Want to live longer? Live in counties that elect Democrats

From USA Today -

The 'mortality gap' between Republican and Democratic counties is widening, study says. Here's why.

A new study found deaths rates are improving faster in Democratic counties than Republican ones. 

Experts are calling this phenomenon the "mortality gap," and say state policies, individual health decisions and a shift in party demographics may be widening it.

From the study, published in The British Medical Journal -

Interestingly, the population figures are very telling -

As of 2016, there were over 361K people in counties won by Democrats, while there were just over 55K people in counties won by Republicans.

The full study is here.

Dear campaign staffers for Sen. Mark Kelly: publicize this

From Politico -

Garcetti allies tried to put the screws to Mark Kelly. It may have backfired.

Democratic powerbrokers close to Eric Garcetti privately pressured Sen. Mark Kelly to support the Los Angeles mayor’s ambassadorial nomination, according to five people familiar with the outreach.

As part of the push, they left the strong impression that the Arizona Democrat could find himself cut off from donor networks should he refuse to back the beleaguered nominee to be U.S. ambassador to India.

I don't know who is going to win the R primary, but I expect that whoever it is won't compare well to someone who isn't for sale.

Arizona leading the way, but not in a good way

Pointed at this by the Election Law Blog.

From the Brennan Center for Justice -

Arizona Is the Epicenter of the Fight for Voting Rights Today

One of the worst voter suppression laws in the nation, fueled by conspiracy theories, has pushed Arizona to the forefront of the fight for voting rights.

In a brazen repu­di­ation of federal law and recent Supreme Court preced­ent, Arizona recently enacted a law requir­ing docu­ment­ary proof of citizen­ship to vote by mail or in pres­id­en­tial elec­tions. In 2021, Arizona was one of the 17 states nation­wide to enact new restrict­ive voting laws. Now it’s trying to break away from the rest of the voter suppres­sion pack.

After a year and a half of conspir­acy theor­ies, a partisan postelec­tion “audit,” anti­demo­cratic legis­la­tion, elec­tion sabot­age rhet­oric from polit­ical candid­ates, and a Supreme Court ruling further weak­en­ing the Voting Rights Act, Arizona has become a key battle­ground in the fight for voting rights.

[snip]

Further, H.B. 2492 could be an attempt to push the Supreme Court to further erode voting rights. The Court recently held that Arizon­a’s previ­ous attempt to require docu­ment­ary proof of citizen­ship for federal voter regis­tra­tion viol­ated the National Voter Regis­tra­tion Act. This new law seems designed as an invit­a­tion to the Court to recon­sider that ruling. 

Since the 2020 elec­tion, Arizona lawmakers have shown a consist­ent interest in using false claims about voter fraud as the raw mater­ial for justi­fy­ing new restrict­ive voting laws.

HB2492 has been signed into law by Doug Ducey, Arizona's Governor; his letter to Katie Hobbs, Arizona's Secretary of State, is a shining example of self-serving doublespeak.

I'll just leave this here for readers and their own punch lines

From Twitter, yesterday -

I'm guessing that the meds that can help this level of insanity don't exist

From Twitter, taken yesterday -

Legislative schedule - week starting 6/5/2022

On the surface, not much is scheduled to happen at the legislature.

Of course, legislative leadership could hand the membership a package of budget bills at any time.

Of course2, certain members could while away the time watching another movie out of the Riefenstahl oeuvre.

Other than the respective chambers' Rule Committees, only one committee is scheduled to meet this week.

Senate Health and Human Services meets at 9 a.m. on Thursday, 6/9/2022 in SHR1 to consider some executive nominations.

Note: HHR refers to a hearing room in the House building; SHR refers to one in the Senate building.

Note2: Generally, I'll only specify bills that look to propagate propaganda.  Other bills may be more conventionally bad (think: corrupt or other misuses of public monies and/or authority.  My recommendation is that if an agenda covers an area of interest to you, read the entire agenda.

Note3: Each chamber's respective Rules Committee meets on Monday, the House's in HHR4 at 1 p.m. and the Senate's in Senate Caucus Room 1, also at 1 p.m.  Both committees serve as rubber stamps for bills leadership wants to be advanced and gatekeepers for measures that leadership wants stopped.

Note4: Meeting start times may be listed, but are flexible.  Before journeying to the Capitol or viewing the meeting online, verify the start time.

Note5: Watch for strikers, or strike everything amendments.  Those involve inserting language into the entirety of a bill.  Those can be introduced at any time and can make a previously harmless bill into a very bad one. 

When a GOPer describes joe Biden as be "not helpful", he means "not joining us in dancing on the graves of the victims of gun violence"

From The Hill -

Toomey says Biden not ‘helpful’ amid negotiations on gun legislation

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on Sunday that President Biden has not been “helpful” amid congressional negotiations on gun reform in the wake of a string mass shootings in the U.S. 

“I think the president might have been a president who would reach across the aisle try to bring people together,” Toomey told moderator Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“But he’s chosen not to take that approach,” Toomey added. “Since day one, he has sided with the far left of his party and really not reached out to Republicans.”

Is any place safe from gun nuts?

In recent days, there have been mass shootings in a school, supermarket, strip mall, hospital, church, and even a street.

And while certain people object to anything that even hints of gun control, one place that was safe from guns was the NRA convention when Cheeto was speaking.

Because guns were banned there.

Certain people think that sacrificing innocent lives on the altar of fear and greed is a good thing.

It's not.

Andy Biggs isn't bothered by mass murder, he's just bothered by efforts to deal with it

From Twitter -

Dear Peter Thiel: If you're going to try to buy a seat in the US Senate from AZ, you might want raise (and spend) more than 1.25% of your PAC's money here

Also, if you're going to put "Arizona" in your PAC's name, it may be a good idea to base it here.

From the Saving Arizona PAC's statement of organization filed with the FEC -

Thiel used $10,000,000 of his billions and funded the PAC.

From the PAC's mid-year 2021 filing -

Yet, while the PAC may have "Arizona" in its name, incredibly little of its money has been raised or spent here.

According to its FEC summary page, the PAC has raised a total of $10,558,039.78, yet of that total, $130K was raised here (and of that, $100K came from the same sources -

What?  You say that the Blocks are different from Basis?  The records of the Arizona Corporation Commission might not agree -

Anyway, I digress.

To make a long story short, 1.23% of the PAC's money has been raised here.

Which is actually higher than the percentage of the PAC's money spent here, which is 1.14% out of $6,146,710.68.

Anyway, while Thiel has spent $10M + on the race (the "+" comes from the fact that he given almost $6K directly to Masters' campaign committee), but I have to ask one thing -

How much more did Thiel have to spend to "win" Cheeto's endorsement of Masters?

It's pretty obvious that I am *not* a fan of Mark Brnovich - I think that he's a bigoted and opportunistic hack.

Having said that, at least he's an Arizona bigoted and opportunistic hack and not a carpetbagger looking to buy a nomination.

Thiel/Masters is.

Rich people trying to buy a political office is not a new idea, but in the age of Cheeto, they're not even trying to hide it any longer.

From Politico -

Big-spending billionaires are upending politics. The Los Angeles mayor's race is the latest test.

Even by the cash-flush standards of modern politics, Rick Caruso’s run for mayor of Los Angeles has been a shock-and-awe spending campaign.

The billionaire Republican-turned-Democrat has already dropped $34 million on the race, single-handedly making the June 7 primary one of the most expensive elections in the country. He’s spent $25 million on TV advertising alone this year, more than any other candidate for any office in America, save one prospect running for governor in Illinois, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And in those TV ads, Caruso hammers away at homelessness, crime and corruption at City Hall, a trio of top issues for Los Angeles voters, while casting himself as an outsider — “not just a talker, a doer,” one TV ad narrator says.

State Committee update

From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State --

Both Heaton and Reid-Shaver are Libertarians, though neither listed a party.

As of this writing, there are no Libertarian candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction, write-in or ballot, listed by the AZSOS, while there is one declared Libertarian candidate for Governor, write-in candidate Barry Hess.

The majority of Americans are pro-choice; the majority of the Supreme Court are not

From NPR -

In a new U.S. poll, a majority identify as 'pro-choice' for the first time in decades

The percentage of Americans who consider themselves "pro-choice" has risen in the past year to 55%, its highest level in decades, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

That increase mainly was driven by Democrats, wrote Lydia Saad, the polling firm's director for U.S. social research, in a summary of the survey's findings. She attributed the shift to the recent Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting a possible end to Roe v. Wade.

Gallup surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults by telephone over three weeks beginning May 2 — the day Politico published a draft opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court could soon overturn Roe v. Wade. That decision would enable many states to dramatically restrict or ban abortions.

The Supreme Court's leaked majority opinion is here.

From the Gallup poll -

Now, I realize that public policy issues aren't popularity contests and opinion polls doesn't mean that the pro-choice side is correct.

However, the dearth of facts on the anti-choice side adds credibility to the pro-choice side.

I may be bothered by tax support for Big Business, but pettiness from elected officials bothers me more

And, have no doubt, pro sports qualifies as "Big Business."

From The Hill -

DeSantis vetoes funds for Tampa Bay Rays practice facility after team tweets on gun control

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) approved a new state budget Thursday, but vetoed funds for a Pasco County baseball practice facility that was to be used by the Tampa Bay Rays, a move that comes shortly after the MLB organization tweeted in support of gun control last week.

DeSantis, an avid supporter of gun rights, vetoed the funding proposed by state Sen. Danny Burgess (R) that was widely expected to be signed into the state’s budget a week after the Rays showed support for gun control measures.

DeSantis wants to be president, one in the mold of Cheeto.

He's already got the "petty dictator wannabe" part down.

At least Sen. Kelly Townsend can dance...if the 'hypocritical two-step' counts as a dance

Pointed at this by AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona.

From Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services, published by KJZZ -

Townsend encourages 'vigilantes' to monitor ballot drop boxes, denies it's intimidation

One of the leading proponents of the claim that there is fraud in Arizona elections wants "vigilantes" to monitor ballot drop boxes in the upcoming election.

Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Apache Junction) complained during an informal legislative hearing Tuesday about the failure of the Senate to either outlaw drop boxes entirely or require that they be monitored 24 hours a day. In fact, Townsend wants to deal with the issue of possible fraudulent ballots by eliminating early voting entirely.

[snip]

"We're going to have people out there watching you," Townsend said. "And they're going to follow you to your car and get your license plate."

That was Tuesday; on Wednesday, she voted to greatly expand the definition of "harassment".

From the minority report on the conference committee results for SB1633, signed by Rep. Melody Hernandez and Sen. Victoria Steele -

"Under this language, a single instance of surveilling or contacting a person "in a manner that harasses" (the definition of which is murky) could expose someone to a Class 6 felony. The amendment fails to address any of these concerns, and in fact broadens the application of the statute by making it aggravated harassment to commit an act of harassment, as specified above, in violation of an order of protection. For those reasons oppose SB1633 as amended by the conference committee."

SB1633 *does* have a specific carve out, one that seems so specific that Townsend's vigilantes don't seem to fall within it -

Covid cases are rising both here in AZ and nationally...but I went to supermarket today, and maybe 10% of the customers were masked

From NPR -

The real COVID surge is (much) bigger than it looks. But don't panic

Cases of COVID-19 are — yet again — on the rise. The U.S. is seeing an average of more than 100,000 reported new cases across the country every day. That's nearly double the rate a month ago and four times higher than this time last year.

And the real number of cases is likely much higher than that, according to health officials. Because many people now rely on at-home tests, "we're clearly undercounting infections," White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told reporters at the most recent COVID press briefing. Hospitalizations are trending upwards too, though only gradually still in most places.

From the Mayo Clinic -

In the U.S.:

In AZ:

1. Wear a damn mask.

2. Get vaccinated.