins told The Maine Wire on Thursday, adding, “He was not drafted.”

Additionally, the GOP senator cited Platner’s decision to work for the security company Blackwater, which was investigated by the U.S. government over allegations that it violated international law.

He signed up after the war began, and he re-upped. It was entirely voluntary.

His reply? She made me do it anyway:

Now all these years later, instead of acknowledging that she was wrong, she’s decided that she’s going to blame all of us who — in our late teens and early twenties — signed up to serve our country,” he continued. “That somehow it’s our fault that she and establishment politicians like her, wanted to abuse our willingness to serve, to go send us off to fight in stupid wars that did nothing but make some people very, very rich at the expense of American taxpayer dollars.”

Some facts on Platner’s service – and recall that the Iraq War began in March of 2003:

Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school in 2003. He attended the Marine Corps School of Infantry, then deployed to Iraq in 2005. He served a total of eight years in the military, including three combat tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah. Asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, “I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway.”

After four years in the military, Platner enrolled at George Washington University, funded by the G.I. Bill. Shortly after starting school, he enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard and served an additional tour of duty in the war in Afghanistan. He returned to Washington in 2011, resuming classes at GWU and working as a bartender at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill. From 2011 to 2016 he alternated between living in DC and military deployments, before withdrawing from GWU and returning to Maine in 2016 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other military-related injuries.

In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, where he provided diplomatic security to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan.

By 2016 Platner would have been 31-32 years old.

NOTE: Here’s one of my previous posts about Platner.

See also this post by Ace about Platner.

The post Graham Platner: Susan Collins made me do it! appeared first on The New Neo.

Trump had better know what he is doing. Maybe he’s got it worked out that Iran collapses economically real soon. Still, it seems he is cutting it pretty close. He may say he doesn’t care about the midterms, but a lot of Americans care more about the economy than Iran.

Indeed they do, although a lot of people care about both. But gas prices are certainly more up close and personal.

What did Trump actually say, in context? This:

President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he isn’t concerned about making a deal soon with Iran, adding that he doesn’t “care about the midterms” in what he said he thinks is the regime’s calculation that he has to negotiate a deal before what are expected to be highly-competitive elections in November.

“They thought they were going to out-wait me, you know. ‘We’ll out-wait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night, that was a prelude to the midterms. People understand it,” Trump said, likely referencing his endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, winning the Senate Republican runoff in Texas. …

“Mr. President, you’ve said that you’re in no rush to make a deal, but with gas prices that are still high across the country, people are paying more for travel. Does that give you more urgency to make a deal? Why doesn’t it?” ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump during the Cabinet meeting.

“Well, I’ll tell you, the primary urgency, I’ve said this, it wasn’t covered properly, but the primary urgency is that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump responded.

It’s very clearly a message to Iran that they shouldn’t believe he’s under pressure to cave because of concerns about the midterms. The press and the Trump opposition are eager to convey the message as one that says “he doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care that you have to pay more for gas, he simply doesn’t care.” But clearly he cares; he just prioritizing the message to the Iranian leadership that they shouldn’t believe he will cave because of the midterms. Note the eagerness of questioner Rachel Scott of ABC (although she’s harely alone) to indicate that he must cave.

Trump also said this:

…[W]e’re not talking about any easing of sanctions or giving money. No sanctions, no money, no nothing,” Trump said. “We have control of money that they claim is theirs. We’ll keep control of that money. And when they behave properly and when they do what’s right, we’ll let them have their money. But right now, we’re not doing that … One thing is not contingent on the other.” …

On the status of negotiations, Trump said on Wednesday he’s “not satisfied” and that Iran is “negotiating on fumes.”

“We’re not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be. Either that or we’ll have to just finish the job,” Trump said.

The question I would like to see answered is: so why continue to negotiate? Haven’t you given this enough time? I don’t know the true answer, but I listed my guesses in this recent post.

The post Did Trump say he doesn’t care about the midterms? appeared first on The New Neo.

This is an example of the effect of redistricting. Green would have almost certainly been a shoe-in if he was running in his old district. But he can’t do that, because his old district doesn’t exist. So he switched to another district, and was defeated in the runoff:

The race for Texas’ solidly Democratic 18th Congressional District was an incumbent-on-incumbent Democratic clash, with Green and Menefee both trying to preserve their places in Congress after redistricting altered the congressional districts around Houston.

Green has been among President Donald Trump’s fiercest critics in Congress, pursuing impeachment charges on multiple occasions against him during both of Trump’s terms. Green has been kicked out of Trump’s State of the Union addresses multiple times as well for standing up and protesting amid the speech.

The new district is not competitive for the GOP, so Menefee will almost certainly win in the general.

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