Crooked Media - Big frackin' deal

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 BY CROOKED MEDIA

*- Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's former White House Communications Director, on his ex-boss' need to overcompensate.*

A years-old pledge by Kamala Harris to ban fracking still resonates in energy-rich Pennsylvania. The question now is whether voters in this crucial swing state will look past it in November.

Vice President Kamala Harris has a long track record of taking green-friendly positions, dating back two decades to her days as a San Francisco prosecutor. Her ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket was hailed by climate activists, who got even more amped up when she tapped climate hawk Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), as What A Day noted last week. But Harris has recently backed away from a pledge she made four years ago, during her first run for president, to ban the dirty drilling process known as fracking. And it’s not hard to see why. Pennsylvania is a world capital for fracking, a specialized and controversial technology for pulling oil and natural gas out of challenging underground formations. And now, Pennsylvania might just decide who becomes the next president.

Disgraced former President Trump attacked Harris almost immediately over her previous fracking ban comments just as soon as President Biden dropped out of the race in July. “She's against fracking, she's against oil drilling, she wants everybody to have one electric car and share it with the neighbors,” Trump told a rally in Harrisburg, PA, on July 31. The Harris campaign called Trump’s assertions “false,” and stated Harris would not ban fracking — effectively reversing her former position.

What will voters in Pennsylvania, one of the most important swing states in the 2024 presidential election, make of all this? For the moment, Trump’s attempts to drum up a controversy on the fracking issue aren’t exactly burying the Harris campaign. Harris is gaining in the polls and now leads Trump in Pennsylvania by about 2 percentage points, according to analyst Nate Silver’s polling average. A recent NYT/Sienna poll had her ahead by 4 points in Pennsylvania.

You can bet Trump will hammer on this issue as hard as he can from now until election day.

Fracking turned Pennsylvania into an energy powerhouse by allowing drillers to access reserves that had once been considered too difficult to drill. The Washington Post profiled some of those PA voters on Tuesday, pointing out that some in this state would probably back Harris if not for concerns over where she really stands on this issue. That includes 31-year-old Emanuel Paris, who works in construction, believes that climate change is real — and plans to vote for Trump. “It’s not like we can just shut off everything else and switch to solar and wind,” Paris told the Post.

A future Trump administration, of course, is a climate disaster waiting to happen — with impact stretching well beyond the state of Pennsylvania.

Next week, we’re going all out for the Democratic National Convention. Here at Crooked Media, we’re giving Friends of the Pod subscribers access to a ton of behind-the-scenes content and community events including a DNC subscriber live chat, a new subscriber exclusive segment featuring Jon, Jon, Tommy and Dan, four (count ‘em FOUR!) back-to-back, ad-free episodes of Pod Save America recapping the biggest convention news of the night and brand new episodes of Inside 2024 and Pollercoaster. It’s gonna be a hell of a week for content, and as a bonus we’ll have a Democratic Party nominee by the end. Pretty good deal! Get all of our exclusive DNC content and more when you subscribe to Friends of the Pod. Head to crooked.com/friends to sign up now!

Hamas said it will not take part in ceasefire talks scheduled to begin on Thursday, signaling that hopes of a deal to halt the fighting remain elusive. The group’s London representative told the New York Times it would not participate because it believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not been negotiating in good faith.

Donald Trump held a glitchy, rambling “conversation” with tech-billionaire and misinformation enthusiast Elon Musk on X/Twitter Monday night. The event — which was riddled with so many flat-out-lies it had our heads spinning — kicked off 45 minutes late after what Musk called a Distributed Denial of Service attack that supposedly kept users from joining. Sure, pal! That’s that towering innovation we’ve come to know from Elon. An X employee told The Verge they were 99 percent sure Elon was lying.

Musk and Trump’s batshit conversation prompted the United Auto Workers union to file federal labor charges against the two men for comments they made about labor rights after the pair of billionaires waxed fondly over how cool it is to fire striking workers, which as the union noted, is illegal. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain called the remarks “disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”

Meanwhile, AppHarvest, a now-bankrupt startup backed by wannabe veep, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) has come under scrutiny as workers allege “nightmare” conditions at the Kentucky-based company.

Everything this man touches turns to workplace violations.

President Biden said he’s attend Trump’s inauguration, if Trump wins the election. Biden quipped: “I have good manners, not like him.”

August is Read-A-Romance Novel Month!

What steamy romance book are you reading to set the mood? From Emily Henry’s “Funny Story” to “This Could Be Us” by Kennedy Ryan, Bookshop.org has just the book you’re looking for to celebrate your love of love. Their online bookstore is stocked with a range of titles that will keep you entertained for hours. Book recommendations on Bookshop.org also come from real people who love books, not algorithms.

And the best part? When you purchase from Bookshop.org, you’re supporting over 2,000 local, independent bookstores across the country.

What A Day is proud to partner with Bookshop.org in supporting independent bookstores. Every purchase you make on Bookshop.org directly funds local booksellers. Thanks to fellow readers like you, over $32 million has already been donated to help keep local, independent bookstores serving their communities. Bookshop.org is a certified B-Corp and all deliveries are carbon-neutral.

Join Bookshop.org in uplifting independent bookstores today. AND - for a limited time*, use the code "Romance" at checkout for 15% off select romance books. Happy reading! *Discount code expires August 31, 2024.

Farming startups are seeking to use soil, specifically, fungi to pull carbon dioxide from the environment. Soils can hold three times more carbon than the atmosphere, which equates to one seventh of all the carbon we humans pump into the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That makes soil runner up to only oceans in terms of carbon absorption and storage.

Kamala Harris is “within striking distance” of Trump in Florida, according to a pollster who conducted a new USA Today survey showing the vice president trailing the former president by 5 percentage points, with a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points. Florida will probably go for Trump, of course, but it’s fun to think he’ll have to sweat the Sunshine State.

Former President Obama released both a summer reading list and a summer playlist, if you’re into that sort of thing!

The Arizona Secretary of State announced that over 577,000 valid signatures were submitted for the Arizonans for Abortion Access initiative, meaning abortion rights will be on the ballot in the key battleground state this fall. Let’s go get back these rights, Arizona!

The Department of Justice is considering breaking up Google after a court found the company monopolized search, Bloomberg News reported, citing unnamed sources. Steps could include splitting off the Chrome web browser or the Android operating system. Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, we bow down to your greatness.

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