Pretty clear from the year that the GOP's biggest fear is a Supreme Court that will make voting easy and fair.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 2, 2016
… doesn’t want to “cheapen the work of civil rights activists” by permitting automatic voting registration.
No, seriously:
Automatic voter registration has recently emerged a key tool in increasing the United States’ anemic voter turnout. The process is simple: Whenever an eligible citizen interacts with a government agency (typically the DMV), she is registered to vote unless she declines. Although automatic voter registration is a nonpartisan initiative, it tends to be favored by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, who believe they fare better in low-turnout races; two Republican governors have already vetoed Democrat-sponsored automatic voter registration bills in Illinois and New Jersey. Now Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, has joined the opposition. Asked a question about automatic voter registration, Merrill declared that the practice “cheapen[s] the work” of civil rights heroes and that “just because you turned 18 doesn’t give you the right” to vote….
These people fought—some of them were beaten, some of them were killed—because of their desire to ensure that everybody that wanted to had the right to register to vote and participate in the process. I’m not going to cheapen the work that they did. I’m not going to embarrass them by allowing somebody that’s too sorry to get up off of their rear end to go register to vote … because they think they deserve the right because they’ve turned 18.…
But they do have that right, Sec. Merrill — as enshrined in the Constitution, and further specified in its 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments. It’s not your “ball game,” not any more, and you don’t get to decree who’s entitled to “win a trophy”…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
reposted from below for non baseball folk
RedDirtGirl
They keep saying this shit out loud!
redshirt
@RedDirtGirl: They don’t care anymore. I think they’ve collectively realized they can say anything they want, lie all they want, and their voters won’t care. Can’t blame them, I guess.
Peale
I’m sure if he were alive today, Medgar Evars would totally be against automatic voter registration and be looney about the Democrats busing illegal Somalis around the country to ruin the electoral hopes of good Republican office holders.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
At this late stage, only five days from election day, it would have to be a pretty big bomb to get anyone’s attention, let alone change their minds
Chris
@redshirt:
And worse, their voters will tear them to shreds if they don’t do this. Two Minutes Hate: participate, or we might just decide you’re one of these awful liberals.
JMG
On twitter, Silver is basically saying he doesn’t think Clinton can win. Making case Obama’s smaller lead in 2012 was actually a bigger lead, because reasons.
Omnes Omnibus
YES, IT FUCKING DOES! FOR FUCK’S SAKE, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU GIVE STUPID POLITICAL HACKS A BAD NAME, YOU RANCID, RUNNY SHIT!
/End rant. Sorry about that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: I guess the theory is depress his turn-out, make reluctant Republicans stay home or go for one of the alternatives> they have come up with a couple of pretty effective ads in the last couple of days
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’s been teasing this for weeks and that maybe, just maybe she’ll drop it herself. The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
Barbara
Actually, just because you turn 18 you do have the right to vote. How many ways can you say “We don’t want you to vote”?
schrodinger's cat
@JMG: Don’t you have anything better to do than report Nate Silver’s every fart.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Actually the strategy behind these things is you leave the biggest drop for late Thursday afternoon before the election. That way it gets picked up for that night’s cable and network cycle, then dominates through the weekend to 1) shore up anyone getting wobbly on your side and 2) to demoralize anyone wobbly on the other side.
Baud
@JMG: Good. Then we can stop treating him as credible once he is proven wrong.
And if he is proven right, he’s the least of our worries.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: She has been trying to get attention all year ever since she lost her job with Walker. It’s hard to know when she is being serious.
piratedan
@efgoldman: well, we must remember to reach out and empathize with them, while they’re in this tender stage of attempting to disenfranchise the people that they dislike. Otherwise, how can we ever attempt to reach common ground and understand their fears and concerns that they have to continue to fuck the rest of us over?
JMG
@schrodinger’s cat: You’re right. Sorry, I’ll stop.
Pogonip
I personally think voting should be required (of course, then people would be trying to get out of it, human nature being what it is).
I got door-to-door surveyed today! We didn’t get much of that in the Big City, but West Deplorable is still small enough to be relatively fearless. I could tell he was looking for likely voters, as when I said I’d already mailed my ballot he only asked me 3 questions and didn’t even get my demographics. (When a willing participant fails the screening questions you ask him a few questions anyway, as willing participants are not exactly falling out of the woodwork and you don’t want them to get turned off the survey process.)
Be nice to the pollsters, please, especially the ones doing the dreaded push polls, which are always long with dreadfully convoluted questions, so it’s very hard to get completions. A push poll is a political designed to persuade you to vote for whichever party commissioned the survey; it’ll have questions like “If you knew that Candidate Cole has openly matriculated, is an admitted heterosexual, owns a house that is a neighborhood eyesore, has parked his Subaru in an honest farmer’s field without advance permission, and practices animal husbandry, knowing this, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for him on Election Day?”
Adam L Silverman
@Barbara: Who knows? As I wrote the other night she comes across somewhere between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil.
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: Nate farts? (“if you knew that Candidate Silver not only farts but eructates in public, would you be more or less likely…”)
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Rant away. I’m right there with you.
Pogonip
@JMG: Are you the Archdruid?
redshirt
@efgoldman: In many areas, that’s all they need. Or, in order to win a Primary.
PsiFighter37
@JMG: Fuck Nate Silver. I liked him better when he was anonymously posting as a chili pepper in 2008.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s not aimed at those who’ve already made up their minds, then. I get it now.
Russ
Lazy citizens is the issue. They want to be able to vote just because they were born American. Us white people are ‘agin it.
albertZ
What y’all said. SMH.
Keith P.
Sigh…I currently live in the state of Rick Perry and Greg Abbott (among other dignitaries), but am supposed to be moving to Alabama early next year. Too bad I’m so close to my family, because I really would be less embarrassed (and better off, given my employment issues this year) living in a proud blue state.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Hell, I’ve already voted. There are ways that I could get my ballot back and go vote in person on election day, but it would be a pain in the ass. Also, even if conclusive evidence comes out that HRC is a lizard person, I am still with her.
hedgehog mobile
Sam Wang has Her at 317. Breathe, phonebank, contribute, VOTE (I’ve done it all).
hedgehog+2
schrodinger's cat
@Pogonip: Tweets, farts, whatever. Patience with concern trolls, I am losing it.
Jeffro
@efgoldman:
There was a book review recently of that very same book that the op-ed writer references (“Strangers in their Own Land”), except instead of trying to gin up sympathy for racist whites, it points out just how badly the supposedly-liberal author wants to excuse racist behavior.
WE ARE NOT TALKING PAST THESE PEOPLE OR IGNORING THEM…THEY ARE DISQUALIFYING THEMSELVES FROM ANY DECENT NATIONAL CONVERSATION BY THEIR RACISM, HATE, VIOLENCE, AND INSANITY.
burnspbesq
I can remember when Democrats and lefties thought Silver was all that. His trajectory is like a beloved indie band that wins a Grammy.
Scamp Dog
@Adam L Silverman:
Dashiell Hammet FTW!
Judge Crater
This election went through the looking glass so long ago that sanity is only a a faint memory now. Trumpism, no matter how long it lasts, is a sign of the failure of politics – a genuinely bad thing. The center, as the cliche goes, is not holding. My first presidential vote was for George McGovern. That seems like a halcyon time compared to today’s cesspool of fruitcakes and bomb throwers.
Omnes Omnibus
Burn the white flag.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
They’re leaking again, WSJ Story:
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t end the rant, carry on, it’s a grand rant. The kind of rant that novels are written about, the kind of rant that may just finally get their attention. Although I’m pretty sure you need a couple of more “fucks” in there to really sell it.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: According to the documentary I saw on Destination Channel HD, they live in subterranean Los Angeles and access the upper world through people’s closets.
Walker
@hedgehog mobile:
Sam also has the Senate as a nail biter. That is the real race.
Mary G
This is right up there with “Martin Luther King was a Republican” line they use, along with “Robert Byrd was in the KKK,” “Democrats are the real racists,” “We don’t believe in identity politics/class warfare, we treat everyone equally,” “We’re not the party dividing the country,” etc., etc., ad nauseum. I am so over all this 1984-speak.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: I think part of the problem is one Yglesias touched on earlier today. We now have too many aggregators of polls and not enough top notch polling.
redshirt
@burnspbesq: He’s got terrible hair too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Adam L Silverman
@Scamp Dog: I occasionally like to mix it up as “the gaudier the crook, the cheaper the patter”.
Mary G
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Oh, and I am sure the FBI has spent thousands and thousands of hours on anyone who’s ever expressed support for Black Lives Matter. Priorities.
Percysowner
I’m actively trying to avoid polls and predictions at this point. They make me too nervous. I’m scheduled to canvas this weekend and Monday and Tuesday. That’s all I can do. I’m in Ohio, so it won’t make much difference, but I’ll give it all I’ve got.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I am not good at long rants.
Walker
@Adam L Silverman:
Garbage in, garbage out.
WaterGirl
@burnspbesq: Well, to be fair, he was all that when he was still at his original blog. You know, before he sold out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Fuck it, I’m still in even if she is a C.H.U.D.
Lurker Extraordinaire
As a Latina, I think I’m going to completely cut myself off from any and all election coverage until after Election Day. I know many of you will consider this “bed wetting” but Trump and his supporters are real threats to my family’s very existence. I grew up in an area with quite a few Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren, and their experiences have been echoing in my mind for months now. It’s not enough for me to hear “oh, Trump only wants to deport illegal immigrants.” Or that he wants to ban only Muslims from entering the country. The things he and his supporters want to do have occurred within living memory, so I cannot write off this stuff as just words. It’s a dishonor to our grandparents and great-grandparents who fought against the Nazis that fascism is kicking down our door. We will see on Election Day if we blast fascism in the face, or we welcome it with open arms and invite it in. Of course, it’s always been lying in wait (for many years), but the fact that people are taking Trump seriously, especially our media, means we are so dangerously close, perhaps more than ever before.
The consequences are simply too great for me to underestimate the threats to my person, other people of color, women, LGBTQ, Muslims and others.
I will be voting Friday, and my husband voted today. In Ohio. I guess on November 9th I’ll know if I have to seriously consider having an “escape route plan” just in case. Until then, my friends….
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Sometimes the hipsters are right.
hedgehog mobile
@Walker: Agreed.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
More like when Garth Brooks decided to become Chris Gaines and the world went, “Huh?”
Mnemosyne
If opiejeannie comes by, I eventually decided to get my San Francisco hotel room from Hotwire.com, went through the whole process, and discovered that it’s … the Sir Francis Drake.
It’s like it was destiny. ;-)
redshirt
@Percysowner: Ohio doesn’t make much of a difference?
Baud
I read Silver’s book. The Signal and the Noise. One of the worst written books I’ve ever read.
Baud
@redshirt: I think he’s expressing skepticism that Hillary will carry the state.
JMG
@Lurker Extraordinaire: I admire your honesty and courage. I’m old. have money, and am an old line WASP, so Trump can’t do much to me except that blowing up the world thing. I hope you will accept my pledge that you and yours are an important part of why I am so engaged in this election.
NotMax
After this year, if I ever come across the term homo sapiens again, it’ll be too soon. Like Brontosaurus, a false designation to be retired.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lurker Extraordinaire: A person I am very close to is a Latina whose grand-parents were Jews who went to Latin America from Poland in the ’30s. They saw trouble. She is confident that Hillary will win, but is disturbed as hell by what this election has churned up. Moi, as a WASPy type, I am disturbed as hell too. The difference is that they would come after her for who she is, but they would only come after me for what I say.
ETA: If the worst comes to pass, I can guarantee an underground railroad to Canada from friends and family.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: I use Hotwire all the time. It’s like Russian R0ullete for hotel rooms.
I did just stay at the Intercontinental in Boston for $200 and it was very nice.
redshirt
@Baud: I know the polls, but I don’t understand how Hillary can lose it when Obama won it twice.
Baud
@redshirt: Iowa has turned red.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I thought the knock on Silver this round was that the original data nerd was now factoring in non-data things (like historical trends and momentum or I don’t know what because I haven’t followed it) into his model, whereas Wang was sticking to just the numbers
cmorenc
Those shiftless nigras…who can only be bothered to get up off the couch when they want to go to the grocery store to buy T-bone steaks with their food stamps.
piratedan
as a reminder about the Lies that Hillary Clinton is guilty of… someone picked up the Elijah Cummings questioning of Director Comey on a tweet:
Elijah Cummings questioning of James Comey
a synopsis….
Comey: the FBI reviewed 30k worth of e-mail…
Cummings: and you found three that had classified material
Comey: correct…
Cummings: but you state that they weren’t identified as such, in the header or topic or using any other normal method of identifying classified information
Comey: correct
Cummings: and the part that was marked with a lower case “c” was embedded in the document itself, further down
Comey: correct
Cummings: and then you found that even these were used incorrectly
Comey: yes, that’s true
Cummings: I just wanted to be clear here on what you found….
THIS is what the media has allowed to be characterized as a lie by the GOP.
redshirt
@Baud: Not yet!
Trentrunner
Just a reminder that if Clinton wins Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Colorado, she wins the election.
She can lose Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and Iowa, and still win with PVC.
That is all.
Baud
@Trentrunner: And Florida, where I’d still put her as the favorite.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@redshirt: non-college white voters, labor unions endorsing Republicans for… reasons, and a Republican SoS who has quietly pushed voter suppression while the MSM fawns over Katich’s vote for McCain
Mike in NC
This JMG idiot is a fairly new concern troll, correct?
Adam L Silverman
@Walker: Perhaps.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Works for me!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: No. Real commenter who is nervous. Be nice.
Mike in NC
@Trentrunner: North Carolina looking good, but less good for incumbent GOP governor and senator. GOTV vs Dark Money.
Adam L Silverman
@Lurker Extraordinaire: We have your back. This is not Germany in the 1930s. Nor the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s.
NotMax
@Trentrunner
Also a reminder that every four years “Pennsylvania is in play” is dragged out of mothballs.
It’s not in play.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: then why?
@NotMax: I remember that from 2012.
Elizabelle
@Percysowner: Yippee! You’re doing a lot. 3 cheers. Canvassing rocks.
Jeffro
@redshirt: @Baud:
I have Hillz losing Ohio and Iowa and still winning 332-334 (I’m not being cagey; I can’t remember the exact number!) of EVs to Trump’s 198 or so.
If it helps (and boy does it ever help me): turn off the cable news, trust Sam Wang’s site, and GOTV!
Barbara
@piratedan: Cummings made Comey look like a fool.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Why what?
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Why are we having to deal with Trump?
PPCLI
Ah yes. I remember that part of the great MLK speech “I have a dream… that whites in Alabama will need to be more ingenious than they currently have to be to ensure black turnout is low.”
But seriously, John Lewis is still alive, and he actually is one of the people who was beaten, and almost killed. So you can just give him a call and ask if he would be embarrassed by automatic registration and making voting easier for everyone. I think you will be surprised at what he’ll say….
But in fact, Mr. Merrill, I suspect you know exactly what he’d say were you to make that call. And you know full well that what he would say is nothing like what you are saying. You lying sleazebag.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Would you come out in public to protest the mistreatment of Hispanics or Jews? A lot of us would.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Will there be refreshments?
Keith P.
@piratedan: It’s ironic that the Trump campaign is going after Clinton on the ‘c’ indicating ‘classified’, when Trump had a bunch of housing applications that were also marked with ‘c’. In Trump’s case, naturally, the ‘c’ meant “colored”, so him and Pops Trump could discriminate on applicants.
Jeffro
@Lurker Extraordinaire: As with many others here – we’re with you. We’re going to win this election and then have a high old time getting this country to realize just what a dangerous, dangerous problem it has in Trump supporters and the GOP as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I will buy you a beer – two if you are mouthy. Does that work?
ETA: Shot or reasonable mixed drink of your choice instead, if you want.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Craft beer, right? Not that mass produced swill.
Lyrebird
@Lurker Extraordinaire: You go, protecting your sanity — super important!
And count David Nir in, over at DKos, noticing the fascism parallels.
Now back to your cat gifs or whatever keeps you going!
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Two different things. My remarks were along the lines that there are both the necessary and sufficient numbers of people in the US, who are sufficiently informed, that any attempt by Trump’s worst supporters to bring what happened in those places here in anything other than isolated incidents will not happen.
As for your question of why Trump or, perhaps how Trump, its what I wrote several months ago:
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Okay. But you gotta earn it, otherwise it is the mere alcohol of a Miller High Life – which is better than nothing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: OH, FUCK! (Runs to bedroom to check for holes…doors in closet floor.)
piratedan
@Barbara: my issue is that with this out there on the public record, The media lets the GOP perpetuate the framing and how many of us have had to try and talk down friends and family from the ledge because of it… unsure if anyone has seen that published and explained as clearly as Rep. Cummings did.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Too soon.
Mike J
Jeebus, Cubs.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Not for lack of trying.
Percysowner
@redshirt: Portman is ahead by so much that it won’t make a difference and Trump is pretty far ahead, enough that it’s going to be hard to turn the tide. There are zero House seats that are competitive in Ohio. I’m hoping that we might get Hillary to squeak out a win, that’s why I’ll canvas, but it’s not looking too good.
Miss Bianca
How is it that I’ve spent at least some part of every day for oh, I don’t know – the past 200 days? – the past two years? – going, “what the ever-fuckin’ FUCK?!”?
And it’s always over stories like this. Irony is not only dead and buried, it’s positively mouldering in the grave. It keeps giving little zombie kicks and twitches, however, from the Great Beyond.
Day Two of NaNoWriMo: up to 3,494 words. We are ON TRACK so far!
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTfwqm2i9z8
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Baud plays a charming and witty sociopath here. We all have our online personae which differ to some extent from our ‘nym’s reputation. For example, I am not 5’10”; I am 5’ 9″ and 3/4″.
rikyrah
@Omnes Omnibus: that was a good rant.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: For me it’s: “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” Some days those are the first words I say all day. Sad!
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: It was covered at the time on the news. The video and transcript is at CNN – I posted the link and the excerpt from entire Q&A the other night. There are internet meme posters going around with this on it. But until someone forces Tweety and Andrea Mitchell and everyone at CNN and NBC, ABC, and CBS evening news to actually read it over and over and over and admit their reporting has been skewed and biased and not supported by the facts, it does not matter one whit that its the truth.
rikyrah
@Lurker Extraordinaire: you tell the truth.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: I had a yen for schnitzel the other night and couldn’t get it. So someone is clearly not trying hard enough!
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Thank you. That also means a lot coming from you.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
Well, actually …
And now I really do have to turn off wi-fi and do my NaNo thing. Later, gators.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
This just in: “Comey Says FBI Investigating Hillary’s Ties to Bill Clinton.”
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: What? Baud’s a sociopath?!
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
You forgot handsome.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: OT: I found that article and posted the link and excerpt in the Doug! thread. Don’t want you to miss it.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: Or, as Garry Trudeau so masterfully put it: “Jefferson was the Antichrist! Democracy is Fascism! Black is White! Night is Day!”
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I was just thinking of the valid concerns just expressed by Lurker Extraordinaire. But yeah, I get it. Just haven’t seen Lurker Extraordinaire enough to know if he/she would know that baud was just having a little fun, not really laughing about something terrible.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: My bad. Sorry.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman:
I think people probably also thought that in Germany and Bosnia and Rwanda right before the killing started.
Miss Bianca
@Lurker Extraordinaire: Please don’t go. At least, not yet. We’re not going to let this monstrous shit happen.
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: granted Adam, guess we need to do the heavy lifting that our media refuses to do.
PPCLI
@Keith P.: Actually the “c” didn’t mean “Classified”, as Trump originally claimed, in his usual overbearing way. It means “confidential”, which is the lowest level of classification.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): I was so hoping that was going to be The Onion or something similar. Thank god for that!
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
A false designation to be retired until proven otherwise, then.
Happy now?
Baud
@WaterGirl: I think the chain of comments got crossed. I wasn’t making light of LE’s comment.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
While I am loathe to give him any credit for it, he does have the skills to play the GOP primary process perfectly. He was what its voters wanted, and was not tied to dogma that the GOP voter only wanted because it was the best racism fix they’d been offered. The thing is, every other GOP politician in the country now knows he won the presidential primary on hard racism, and the base is not going to stop wanting that – including the asshole idiocy that came with the package.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Actually we have good historical evidence that that was not the case in Germany. I cannot speak as informedly on the Balkans or Rwanda.
Miss Bianca
@Trentrunner: And I’m phone-banking in CO this week. FTW.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Looks like Hillary is favored to win Wisconsin, but why is Feingold doing worse?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I saw it, thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: There is an extent that we are playing the kind of semi-pro hockey where damn near anything goes. A true ex-lurker who doesn’t seem trollish always seems to get a honeymoon period. After which, they are in the mix. It happened to all of us.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Steeplejack (phone): Ha, pretty good one.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Did you read my comments to LE?
WaterGirl
@Baud: I knew that wasn’t your intent. I just thought it could be read that way to someone who might be new to BJ.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Just wanted to make sure you saw it.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree with the charming and witty part but not the sociopath part.
@Baud: That too.
Baud
@WaterGirl: We accept new people?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: True enough.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: No, it’s all true.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: His own words.
NotMax
@Baud
Gotta do the gibble-gobble chant to make it official.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Beg to differ – “nothing” is, in fact, better than the mere alcohol of a Miller High Life. Life is too short to pickle your liver with anything less than something worth drinking.
Beer Snot signing off, having ingested a fine barley wine and not wanting to harsh the buzz with judgey strictures.
Original Lee
@Miss Bianca: I can’t write today because I worked a double shift and when I got home everybody was watching the World Series in the room I keep my desktop in. I cannot watch the Cubs probably lose this game and write at the same time, so I guess I’ll do double tomorrow.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I did see your comment, and I was pleased to see several comments that expressed sincere reassurance – I had wanted to do that but hadn’t come up with any words that didn’t sound trite. You guys did much better.
And then I thought you seriously asked about coming out in public to protest the mistreatment of Hispanics or Jews, and said you thought a lot of us would. I agree with you there, too.
But baud answered with the fun/silly will there be snacks comment and when I put myself in LE’s shoes it felt too soon to be cracking a joke like that in a thread where she/he had expressed some very serious worries. Hence my “too soon” to baud. Does that make sense?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Never!
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Gabba-Gabba! We accept you! One of us!
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I would drink a Miller High Life but I would NEVER drink a Bud anything. It’s right up there (down there?) with Old Milwaukee. Ugh.
Baud
@WaterGirl: If we had threaded comments, we wouldn’t have these problems.
rk
I live in PA and I’ve had at least 7 people come to my door within the last month asking me how I plan to vote. I even signed a pledge that I’ll vote for Hillary and yet they still come. They belong to superpacs so there’s no coordination between them. I see hardly any Hillary signs, and more (but not that many) Trump signs. I was also told that Democrats are refusing to put out any yard signs (too fearful).
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: I am not a beer snob but seriously Miller Lite?
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Silver’s model has always been too complex and over-hedged; he gets results that are no better and often worse than Wang’s or Drew Linzer’s, and he builds in unreasonable amounts of uncertainty. That’s his model.
But his public statements this year are something else again. He seems to be letting his gut feelings run away with him. I can understand that to some degree, but it’s getting ridiculous. He spent the whole primary season insisting that Trump couldn’t possibly get the Republican nomination even though Trump was obviously running away with it. When that finally became clear to him, the shock seems to have been so great that he’s been talking up Trump’s chances in the general election ever since, as a kind of overcompensation.
It might be that he’s just gambling that if Trump wins he at least comes out looking like a genius, and if he doesn’t, no big deal. Or he might just be in a panic.
GregB
@Baud:
I can hazard a guess that the Koch whores and their buddies are dumping millions in negative ads against Russ.
WaterGirl
@Baud: If had threaded comments, most of us wouldn’t be here. So there’s that.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Sounds like he is manipulating his model to get the results he wants.
redshirt
@schrodinger’s cat: Miller High Life does not equal Miller Lite.
WaterGirl
@Baud: When did you start using Baud instead of baud? Weren’t you cap-less for a very long time?
Baud
@WaterGirl: Me either. just kidding.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: I love threaded comments, I’ll have yours.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Nope. I’ve never changed my nym.
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: My bad, didn’t read closely, also its all that cold medication I am taking.
Matt McIrvin
@rk: Clinton-Kaine signs have just started to appear in my town; for a long time the only presidential signs were Trump signs, and they were getting increasingly deranged, the billboard ones being joined by “Hillary for Prison” and “Vote Trump–A President With Balls!”
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Just No. MHL is not better than nothing. That is bottled donkey piss.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: No, I get it. FWIW, the black humor joke is my first response. Some people do not get it.
As I said to LE, I know, right now, an underground railroad that I could make happen. But fuck that. We are better. We will win.
schrodinger's cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I like to get my eyebrows threaded, does that count?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Huh! Wrong again, twice in one night. I would just go to bed if it wasn’t for a little thing called the world series.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodinger’s cat: No, but it does sound painful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: It will get him drunk. I made no other claims.
schrodinger's cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It is! But the end result is gorgeous.
Botsplainer
Fuck you, Donald Trump, and fuck the FBI for bringing political ads with this lying bullshit to the World Series.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Really it isn’t that hard. What the fuck is wrong with them is that they are sociopathic morons. See how easy that is?
OK the hard part is figuring out how there are so many of them and what to use for a disinfectant.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: This last week has been tough. I hope you are right. I think Hillary will win, but I think Comey may have lost us the Senate. I haven’t decided which circle of hell he belongs in, perhaps he should rotate through them all.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Yes yes yes to your final sentence. I hate having to see how many of them there are. I truly had no idea.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not sure he’s consciously manipulating his model, but I do think he’s seriously overfitting his available data (for instance, trying to derive a single “house effect” number for each polling firm and using that to adjust each individual poll is just asking for trouble), plus he has the time-averaging length set to “hyper-twitchy” even for the ostensibly more-stable “polls-plus” model.
Nate pioneered this sort of analysis, but I can’t help but think that he’s been surpassed by others. Sam Wang at Princeton and the data modelers working at Pollster come to mind.
schrodinger's cat
@WaterGirl: Is that Nate Silver’s prediction or did you pull that out of thin air? FWIW I don’t find these wild swings in the polls believable. Last week, Hillary was supposedly on track to win Arizona and this week its all doom and gloom. Whatever.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: He’s overfit it to the point where the graph of his projection history looks an awful lot like… the graph of the polling average history. It’s sad, really.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s still donkey piss. Just because they put alcohol in it doesn’t make in better.
rk
@Matt McIrvin:
Our neighborhood has very few signs. The houses which have Trump signs have multiple signs. One house has four Trump/Pence signs, one on driveway, two on either side of the yard and one in the window. One house had a giant sign, that got vandalized and Trump was replaced by a Harambe picture (they installed video cameras after that). But then for unknown reasons they replaced it with 4 smaller signs. Trump supporters are an aggressive lot. One sign is not enough. They really want to rub everyone’s faces in it or at least that’s how I see it.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: I like the approach Sam Wang uses, which is to track the past history of his “meta-margin” and then show a plausible range of future values given reasonable assumptions about volatility. That basically relies on one assumption, how much volatility to plug into the model, and not much else.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin:
In other words, he’s become a pundit. The reason pundits make such nonsensical predictions is that punditry is hit-based, like music and video games. If you make mainstream well-supported predictions, no one will remember you. If you make outrageous predictions, the others will forget all the ones you got wrong, but the lone one you get right will make your reputation.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: Wang’s model is great.
Ruckus
@rk:
I think they feel that if everyone knows they are racist scum everyone else will leave and they will have nirvana. It’s a cheap way of having that walled city with just white, gun fetishist, fundamentalist, assholes like themselves and they don’t have to move to have it.
FlipYrWhig
@piratedan: Am I misremembering or isn’t it also true that none of those were sent or received by Hillary herself?
The Lodger
@Baud: Don’t stop being Baud.
Redshift
@rk: The Trump campaign is apparently giving away lots of signs. Since signs don’t actually have any effect on results, the Clinton campaign is mostly just letting people buy them and now giving out limited numbers of them.
Lizzy L
Ted Cruz is going to join Mike Pence to campaign on Thursday in Iowa and Michigan. What a hateful slimy hypocrite weasel that man is.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: Sam Wang was doing it before Silver. His first year modeling the Presidential election was 2004, and his model was great except that he screwed up by predicting that undecideds would break strongly toward Kerry (based on an incorrect theory). As it turned out, the un-adjusted version of his map called almost every state correctly, so he took out the adjustment the next time around.
Wang didn’t try to call November win probabilities until, I think, 2012; before then he was just generating his snapshot distribution of possible “if the election were held today” EV results. The snapshot uses a probably unrealistic assumption of uncorrelated errors, but his prediction model actually tries to allow for correlations.
I think the best argument I can come up (pulled out of my ass) with that the situation might be much worse than Wang’s model is that maybe all the remaining Gary Johnson voters are going to break for Trump at the last minute. Something of that sort does seem to be happening on the margins. But for all of them to do it would not be consistent with surveys from earlier in the year.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
Bet they won’t pay the printer(s), who now can’t even get the signs back for bulk recycling to at least get something out of it.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin:
I believe his analysis uses a naive bayes model, which, while based on an unrealistic assumption of uncorrelated attributes, is nonetheless universally reviled (j/k) in the machine learning community for its combination of computational efficiency, absurd simplicity, and startling accuracy.
Botsplainer
One thing conservatives have counted on in the past is a basic sort of goodwill and respect for institutions from liberals when conservatives win elections.
That has been irrevocably squandered. They’ll never get an easy ride again, with a great deal of unrest, protest and noncompliance with everything from revenue to religious respect.
Ruckus
@Lizzy L:
As a male human being I take offense at having Odious Teddy included as one of us.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: I gave up on Nate long ago. And yes, that’s just my gut feeling, pulled right out of the air. And the rumors of poll changes swirling around. I don’t actually look at polls – and since this is such a strange election year, I think year that any predictions based on the past are probably not worth much this year.
Just like when President Obama ran in 2008, there was really no way to know what people would do when they got in that voting booth. Would they panic at the last minute and not vote for the black man? Were they saying they would vote for Obama because they didn’t want to look/sound racist? Etc.
I think it’s similar this year, only worse, because we’ve got a woman for the first time AND someone like Trump. How many people are saying they will vote for him (mostly bluster) but won’t once they are alone in that booth. How many people plan to vote for Trump but will get in the booth and end up leaving the presidential race blank? Etc.
Shorter WaterGirl: I think the data this year is mostly suspect. Garbage in, garbage out. I’m sure many people here will tell me I’m wrong.
piratedan
@FlipYrWhig: I know that based on the tweet, they were sent to her, but the “classification” was buried in the text. Then upon further questioning of Comey by Cummings, Comey admitted that these shouldn’t have even been designated as classified, as he understood the policy.
Yeah… it’s THAT fucking thin. and THIS has been damn near the entire basis of the GOP claiming that she’s untrustworthy. As Mr. Silverman has stated, the fact that perhaps the Dems don;t want to try and explain this, because if you’re explaining you’re losing.. yet no one in the media ever stands up and re-iterates that this is complete and total bullshit and allows the GOP to continue to frame this and now the FBI is STILL fucking framing it this way with these additional leakages attempting to cite something/anything to say that she’s dishonest or incompetent.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: Oh, what did he say?
WaterGirl
@The Lodger: I second that!
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: They were sent to her. Everything else that was of concern was upclassified as the result of the FOIA requests in 2015/2016. They were not classified at the time. So in the end, we’re talking three emails, that were themselves mismarked by the sender.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: WaterGirl perks up! Is there video?
P.S. Is there any reason to think that anyone who was influenced by Comey (against Hillary) would be swayed by what the president thinks? I still want to see the smackdown, though.
FlipYrWhig
@piratedan: Trump has a commercial based on the idea that Hillary lied when she said she didn’t send any classified info. Isn’t it actually true that she didn’t? I guess they can’t get into it because the media will say it’s “Clintonian” “parsing” about “the meaning of is,” or, in other words, true.
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: To clarify: I think its just that explaining won’t make any sense. The reporters aren’t going to change how they describe this, nor the commentators, so what difference will it make.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: For all those crazy-making unprecedented factors in 2008, the kind of modeling Sam Wang was doing still called it, right on the nose. I think he missed by one electoral vote (the Nebraska 2nd district). And Nate Silver actually didn’t do badly, though he was overhedged.
Wang’s current speculation is that the crazy emotional pitch of this election actually makes it more predictable, not less, by increasing polarization and making it less likely that people will change their minds. I’m not sure I buy it 100% because he also says this can increase the number of undecideds, without making the race more volatile. But it’s at least a theory you can test.
FlipYrWhig
@Adam L Silverman: and that she didn’t send! I mean, holy shit, dude.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
I don’t remember my exact number, but I wrote another 1,600-ish words today. I was slightly over 1,900 yesterday, so I’m a little ahead of the game.
I’m hiding out in the craft room to avoid the Cubs game, since I am a jinx. You’re welcome, Chicago.
Pogonip
@redshirt: If he was a sociopath his presidential bid would have been more successful.
divF
@Major Major Major Major: I am about half-way in my chore to learn about machine learning. So I do not yet completely appreciate the nuances of your snark. Soon, though.
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: This cake was baked long ago. I’ve had this discussions with friends/colleagues who have or have had clearances, just like me. I’ve shown them the official Congressional transcript with Congressman Cummings getting the clarification from Director Comey. They are still convinced that if they had done “what she had done” they’d be in prison now. And these are people that understand the classification system and rules. If they can’t/don’t want to get it because they already know about Clinton, what chance do you have of getting Andrea Mitchell or Chris Matthews to understand it, let alone the Fox News crowd?
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I’ve heard that MHL is the best beer to use when you make beer and cheese soup. So I guess it’s a cooking beer, not a drinking beer?
FlipYrWhig
@Adam L Silverman: I get it, I get it. Still, it seems like they’d get 95% of the impact by describing the problem as “Hillary doesn’t run a tight ship” rather than implying, or saying outright at times, that Hillary herself did various reprehensible things.
Mnemosyne
For people who need a break from the election, you can watch giant river otters going down a slide instead.
(Photography alert for Bill — these guys and their slide are at the LA Zoo.)
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: I just know a lot about IO and PSYOPS, none of the campaign professionals would ever think to talk to someone like me.
Major Major Major Major
Well, there you go, the sportsball is over.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
MHL is better Bud. Not a much better mind you.
Beer and cheese soup. How can it be good if one uses donkey piss as one of the main ingredients?
I used to be somewhat of a beer snob, mostly because most beers taste to me like what I imagine various animal waste would. The beers that true beer snobs like, I liked. But mostly my choice was whiskies.
Elizabelle
@rk: Of course, today’s most memorable Trump sign is the huge one in the yard of the guy who murdered two Iowa police officers in cold blood, sitting in their cars.
Actually, it’s his mom’s house. And she was trying to get him out of it.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Drunk Squirrels. Now that is a band name.
Well, boiling the bratwurst is probably the best use of MHL because it doesn’t actually get consumed.
leeleeFL
@Omnes Omnibus:I have always hoped that I would have spoken out in Nazi Germany; I hope now that I will be the person I want to be and stand athwart the Trumpers shouting “no!” William Buckley can choke on that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Lurker Extraordinaire:
All the more reason to because it’s so personal. The MSM all about the sensationalism on this and if past electoral history is an example, it’s all over a boring, predictable result. Not worth the pain.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: it’s even more childish than that – they’ve been claiming the Clintons are crocks for years, finding nothing, looking like idiots and now found she broke a rule, so they were right all along, you see! It’s all emotion and no reasoning.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Pogonip:
and had more biker chicks.
Tarragon
@piratedan:
Anyone figure out where that’s a screenshot from? I’d like to be able to link back to source.