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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • As bad as it looks from the outside, Iowa is still a near swing state. Last election was a 44/54 split. The Republican 2016 take over gave Republicans the trifecta of house, senate, and governor. They hobbled the census, and threw out the historic joint commission of drawing new lines to reduce Democrats to have no federal representation.

    Iowa is severely, blatantly gerrymandered, done by splitting the urban centers and extending the rural left. Iowa, under Republicans, has among the lowest population growth in the nation. The older rural population is stuck, but progressive, educated young leave the state in relatively larger numbers.

    As you might guess, the educated workforce is in very high demand (as long as they do so in LCOL wages). These are the ones who are easily able to leave for better wages and amenities. On the other side, Republicans are older and dying off.




  • I recently subscribed to Ground News, a news aggregator site that rates news sources to left, leans left, center, leans right, and right.
    It also rates their outlets to being partially accurate or highly accurate. GN also report and who owns the outlets, to give a window to biases by owners.

    My personal bias is to being factually accurate and honest, far more than the red/blue/green divides.

    Sadly, discourse is such that being accurate is a right filter, leaving far fewer right outlets that can be trusted. For example, I have found that RT is more often correct than some of these outlets. Why? If RT propagandists throw in truthful news, they gain credibility, which buoys their credibility for when they break to full propaganda.
    In a same vein, 60+ lawsuits were foisted in the last election over fake votes, with every single one thrown out by not having any evidence to support their accusations. But I still hear someone BSing those lies. But whadaboutism accusing Biden is still innuendo, without proof, and most importantly, does not excuse others to be free to break laws.
    If Joe Biden took money from foreign interests, for himself, via Hunter, he would deserve prosecution, too.

    Finding any balance that to a so-called center is still half crazy, which is not good enough.

    Fox News was sued and famously paid 3/4 of a billion dollars to pay damages for their lies, and more lawsuits are coming. Pulitzer prize winning magazines and newspapers deserve greater weight for truthfulness, while I would argue, Fox News and RT should be banned. They simply cannot be trusted.











  • My family have had one home leveled, one home so badly damaged that after rehab, lost 2/3 of its value, and yet another home badly damaged by three separate climate driven events. One was a 1000 yr flood, and then, two different straight wind derechos. We were homeless three times.
    We live in the Midwest. Furthermore, we are only one of many thousands that have already been affected and are certainly not the first. When the insurance companies pass on the profits because of risk, we can accept that actuaries have seen the light.