Tuesday, August 20th 2024 Today, the Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago and Governor Pritzker confirms members of the Illinois National Guard are on standby; DA Alvin Bragg does not oppose Trump’s request to postpone his sentencing but is leaving it up to the discretion of the court; Judge Luttig has endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket; the House Republicans have released their Biden impeachment report; Kamala Harris outlines her economic policy agenda; despite what we hear from the right, violent crime is plummeting; Trump shared a fake Taylor Swift endorsement on Truth Social; Democrats project anti-Trump messages on his Chicago hotel; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
Tuesday, August 20th 2024
Today, the Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago and Governor Pritzker confirms members of the Illinois National Guard are on standby; DA Alvin Bragg does not oppose Trump’s request to postpone his sentencing but is leaving it up to the discretion of the court; Judge Luttig has endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket; the House Republicans have released their Biden impeachment report; Kamala Harris outlines her economic policy agenda; despite what we hear from the right, violent crime is plummeting; Trump shared a fake Taylor Swift endorsement on Truth Social; Democrats project anti-Trump messages on his Chicago hotel; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
Stories
Democrats project anti-Trump campaign messages onto his Chicago hotel (NBC News)
Harris unveils economic plans on inflation, housing. Here's what economists think (ABC News)
Dear Reader, Taylor Swift Endorsing Trump Is an AI-Generated Fairytale (Time)
Violent crime is plummeting. Why? (Vox)
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Hello, and welcome to The Daily Beans for Tuesday, August 20th, 2024.
Today, the Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago, and Governor Pritzker confirms members of the Illinois National Guard are on standby.
DA Alvin Bragg has said he does not oppose Trump's request to postpone his sentencing, but is leaving it up to the discretion of the court.
Judge Luttig has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.
That's huge.
The House Republicans have released their Biden impeachment report, and it's really sad.
Kamala Harris outlines her economic policy agenda.
Despite what we hear from the right, violent crime is plummeting.
Trump shared a fake Taylor Swift endorsement on Truth Social, and Democrats project anti-Trump messages on his Chicago hotel.
I'm Allison Gill.
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
Hey, my friend.
Happy Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday to you.
I'm glad you made it safely to Chicago.
I am not there yet, as you know.
So many flights got canceled from New York because of weather.
But I know that you're going to make it.
And I know that there's tons of people who were scrambling to find flights or trains or rent cars to get out.
A mess.
I'm glad that was not your issue.
I'm glad you're there safely.
You've got work to do and democracy to save.
Let's go.
It's been really completely amazing.
It's like the Super Bowl, but for Democrats.
It's incredible.
We've taken over the whole town.
So I've got my credentials.
I've been kind of getting to know the lay of the land out here.
I'm going to be heading as soon as we're done recording.
And we're going to be recording pretty early on these weekdays, at least for the headlines of the news.
And then I'm going to try to come back and record like a quick B block of what I saw that night, like when I go tonight to go see Joe Biden speak.
Hopefully I can get in.
Everything's still sort of up in the air and interesting, but I'm going to do my best to bring you all the content that I can.
So I mentioned in the headlines that the governor here, JB Pritzker, says about 150 members of the National Guard will be in Chicago during the DNC.
But he said they're present in a standby role only.
During a press availability, he said that Illinois Guard members in the city are trained as military police, but that residents shouldn't expect to see them taking on an active role during the DNC.
So I'm glad that they're on standby.
Also Judge Luttig, who we've had on the show and who we've had on the Jack podcast, former judge in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, very conservative, just today endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
So that's truly amazing.
I love to see it.
Every single Republican or conservative that we can get publicly supporting Harris, not just announcing Trump, but supporting Harris.
It's a big deal.
So I love to see it as well.
Yep.
And Biden's impeachment report is out.
Whatever.
I'm not going to really spend any time on it.
It's really sad that they don't have any evidence and they aren't recommending impeachment because they don't have the votes.
So we'll talk about it on Clean Up on L45 tomorrow.
And DA Alvin Bragg has written a letter to the court saying he doesn't actually oppose postponing Trump's sentencing, saying if this is interlocutory.
I mean, basically what's going on here is the Supreme Court left such a fucking mess that he's like, I don't even know, so I'm going to leave it up to the court.
So they may postpone this until after the election just to make sure that they get it right.
But all that means is that we need to get out of vote numbers they've never seen so that he does not have his own Department of Justice.
So if that's what they're going to do, listen, I understand, I support, then do everything you can that we are the judge and jury before the election, period.
Yes.
And for those saying, well, this is the state, he can't touch the state.
It's in Project 2025 that he wants the Department of Justice to take control of state prosecutions, DAs and things like that.
So don't think that if he wins, he won't be able to touch this case.
He'll find a way.
So we're going to talk about that in more detail, too, on Clean Up on Al 45.
All right.
We have a lot of news to get to today.
So let's hit the hot notes.
Hot notes.
All right.
First up, this is from NBC, the Democratic National Committee, projected anti-Trump campaign slogans on to Trump Tower in Chicago on Sunday.
That's the day before the convention kicked off.
The messages include, quote, Trump Vance, weird as hell, Harris-Walz fighting for you, and Project 2025 headquarters.
That was probably my fave.
A reference to the controversial conservative policy plans written by a slew of allies of the former president.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but he's lying.
Quote, this week, the entire country will witness what it looks like to unite behind hope and a clear vision for a better future, as Democrats rally behind Vice President Harris and Governor Walz.
That's DNC spokesperson, Abhi Raman, in a statement.
Also went on to say, well, Donald Trump and JD Vance are out for themselves, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fighting for you.
Now, the Trump campaign didn't respond to request for comment, but projections were written in English and Spanish and changed every few seconds.
Other messages include Trump Vance out for themselves and Harris Walz's joy and hope.
Quote, all eyes are on Chicago and tonight everyone's seeing a preview of the contrast that will take center stage this week throughout the Democratic National Convention.
That's the spokesperson again.
The DNC is set to launch Monday with a number of speakers, including President Joe Biden's address in the evening.
Harris is set to deliver her speech Thursday in primetime when she will formally accept the party's presidential nomination.
I got chills just then.
Trump is set to hold a series of campaign events throughout the week.
This is a mistake, but he's going to do it anyway.
And he's going to try to draw a split screen with his political rival.
The Republican National Convention took place last month, if I've forgot, just days after he was the target of that assassination attempt.
Oh, also, which I forget.
By the way, I do forget that there was an assassination attempt until someone posted on social media.
Yeah.
But yeah, the RNC, they're like, Laura Ingram's like, oh, they're just going to be all show and vibes.
And like you had Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock, dude.
They're not going to talk about serious policy.
I can guarantee you none of our speakers are going to rip their shirt off.
Although it would be really funny if Walz did that.
Yeah, it would.
I would take it.
Oh my gosh, so would I.
All right.
Thank you so much, AG.
This is from Matt Zahn at ABC.
Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a sweeping economic agenda on Friday, vowing to ease inflation, fix the housing market and slash taxes for middle income families.
The plans include eye catching proposals such as a ban on grocery price gouging and a $25,000 subsidy for first time home buyers.
And let me be clear, that is for US citizens.
I know you're going to see a lot on the other side that says it's not.
It is.
Economists who spoke to ABC News offered a mixed assessment of the newly released agenda.
Some experts lauded the effort to slow rising costs and restrain corporate power in key sectors, while others criticized what they consider a misguided attempt to override market forces that risk worsening the nation's debt.
Less than three months before the presidential election, the economy tops lists of voter concerns.
Growth is slowing but remains solid.
Price increases have cooled dramatically but remain higher than the Federal Reserve's target level.
The campaign aims to rein in price increases for everything from groceries to prescriptions, drugs to homes.
Harris points to the market power of the large corporations as key cause of rapid price increases for essential goods, saying companies use their outsized role in a given market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product and a more affordable price.
Consumers, the Harris campaign says, are left no where to turn.
The grocery industry exemplifies the damage caused by mega corporations, according to the campaign.
And I quote, extreme consolidation in the food industry has led to higher prices that account for a large part of higher grocery bills.
This is what the campaign said in a statement on Friday.
Grocery store profits, the margin surged in 2021 and they rose even higher two years later even after price increases had begun to cool.
A Federal Trade Commission study showed that in March.
To control the price hikes, Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries.
While details remain limited, the plan could resemble price gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods.
In recent years, housing market has suffered from a convergence of high mortgage rates and elevated home prices, shutting out prospective buyers with high costs.
The Harris campaign proposed restoring affordability through a combination of boosting home supply and easing the price pressures for some home buyers.
Plans to grow the supply of homes include a tax incentive for companies that build starter homes and affordable rental homes.
This is what the Harris campaign said.
The campaign's plans to aid buyers feature a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers.
The Harris campaign said it aims to keep some money in middle-class consumers' pockets by reducing their tax burden.
The plans include a restoration of the expanded child tax credit of $3,600 per child that expired in 2022.
Harris also proposed an additional new $6,000 child tax credit for families with a child in the first year of life.
The tax cuts for families drew wide support from economists who spoke to ABC News, though some emphasized the importance of accompanying those proposals with revenue-raising measures that will offset the tax reductions.
I do want to say that when she proposed a ban on price gouging, a major article dropped about how grocery stores did price gouging during the pandemic.
Now they have obviously investigation have been caught doing that.
This is happening and it's not at the fault of this administration.
Well, it dropped again.
That was from the FTC's report about a month and a half ago that we covered.
Yes.
You and me.
It's going around again and I'm glad that it's being picked up.
Because as much as we can scream it to our leguminati, maybe not everybody is aware that they used the pandemic, a global pandemic, to line their pockets.
Yeah.
It's awful.
All right.
Next up from Kou at Time Magazine.
Trump would like his followers to believe that pop music megastar Taylor Swift advocates voting red.
But that may just be in his wildest dreams.
Quote, I accept, said the former president on Truth Social, along with a collage of images from the internet, including some that were generated by artificial intelligence, showing the time person of the year dressed as Uncle Sam, this is Taylor Swift, as Uncle Sam, and saying, Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump, as well as numerous Swift fans expressing their support for the Republican presidential nominee.
Taylor Swift has not officially endorsed any candidate yet in this particular election, though she backed Biden and Harris in 2020, and has criticized Trump for stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism, and for defunding the US.
Postal Service in 2020, which she described as choosing to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans' lives at risk in an effort to hold onto power.
Time has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on potential Swift endorsements.
As the Democratic Party kicks off its convention this week in Chicago, where a number of celebrities are expected to speak and perform in support of the Harris-Walls campaign.
But there's no evidence that a significant number of fans of Taylor Swift are supporting the Republican candidate.
An unofficial Swifties for Trump account on X created in July has fewer than 4,000 followers, while an unofficial Swifties for Kamala, also created in July, has over 60,000 followers, and 100,000 on TikTok.
Trump's Truth Social post also included a screenshot of a post by a conservative account, Amuse, featuring clearly AI-generated images of young women wearing Swifties for Trump shirts, accompanied by a headline labeled as satire that says Swifties are turning to Trump after the singer's Vienna concert was canceled out of concern over a jihadist terrorist plot.
The original post on Twitter acknowledges in its image that it's satire.
It says there is no Swifties for Trump movement, but there should be.
Okay.
In another True Social post on Sunday, Trump reshared a TikTok video of a woman claiming that Swifties were now rallying for Trump because of the same terrorist plot.
Now, Trump has spoken about Taylor Swift before, telling Ramin Satuta, author of the book Apprentice in Wonderland, how Donald Trump and Mark burnett took America through the looking glass, quote, I hear she's very talented.
I think she's very beautiful, actually, unusually beautiful.
As for Swift's politics, Trump is quoted in the same book as saying, I think she's liberal, liberal, but she probably doesn't like Trump, though he expressed some skepticism about that.
Reportedly questioning, she legitimately liberal?
It's not an act, it surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.
As experts warn of the dangers of disinformation in politics, which new technology can exacerbate, Trump's recent sharing of the Swift-related AI-generated images comes after he and billionaire Elon Musk shared an AI-altered video on Twitter last week depicting them dancing after the two held a high-profile live stream together on the social media platform.
So anyway, yeah, there's no such thing as Swifties for Trump.
No, there is not.
All right, last in the segment, this is from Nicole Naria at Vox.
Violent crime levels have dropped significantly in the first half of the year.
This is according to a new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Overall, violent crime dropped by 6 percent and homicides fell by 17 percent in 69 cities compared to the same period last year.
Columbus, Ohio saw the biggest drop in violent crime at 41 percent.
That's according to an Axios data analysis.
But cities including Miami, Washington, DC and Austin, Texas also saw large declines.
Notably, New York City was not included in the data, though other reports have indicated that violent crime is falling there too.
It's hard to say exactly what's causing the decline, which comes after a major COVID-19 crime wave.
It may be partially due to policies aimed at tackling crime at the federal, state and local levels.
But it may also just be a symptom of the fact that normal life in America has resumed post-pandemic, or a combination of those and other factors.
Republicans have long tried to use concerns about crime as a political cudgel against President Joe Biden's administration, while former President Donald Trump doesn't appear to be giving up on that attack strategy just yet.
Democrats can now use the new data as a defense.
Whether that will be effective, however, is far from certain.
In a statement on Saturday, President Joe Biden credited the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill at Congress passed in 2021, which allocated $15 billion towards public safety and violence prevention efforts for helping bring down crime levels.
He also cited bipartisan gun control law that expanded background checks and encouraged states to adopt red flag laws and prevent people who pose a danger to themselves or others from obtaining a gun.
Yeah, so I think if you spend $15 billion toward public safety and violence prevention, that could cause violent crime to go down.
Yes, look at that investment.
Huh, and gosh, the inflation started to take a nosedive after we passed the Inflation Reduction Act.
It's a miracle.
All right.
Thank you so much for that story, everybody.
We have a lot of good news to get to, but we have to take a quick break first.
So stick around.
We'll be right back.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back.
It's AG.
It's about, oh, what time is it here?
Like midnight almost.
I just got back from the United Center.
Oh my God.
So my phone has just been blowing up nonstop since right around the time Hillary Clinton began speaking and it hasn't stopped.
Everybody's texting me in like all caps about how pumped and how energized and amazed and in awe they are of the energy that came out of the first night of the Democratic National Convention.
And I can't, I'm afraid that my words aren't going to do it justice because if you're energized just watching it on C-SPAN live or watching it on TV, I am hard-pressed to explain the energy inside United Center.
It's almost has a life of its own.
The whole place seems to be like moving.
Like it's like almost like we're in an earthquake.
It's just so hard to explain, but the energy is incredible.
And this is just night one.
This is just opening night.
But we got an incredible surprise appearance by Kamala Harris.
But that closing speech by Joe Biden, especially where he quoted those song lyrics that he thinks of America, America, I gave my best to you.
And that introduction, that heartfelt introduction by Ashley Biden, it was just so emotional.
And then I noticed that Ken Burns later tweeted out those lyrics back at him.
And that Stephanie Rule kind of brought up the point that it's a bookend on his presidency, the most effective, important, and consequential presidency of my lifetime.
I can say that of my lifetime.
And just as far as legislation that he's got done, and bringing us back from the brink after January 6th.
But that passing of the torch, that bookending, because he brought up those same lyrics in his inauguration.
That's why I was getting out with the bookends.
But sorry, my mind is going like a million miles a minute.
I'm just so full of energy.
I'm still buzzing from being in the United Center.
It was a very long day.
I think I got up at five and I flew from DC to Chicago.
Then, of course, everything's always a little bit delayed, especially when you're flying into O'Hare.
But I got here, I got to the hotel fortunate enough to have a room ready for me, even though I was here relatively early in the morning.
Then I had to take a shuttle to McCormick Place, which is the other central area, especially where delegates and caucuses are meeting during this convention.
McCormick Place, there's not a shuttle directly from my hotel to there, so I had to walk to a nearby hotel to catch that shuttle.
Went down there, then I stood in line for quite a long time to go through secret service security screening.
Then once I was through that, I was able to walk to another building downstairs, through a hall, across a sky bridge, and into another hotel to finally find the line that I had to wait in to get my creator credentials.
And we have to do this every day.
And so by the time I got back to, onto the shuttle, back to the hotel nearby, and then walked back to my hotel, it was already time to record Clean Up on aisle 45 and record The Daily Beans.
And then, so that's what we recorded the A block, but then I had to immediately get ready and get on the shuttle to go to United Center.
And of course, there was a delay.
The whole program started a little bit late, I think because of some protesters.
And from what CBS News was saying is they were outside agitators, not like actual Palestinian protesters, or pro-Palestinian protesters, I should say.
So we were delayed and the whole night was delayed, actually, by quite a bit of time.
Then we finally got there, we waited in line to go through security again, and security is very tight, I'm very thankful for that.
And then I get in there and then around 7, I'm like, okay, Joe's going to go on about 9.30, I'd like to see all these speakers between now and then.
I'm going to go find a seat.
By the time I go to get a seat in the club deck, which is the second floor, the second level of seats above the floor, that's where all the creators have seats, that's where we're allowed to go, that's what we're reserved for there, was full already.
I had to go to the upper deck, to the nosebleeds, to the top of the whole United Center.
But there's not a bad seat in that house, and every seat was full.
And then we sat, we watched the whole program from 7 to almost midnight.
And everybody was helping each other out.
If somebody needed to go to the restroom, we'd save each other's seats.
If somebody was going to the concessions, we would see if everybody around us needed water.
They handed out these signs, so everybody had signs, the Jill signs, the we fight, we win signs, the we vote, we win signs, and then the big, the ones, the tall, we love, we heart Joe signs.
We all got a whole set of signs, every single person almost in that arena.
There's 20,000 seats in that arena, I think.
But anyway, it was full.
There were no seats left, and that was for the entirety of the like pretty much the last five hours of the program.
Now, I'm very thankful to the DNCC for inviting creators to this convention.
I mean, this is the first time they've ever done anything like this with creators, with independent media.
And they really didn't give us any direction.
They didn't really give us any talking points.
They didn't give us any things they wanted us to focus on.
They didn't say, please make this many videos or like nothing like that.
They were just like, do your thing, because whatever your thing is, works for you and for the people who listen to it.
So it was amazing to see all of my friends there.
Jennifer Taub, I know she has some live Monday morning show that she does, which is just amazing.
We saw Lee McGowan is here, our politics girl, Brian Tyler Cohen, BDD, Brooklyn Dad Defiant, I ran into him, Aaron Parton.
Just so many people that we all continue to rely on to get information when we need it.
For all of us to be there and sharing everything that we're seeing on the ground is, I just think, really incredible and I'm honored.
I'm so grateful to the DNCC for having us, for allowing us.
They just give us credentials and say, go do what you do.
Tomorrow, which is today as you're listening to this, I'm going to drop in, I think on John Fugelsang, I might drop in on Stephanie Miller.
On Thursday, I've walked around and found out where their booths are.
I've got a couple of hits with some Scripts News, Grey TV, News Nation.
I think I'll be on CNN Wednesday night at midnight with Laura Coats in that hour, Central Time.
And I'm very honored to speak to her.
I've been on her SiriusXM show a lot.
I love Laura Coats.
So I'm looking forward to speaking with her, but I can't explain this energy to you.
I hope that you're feeling it wherever you are.
This is just the first night.
This is the opening night.
It's going to build and build and build until Thursday.
And it's amazing.
There were some other standout moments for me tonight.
Jasmine Crockett, when she talked, she told a story about when she first met Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris.
And she was having a hard time because the Republicans in Congress are dickheads and everything was just fucked up.
The Oversight Committee was at, they were just, it was awful.
The House, this Congress is terrible for getting anything done.
And that's why she came to work, right?
And she wanted to work, and it wasn't happening.
And Kamala Harris saw that in her and wiped, she said, the most powerful women in the world wiped away my tears.
And that like, that really got me.
To have the women come up and tell their stories about not being able to access abortion, healthcare was extremely powerful.
I know my friend Charlotte Clymer had tweeted that when that young girl talked about how Donald Trump thought overturning Roe was a beautiful thing, and she said, how is it beautiful for a 12 year old girl to carry her parents' baby?
And the whole of the United Center just gasped.
Charlotte said, I think, what did she say?
That the wind went out of the room, the air went out of the room.
It was true.
It was just this black hole of silence and utter disbelief and empathy and love.
And it was just, it's truly an incredible thing.
And I'm so glad that again, and grateful that the DNCC sent me here and that, you know, patrons of this program helped me fund it.
So thank you so much.
I'm going to keep doing these little B blocks late at night, much to the chagrin of our production team.
And I'm so, so sorry, guys.
I know it's late, but I really want to get this stuff out as it happens.
And so I really, really appreciate you too.
And by the way, all of you all listening and all the leguminati, it's because of you that we have such an incredible production team.
And they are willing to work with me this late at night.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
We do have actually good news after this segment to get to.
And we'll do that right after this break.
So stick around.
We'll be right back.
Everybody welcome back.
It's time for the good news.
And if you have any good news, confessions, corrections, you want to play, What the Mut, Find the Cat, What the Hell is in That Show, What's the Model of Your Oxalotl, Opine on the Bovine, What the Heck Wine, any pet guessing game at all, send in your pet or a wild animal, a baby animal, a grown up animal, an old man animal, send them all, all the animal photos.
And if you don't have pod pet tax to pay, you can send us an adoptable pet in your area.
We'll see if we can find him a forever home.
Also, if you have a shout out you want to give, whether it's to somebody personal in your life, like a family member, spouse, partner, kid, parent.
I love self shout outs.
I know Dana also really, really enjoys hearing a good self shout out now and then.
So you can send those in.
Shout out to a small business in your area that could use a boost or maybe an activist group that's doing some great stuff to help win this election.
Send that to us.
And of course, shout outs to government programs that have helped you or somebody that you know, whether it's gosh, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Affordable Care Act, SNAP, WIC, VA health care, anything at all, especially in including student debt relief.
Send that to us as well.
And you can do it by going to dailybeanspod.com and clicking on contact.
First up from BJ, pronouns he and him.
Hi, Allison and Dana.
Thanks for what y'all do.
You're such positive forces for good in the world.
And you are so appreciated.
I've got a shout out to a couple of programs and some good news.
First, shout out to the Affordable Care Act.
Through Obamacare, I went from limping around in great pain to two new hips and a smooth pain-free strut.
And I didn't ruin myself financially.
Second, big shout out to Biden.
Through one of his plans for veterans, my father-in-law has been shown eligible for complete coverage of his health care.
Dad-in-law had a stroke seven years ago and wasn't found for 24 hours.
Oh my God, so he's paralyzed on one side and he needs to have live-in care at home.
Due to his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, he was deemed eligible for very significant cost coverages for his care in a program through President Biden.
Finally, the good news.
For the first time in 18 years, I volunteered my time to phone bank for Kamala Harris.
In 2006, I volunteered with moveon.org.
When it looked like Bush, Cheney and their crew were going to take some draconian measures, capitalizing on 9-11.
In 2006, I probably volunteered 10 or so nights in an office downtown with telephones and paper lists of targeted voters in targeted districts.
On election night, exceeding expectations, we won the House and the Senate, and it was glorious.
It was a glorious feeling like I may have made a difference in some of those very tight contests.
Regardless, the joy of participating in democracy and engaging in activism was palpable and rewarding.
I was inspired to act then and I'm inspired to act now.
I'm so happy to say last Thursday through moveon.org, I was making phone calls from home on my computer for Harris Walls and other Democrats to voters in my time zone.
I talked to several voters and more than one person was inspired to vote and get a sticker.
You never know where the tipping point is in an election and every little action adds up.
That's so true.
Very true.
I want to volunteer even more for the rest of the summer and into the fall leading up to the election and do my part for creating the kind of country and society I would like to see.
No small part of this is because the inspiration offered through the MSW network programming.
Keep up the great work, y'all are so loved and for pet tax I give you Boo and Patch, the mightiest one-year-old pair of fly hunters in these parts.
Look at these tuxes.
Oh, they're very cute.
Look at the nose.
There's a beautiful face markings.
I want to boop the noses.
Yeah.
Thank you so much BJ and thanks for volunteering.
Oh my goodness.
This one's from Alice Pronoun.
She and her yesterday's good news from the guinea pig mom reminded me a bit of a hamster I had as a kid.
He was a discount hamster, half off, mostly because he'd been returned twice for biting.
The biting end may have been scary, but he was cute and on sale.
So I brought him home.
I named him Hamster Damn.
He was Hamster Damn when he was good and Damn Hamster when he bit.
To get him used to me, I wrapped my hand in a kitchen towel so he could smell me and learn that I wasn't a threat.
But I had some protection from the sharp bites.
It took a little patience, but was well worth the effort.
And on White People Spices, sorry, I forgot this is going around.
And so when I read this, I was like, is that what this says?
On White People Spices, my late partner told me that when she was in college and at WVU, some of the students decided to have a taco stand for their fundraiser.
One good old boy looked at the sign and asked, what the hell is in a take-o?
My friend thought a minute and replied, it's like Mexican sloppy joes.
Oh, my God.
Thanks for all your work.
Thanks for all your hard work and good news, keeping us sane as we keep moving straight.
Awesome.
Alice, thanks for that.
I know.
I was like, white people spice.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
That's a thing now I've forgotten.
Next up from Kim Pronoun, she and her, hi, I want to give a shout out to a couple I met at the DC show this weekend as well as the community as a whole.
The person I was going to go with wasn't able to make it out, so I ended up going alone.
I felt really awkward pacing the middle part of the venue trying to find a table where I could be imposing on people who had come together.
I happen to make eye contact with a woman and I feel like she must have been seeing the anxiety in my eyes.
She asked if I was there solo and if I wanted to join them.
My nervousness melted away.
I felt like we were able to find so many connective threads.
It was also the first time I opened up to someone I didn't know about my non-binary middle schooler.
I'm so proud of who they are, but it's hard to know who to trust with sharing such precious information.
The thing was this immediate level of comfort in just knowing that if they're here at the show, I can know that they'll be respectful about it.
Not only were they, that they talked about their relative who is also non-binary, NeuroSpicy, and was getting into theater to find other people too.
I just wanted to thank you both again, AG and DG for gathering such an amazing community of people.
I wish I could have gotten their socials.
I'm so bad with people's names, but I wanted to shout out Fry and Lila, the cat's parents for taking me in.
These are the parents of Fry and Lila, the cats.
For Poppet Dax, here's Earl.
Him and his siblings had been rescued after being dropped off at a kill shelter by a breeder.
All were given E names and Earl suits him well.
For what the mud, I'll give you a hint.
The rescue had his paperwork listed as a giant schnauzer and he's 0% that.
He is half purebred and half mud.
Here are pictures of Earl being Earl, enjoying the good life sitting on the back of the couch, staring at my lunch and with Mel, my middle schooler.
Oh, look at this baby.
So there's no schnauzer in there.
Okay.
I don't believe that.
Okay.
Terrier and Newfoundland.
And German Shepherd only because of the black and the brown face.
Oh my God.
Adorable dog though.
Other than that, I don't know.
Earl, German Shepherd, German Wired Hair Pointer, Mastiff and Airedale Terrier.
So Terrier, I got, but you got the other half.
Got the other half.
Amazing.
What a beauty.
Okay.
I don't want to edit this out just because it's amazing.
Did you see Pete just pop in?
Did Pete just pop in?
No, you can't see your screen.
So leave this in the podcast.
Obviously we record and Allison's got 15 other podcasts.
So Pete Strzok just popped in to our Riverside.
And I said, Pete, get out of here.
Yeah, I missed that all.
Oh my God, that was awesome.
Okay.
All right, I gotta text him.
I need five minutes, my friend.
Text him, on with the good news.
Here we go.
This is from anonymous pronouns.
She and her, hi, beautiful ladies of The Beans.
I was inspired by your listener sharing her childless cat lady shirt in the wild.
A coach cheerleading on Saturday mornings and one of the moms came in wearing her Kamala shirt to pick up her child.
I said, I love your shirt.
Would you get it?
She had ordered it off Etsy and inspired me to start searching for it on a hat.
We are in Rapid City, South Dakota, so I have a very red area, but I was so thrilled to find someone who shared my values.
I thought it would be nice to do the same for others.
I love listening to you two every morning and I look forward to Pete Strug on Fridays and I love Pete as well.
For Pod Pet Tax, I've included pics of our two newbie babies.
Kismet the kitten found in a Walmart parking lot, hence the Kismet and Jack the puppy.
My daughter makes a small cameo in one of the pics.
You're welcome to guess his breed as a puppy.
I think there might be two reasonable guesses, but he is only one of the two.
That looks like a Golden Retriever puppy.
That's a Golden Puppy, right?
Having a pup cup with the daughter there.
Oh, and there's the kitten climbing curtains as they do.
Oh my God, look at them sleeping together.
So sweet.
Golden Retriever.
Technically, he's a cream or I believe they call it an English Golden Retriever.
He's the goodest boy either way.
If I'm a little mouthy, oh my God, they're adorable.
Gosh, thank you so much.
Yeah, Pete.
Oh my God, it was so cute.
Tell Pete I said hi.
Pete's like, oh shit, I thought I was like, oh cool, Dana's joining us for cleanup today.
Hey, I would join y'all anytime you wanted.
Oh my gosh, maybe I need to create separate studios for all the separate shows.
Oh my God, I mean, in DC, it was the first time I ever met Pete in person and I love the guy.
He's such a good man.
Yeah, he's a great dude.
He's super funny and he's a gem.
It's a pleasure to know him.
So anyway, I wish you all could have seen that.
Maybe we'll see if we can score some video, but I don't know that I'm recording the video.
Anyway, thank you all so much.
I'll try to bring you as much convention coverage as I can.
I'm going to head out on day one.
This is Monday.
I'm going to head out to United Center and follow me on Twitter if you're not at Mueller She Wrote because that's where I'm going to be posting most of my stuff and then of course, on my sub stack, muellershewrote.com, I'm going to be dropping in notes there and photos and all sorts of great stuff.
But anyway, thanks to all of y'all and thanks for your good news.
Dana, do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here?
No, not today.
All right, everybody, we'll be back in your ears tomorrow.
Provided all goes well here in Chicago.
I can't imagine we won't find time to record.
So we'll talk to you then and until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, take care of your family, vote blue over Q, take all that family with you, and go to vote.org, check your registration status and vote down ballot all the way to the bottom.
MSW Media.
Hello, and welcome to The Daily Beans for Tuesday, August 20th, 2024.
Today, the Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago, and Governor Pritzker confirms members of the Illinois National Guard are on standby.
DA Alvin Bragg has said he does not oppose Trump's request to postpone his sentencing, but is leaving it up to the discretion of the court.
Judge Luttig has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.
That's huge.
The House Republicans have released their Biden impeachment report, and it's really sad.
Kamala Harris outlines her economic policy agenda.
Despite what we hear from the right, violent crime is plummeting.
Trump shared a fake Taylor Swift endorsement on Truth Social, and Democrats project anti-Trump messages on his Chicago hotel.
I'm Allison Gill.
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
Hey, my friend.
Happy Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday to you.
I'm glad you made it safely to Chicago.
I am not there yet, as you know.
So many flights got canceled from New York because of weather.
But I know that you're going to make it.
And I know that there's tons of people who were scrambling to find flights or trains or rent cars to get out.
A mess.
I'm glad that was not your issue.
I'm glad you're there safely.
You've got work to do and democracy to save.
Let's go.
It's been really completely amazing.
It's like the Super Bowl, but for Democrats.
It's incredible.
We've taken over the whole town.
So I've got my credentials.
I've been kind of getting to know the lay of the land out here.
I'm going to be heading as soon as we're done recording.
And we're going to be recording pretty early on these weekdays, at least for the headlines of the news.
And then I'm going to try to come back and record like a quick B block of what I saw that night, like when I go tonight to go see Joe Biden speak.
Hopefully I can get in.
Everything's still sort of up in the air and interesting, but I'm going to do my best to bring you all the content that I can.
So I mentioned in the headlines that the governor here, JB Pritzker, says about 150 members of the National Guard will be in Chicago during the DNC.
But he said they're present in a standby role only.
During a press availability, he said that Illinois Guard members in the city are trained as military police, but that residents shouldn't expect to see them taking on an active role during the DNC.
So I'm glad that they're on standby.
Also Judge Luttig, who we've had on the show and who we've had on the Jack podcast, former judge in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, very conservative, just today endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
So that's truly amazing.
I love to see it.
Every single Republican or conservative that we can get publicly supporting Harris, not just announcing Trump, but supporting Harris.
It's a big deal.
So I love to see it as well.
Yep.
And Biden's impeachment report is out.
Whatever.
I'm not going to really spend any time on it.
It's really sad that they don't have any evidence and they aren't recommending impeachment because they don't have the votes.
So we'll talk about it on Clean Up on L45 tomorrow.
And DA Alvin Bragg has written a letter to the court saying he doesn't actually oppose postponing Trump's sentencing, saying if this is interlocutory.
I mean, basically what's going on here is the Supreme Court left such a fucking mess that he's like, I don't even know, so I'm going to leave it up to the court.
So they may postpone this until after the election just to make sure that they get it right.
But all that means is that we need to get out of vote numbers they've never seen so that he does not have his own Department of Justice.
So if that's what they're going to do, listen, I understand, I support, then do everything you can that we are the judge and jury before the election, period.
Yes.
And for those saying, well, this is the state, he can't touch the state.
It's in Project 2025 that he wants the Department of Justice to take control of state prosecutions, DAs and things like that.
So don't think that if he wins, he won't be able to touch this case.
He'll find a way.
So we're going to talk about that in more detail, too, on Clean Up on Al 45.
All right.
We have a lot of news to get to today.
So let's hit the hot notes.
Hot notes.
All right.
First up, this is from NBC, the Democratic National Committee, projected anti-Trump campaign slogans on to Trump Tower in Chicago on Sunday.
That's the day before the convention kicked off.
The messages include, quote, Trump Vance, weird as hell, Harris-Walz fighting for you, and Project 2025 headquarters.
That was probably my fave.
A reference to the controversial conservative policy plans written by a slew of allies of the former president.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but he's lying.
Quote, this week, the entire country will witness what it looks like to unite behind hope and a clear vision for a better future, as Democrats rally behind Vice President Harris and Governor Walz.
That's DNC spokesperson, Abhi Raman, in a statement.
Also went on to say, well, Donald Trump and JD Vance are out for themselves, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fighting for you.
Now, the Trump campaign didn't respond to request for comment, but projections were written in English and Spanish and changed every few seconds.
Other messages include Trump Vance out for themselves and Harris Walz's joy and hope.
Quote, all eyes are on Chicago and tonight everyone's seeing a preview of the contrast that will take center stage this week throughout the Democratic National Convention.
That's the spokesperson again.
The DNC is set to launch Monday with a number of speakers, including President Joe Biden's address in the evening.
Harris is set to deliver her speech Thursday in primetime when she will formally accept the party's presidential nomination.
I got chills just then.
Trump is set to hold a series of campaign events throughout the week.
This is a mistake, but he's going to do it anyway.
And he's going to try to draw a split screen with his political rival.
The Republican National Convention took place last month, if I've forgot, just days after he was the target of that assassination attempt.
Oh, also, which I forget.
By the way, I do forget that there was an assassination attempt until someone posted on social media.
Yeah.
But yeah, the RNC, they're like, Laura Ingram's like, oh, they're just going to be all show and vibes.
And like you had Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock, dude.
They're not going to talk about serious policy.
I can guarantee you none of our speakers are going to rip their shirt off.
Although it would be really funny if Walz did that.
Yeah, it would.
I would take it.
Oh my gosh, so would I.
All right.
Thank you so much, AG.
This is from Matt Zahn at ABC.
Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a sweeping economic agenda on Friday, vowing to ease inflation, fix the housing market and slash taxes for middle income families.
The plans include eye catching proposals such as a ban on grocery price gouging and a $25,000 subsidy for first time home buyers.
And let me be clear, that is for US citizens.
I know you're going to see a lot on the other side that says it's not.
It is.
Economists who spoke to ABC News offered a mixed assessment of the newly released agenda.
Some experts lauded the effort to slow rising costs and restrain corporate power in key sectors, while others criticized what they consider a misguided attempt to override market forces that risk worsening the nation's debt.
Less than three months before the presidential election, the economy tops lists of voter concerns.
Growth is slowing but remains solid.
Price increases have cooled dramatically but remain higher than the Federal Reserve's target level.
The campaign aims to rein in price increases for everything from groceries to prescriptions, drugs to homes.
Harris points to the market power of the large corporations as key cause of rapid price increases for essential goods, saying companies use their outsized role in a given market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product and a more affordable price.
Consumers, the Harris campaign says, are left no where to turn.
The grocery industry exemplifies the damage caused by mega corporations, according to the campaign.
And I quote, extreme consolidation in the food industry has led to higher prices that account for a large part of higher grocery bills.
This is what the campaign said in a statement on Friday.
Grocery store profits, the margin surged in 2021 and they rose even higher two years later even after price increases had begun to cool.
A Federal Trade Commission study showed that in March.
To control the price hikes, Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries.
While details remain limited, the plan could resemble price gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods.
In recent years, housing market has suffered from a convergence of high mortgage rates and elevated home prices, shutting out prospective buyers with high costs.
The Harris campaign proposed restoring affordability through a combination of boosting home supply and easing the price pressures for some home buyers.
Plans to grow the supply of homes include a tax incentive for companies that build starter homes and affordable rental homes.
This is what the Harris campaign said.
The campaign's plans to aid buyers feature a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers.
The Harris campaign said it aims to keep some money in middle-class consumers' pockets by reducing their tax burden.
The plans include a restoration of the expanded child tax credit of $3,600 per child that expired in 2022.
Harris also proposed an additional new $6,000 child tax credit for families with a child in the first year of life.
The tax cuts for families drew wide support from economists who spoke to ABC News, though some emphasized the importance of accompanying those proposals with revenue-raising measures that will offset the tax reductions.
I do want to say that when she proposed a ban on price gouging, a major article dropped about how grocery stores did price gouging during the pandemic.
Now they have obviously investigation have been caught doing that.
This is happening and it's not at the fault of this administration.
Well, it dropped again.
That was from the FTC's report about a month and a half ago that we covered.
Yes.
You and me.
It's going around again and I'm glad that it's being picked up.
Because as much as we can scream it to our leguminati, maybe not everybody is aware that they used the pandemic, a global pandemic, to line their pockets.
Yeah.
It's awful.
All right.
Next up from Kou at Time Magazine.
Trump would like his followers to believe that pop music megastar Taylor Swift advocates voting red.
But that may just be in his wildest dreams.
Quote, I accept, said the former president on Truth Social, along with a collage of images from the internet, including some that were generated by artificial intelligence, showing the time person of the year dressed as Uncle Sam, this is Taylor Swift, as Uncle Sam, and saying, Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump, as well as numerous Swift fans expressing their support for the Republican presidential nominee.
Taylor Swift has not officially endorsed any candidate yet in this particular election, though she backed Biden and Harris in 2020, and has criticized Trump for stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism, and for defunding the US.
Postal Service in 2020, which she described as choosing to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans' lives at risk in an effort to hold onto power.
Time has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on potential Swift endorsements.
As the Democratic Party kicks off its convention this week in Chicago, where a number of celebrities are expected to speak and perform in support of the Harris-Walls campaign.
But there's no evidence that a significant number of fans of Taylor Swift are supporting the Republican candidate.
An unofficial Swifties for Trump account on X created in July has fewer than 4,000 followers, while an unofficial Swifties for Kamala, also created in July, has over 60,000 followers, and 100,000 on TikTok.
Trump's Truth Social post also included a screenshot of a post by a conservative account, Amuse, featuring clearly AI-generated images of young women wearing Swifties for Trump shirts, accompanied by a headline labeled as satire that says Swifties are turning to Trump after the singer's Vienna concert was canceled out of concern over a jihadist terrorist plot.
The original post on Twitter acknowledges in its image that it's satire.
It says there is no Swifties for Trump movement, but there should be.
Okay.
In another True Social post on Sunday, Trump reshared a TikTok video of a woman claiming that Swifties were now rallying for Trump because of the same terrorist plot.
Now, Trump has spoken about Taylor Swift before, telling Ramin Satuta, author of the book Apprentice in Wonderland, how Donald Trump and Mark burnett took America through the looking glass, quote, I hear she's very talented.
I think she's very beautiful, actually, unusually beautiful.
As for Swift's politics, Trump is quoted in the same book as saying, I think she's liberal, liberal, but she probably doesn't like Trump, though he expressed some skepticism about that.
Reportedly questioning, she legitimately liberal?
It's not an act, it surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.
As experts warn of the dangers of disinformation in politics, which new technology can exacerbate, Trump's recent sharing of the Swift-related AI-generated images comes after he and billionaire Elon Musk shared an AI-altered video on Twitter last week depicting them dancing after the two held a high-profile live stream together on the social media platform.
So anyway, yeah, there's no such thing as Swifties for Trump.
No, there is not.
All right, last in the segment, this is from Nicole Naria at Vox.
Violent crime levels have dropped significantly in the first half of the year.
This is according to a new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Overall, violent crime dropped by 6 percent and homicides fell by 17 percent in 69 cities compared to the same period last year.
Columbus, Ohio saw the biggest drop in violent crime at 41 percent.
That's according to an Axios data analysis.
But cities including Miami, Washington, DC and Austin, Texas also saw large declines.
Notably, New York City was not included in the data, though other reports have indicated that violent crime is falling there too.
It's hard to say exactly what's causing the decline, which comes after a major COVID-19 crime wave.
It may be partially due to policies aimed at tackling crime at the federal, state and local levels.
But it may also just be a symptom of the fact that normal life in America has resumed post-pandemic, or a combination of those and other factors.
Republicans have long tried to use concerns about crime as a political cudgel against President Joe Biden's administration, while former President Donald Trump doesn't appear to be giving up on that attack strategy just yet.
Democrats can now use the new data as a defense.
Whether that will be effective, however, is far from certain.
In a statement on Saturday, President Joe Biden credited the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill at Congress passed in 2021, which allocated $15 billion towards public safety and violence prevention efforts for helping bring down crime levels.
He also cited bipartisan gun control law that expanded background checks and encouraged states to adopt red flag laws and prevent people who pose a danger to themselves or others from obtaining a gun.
Yeah, so I think if you spend $15 billion toward public safety and violence prevention, that could cause violent crime to go down.
Yes, look at that investment.
Huh, and gosh, the inflation started to take a nosedive after we passed the Inflation Reduction Act.
It's a miracle.
All right.
Thank you so much for that story, everybody.
We have a lot of good news to get to, but we have to take a quick break first.
So stick around.
We'll be right back.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back.
It's AG.
It's about, oh, what time is it here?
Like midnight almost.
I just got back from the United Center.
Oh my God.
So my phone has just been blowing up nonstop since right around the time Hillary Clinton began speaking and it hasn't stopped.
Everybody's texting me in like all caps about how pumped and how energized and amazed and in awe they are of the energy that came out of the first night of the Democratic National Convention.
And I can't, I'm afraid that my words aren't going to do it justice because if you're energized just watching it on C-SPAN live or watching it on TV, I am hard-pressed to explain the energy inside United Center.
It's almost has a life of its own.
The whole place seems to be like moving.
Like it's like almost like we're in an earthquake.
It's just so hard to explain, but the energy is incredible.
And this is just night one.
This is just opening night.
But we got an incredible surprise appearance by Kamala Harris.
But that closing speech by Joe Biden, especially where he quoted those song lyrics that he thinks of America, America, I gave my best to you.
And that introduction, that heartfelt introduction by Ashley Biden, it was just so emotional.
And then I noticed that Ken Burns later tweeted out those lyrics back at him.
And that Stephanie Rule kind of brought up the point that it's a bookend on his presidency, the most effective, important, and consequential presidency of my lifetime.
I can say that of my lifetime.
And just as far as legislation that he's got done, and bringing us back from the brink after January 6th.
But that passing of the torch, that bookending, because he brought up those same lyrics in his inauguration.
That's why I was getting out with the bookends.
But sorry, my mind is going like a million miles a minute.
I'm just so full of energy.
I'm still buzzing from being in the United Center.
It was a very long day.
I think I got up at five and I flew from DC to Chicago.
Then, of course, everything's always a little bit delayed, especially when you're flying into O'Hare.
But I got here, I got to the hotel fortunate enough to have a room ready for me, even though I was here relatively early in the morning.
Then I had to take a shuttle to McCormick Place, which is the other central area, especially where delegates and caucuses are meeting during this convention.
McCormick Place, there's not a shuttle directly from my hotel to there, so I had to walk to a nearby hotel to catch that shuttle.
Went down there, then I stood in line for quite a long time to go through secret service security screening.
Then once I was through that, I was able to walk to another building downstairs, through a hall, across a sky bridge, and into another hotel to finally find the line that I had to wait in to get my creator credentials.
And we have to do this every day.
And so by the time I got back to, onto the shuttle, back to the hotel nearby, and then walked back to my hotel, it was already time to record Clean Up on aisle 45 and record The Daily Beans.
And then, so that's what we recorded the A block, but then I had to immediately get ready and get on the shuttle to go to United Center.
And of course, there was a delay.
The whole program started a little bit late, I think because of some protesters.
And from what CBS News was saying is they were outside agitators, not like actual Palestinian protesters, or pro-Palestinian protesters, I should say.
So we were delayed and the whole night was delayed, actually, by quite a bit of time.
Then we finally got there, we waited in line to go through security again, and security is very tight, I'm very thankful for that.
And then I get in there and then around 7, I'm like, okay, Joe's going to go on about 9.30, I'd like to see all these speakers between now and then.
I'm going to go find a seat.
By the time I go to get a seat in the club deck, which is the second floor, the second level of seats above the floor, that's where all the creators have seats, that's where we're allowed to go, that's what we're reserved for there, was full already.
I had to go to the upper deck, to the nosebleeds, to the top of the whole United Center.
But there's not a bad seat in that house, and every seat was full.
And then we sat, we watched the whole program from 7 to almost midnight.
And everybody was helping each other out.
If somebody needed to go to the restroom, we'd save each other's seats.
If somebody was going to the concessions, we would see if everybody around us needed water.
They handed out these signs, so everybody had signs, the Jill signs, the we fight, we win signs, the we vote, we win signs, and then the big, the ones, the tall, we love, we heart Joe signs.
We all got a whole set of signs, every single person almost in that arena.
There's 20,000 seats in that arena, I think.
But anyway, it was full.
There were no seats left, and that was for the entirety of the like pretty much the last five hours of the program.
Now, I'm very thankful to the DNCC for inviting creators to this convention.
I mean, this is the first time they've ever done anything like this with creators, with independent media.
And they really didn't give us any direction.
They didn't really give us any talking points.
They didn't give us any things they wanted us to focus on.
They didn't say, please make this many videos or like nothing like that.
They were just like, do your thing, because whatever your thing is, works for you and for the people who listen to it.
So it was amazing to see all of my friends there.
Jennifer Taub, I know she has some live Monday morning show that she does, which is just amazing.
We saw Lee McGowan is here, our politics girl, Brian Tyler Cohen, BDD, Brooklyn Dad Defiant, I ran into him, Aaron Parton.
Just so many people that we all continue to rely on to get information when we need it.
For all of us to be there and sharing everything that we're seeing on the ground is, I just think, really incredible and I'm honored.
I'm so grateful to the DNCC for having us, for allowing us.
They just give us credentials and say, go do what you do.
Tomorrow, which is today as you're listening to this, I'm going to drop in, I think on John Fugelsang, I might drop in on Stephanie Miller.
On Thursday, I've walked around and found out where their booths are.
I've got a couple of hits with some Scripts News, Grey TV, News Nation.
I think I'll be on CNN Wednesday night at midnight with Laura Coats in that hour, Central Time.
And I'm very honored to speak to her.
I've been on her SiriusXM show a lot.
I love Laura Coats.
So I'm looking forward to speaking with her, but I can't explain this energy to you.
I hope that you're feeling it wherever you are.
This is just the first night.
This is the opening night.
It's going to build and build and build until Thursday.
And it's amazing.
There were some other standout moments for me tonight.
Jasmine Crockett, when she talked, she told a story about when she first met Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris.
And she was having a hard time because the Republicans in Congress are dickheads and everything was just fucked up.
The Oversight Committee was at, they were just, it was awful.
The House, this Congress is terrible for getting anything done.
And that's why she came to work, right?
And she wanted to work, and it wasn't happening.
And Kamala Harris saw that in her and wiped, she said, the most powerful women in the world wiped away my tears.
And that like, that really got me.
To have the women come up and tell their stories about not being able to access abortion, healthcare was extremely powerful.
I know my friend Charlotte Clymer had tweeted that when that young girl talked about how Donald Trump thought overturning Roe was a beautiful thing, and she said, how is it beautiful for a 12 year old girl to carry her parents' baby?
And the whole of the United Center just gasped.
Charlotte said, I think, what did she say?
That the wind went out of the room, the air went out of the room.
It was true.
It was just this black hole of silence and utter disbelief and empathy and love.
And it was just, it's truly an incredible thing.
And I'm so glad that again, and grateful that the DNCC sent me here and that, you know, patrons of this program helped me fund it.
So thank you so much.
I'm going to keep doing these little B blocks late at night, much to the chagrin of our production team.
And I'm so, so sorry, guys.
I know it's late, but I really want to get this stuff out as it happens.
And so I really, really appreciate you too.
And by the way, all of you all listening and all the leguminati, it's because of you that we have such an incredible production team.
And they are willing to work with me this late at night.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
We do have actually good news after this segment to get to.
And we'll do that right after this break.
So stick around.
We'll be right back.
Everybody welcome back.
It's time for the good news.
And if you have any good news, confessions, corrections, you want to play, What the Mut, Find the Cat, What the Hell is in That Show, What's the Model of Your Oxalotl, Opine on the Bovine, What the Heck Wine, any pet guessing game at all, send in your pet or a wild animal, a baby animal, a grown up animal, an old man animal, send them all, all the animal photos.
And if you don't have pod pet tax to pay, you can send us an adoptable pet in your area.
We'll see if we can find him a forever home.
Also, if you have a shout out you want to give, whether it's to somebody personal in your life, like a family member, spouse, partner, kid, parent.
I love self shout outs.
I know Dana also really, really enjoys hearing a good self shout out now and then.
So you can send those in.
Shout out to a small business in your area that could use a boost or maybe an activist group that's doing some great stuff to help win this election.
Send that to us.
And of course, shout outs to government programs that have helped you or somebody that you know, whether it's gosh, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Affordable Care Act, SNAP, WIC, VA health care, anything at all, especially in including student debt relief.
Send that to us as well.
And you can do it by going to dailybeanspod.com and clicking on contact.
First up from BJ, pronouns he and him.
Hi, Allison and Dana.
Thanks for what y'all do.
You're such positive forces for good in the world.
And you are so appreciated.
I've got a shout out to a couple of programs and some good news.
First, shout out to the Affordable Care Act.
Through Obamacare, I went from limping around in great pain to two new hips and a smooth pain-free strut.
And I didn't ruin myself financially.
Second, big shout out to Biden.
Through one of his plans for veterans, my father-in-law has been shown eligible for complete coverage of his health care.
Dad-in-law had a stroke seven years ago and wasn't found for 24 hours.
Oh my God, so he's paralyzed on one side and he needs to have live-in care at home.
Due to his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, he was deemed eligible for very significant cost coverages for his care in a program through President Biden.
Finally, the good news.
For the first time in 18 years, I volunteered my time to phone bank for Kamala Harris.
In 2006, I volunteered with moveon.org.
When it looked like Bush, Cheney and their crew were going to take some draconian measures, capitalizing on 9-11.
In 2006, I probably volunteered 10 or so nights in an office downtown with telephones and paper lists of targeted voters in targeted districts.
On election night, exceeding expectations, we won the House and the Senate, and it was glorious.
It was a glorious feeling like I may have made a difference in some of those very tight contests.
Regardless, the joy of participating in democracy and engaging in activism was palpable and rewarding.
I was inspired to act then and I'm inspired to act now.
I'm so happy to say last Thursday through moveon.org, I was making phone calls from home on my computer for Harris Walls and other Democrats to voters in my time zone.
I talked to several voters and more than one person was inspired to vote and get a sticker.
You never know where the tipping point is in an election and every little action adds up.
That's so true.
Very true.
I want to volunteer even more for the rest of the summer and into the fall leading up to the election and do my part for creating the kind of country and society I would like to see.
No small part of this is because the inspiration offered through the MSW network programming.
Keep up the great work, y'all are so loved and for pet tax I give you Boo and Patch, the mightiest one-year-old pair of fly hunters in these parts.
Look at these tuxes.
Oh, they're very cute.
Look at the nose.
There's a beautiful face markings.
I want to boop the noses.
Yeah.
Thank you so much BJ and thanks for volunteering.
Oh my goodness.
This one's from Alice Pronoun.
She and her yesterday's good news from the guinea pig mom reminded me a bit of a hamster I had as a kid.
He was a discount hamster, half off, mostly because he'd been returned twice for biting.
The biting end may have been scary, but he was cute and on sale.
So I brought him home.
I named him Hamster Damn.
He was Hamster Damn when he was good and Damn Hamster when he bit.
To get him used to me, I wrapped my hand in a kitchen towel so he could smell me and learn that I wasn't a threat.
But I had some protection from the sharp bites.
It took a little patience, but was well worth the effort.
And on White People Spices, sorry, I forgot this is going around.
And so when I read this, I was like, is that what this says?
On White People Spices, my late partner told me that when she was in college and at WVU, some of the students decided to have a taco stand for their fundraiser.
One good old boy looked at the sign and asked, what the hell is in a take-o?
My friend thought a minute and replied, it's like Mexican sloppy joes.
Oh, my God.
Thanks for all your work.
Thanks for all your hard work and good news, keeping us sane as we keep moving straight.
Awesome.
Alice, thanks for that.
I know.
I was like, white people spice.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
That's a thing now I've forgotten.
Next up from Kim Pronoun, she and her, hi, I want to give a shout out to a couple I met at the DC show this weekend as well as the community as a whole.
The person I was going to go with wasn't able to make it out, so I ended up going alone.
I felt really awkward pacing the middle part of the venue trying to find a table where I could be imposing on people who had come together.
I happen to make eye contact with a woman and I feel like she must have been seeing the anxiety in my eyes.
She asked if I was there solo and if I wanted to join them.
My nervousness melted away.
I felt like we were able to find so many connective threads.
It was also the first time I opened up to someone I didn't know about my non-binary middle schooler.
I'm so proud of who they are, but it's hard to know who to trust with sharing such precious information.
The thing was this immediate level of comfort in just knowing that if they're here at the show, I can know that they'll be respectful about it.
Not only were they, that they talked about their relative who is also non-binary, NeuroSpicy, and was getting into theater to find other people too.
I just wanted to thank you both again, AG and DG for gathering such an amazing community of people.
I wish I could have gotten their socials.
I'm so bad with people's names, but I wanted to shout out Fry and Lila, the cat's parents for taking me in.
These are the parents of Fry and Lila, the cats.
For Poppet Dax, here's Earl.
Him and his siblings had been rescued after being dropped off at a kill shelter by a breeder.
All were given E names and Earl suits him well.
For what the mud, I'll give you a hint.
The rescue had his paperwork listed as a giant schnauzer and he's 0% that.
He is half purebred and half mud.
Here are pictures of Earl being Earl, enjoying the good life sitting on the back of the couch, staring at my lunch and with Mel, my middle schooler.
Oh, look at this baby.
So there's no schnauzer in there.
Okay.
I don't believe that.
Okay.
Terrier and Newfoundland.
And German Shepherd only because of the black and the brown face.
Oh my God.
Adorable dog though.
Other than that, I don't know.
Earl, German Shepherd, German Wired Hair Pointer, Mastiff and Airedale Terrier.
So Terrier, I got, but you got the other half.
Got the other half.
Amazing.
What a beauty.
Okay.
I don't want to edit this out just because it's amazing.
Did you see Pete just pop in?
Did Pete just pop in?
No, you can't see your screen.
So leave this in the podcast.
Obviously we record and Allison's got 15 other podcasts.
So Pete Strzok just popped in to our Riverside.
And I said, Pete, get out of here.
Yeah, I missed that all.
Oh my God, that was awesome.
Okay.
All right, I gotta text him.
I need five minutes, my friend.
Text him, on with the good news.
Here we go.
This is from anonymous pronouns.
She and her, hi, beautiful ladies of The Beans.
I was inspired by your listener sharing her childless cat lady shirt in the wild.
A coach cheerleading on Saturday mornings and one of the moms came in wearing her Kamala shirt to pick up her child.
I said, I love your shirt.
Would you get it?
She had ordered it off Etsy and inspired me to start searching for it on a hat.
We are in Rapid City, South Dakota, so I have a very red area, but I was so thrilled to find someone who shared my values.
I thought it would be nice to do the same for others.
I love listening to you two every morning and I look forward to Pete Strug on Fridays and I love Pete as well.
For Pod Pet Tax, I've included pics of our two newbie babies.
Kismet the kitten found in a Walmart parking lot, hence the Kismet and Jack the puppy.
My daughter makes a small cameo in one of the pics.
You're welcome to guess his breed as a puppy.
I think there might be two reasonable guesses, but he is only one of the two.
That looks like a Golden Retriever puppy.
That's a Golden Puppy, right?
Having a pup cup with the daughter there.
Oh, and there's the kitten climbing curtains as they do.
Oh my God, look at them sleeping together.
So sweet.
Golden Retriever.
Technically, he's a cream or I believe they call it an English Golden Retriever.
He's the goodest boy either way.
If I'm a little mouthy, oh my God, they're adorable.
Gosh, thank you so much.
Yeah, Pete.
Oh my God, it was so cute.
Tell Pete I said hi.
Pete's like, oh shit, I thought I was like, oh cool, Dana's joining us for cleanup today.
Hey, I would join y'all anytime you wanted.
Oh my gosh, maybe I need to create separate studios for all the separate shows.
Oh my God, I mean, in DC, it was the first time I ever met Pete in person and I love the guy.
He's such a good man.
Yeah, he's a great dude.
He's super funny and he's a gem.
It's a pleasure to know him.
So anyway, I wish you all could have seen that.
Maybe we'll see if we can score some video, but I don't know that I'm recording the video.
Anyway, thank you all so much.
I'll try to bring you as much convention coverage as I can.
I'm going to head out on day one.
This is Monday.
I'm going to head out to United Center and follow me on Twitter if you're not at Mueller She Wrote because that's where I'm going to be posting most of my stuff and then of course, on my sub stack, muellershewrote.com, I'm going to be dropping in notes there and photos and all sorts of great stuff.
But anyway, thanks to all of y'all and thanks for your good news.
Dana, do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here?
No, not today.
All right, everybody, we'll be back in your ears tomorrow.
Provided all goes well here in Chicago.
I can't imagine we won't find time to record.
So we'll talk to you then and until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, take care of your family, vote blue over Q, take all that family with you, and go to vote.org, check your registration status and vote down ballot all the way to the bottom.
I've been AG.
And I've been DG.
And them's The Beans.
The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Allison Gill, with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg.
Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarland, with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios.
Music for The Daily Beans is written and performed by They Might Be Giants, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice.
For more information, please visit mswmedia.com.
MSW Media.
I've been AG.
And I've been DG.
And them's The Beans.
The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Allison Gill, with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg.
Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarland, with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios.
Music for The Daily Beans is written and performed by They Might Be Giants, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice.
For more information, please visit mswmedia.com.
MSW Media.