Hard Pass

Susan Collins should never be underestimated. She won her first Senate election 30 years ago, and her sheer tenacity in staying in power is formidable, especially since, over the course of her political career, Maine hasn’t been hospitable ground for Republicans (the state last gave the popular vote to a GOP president in 1988).

But Collins’s undeniable gift for pork-barrel spending could now come back to haunt her, thanks to a new pay-for-play scandal broken on Tuesday by ProPublica. The ProPublica story focuses on Collins’s links to Martin Kao, the former CEO of a defense contractor called Navatek. Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison for bank fraud and Covid relief fraud.

ProPublica’s reporting shows that Kao’s operation was almost comically corrupt. Despite the denials of Collins’s office, the ProPublica report is damning. It’s also being picked up by local media in Maine. Troy Jackson, the Democratic candidate in the Senate race, put out a punchy ad quoting the reporting and labelling his rival “Corrupt Collins.”

Deep South Democrats, largely absent from statewide offices, are aiming for a comeback this year. They are seeking to mobilize Black voters who are angered about the Republican moves to dismantle minority congressional districts, as well as voters who are frustrated with high gas prices, the Iran war, data centers and other issues.

Tyler Boebert is facing five felony charges for allegedly filming a 43-second video of himself and an underage female which local authorities have deemed to be child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a copy of a criminal affidavit obtained by PEOPLE.

The affidavit says the CSAM was filmed on Feb. 1, 2024, when Tyler was 18 and the female was 17, two weeks before she turned 18.

Unlike much of the material detailed in the affidavit, the video of Tyler and his then-girlfriend was never shared online or posted to social media.

. . . Tyler has yet to enter a plea to the charges against him in this case. He will be sentenced in early September in both Weld County and Garfield County for two prior, separate cases.

His sentencing in Weld County is for a child abuse case filed in 2025; his Garfield County case is from an incident in 2024 that led to multiple charges, including property theft and trespass.

Prior to both of those sentencing hearings, he will appear in court on Aug. 19 for a hearing related to this latest arrest regarding the child sex abuse sting, per authorities.

Recent polling indicates that Lauren Boebert is favored to win Colorado's 4th Congressional District, with projections showing her receiving about 53% of the vote compared to 47% for her opponent, Admiral Eileen Laubacher (ret.).

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1426843/breaking-up-with-google-play-why-conversations-is-now-free

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On Tuesday, Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed spent the day campaigning across Detroit with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

This decision was a gut-punch to anyone who remembers the role the Biden-Harris administration played in the Gaza genocide, continued seamlessly by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

El-Sayed, who has made clear his embrace of capitalism and condemnation of Palestinian resistance to settler colonialism, has always had the hallmarks of an establishment candidate.

And when a reporter asked at a Detroit press conference whether campaigning with Harris, after his own support for the uncommitted movement, might backfire with Arab American voters, El-Sayed turned on the questioner:

"Is Vice President Harris the same as President Biden? Was Vice President Harris running for president at the time we were uncommitted? Answer the question... You're asking a question based on false premises, so I'm just getting you to clarify your premise... Thank you. Next question."

Harris herself has answered his question. Asked on the US talk show The View in October 2024 what she would have done differently from Biden, she said: "There is not a thing that comes to mind... I've been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact."

After President Joe Biden dropped out, the uncommitted movement took its demand for an arms embargo directly to Harris as the party's nominee. She never granted it.

El-Sayed's response drew swift backlash on social media, with critics deriding the uncommitted movement as a scam and condemning his arrogant dismissal of the contradiction the reporter had raised.

As some Democrats debate whether defending transgender people carries a political cost, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is pointing to her record. She has won repeatedly while making LGBTQ+ protections part of her agenda.

“Michigan is a very swing state, and I’ve never wavered on these issues, and politically, I’ve been successful,” Whitmer told The Advocate in an exclusive interview Saturday, hours before she was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN that he has to "make a deal" with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war that Putin started.

The post ‘Make a Deal!’ Trump Says He Told Zelensky To ‘Settle With Putin’ To Stop The Killing first appeared on Mediaite.

He likes it, he can hear better with his ears flipped back.

I'm curious as to which tools and technologies you all are using to keep track of all those services you are deploying, whether it be resource tracking, network traffic, logs, traces, or uptime.

As a bonus question, how have you organized your network or your services to reduce the overhead of implementing observability?