You got to pay. You got to pay your bills. So says THE MAN!

 Watch -

Trump says he told it to NATO allies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzOq8a2AOpg

Well, that's them, but this now, this is Donald (not all the animals in Animal Farm are equal - with the pigs walking on two legs):

 

JD Vance introduces former president Donald Trump at a July 27 rally at St. Cloud State University. (Glen Stubbe)

ST. CLOUD – The city of St. Cloud has sent a second invoice to the Trump campaign after it missed the Oct. 10 deadline to pay for about $209,000 in city services incurred at a July rally.

[...] Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance visited central Minnesota on July 27, speaking to a capacity crowd of 8,000 at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center while a large crowd gathered outside the arena to watch the speeches on a big screen.

Police helped block roads and direct traffic before the event and, when the campaign left the venue, city vehicles — including plows and construction trucks — blocked the cross streets of a main route near campus.

St. Cloud City Administrator Matt Staehling said Monday that the city doesn’t bill the White House for official visits but it does for campaign stops and other events that require city services, such as the annual Earth Day half-marathon.

 St. Cloud State athletic director Holly Schreiner said Monday the campaign paid the university’s $35,000 fee in August [for the venue].

Minneapolis tried for years to get the Trump campaign to cover $530,000 in overtime and expenses after a 2019 rally at Target Center. The city eventually received about $100,000 in compensation.

NBC News recently reported at least four cities are waiting to be reimbursed for costs associated with law enforcement during campaign visits. The costs — some dating back to 2016 — total more than $750,000.

And he has a history of not paying. Putin should have his way with him, as with non-paying NATO nations?  

Well, St. Cloud will wait a bit and hell at some point will freeze over.

....................................

Putin seems to have his way with him, whether he pays or not. What's more . . .

Why I want DJ Tice's Minnesota vote to have equal gravitas in things as Will Bunch's vote in Pennsylvania

 DJ Tice got an op-ed item published in Strib.

Will Bunch got one published in Philly Inquirer.

The Strib footer:

D.J. Tice is a retired commentary editor and an opinion columnist for the Star Tribune. He also served seven years as political news editor. He has written extensively about Minnesota and American politics and history, economics and legal affairs.

The Inquirer footer: 

I'm the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.

So, two newspaper guru types. And now, why Tice's vote for Trump (a sound assumption based on editorial history) should have the gravitas of Bunch's Harris vote (you read, you know his leaning).

THAT, IN THEORY, IS THE QUESTION.

Favoring Harris, agreeing with the mood of what Bunch wrote about Trump, why am I favoring the equivalence in gravitas as being as stated? 

Simply because I want my vote in Minnesota, which statewide has been blue forever since the Pawlenty mistake to have a national impact equivalent to one person's Pennsylvania vote. Each equal in deciding an ultimate Presidential election outcome. 

Because Pennsylvania is a swing state and Minnesota not, they get disproportinate attention. They have a "bigger" say.

Tice is too verbose to quote except for his main point in defense of the electoral collage superstructure over popular voting:

Consider this: In 2016, Hillary Clinton famously won the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but lost the election to Donald Trump in the Electoral College, doing much to enflame American progressives’ distaste for the college. What’s worth noting is that Clinton’s popular vote margin that year within the borders of California was well over 4 million votes. In short, outside California, Trump won the popular vote across 49 states.

I did not vote for either then, going Dem down ticket, but third party at the top because of how Clinton took Goldman Sachs money and how the two Clinton terms were in my retrospective view bad for party and nation.

So sink California and its population in the Pacific Ocean and then Trump would have in 2016 had both a popular majority and a majority of electors, instead of one but not the other. So what? Big deal. He got the spoils.

My bottom line is they give me one stinking little vote, they give each voting Pennsylvanian the same one vote. 

But because it's a swing state, his/her one vote matters more than mine, in the Sweepstakes, (even with mine preeminent in my own mind). At least make mine of equal consequence.

At least give me a parity. 

Count the popular vote as decisive, and I'd be happier.

Things will take much pressure to rid us of the Constitutional present elector system, because the Dakotas and Wyoming like things as is, but I still want full vote parity with anybody else, anywhere in the blessed federal nation.

It's only fair (Fairness being something Tice suggested in his "reasoning"). 

We are a nation of equal people. Never mind in 1789 political compromises were made then to get the Constitution approved per rules, then. Those compromises now are as irrelevant as the horse trading that went on back then, a/k/a "original intent."

Original intent was that only propertied white men voted, subject to a poll tax and literacy test, and for head count a slave counted 3/5 of a white voter, women counted as a full person as did children, but neither had a vote, then. Much of that was changed, but elector BS remains.

It is antiquated, it is an impediment to one voter, one equal AND equivalent vote, and besides all else, 

The electoral college, I don't like it. End of story.

(Minds can disagree. I concede that.)

The politicization of the response to Helene and later Milton has provided a recruitment opportunity for white supremacist groups who have assembled in devastated regions that government emergency services have struggled to reach as part of a recruitment drive and PR effort. Fema has also long been a target of unfounded anti-government conspiracy theorists – especially on the US’s far right – going back more than a decade.

 Two early paragraphs run together form the headline. This link.

Harris offers medical disclosure. Fit for the job, in her late fifties.

This document. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/VP-Harris-Health-Summary.pdf

Released per Harris authorization. To contrast with Trump.

The view here of Trump  - a sick body and sick mind. Perhaps the body is borderline.

Also, should the release of the document been by the campaign, not using whitehouse.gov? It surely is a campaign step.

And - do we deserve a document on JD's health, given uncertainty of Trump making it four more years, where he could win? Crabgrass hope is he loses, mooting the issue.

The suggestion is Harris is fit for two terms, eight years, and the expectation is she wants eight.

BK and the NRA

 Keep in mind the question of what might childless cat ladies say.

Torturing a frat cat to death for not using its litterbox presages a career raising to the top of the NRA. Some, not all, may postulate a connection - a common mindset.

Guardian:

Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.

Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. Photograph: Courtesy Shelagh Abbs Winter

Hamlin served as the fraternity president at the time, according to the media reports. While Hamlin’s exact role in the killing is unclear, a report in the Ann Arbor News published in March 1980 – at the time of the court case – said that district court judge SJ Elden singled Hamlin out for criticism, saying he could have prevented it from happening as the leader of the fraternity.

The judge called the cat killing an “unconscionable and heinous” act and suggested the fraternity had tried to engage in a coverup to protect its members after the crime was exposed.

“Heartlessness must be in the job description to run the NRA,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “This revelation shows that the NRA has failed to turn the page on its scandal-plagued leaders and its doom spiral continues with Hamlin at the helm.”

It happened, shaming now, why not? There is something to the story repellent to regular people, and it has rattled out of the "sorry I did it" closet as news. 

There is, by the time University of Michigan student status is reached a certain maturity expected, and cruel deviance suggests a personality defect, hopefully since cured. 

Politically incorrect? Absolutely, but than it's the NRA, not United Hope Charities that has its current embrace of one of the involved cat-killer individuals. The NRA is not the home of kind and sensitive leadership. It's a crass highly funded single issue lobbyist. But - name a lobbyist venture that is really sensitive to absolute decency. The cause may be just, but what of tactics, at the best of such trading operations.

Friends of the Boundary Waters comes to mind as the best of the genre. It's okay.

BOTTOM LINE: The story is weird. The behavior reprehensible. Decades ago. What should be the public's reaction now? Beyond scorn?

Natural Gas and Fracking - Pennsylvania and Texas are BIG producers. Texas 2024 election status, likely GOP. Penn is in play.

 And you will not see Kamala Harris against fracking. If elected, what she does on climate change will show up. Now? Guess what she'll say.

Trump is a pump and burn preacher. Harris, a "That's not at issue" recent believer.

Data link.

Explanatory links, oil and gas.

Keep the home warm over winter. Liquify and sell to Europe. Vote, warm home and balance of payment help any way we can get it?

Somebody blew up the Russian under-Baltic gas supply lines to Germany. Must have been the Ukrainians.

Ships and port facilities support: liquify in US, ship, unload in Europe, distribute in existing distribution piping. $$$

The Dems will not rock that boat pre-election. And Biden is discouraging the Israelis from bombing Iranian oil facilities. For humanitarian reasons. Don't escalete that way. Yet. Trump would see us all pay more at the pump. Selfish that way, with Biden subject to accusations. Politics in play stinks.

UPDATE: Forbes in August this year reported record setting production. Wholly coincidental, 

FURTHER: A lot of money, mostly dark, into politics - (play along to get along politics) - Open Secrets, here, here and here. If you have to read to believe, there are those links. But if you think a bit, you already know. After the elections guys and gals show up time and again and say, "Remember when." 

What originally was done in the lobbies took on a name.

FURTHER: A footnote to things, as if it mattered.

Niron High Performance Non-Rare Earth Permanent Magnets - For Consumer, Industrial and Automotive Applications has announced a real estate site for its beginning commercial manufacturing and sales. Not yet large scale, but producing some output. As advancements in green technology and increasing electrification continue, the demand for permanent magnets has never been higher.

Minnesota-based magnetics company scales up greener options

Other reporting, here and here. 

If the Niron process produces reliable Rare Earth free permanent magnets at automotive electric drive-train scale, without problems, it could be a cost breakthrough lessening reliance in the magnetics worldwide market upon Chinese Rare Earth element production. Other Rare Earth uses - other of the elements - would remain as is, but magnetics would change. This would accelerate transition from internal combustion driven autos to electric. In turn, there would be less reliance on Middle East oil for powering motor vehicles, allowing conservation of reserves for petrochemical use, rather than for greenhouse gas combustion. 

It would be win-win all around.

 UPDATE: Local business journal reporting indicates some job creation in a rural location, with this step, and with national and international expansion steps contemplated once this pilot-plant in Sartell, MN, is successfully up and running.

 

SpaceX California Launch Request permit handling arguably hinged in part upon Musk political online commentary.

 

These consistent links. One, the LATimes article, is behind a subscription wall.

“California rejects further SpaceX rocket launches after Musk’s ‘aggressive’ presidential race involvement” 

 “California officials reject more SpaceX rocket launches, with some citing Musk’s X posts” –  (LA Times)

“California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches”

Headlining largely describes what the items detail, (LA Times walled off), with much ambiguity about what weight Musk's online political commentary had on any ultimate "all circumstances" decision outcome. 

NO EXCERPT, follow the links for detail.

It is uncertain if mention of political commentary was incidental, or major in decision making, but it is reported to have been mentioned by the hearing panel members, or some of them. Crabgrass believes politics mixed at all into a permitting hearing is questionable procedure.