My beloved parents, bless their hearts, apparently blissfully unaware just HOW FUCKING FRAGILE I AM AT THIS STAGE IN THE ELECTION CYCLE, called me one after the other at the ass crack of dawn to inform me that my favorite restaurant burned down. Just could not wait to share the bad news, and so excited they had to do it twice. Apparently they do not live in the same fucking house and talk to each other. 96 hours. I can make it that long.
Also, get your pet pics in. I need to do it today to get Watergirl off my arse.
Shrillhouse
FIRST!
I’m Canadian, but I can assure you that many of us up here are also counting down the hours…
Chief Oshkosh
Well, I suggest you return the favor tomorrow morning and call to tell them that Francisco Franco is still dead.
Twice.
NYCMT
Millie (1929-october 30 2020), the youngest sister of Grandma Shirley (1923-April 3, 2020) is being buried three graves away from her sister right now this morning. The Rosenzweig sisters are now all gone.
Fuck covid.
Cermet
John, you are an extreme optimist if you think in 96 hours we will know the result – even if Florida goes Biden (and for me, then the electon is over) it still wouldn’t really be over offically then, either.
Starfish
Did you take the next few days off because you are feeling fragile? I did.
TaMara (HFG)
I am trying to go offline and just watch movies/bad tv for the remainder of today. I have no idea how I’m going to get through Monday and Tuesday.
Add to that one of my largest clients is thinking of going out of business. Which would stress my already diminished client list.
Fuck the orange disease. I want him humiliated at the polls and then bankrupted to oblivion.
Starfish
@TaMara (HFG): Thank you for posting the Biden/Harris events every day. I find them uplifting and not necessarily getting much publicity.
dmsilev
We’re all really really on edge. I just had a long chat with my parents which included “are we in a Weimar Republic situation?”. For a family descended from Eastern European Jews, that’s not an analogy made trivially.
Catherine D.
On a brighter note, my tuxedo cat Jeeves is 16 today and healthy enough so far. Semi-annual old fart checkup is next week.
(It’s his assigned birthday because he’s an ex-barn kitten, and he was about 6 weeks old when mom cat let them out of the trunk of the old car where she had them.)
MomSense
Damn. I’m sorry, John. I was on my way out to get my flu shot and saw my neighbors from across the street. He said “it’s almost Tuesday”. I replied that I know because I haven’t slept in weeks. His wife told me I need to drink more wine. I’m already reduced to watching hallmark Christmas movies. I don’t think more wine would be wise.
gwangung
Yeah, well the orange shit stain has borked the US economy for decades, if not permanently, with his xenophobic policies; the country really did well in skimming the cream of immigrants and making them American. White supremacy has mucked that up, perhaps for good.
frosty
Favorite restaurant, favorite restaurant… I’m trying to recall the meaning of those words. Fuck COVID.
Villago Delenda Est
John, sorry to hear that your favorite restaurant is gone. Let me cheer you up. I have my pet pics in, so I’m not the cause of Watergirl being all over your ass.
As for your parents, nothing I can do there but offer tea and sympathy. It’s not very Army, I know, because it’s beer and sympathy there, but you’re on the wagon and we all as a group intend to keep it that way.
Drive on, with pride, treadhead.
Kay
About 2 weeks ago, the Trump campaign said they had three scenarios for winning. Flipping Nevada was the third and clearly the least likely to happen.
Interesting that that’s all they have left.
Mart
Restaurant probably needed the money.
Baud
@Starfish: Seconded.
frosty
@TaMara (HFG): There were some good movies in this Atlantic article, most of which I haven’t seen. I need to switch to binge-watching TV instead of political blogs for the next couple of months. This might help.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/10/comfort-movies/616939/
Elizabelle
Avenue Eats in Wheeling? There were occupied apartments in the building, which has been declared a total loss (albeit a good part of it is still standing, heavily damaged). WTRF coverage, with photos.
How sad. Call to Fire Department at 5:01 am. Your parents heard the news quickly.
CaseyL
@NYCMT: Are they your relatives? My condolences.
I’m so worn out by anxiety over the election, I’m afraid to even watch the returns. I’ll rely on this place to update me.
I remember back in 2004, what it was like to go into work after Bush the Lesser was (re-)elected. It was like visiting a cemetery.
The day after Trump won, I had barely slept at all and was in too much shock myself to see how other people were taking it.
Funnily enough (or not) Wednesday is my day to go into the office. Fortunately (or not) I’ll be the only one there.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: These idiots are into Uday’s Bolivian Marching Powder stash.
Baud
@Cermet:
It’ll be over if we get Florida. Not officially, but essentially.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
My brother took Tuesday and (I think) Wednesday off from work, and we are going to have a watch
partyvigil at Sighthound Hall. There will be tasty food and quite probably alcoholic beverages.I need to erase the memory of 2016, when we sat in disbelief and watched Trump waddle his way to victory state by state. Ugh.
zhena gogolia
@Starfish:
The NYT magazine today has Trump on the cover for the billionth time. There has been not one story focusing on Biden.
WaterGirl
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is what John describes as WaterGirl being all over his ass:
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I think the absence of all caps frightened him.
Cheryl Rofer
Three hours managing texting for the county Democratic Party today, tomorrow, and Tuesday. Nice people to work with via Zoom. Helps get through the time.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: You want a Tara Reade story?
dmsilev
@Kay: John Ralston, who pretty much everyone agrees is the go-to expert on Nevada voting patterns, has …a different opinion:
From the linked post,
mali muso
@CaseyL: My day to (wo)man the office is Tuesday. lol. But Wednesday is a work at home day for me, so I can sleep off the inevitable hangover.
Barbara
@Kay: Does that number include holding NC?
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Miller cleans it up a little by using 290 instead of 270 but why would they need to flip Nevada? Because they lost MI and WI. I mostly thought it was interesting that even this pack of liars think they have to provide some number that is different than his 2016 map. Why? Because it’s not even believable enough for them, which is saying something :)
WaterGirl
@Baud: Yes, I am clearly horrid.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
I’ve just gone into denial, and decided to hope it’ll be such a blowout that it’ll be called for Biden as soon as the polls close on the west coast.
I have no idea what I’ll do if that doesn’t happen, and if eventually Mango Mussolini ends up with four more years, but I imagine it’ll involve a day of shock and mourning followed by supporting anyone fighting this bastard even harder, since I can’t leave the country yet.
But hey, maybe it’ll be a massive blowout for Biden? Oh please, oh please, universe? I mean, thanks for getting me the much better job and I’m sorry to be greedy, but…?
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: Article written by the mediocre and dishonest Elaina Plott. Hard pass.
They did have a good article on Harris’ record in California yesterday in challenging corporate malfeasance, by a reporter who clearly understood the issues. Bottom line: she focused on cases that made a difference in people’s lives versus getting showy headlines.
BR
@Cermet:
Once Arizona, Nevada, NC, Michigan, and Minnesota are called, it’s over. (Or replace Michigan with Georgia, Florida, or Texas, all three of which count early.) There’s a decent chance that by midnight Eastern the call will be made.
Shakti
Cole,
In 2012, Florida was the last state to be called in the election by less than 1%.
FWIW, as I said, in another thread, my vote was counted. My mother’s was as well.
On the county supervisor of elections’ site right now, mail voting dwarfs early voting ~3-1 and more Democrats than Republicans have voted by any method.
The current supervisor of elections was appointed by DeSantis. I did not vote for her, because Republicans insist on making election administration some kind of partisan issue. Pity.
Baud
@BR:
I want them all.
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of fragile….
<weeps in Seasonal Affective Disorder>
? Hello darkness my old friend
Soon you’ll start at 5 p.m. ?
Calouste
Politico reports that the White House is planning a purge of the cabinet and upper level government positions for insufficient loyalty in case they get a second term. This is of course to be completely expected to anyone who knows a little bit about the history of totalitarian regimes.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I read periods in texts are now seen as aggressive.
WaterGirl
@Baud: This makes me sincerely doubt the veracity of some of the stories John tells us about his parents.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Rick Klein, chief political something-or-other for ABC, is getting roasted on twitter for saying that Miller made this “point”, Armando late of D-Kos is collecting the responses. It’s not a “point”, many people are pointing out, but propaganda and the threat to the legitimacy of the vote.
Jake Tapper can be an ass– “Fox is our sister network!”– but good on him for this, and he’s probably the biggest name I’ve seen take after Klein
frosty
@Cheryl Rofer: I have a friend in ABQ. His wife is a precinct captain, in charge of making sure her turf all votes. Great job of organizing!
I’ve never seen anything like it in PA; they just send me out on different walk lists every time, so there’s no way an organizer, activist, or volunteer gets to know the same set of voters one election after another.
Kay
@Barbara:
All three of their scenarios include FL and NC. And of course TX, OH and GA. Trump starts with more shaky assumptions than any of Biden’s maps. It’s this glaring overall difference between the two maps that no one mentions. Trump’s least optimistic map is more optimistic than Biden’s least optimistic map. I feel like it’s completely consistent with who these people are that they even lie to themselves, give themselves an unearned advantage. Literally nothing they say hangs together even with a close reading. let alone “data”.
BR
@Baud:
Same. I just figure the networks won’t call PA for days because of all the mail-in ballot drama, and perhaps Wisconsin unless it’s a blowout. So the only hope for an official Associated Press call on election night is for some of those others like NC, GA, TX, and AZ.
Mary G
@Cheryl Rofer: I loved the Rocky Horror show reunion so much last night I am phonebanking Wisconsin today and tomorrow and I hate phonebanking. It still helps with the time passing.
Cheryl from Maryland
I feel for all of us. I’m just finished up a proposal from a committee I chair to my HOA for a Little Free Library. That we were able to come to a consensus in four weeks and that four of the seven members have signed off on the proposal, I consider nothing short of a miracle. But now I have nothing to distract me, and it’s raining.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I will have to keep that in mind. No doubt the smiley face reminds him of a scary clown. I was doomed before I ever pressed send on the text.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m trying not to worry about the late count/messaging wars scenarios. I think there’s a good chance none of that matters.
BR
@Kay:
Well they are relying upon Eric Cantor’s pollster…
frosty
@Sister Golden Bear: Brilliant! My SAD wife sez “More like 4:00”
Baud
@Kay: Plus, Dems are on it, and protests are already being planned.
BR
I’m hoping for something a bit strange, but I think could be very important: around the time that some networks make the call for Biden, hopefully late on election night, I hope Bush makes a statement, even a two liner, congratulating Biden as the president elect and asking the nation to come together. It’ll send a signal to the various judges and party people he appointed that they need to stand down, and some will listen.
Kay
@BR:
I love that Twitter was like “if he is wrong he will never work again!”
Okay doke. Looks like he’s “working” to me after his last massive failure, but okay. Let’s continue to pretend merit matters, if we must. As if people get fired fr bad work. As if. He’ll probably get promoted.
Yarrow
I’m going grocery shopping tomorrow or Tuesday morning to get a few last minute perishable things. Already well stocked with non-perishables. Then I don’t plan to leave the house from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday at least. I expect some unrest. Just not sure where.
oatler.
https://www.joemygod.com/2020/11/nc-cops-pepper-spray-voters-marching-to-polls/
Elizabelle
@dmsilev:
I love this.
And yes, Weimar is an appropriate analogy. Albeit, the Germans had a lot more to legitimately complain (WRT their economic situation; not necessarily their government) about than do our Fox News radicalized rightwingers.
Calouste
@BR: According to 538, NC, FL, and AZ count their votes quickly and will be called on election night unless the race is close.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I am not sure that Cole has the good sense to be terrified by clowns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can never keep track of which pollsters are “highly regarded” and which are not, but here’s some good news for people who can’t look away from bad news
they have Biden up by three in FL overall
Kay
@Baud:
I do think they’re underestimating the extent of the pushback. This idea they have that they can just throw it to the crooked federal judges and the whole country will go along quietly seems to me naive.
BR
@Kay:
I remember reading here sometime in the late ’00s — must have been either DougJ or John — about how the biggest problem in American life is that nobody can be discredited. They can do terrible things or be amazingly wrong and can, if they have the right pedigree or connections, just dust themselves off and get in positions of power again.
How right that was.
BR
@Calouste:
Exactly. I figure FL will be close so there won’t be a call until the day after, but I hope NC and AZ won’t be close so they’ll get called. I think GA and TX may also count quickly if for no other reason than they have very little mail-in but a lot of in-person-early voting.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Right.
Ken
If you squint, it looks a little like a figure wielding a large scythe.
Calouste
@BR: Romney could do that as well, as the GOP governors who have publicly stated that they won’t be voting for the shitgibbon.
zhena gogolia
@dmsilev:
Who’s gonna pay for the gaming license? Michael Corleone?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fixed that for you. :-)
*smiley face not intended as a threatening clown
Calouste
@Kay: Unions are already talking about a general strike if the election is stolen.
zhena gogolia
@BR:
Ain’t gonna happen.
BR
@Calouste:
I agree they could and should, but none of the rank and file will listen to Romney or Weld or those folks. Bush’s silence may have earned him a bit of credibility with them if he were to weigh in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d seen hints of this story on twitter, but I didn’t know just how far Christie had been taken in
I had no idea this race was so close. I think I’m gonna send Cooney some money
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: What makes you think that W commands any residual loyalty from his appointees? Quite honestly, he should not, nor should any president.
EveryDayIhaveTheBlues
@WaterGirl: Just uploaded my folder using the dropbox link!
Calouste
@BR:
Romney etc would be about the media narrative. It would be harder for the media to maintain that the shitgibbon has a case if well known members of his own party think he doesn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: That comment also implies what we already suspected, that they’re relying on most early votes (even from weeks ago) not being counted yet so they can try to delegitimize them entirely. If they’re “leading in” that many electoral votes, it’s just because the Election Day returns will be most of what’s already counted in the Great Lakes region.
Kay
@Calouste:
It’s just a fundamentally different scenario than stealing FL in 2000. That’s not a good comparison. This is millions and millions of voters in several states and they managed to discredit their judges ahead of time with these insane voter suppression orders.
But we have to put in reforms after the election even if it’s not close because if we don’t this is going to happen every two years and every close election will be decided for Republicans. It’s just not a reasonable thing to ask voters to accept, that their elections will be thrown into chaos by Right wing courts every time it looks like the GOP might lose. It has to be fixed. They’ve already over-reached. They showed their hand and now we know so we have to take action.
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think in TX there’s still a bunch of folks who worked under him or got their start under him who are semi-loyal to him. Maybe it’s only a quarter of the GOP who’d listen to him, but that’s a big enough chunk.
Former presidents retain some (limited) amount of influence whether we want them to or not…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
A friend of mine who is a top tier business lawyer, a former prosecutor, a marine combat vet staff officer and a gifted editorial cartoonist had this to say on his FB page:
Amir Khalid
A good way to keep calm is to watch Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Songs From Home video series on YouTube. It’s just her at home, a guitar, and a beautiful song — usually one of her own, but not necessarily. Sometimes her dog Angus joins her on his squeaky toy. She’s up to 45 songs now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BR: I will be pleasantly surprised if W does the right thing. I guess it’s still a possibility he and Jeb(!) are keeping their powder dry.
But the cynic in me says George P has ambitions to be the generation that redeems the family from the failed efforts of the second generation to redeem the failed efforts of the first generation, and that he sees the path to glory running through trump-hat America
I almost felt sorry for Jeb (!) when his son endorsed the man who so thoroughly and relentlessly pantsed his daddy in ’16. The Bush family oedipal loop-de-loop loops on….
BR
@Kay:
I remember Warren had a proposed constitutional amendment about the right to vote and have that vote counted. Is it redundant, or does that actually cover new legal ground not currently in the constitution? (There’s a separate question whether the current judicial extremists would just ignore it like every other inconvenient amendment.)
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: NYT/Siena is one of the top-tier polling operations. Doesn’t mean that they’ll be exactly right of course, but it’s still an encouraging batch of results.
Ruckus
@TaMara (HFG):
Well he’s put himself half way there several times financially and more than once as just a human being. Although on the second part I’m not sure he wasn’t born that way and just never got out of being humanly bankrupted.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: There is no explicit federal right to vote. However, there is an explicit STATE right to vote in the constitutions of 49 of the 50 states (Arizona is the exception, and even there it’s pretty easy to read an implicit right into what it does say). Whether that actually figures in court decisions to the degree that it should is another question–apparently it’s common to just assume that the weaker federal guarantees against racial discrimination, poll taxes, etc. are what apply. Source is this interesting article: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1295&context=law_facpub
Aleta
In 2016 I made the mistake of opening the champagne early. Under its influence as the results turned bad, worse, worst … the horror. The horror.
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
Wow, I didn’t realize that. Interesting.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On a positive note, I was walking the dog in a BLM hoodie, and one of the neighbors stopped her car to say she really likes my hoodie. Funny part is that she’s married to a retired coastie who’s Trumpish. We actually like them a lot – she is his 4th or 5th wife, and I suspect isn’t telling him her true political feelings.
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
Yes, you are. I saw your SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS BUT WITHOUT CAPS message (i.e., the one what you embedded) to Cole, and I started shrieking, wailing, crying, diving under the desk, and other stuff.
Or something like that.
hitchhiker
my sympathy, John.
my mom, may her memory be a blessing, was always eager to share terrible news, or even mildly annoying news.
i mean, she just loved to do it … once she shared with my siblings something truly awful that my then-boyfriend had done while massively drunk, because that’s just how she rolled.
when i called her out the next day is the only time in my life that she seemed to understand maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be ALL OVER other peoples’ troubles.
(what did my then-boyfriend do? lol. he picked up a strange woman at a bar and brought her to my folks’ house, where he was camping out while doing some construction work while i was finishing my quarter at college a few hundred miles away. classy guy!)
CaseyL
The “rehabilitation” of W as some sort of elder statesman baffles me. His Presidency was such a disaster that only Trump’s atrocities have blurred it in retrospect; his judgment was shit then and is shit now – and the GOP promptly unpersoned him after he left office.
Why anyone expects him to stand tall and speak out escapes me.
Tom Levenson
@Kay: Jon Ralston says Nevada ain’t flipping. And he has MATH:
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3
Kay
@BR:
I can’t go into specifics here- it’s too lengthy and it’s a whole body of law- but what you’re seeing is that election administration and rules are essential to the exercise of the civil right. The process is the protection. Democrats and other democracy fans have to completely understand that.
New laws have to integrate federal process and administration protections, along with the civil right, because the two things are bound together. You can’t have one without the other. All “regular” people have to do is understand that. They don’t have to draft the laws or handle the details. There are experts who can do it. You need a federal civil right and federal process protections that ensure the civil right can be exercised in all 50 states.
Steeplejack
@Barbara:
Hey, c’mon, Plott actually found a Biden voter!
The Moar You Know
Parricide is legal in all fifty states under such circumstances.
glc
@BR: Editor’s note: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/squash-lacrosse-niche-sports-ivy-league-admissions/616474/
BR
@CaseyL:
I agree with you — his was a disastrous presidency, probably comparable to the current one but with maybe a little less corruption (but that’s not saying much). I’m just thinking purely from a perspective that he has a personal stake in getting some brownie points from historians by coming out with a unifying message in a few days, plus the fact that he has said he’s reportedly not voting GOP this year himself (not sure if that means write-in like Romney or what).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
One thread I’m hanging on to keep hold of my sanity is that the early vote count is up to 93 million now. Of course they’ll try to jigger the results and prevent counting, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to ignore the wishes of 93 million people than of 5-10 million. Especially if the early voters turn out to be a majority of the voters.
I am not ordinarily a praying person, but at times like this my attitude is probably more like Pascal’s Wager: it couldn’t hurt.[*] One of our favorite spiritual communities, the Washington National (Episcopal) Cathedral in DC, is having prayer vigils beginning 7 am Election Day. The announcement is actually that they are opening up to in person prayer starting today, but it will all be available online as well. They’ve been having a really wonderful Sunday streamed service all through lockdown.
I expect I will try to meditate and possibly tune into the vigil to try to gain some measure of calm on Tuesday.
[*] As many wags have pointed out, if you follow Pascal’s logic through to the conclusion, you should also observe all other religions just to be safe. So maybe I need to sacrifice a goat or something.
different-church-lady
@dmsilev:
Has that dude ever seen Godfather II?
BR
@Kay:
Interesting, thanks. Is there a way to have that federal guarantee without a constitutional amendment, given that they gutted the Voting Rights Act?
Kay
@Tom Levenson:
I knew it wasn’t which is why the Trump campaigns “third scenario” caught my eye. It’s as if Biden said “our only plan must include Ohio”. Oh. Really.
The ordinary last ditch scenario for Trump would be “2016 map”. This is worse than that.
BR
@glc:
Exactly.
The Moar You Know
@CaseyL: I can think of plenty of reasons why he might want to; the Bushes are notorious for destroying their political enemies – but he won’t, and he shouldn’t as he’d only damage Biden. And he’s smart enough to know that.
Biden is going to give the Bush family the revenge they want. No need for them to get into the fray. Especially not now, with only a couple of days left.
craigie
@dmsilev:
Mixed metaphor alert.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Only if it includes her tear-stained mug shot.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Did you listen to the interview with the AG from New York that was posted here yesterday?
AGs (Attorneys General) across the country are talking and are coordinating to ensure that every vote is counted everywhere.
She didn’t supply more details than that, but no matter what the dumpster fire tries, the Dems are not going to gently into that good night.
I am guessing that the AGs are also coordinating with, or are part of, Bob Bauer’s efforts.
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Levenson: If I recall correctly, Nevada was a place where Hillary Clinton actually outperformed the polling in 2016 (in general, the big drop relative to final polls that killed her around the Great Lakes was completely absent in the Southwest). Of course, pollsters have a tendency to fight the last war and I wonder if they’ve tried to correct for that.
MomSense
Update: I’ve apparently watched all the Christmas romance movies available for streaming. I’m now watching Mamma Mia and drinking white wine. I don’t like either. This not being able to imagine what the future holds past Tuesday is not a good feeling.
cain
@Elizabelle:
I can’t feel a bit terrified – around this time in 2016 – I had that same feeling of elation because things were looking badly for Trump and we were all so proud of Hillary and how she was interfacing – she was her best self.
I will never forget election night on 2016. The shock and awe – I will be on pins and needles until a winner is declared and it is Biden.
Kay
@BR:
A constitutional amendment and/or robust new VRA are necessary but not sufficient.
You’re seeing that right now. Minnesota is a good government state with voter-friendly state law and rules. Yet. Still. They reached Minnesota’s process in a massive and insane overreach. You need federal voting process laws to protect against that or this will be the norm. Every federal election, here come the Trump judges to throw it into chaos no matter what the state does to protect voters. That can’t happen.
Benw
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: pretty accurate summary IMO
BR
@cain:
I’m waiting for Monday’s headlines. I remember a feeling of dread in 2016 seeing the front page of papers at the newsstands with some big Comey / FBI headlines.
Baud
@BR: I was waiting for that next week. Tomorrow is too late to do them any good.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@WaterGirl: That interview clip with Bauer that you posted a few days ago is one of the things I’m hanging onto.
He wouldn’t give details of what the safeguards are, most likely to prevent any chance of them being countered in advance. But he seemed so rock-solid confident that the multiple safeguards exist, that Trump’s power to corrupt the process is limited, that I believe him.
I’ll still be very anxious Tuesday and Wednesday and likely for days as it plays out. But that interview helped me one hell of a lot. We have good competent people on our side. The other side hasn’t demonstrated a lot of the “competent” part.
MomSense
@The Moar You Know:
Back in 2015 I heard some great gossip from a reliable source that the extended Bush family considers JEB! to be a “hothead” and I’ll suited for the Presidency. He is apparently not what his public persona suggests.
Ruckus
@gwangung:
That which has been trumped can be untrumped. It will take time and effort, and those who are self trumped may not be recoverable, but study history, as bad as this is, human history has been bad before. We know more now, we can see much more of the situation than ever before, that gives a better chance of recovery. Think of this as an MRI on humanity. We knew things weren’t all fine and great but we had a much harder time seeing the actual illness. Modern life has put us in a place where we can see much more of the problems, if we look. And one has to know the problem before one can find a solution, unless one is just extremely lucky. And in all of history there is very little history of extremely lucky. Mostly it’s been fits, starts and stops, because it’s a huge problem and it’s humans and each and every one of us lived in a rather small world. But the world hasn’t gotten bigger but there are more of us and we have managed to learn to talk to each other, OK sometimes at each other, but there is much better communication. And that means the possibility of forming solutions that work. We just need to formulate better solutions to age old problems, fear – and the resulting racism, hate from the resulting racism, and theft of the financial heart of countries for the worsening of a few. In another 2 or 3 hundred years we should be able to write down some solutions to these. Now implementing them…..
different-church-lady
@cain: Election night is just step one. Saying we get that, there’s still no rest until Biden’s hand is on the bible.
BR
@Kay:
This sounds almost like the judicial version of what you’ve written about before — what makes the country function at a deeper level is stability in the rules and processes, and they’ve broken that in the Executive branch (and in state houses as well as the cronyism and corruption and incompetence has trickled down). Now it’s happening with the Judicial branch, where nobody can rely upon laws and procedures that were agreed upon, even on a bi-partisan basis, because some crazy judge might throw it out after the fact. It’s a recipe for a failed state.
You should write a book about it. (I’m serious. It’s a super important thing that even the “deep thinking” pundits aren’t talking about.)
Ruckus
@frosty:
What’s a restaurant?
Kay
@BR:
Because why stop here? The Trump judges succeeded in introducing chaos into this election. What if the 2022 midterms don’t look good for Republicans? What if there’s a close House race that determines the majority? Here come the Trump judges again!
The rule can’t be “landslide for Republican opposition or we throw it to the Trump judges, no matter what the state laws say”. That’s not acceptable.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
That was worth a chuckle. Mainly because it wasn’t directed at me! Thank you……
Barbara
@Kay: They like me probably work in jobs where being catastrophically wrong gets you the boot. It is touching to see their faith in meritocracy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
interesting thread from the NYT’s very smart TV critic following up on the twitter dunking of ABC’s Rick Scott
CBS news division has a weird kind of revolving door with Fox News (Major Garrett, John Roberts). IIRC a few years ago they hired an executive from Fox who was said to be a protégé of Roger Miles. I’ve tried to google the story and can’t find the specifics.
debbie
My cousin and her husband, both self-employed, email back and forth even though their home offices are two smallish-sized rooms apart.
Just got back from a windblown walk. Apparently there was some sort of drama a couple of blocks away. When I walked by there a month ago, one house had four Trump signs across the front yard; when I walked by a couple of weeks ago, there were three Trump signs. Just now, I walked by and saw one Biden sign.
Amir Khalid
In the English Premier League today. Newcastle have beaten Everton 2-1, which means this weekend’s fixtures will conclude with Liverpool three points clear at the top of the table. (ETA: YNWA!!) Right now, two of the EPL’s historical “Big Six” clubs, 15th-placed Manchester United and 12th-placed visitors Arsenal, are in a tedious scoreless stalemate. How tedious? Well, The Guardian’s liveblog is posting comments about Man United legend Sir Bobby Charlton and his recent dementia diagnosis. The BBC liveblog is inviting commenters to name their favourite Arsenal-Man Utd matches from the glory days of both clubs.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
Try the Mamma Mia sequel — it’s better.
Barbara
@Tom Levenson: Just fyi, I started reading your book. I am doing heavy duty reading for the next 60 hours or so.
debbie
@TaMara (HFG):
Did you see DJSTJr. cry during a Fox interview? It was the sweetest thing I’ve seen in almost four years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one last tax-payer subsidized super-spreader event
Kay
@BR:
I think we can make this is a winning political issue. I think it already is a winning political issue with our base and we can extend that to all voters, with the exception of the GOP base. Add Dem base plus unaffliated and you get 60-65%. That’s a good political issue and we’re on the right side of it.
Make it about voters. Elections are about voters. This is THEIR vote that is being fucked with, not “Biden’s vote”. Who is fucking with their vote? Republican incumbents and Republican judges. That’s the fight. Voters vs GOP incumbent + judges. 60 to 65% of voters.
debbie
Yowsa!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
Three old guys are sitting around at the retirement home in Florida, getting acquainted. They’re talking about their history before retiring.
First guy: “Well, I had a restaurant for 40 years, then one day there was a big fire and it burned to the ground. I decided to take the insurance money and retire.”
Second guy: “Pretty much the same story, except I had a clothing store.”
Third guy: “Yeah, me too. Except it was a warehouse and it was a flood.”
The first two guys are silent for a long moment staring at him. Finally one of them asks, “Who do you go to, to arrange a flood?”
MomSense
@zhena gogolia:
I just realized the actor who plays the groom is the same guy who plays Ian Fleming in the BBC series.
PJ
@Kay:
@BR: speaking of which, Ruth Shalit, who was fired from the New Republic over two decades ago for plagiarism and inventing details in her articles, got a gig at the Atlantic, and of course her piece they published this week was rife with inaccuracies and made up details.
In the media, if you are friends with the right people or are in the right group, there are no permanent consequences for bad acts.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: 2016 was different in some ways. Yes, Clinton led in the final polling, but that lead was rapidly softening. If you look at e-v.com’s old maps from the last days, you can see it deflating over the final weekend–seemingly safe states suddenly looking soft. And she was fighting hard to retain a slim majority in some of the states she ultimately won and that seem deep blue now, like Colorado and Virginia. It wasn’t even clear that the Great Lakes were her worst problem.
We had been lulled by what happened in 2012. Obama actually had a razor-thin EV lead in 2012 through the whole year and was sometimes even behind Romney in national popular-vote polling. In the end, the aggregated state poll margins predicted the final result almost precisely and it was held to be this big triumph for Nate Silver types.
But Obama actually outperformed a lot of his state polling by a couple of points. Much of that was, I think, the result of a surprising gain that happened right in the last few days after Hurricane Sandy. Clinton 2016 was the opposite–she was trending down at the end, rapidly. We just thought it wouldn’t be enough to sink her.
This time… the last days just seem remarkably stable. All the state poll aggregators have converged on Biden getting about 350 electoral votes–an almost Obama 2008-sized win–but we’re justifiably worried about a 2016-sized miss cutting into that, since a whole lot of those votes are relatively soft.
For Trump to win, it’d have to be a miss bigger than 2016, with none of the ominous indications from last-minute events that happened then. But that’s still possible.
What I don’t look forward to is the much likelier possibility that an uncertain situation on Election Night from delayed vote counting will allow Trump to claim victory with enough plausibility that some people not entirely in his camp will go along, and build the case for judicial meddling to overturn a clean loss. I hope the media don’t cooperate in this bullshit.
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: I just startled Her Serene Highness, Princess Mocha, right off the back of my chair.
Suzanne
Why do you think the right is blathering about “cancel culture”? They loved that arrangement.
I am stressed out. I am trying to nap. It might happen. It might not.
I unpacked a box and finally found my duvet cover. Yay.
trollhattan
Speaking of restaurants, took the spouse out for her birthday to a nice place that has patio and indoor seating, with ceiling-height glass doors that open, creating a big space for these COVID times. We’re seated on the patio enjoying the nice warm evening, watching foot traffic and ghostly groups of bicyclists go past, along with the occasional bipolar off-their-meds individual plus music from a couple venues on the same car-free street–could almost pretend it was a normal night out.
Normal took a holiday when something whooshed past our table and into the restaurant, followed by the crashing of a lot of glass emanating from the bar. A woman soon sprinted in from the street and a couple minutes later emerged with a very aggravated falcon on her arm. I assume she’s the falconer the city hires to try and reduce the nighttime crow population that coats downtown with guano every night, and in dire amounts during winter.
Somehow we took an odd turn and dined at Hogwarts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
good chance the intro music to this appearance was “Macho, Macho Man”
I saw him waddle on stage, and the first thing he did was start whining about how cold it is in Michigan.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
He’s in a bunch of stuff. Usually more substantial than MM!
BR
@Kay:
I hope so.
But I think you’ve made points that are deeper that may influence how a new administration might do things — things that are a bit wonkish — like how things such as certificates from the state regarding COVID deaths are being corrupted by the current incompetent cronies. I don’t know how one fixes these sorts of things because the set of rules/laws one would have to create would be endless, covering every single function of government, but I imagine you have better ideas about it than I do. Maybe anti-corruption laws are the way to go, but it all comes down to interpretation.
Kay
@debbie:
We had a Trump-decorated pickup parked on the street outside the (failing) convenience store by my office. I don’t think the truck runs- just the look of it with leaves and dirt piled up – but they had decorated it with their new American flags- the Trump flag and the police state flag. The flags are gone. Trucks still there. I was wondering if they had a change of heart. Maybe now they’ll move the truck before it gets tagged and towed.
debbie
@Kay:
That strategy worked back in 2000.
Starfish
@zhena gogolia: I just spoke to my mom, and she said that the television is wall-to-wall Trump. As an extremely online person, I don’t know what is happening on the television so it is interesting to hear these things.
Baud
@debbie:
2000 was very close.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: when I went out to get the Sunday papers this a.m., I was at a stoplight when I saw a big pick-up with a flag set up in the bed coming down the cross street. I rolled my eyes so hard I almost missed the fact that it was, in fact, a Biden flag.
Omnes Omnibus
@Starfish: I am not seeing any Trump ads, but plenty of Biden ones.
Tom Levenson
@Kay: ;-)
trollhattan
Assuming for a moment that Biden wins, will Republicans wait until the inauguration ends until they begin chanting “Why has Biden not fixed this pandemic, people are dying, we need a real leader!” or will they begin next week?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: perfect picture for our Macho, Macho Man trying to be outside
debbie
@Baud:
They’ve had 20 years to fine-tune their ruthlessness. Based on their SC actions over the past five years, don’t think they won’t try, even if we win by a mile.
BR
@Starfish:
I’ve been wondering if the paucity of Biden rallies in the closing days has been partly due to COVID but partly a strategy that it’s safer to cede the airwaves because it sets up the contrast of “do you really want the next 4 years to be more of this?”
Seems like they’re just doing enough rallies to keep the press from complaining that they aren’t doing enough rallies.
germy
Kay
@BR:
I think both the public and businesses take a lot for granted. They take for granted that there is this functioning legal/administrative state behind them. It’s why you can sign a contract or file a title or vote and assume that if you follow the rules the vote will be recorded and counted. That has to RUN or there is no “freedom” because you will spend every waking moment just operating in a lawless environment.
You and I have to make basic assumptions about the background structure of our personal and economic activities or we can’t function. You won’t be able to take care of your family or make money. You’ll spend all your time just navigating chaos.
Ksmiami
@Kay: the idea that a bunch of undereducated hicks can hold sway over the people actually building the real wealth and innovation in this country is complete BS. I think the western states should secede if Trumpov wins
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: In 2000, we didn’t remember 2000. It was all a huge surprise that came out of nowhere. The talk during the campaign had been whether it was OK to vote for Nader since both sides were the same. In the final days, they started wondering what the candidates would do if Al Gore won the electoral vote but Bush won the popular vote.
BR
@Kay:
But I really am serious — I know I’ve said it before, but I think there are a lot of things you write on here that are unique (and I read way too many things, and don’t see people saying what you say or as clearly as you do). I keep hoping to even share what you’ve written, but random comments from a blog aren’t quite share-able. Hope you can start writing a column or go back on the front page or even a twitter feed. (The latter might have the most punch, for what it’s worth, but it forces a certain type of writing.)
divF
@Cheryl from Maryland: We have a Little Free Library box on our corner. We are using it to clear out some of the books in the house, since the box has a slow net outflow. Of course, we take books from the box as well, so I don’t know how much this is really helping our book situation.
debbie
@Starfish:
Here in central Ohio, Trump ads disappeared for a long while, but now they’re back. They’re mostly strings of edited videos of Biden (like “I will raise taxes” period).
Yesterday, I drove through a very white conservative area and was surprised that a number of houses have BLM and Biden/Harris signs in addition to a handful of Trump signs.
NotoriousJRT
@NYCMT: My sincere condolences for your loss.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Republican dissatisfaction with President Biden will begin the day he is declared the winner.
BR
@Kay:
I’ve seen that chaos in other countries firsthand on vacation — where everything is broken and corrupt and to get anything done (even sometimes traveling within the region, going through checkpoints) you have to know someone who knows someone or be good at bluffing, plus a bribe. At every government office. It’s deeply corrosive. Only recently have I begun to understand why magazines like the Economist rate the “rule of law” in countries from a business standpoint.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
The traditional way a society adjusts to that is that everything just starts running on bribes, from cops and local officials on up.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Whiny ass titty baby is going to be a whiny ass titty baby.
Ksmiami
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I lived in Michigan during polar vortex year. They fucking ice golf in the UP. What a wimp…
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
You’re right. I recently listened to a program recapping 2000. I’d forgotten about the Brooks Brothers Riot. I think that, plus the SC, is what won it for the GOP. I can’t imagine they don’t have a similar plan now.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS FUCKING THIS.
The “invisible infrastructure” of society is what makes it function, and if it’s not maintained, a country will turn into a hell hole.
BR
@divF:
I think Little Free Libraries are maybe the most positive thing I’ve seen take off in the last few years, and I hope everyone puts one up. It’s a bit of “social infrastructure” to borrow the nice phrase from someone Chris Hayes interviewed a couple years back:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/social-infrastructure-week-with-eric-klinenberg/id1382983397?i=1000420399598
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
All the more reason to leave his supporters freezing in the open air. “Feel my pain. Bigly.”
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Needs more cowbell.
JPL
@MomSense: That’s how I feel. Since I don’t have cable, my son gave me something called frndly tv for the weather channel mainly. I noticed that they have the Hallmark Channel. I expect to put it on Tuesday, if only to mock it. I do have A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood to watch, By the time this is over, my brain will be mush.
Ksmiami
@Kay: Not to mention that (like what many of my Eastern European relatives dealt with) that this endemic corruption and bribery is undergirded by the perpetual threat of violence. You pay the bribes and protection in the hope that the thugs won’t turn on you but invariably it happens.
Tom Levenson
@Barbara: Thanks! I hope it amuses.
I’m finding it hard to focus on the next one, but when I do manage to dive in, I find it really helps me in just about every way: focus on disasters of the mid 17th c. puts me in a much finer frame of mind in the here and now.
Amir Khalid
Manchester United playmaker Paul Pogba finally breaks the deadlock: he tackles Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin’s ankle and concedes a penalty. Gunners captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang strokes it in, and the home side are 0-1 down.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: I like those Little Free Libraries but I’ve heard of a dismaying number of cases where someone just takes all the existing books and replaces them with their religious literature.
germy
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Do you not get cable TV with the Hallmark Channel?
Baud
@debbie:
Congress declares the winner, and we will control Congress this time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: My god, you are just a fount of cheer.
Mallard Filmore
@Kay:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/31/1991255/-Unions-Call-for-General-Strike-If-Trump-Interferes-with-Election-Outcome
Yarrow
@trollhattan: In 2008 Rush Limbaugh began blaming Obama for the economic crash weeks before the election. They’ll certain start blaming Biden for the pandemic if they haven’t already.
Emma from FL
OK. I AM TRULY PISSED and it’s time to unload. Hillary Clinton did not LOSE the election. SHE WAS FUCKING ROBBED. In spite of Comey AND the third-party ratfuckers she won the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. She lost the electoral college by less than 25,000 votes in four states COMBINED, and it is clear that at least in two of those states the vote was hacked. We still don’t know how much hacking led to fewer votes counted in other places.
CAN WE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP USING REPUBLICAN/REPUBLICAN-LEANING MEDIA TALKING POINTS ABOUT SOFTENING LEADS AND ALL OTHER EXTRANEOUS CRAP?!!!
*deep breath*
Thank you.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I’m not sure. I sense a growing recognition on social media (and even in some elite publications – Josh Marshall posted about that a few days ago) that Republicans and R Judges are just cheating openly and dishonestly now.
And with that comes the acknowledgement from Republicans that this is happening. But they’re not ashamed of it. They brag. And they say “We’re fighting to save America so we need to do everything we can.”
There’s a huge chunk of the country that just doesn’t believe in Democracy at all, or fairness. They just care that they come 9ut on top. I think itd be the same with contract disputes and voting, too. They don’t care about good administration or fairness, they just want to make sure they always win.
germy
Kay
We can be as nervous as we choose to be and I’m as nervous as many of you, but they have good polls and you can tell by where they’re going. The most valuable thing they have is time. They’re spending some of in states Trump considers a sure thing. That’s interesting. It’s just WORLDS more positive than ridiculous Trump claims of flipping Nevada.
germy
@zhena gogolia:
This is true!
Just One More Canuck
@Baud: .
JPL
One thing I have done to pass the time is do NYTimes crosswords from years back. I’m of the age that I only have to go back a few years, and start anew.
germy
Is our administration officials learning?
BR
@MisterForkbeard:
There was an astute observation one of Chris Hayes’s guests made that there has been an assumption since Reagan that the U.S. is a Laissez-faire capitalist democracy and that Dems are keen on throwing away the Laissez-faire capitalist part and the GOP is keen on throwing away the democracy part.
The Thin Black Duke
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: This is fucking amazing. Who wrote it?
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I cut cable some years ago.
debbie
@Kay:
Do you think Biden can win Ohio?
raven
@germy: It’s a month to the day that we lost Lil Bit and we just now finished her monument and buried her ashes. We wish we were able to have more time but the time we did have was wonderful.
BR
@germy:
My guess is a Stanford dean called and said we’re going to boot you if you don’t act up.
Brooklyn Dodger
@BR: We have a few in our neighborhood and they’re very well maintained. A new White-House themed one popped up recently, filled with books about the lives of American presidents. A chain of lights keeps it brightly lit at night for easy browsing. ?
Peale
@Kay: yep. I just want to vote for Dems. I don’t want to have to spend extra hours trying to figure out what to do to have my vote counted. If we lose because the courts decide that mail voting is unconstitutional, fine. I’ll vote in person. But then they’ll find some reason that only votes cast before 9 am count. It’ll always be something,
BR
@Brooklyn Dodger:
The irony is that I think they’re way more common in left-leaning areas despite the fact that they are representative of old-fashioned community values where neighbors look out for one another. Yet another way in which the words we use to describe American life don’t match the reality any more.
germy
germy
@raven:
Well, she was lucky to have you, I can tell you that.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
It’s a great video and everyone should watch it right NAOW!
BR
@Peale:
Sadly I fully expect there to be at least a couple of polling places in the country to get shut down on Tuesday due to threats or vandalism or whatnot by GOPers and conveniently some crazy judge will rule that whatever alternative accommodation that was made so those folks could vote was not allowed so their ballots should be thrown out. It’s why the margins will matter so much this time.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
I guess he hasn’t read a newspaper in five or ten years.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
I think too many liberals spend too much time defining the country in GOP terms. Base GOP are not a majority of voters. The alliance on voting rights is Dem + unaffiliated. That’s the majority. Unaffiliated want their votes counted, whether they’re voting for R’s or D’s. We want the same thing. Republican incumbents + judges don’t.
If you’re an independent or a moderate in “good government, high turnout” Minnesota, Republican judges just told you cannot rely on the rules you were given for voting. That’s unfair, it goes against our whole legal system’s concept of “reliance” and it can be a great political issue for Democrats.
germy
@zhena gogolia:
This is what amazes me. I’m a prole who reads blogs and I know more than this “elite” guy?
(The only other explanation is that he knew, but pretended he didn’t until he was called out.)
raven
@germy: She was a good little doggie.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: Is he talking about Russia Today? Well-known as a KGB propaganda and recruiting tool since the Cold War?
divF
@BR:
Berkeley (CA) is well-populated with them, so yes.
On a related subject, mask-wearing is very well-socialized here, including college students, teen-agers, and toddlers. No one makes a big deal of it, it is just something everyone does as members of the community.
Kay
@Peale:
You are entitled to rely upon an orderly, rule-based process for voting. Follow the rules, it’s counted. That’s the promise. They’re breaking that promise, not with “Joe Biden” but with voters.
People love D voting laws too. I live in a Trump 65% county and early vote is popular because it’s convenient. They will lose this fight politically not because they’re contra Democrats but because they’re contra voters.
germy
@zhena gogolia:
stuff like that keeps my mind off of more worrisome topics.
SFAW
@Kay:
A variant of this is what pisses me off about the RWMF idiots talking about health care (i.e. medical insurance etc) and “let Joe Sixpack choose his plan because he’s smarter than some bureaucrat.” I’m reasonably intelligent, my wife has been a nurse to 40 years, she understands insurance and the market, she and I talk about it, and I STILL don’t feel confident that I can pick the right plan without help. People who don’t have the same advantages don’t have time to research plan cost/benefits endlessly, and even if they did, they might not understand the nuances of the various plans.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
But she’s a cop!
Funny how late in the election cycle substantive stories about Harris finally show up.
I am in Southern California, and early on liked Harris. But even here there is a weird thing that Northern California politicians are often not all that well known in Southern California, and the Bay area and other northern regions don’t know that much about Southern California political leaders.
And National news? Idiots still refer to Jerry Brown as “Governor Moonbeam.” Lazy bastards.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Beau of the Fifth Column posted a video the other day about predictions. He said even if Biden wins, that won’t be end of all this because the real problem in this country is that the Executive branch has too much power.
Calouste
@germy: Would never have gotten the approval of 38 states.
germy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Russia Today? Russian Times? I don’t remember the name.
A Russian propaganda outfit the State Department warned about. He’s either ignorant or deliberately spreading disinfo.
Adam Silverman could probably explain more.
SFAW
@germy:
So, not only is he a moron when it comes to COVID-19, but he’s also a general moron.
Only the best people, alrighty.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@The Thin Black Duke:
His name is Marc Murphy, and he’s great at everything he does.
debbie
@germy:
I remember seeing this on one of Rick Steves’ programs, but the cows weren’t half as raucous. The Alps must not be what they used to be.
trollhattan
@debbie:
TBF that only applies when a Republican is in office. I suspect our shiny newly refurbished USSC will concur. Remember the horror at Obama’s “executive overreach?” Of course, that was forced by McConnell’s refusing to pass anything the WH wanted, for six long years.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Make Alps Great Again!
FelonyGovt
I’m sobered thinking that if (Heaven forbid) Trump is reelected, nothing will be done about COVID, we will all probably get it sooner or later, and my remaining years will be spent cooped up in the house.
In my happier moments, I’m thinking landslide for the good guys.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Hell, I think the Office of the Senate Majority Leader CLEARLY has too much power.
I suppose it all depends on who’s making the observation, but maybe there needs to be a revamp, or at least a couple Amendments righting the overreaching.
debbie
@FelonyGovt:
I think if you move to a Red State, you’ll be fine.
germy
I don’t drink sixpacks but my wife and I are simple folk who watch antenna TV, and the ads are full of “Medicare Advantage deals” that resemble used car ads. I’d feel more comfortable being guided by a bureaucrat than someone who was more concerned with their own profit than my well-being.
There’s a group of local guys who I’ve seen advertising lately, offering to guide the newly eligible through the medicare process. They look like guys who organize trump boat rallies on their days off, and live for golf. I told my wife “I wouldn’t trust these guys anywhere near my finances.”
divF
@Brachiator: The Jerry Brown snark is infuriating. He spent 50 years in public / political life at all levels in the state of California. He was personally quirky, and you could disagree with some of his policy positions (I certainly did), but there is no question that he was a dedicated public servant, and not beholden to the elite.
SFAW
@craigie:
How do you figure? Dice being cast, snake eyes all seem related.
“X is a tsunami which will spread like wildfire” is, I think, a mixed metaphor.
Kay
Always remember they’re dumb and incompetent. They are, all of them, low quality hires. They’re idiots so they make poor decisions nearly every single day- even when they’re trying to be malicious they fuck it all up. Trump hires bad people.
Brachiator
@debbie:
Been a complaint about the office, especially by conservatives, since the era of Woodrow Wilson.
One counter to this is that the Congress is too fractious and too partisan to be more equal to the executive branch, and that party politics favors a powerful president, who sets the tone and commands the attention of the media and the public.
BR
@divF:
And the fact that Brown’s proposal to put up a satellite for state emergency communications was a great idea, not something to mock.
divF
@germy: This is just nuts. the Executive Office of the President has a Comms office whose job it is to vet contacts with the public. No big surprise, it is completely dysfunctional in the Trump administration.
germy
@debbie:
The cows are usually more subdued when they know it’s PBS.
Brooklyn Dodger
@BR: Oh yeah, judging by all the Biden/Harris signs, and friendly notices posted in front yards encouraging mask wearing.
Martin
@Barbara: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people. If you read the A12 stories about what the AG had been doing, it was clear she was doing solid work. She took some risky decisions to go harder after companies, she inserted the AG into corporate mergers quite regularly (Xavier does that a lot as well) for the benefit of the public.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus:
I believe it’s a place you go and eat indoors if you are okay with getting COVID.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: There’s absolutely some truth to this. But I also think there’s a lot of truth to the idea that they’ve obfuscated the issue sufficiently that the general public has a hard time caring.
We see this with Trump a lot – he crimes all the time. Constantly. Lies, too. And his base simultaneously loves it and denies that he’s doing it. But they also accuse Biden and all Democrats of the same thing. And so for a lot of the politically unengaged, they absorb the “all politicians are bad” or “both sides” we hate so much.
So even when people know they’re being cheated, I think Republicans have actually just conditioned them to accept it.
Ruckus
@BR:
I think that a blowout may happen just because so many states are doing some form of early voting, like CA, which has had mail in voting for decades but this year sent every registered voter a ballot, allows same day registration, early voting, and even has extended the last day of counting mail in ballots by 17 days, as long as they are postmarked by the close of the physical polling places. They want participation, they encourage participation, they understand that voting is a very basic right, that has to be made as easy as possible, not as hard or restrictive as possible. republicans of course don’t want open, free, easy voting, because they lose at that far more often than they win. republicans do not want open and free voting, any more than they want an open and free country. An open and free country that respects every person and counts every person as an equal is against everything that republicans stand for. republicans want to conserve the country for themselves, all the money, all the privilege, all the rights. That’s why they went all in for the racist in chief, the most destructive ass every elected to the office, because they are afraid of losing something they were never supposed to have in the first place, privilege.
WaterGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, no! Did you startle her as you gasped with fear, when you saw my text to John? Or with laughter when you saw the content of my (no good, very bad, horrible) text to john?
Starfish
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s not ads. it is coverage on Fox and other “news” channels.
sukabi
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: that is perfectly said.
Martin
@BR: Two points for Newsom (who has exceeded by expectations):
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is a threat, “look what we can do if you make us mad”
bluefoot
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: CBS is kind of pro-authoritarian. Not just their news, but also their scripted shows. Look at all the NCIS and similar shows (does CBS have any other type of scripted show?) – law enforcement always good, any means necessary to catch the bad guys and screw individual rights, everything black and white. I like a popcorn procedural as much as the next person, but come on.
Ken
They’ll disappear in about a month when the open enrollment period ends, and the usual lineup will return – invest in gold, get a reverse mortgage, and ask your doctor about Xyzzyx.
Cermet
@Ksmiami: The Eastern States are both the main sources of financial centers, higher education institutions, and none too small agriculture/industrial region as well.
Say we just divide those red states into a single territory and offer relocation for any dems (i.e. educated people)?
divF
@Ken: I want to see an ad saying “ask your astronomer about syzygy”.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Never understood the fear of clowns.
They have a baseball bat receptacle area between their legs like everyone else. Also kids can land a solid punch in said same area with ease. So why the hate for clowns? I get that they dress funny and wear stupid makeup and wigs, and do stupid stuff but still I don’t get the hate, and fear for clowns.
Maybe it was having a neighbor who was a clown when I was a child, a veteran with one leg, who all the neighborhood kids knew both with normal clothing and with his clown outfit. I respect vets, even when I was young.
mrmoshpotato
Can you hear the howling Russkie laughter from Moscow?
One of the replies via @HillaryWarnedUs –
Starfish
@Emma from FL: They should spend some time investigating all of that. There should be some table pounding about the importance of the right to vote, the legitimacy of elections, and how Republicans were stealing that from people.
Kathleen
@Yarrow: As well as the media and “The Left”.
Mo MacArbie
@SFAW: I think that the die being cast is not a cube with different numbers of pips on each side being rolled, but metal poured into a mold to make something that will stamp more metal.
Ruckus
@Kay:
republicans have been trying to delegitimize opposition voting for a long time. I lived in the same state you do, OH back in 2004 when Ken Blackwell screwed with machines and polling places. He had done things before that I believe and he isn’t alone in this field.
republicans have been and continue to try to do anything they can to stop people voting who disagree with them because if they don’t they will become even more outdated, out voted, and plain thrown out. They have attempted to sell their outdated bullshit for most of my life but it’s way past the time they should be relegated to absolute has been status. And they have shown time and time again why that’s true, shitforbrains is just the most obvious and oblivious reason why.
zhena gogolia
@Mo MacArbie:
No, it comes from Caesar saying “Alea jacta est.” It’s a die like a Las Vegas die.
Kathleen
@Emma from FL: One million applause emojis. Well stated righteous rant!!!
Cheryl from Maryland
@raven: may you and the princess always think of her with joy.
mrmoshpotato
@TaMara (HFG): Cartoons. Watch cartoons.
SFAW
@Mo MacArbie:
No, “die” is the singular of dice, as zhena gogolia has pointed out, and “cast” is a synonym for “thrown.
ETA: Yes, there is a metal manufacturing process called “die casting,” but it has nothing to do with this saying.
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The sum of it in one small box.
Please tell your friend thank you for spelling it out so well. And thank you for posting that here.
RobertB
@Mo MacArbie: “cast” as in “throw”.
craigie
@SFAW:
Except that the expression is “The die is cast” which means something completely different.
I agree he managed to tie them together, but they are two different ideas.
Matt McIrvin
@Mo MacArbie: I used to think that, but in the original sources, the Greek or Latin phrase he used was about a gambling-type die, “alea” (like “aleatoric”) or “kybos”. He was saying the dice were being rolled.
Nora
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Okay, so I guess they’ve given up any possibility of getting New Jersey, huh? Or any of the political positions in New Jersey? You know how people feel when they’re stuck in traffic on the Garden State Parkway? They’re pissed as hell, that’s how they feel. New Jersey people spend a lot of time in their cars (I grew up there), and do not like people who cause traffic jams for their own amusement. Just ask former Governor Chris Christie about Bridgegate.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Bummer. I mean, The Hallmark Channel is in break glass in case of emergency channel.
I watched a lot of it when I broke my ankle. Lately I have been thinking I might need to watch some, too.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
But if Trump loses can we continue to say “nothing mattered”? It did matter. It lost him his next election.
His lies matter. Most people don’t believe a word he says and I do mean “most”. The 65% again. That’s partly why he’s losing- no one believed his attacks on Biden or his lies about “turning a corner” or the bullshit about the vaccine that was supposedly coming.
Credibility only matters when you need it. He needed it to get re-elected, reached for it and didn’t have it. He had it in ’16, pissed it away by ’20. That’s the price he paid.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
LOL. I have been going through the NYT crossword archives in chronological order the last few months. They go back to November 1993 and are a good stress reliever. I have been judging my stress level by how many I do in a day. I am up to July 2013 and think I have enough left to get through the election and the subsequent craziness. Maybe even until Inauguration Day.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s Chris Christie’s job!
Mo MacArbie
OK, so I don’t actually know what I’m talking about here; I’m just repeating what I thought I read somewhere. I appreciate the corrections, and that shall be the end of my election season disinformation.
Steeplejack
@raven:
A nice commemoration. ?
Kathleen
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thank you for sharing this brilliant piece and please thank your friend.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ruckus:
Thanks!
I’m Best part is that his bio isn’t that of a wild eyed radical. Marine combat vet, field grade officer, button down business lawyer, knowledgeable prosecutor.
He’s been out dozens of times on Breonna Taylor marches.
Voices like his close up the abyss.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
37% of voters think Trump is honest and trustworthy. I guess that’s too high but what’s the point of exaggerating it into a majority?
Can’t we just work with the other 63? Seems like enough.
When they’re working to throw out all these votes they’re potentially throwing out the votes of the other 63%. It’s fucking outrageous behavior from public employees and people shouldn’t have to put up with it. Not “Democrats”. People.
WaterGirl
Even with a worst-case scenario, Joe Biden is not going to concede anything without a major fight, “in the name of not looking like a sore loser.”
A Brooks Brothers riot is not going to work this time.
The Thin Black Duke
@WaterGirl: As ye olde bromide goes, “Nothing focuses the mind like an imminent hanging.” Enough people realize now that ignoring Covid-19 will be the ruin of the United States, and Trump is not the guy to get this nation out of this crisis. Help us, Uncle Joe, you’re our only hope.
debbie
I wonder if Trump has yet opined on BoJo’s monthlong lockdown.
Ksmiami
@Cermet:
All aligned w Canada!!!
@Cermet:
Haroldo
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Is it OK with you that I copy this and send it to a few of my email correspondents?
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I don’t disagree with you. But I do think there’s been a fairly successful attempt to obfuscate and lower the bar for everything and it’s just something we have to contend with.
SFAW
@craigie:
As noted above, “the die is cast” refers to the throwing of one of a set of dice. “The die is cast” is not really different from “The dice are cast,” except as regards quantity. The meanings are pretty much indistinguishable. And it’s somewhat difficult to throw (or “cast”) snake eyes with a single die.
SFAW
@Mo MacArbie:
Let this serve as an example for the RWMFs to follow. ETA: As in: I’d hopehope they will stop with the disinformation.] Yeah, right.
And of course, you’re not the only person to get the meaning worng, it’s no great failing to do so.
Uncle Cosmo
Aztec High Priest from Tenochtitlan holding on line 2…//
James E Powell
@craigie:
I believe Julius Caesar said something more like “F**k those A**holes! Let’s go!” but his secretary wrote the more well known quote for posterity’s sake.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Haroldo:
Please do!
Uncle Cosmo
@zhena gogolia: There’s a bit of obsolete snark in The Devil’s Dictionary when Bierce remarks that “the die is not cast, but cut.” True enough in his day, when dice were customarily made from wood or ivory; not so much since the advent of plastics.
Emma from FL
@Kay: See, I don’t think they do. They say it as a way to give themselves a rational reason. “I’m not really a flaming asshole/racist/Nazi/incel/whatever other kind of monster. Really. I have REASONS.” It’s all bullshit. They are who they are.
mrmoshpotato
The Lions are going to lose, but again – fuck the Colts coach, and his plastic face shield!
Also, go Vikings and go Bears!
Bluegirlfromwyo
@germy: No Trump administration official learns. Atlas got caught and couldn’t talk his way out of it.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: If Dump does, I hope BoJo tells him to go fuck himself. I will root for injuries.
janesays
96 hours?
You don’t expect the outcome to be known until close to noon on Thursday?
FSM, I hope not.
janesays
@Cermet: 96 hours from now is Thursday afternoon.
If we don’t know by then who won, it’s very bad. Barring some weird repeat of 2000, we’ll know the results in Florida by early Wednesday morning, at the latest. They’re already counting their mail-in ballots. They’re not like Pennsylvania in that regard.
The only state whose outcome is potentially likely to be still unknown by Thursday afternoon is Pennsylvania. But if all goes according to plan, Biden will have already cleared the 270 EV mark before then. If he hasn’t and it all comes down to PA and it’s very close in that state, but very worried.
Luciamia
Just one more cherry on the shit sundae that is 2020.
Haroldo
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Thank you.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: “It’s 106 miles to Rome, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
“Hit it.”
Matt McIrvin
@Uncle Cosmo: Board-game dice are molded but I think casino dice like they use on craps tables in Vegas are machined.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: The only apology I’ll entertain from this mofo is a Captain Needa apology.
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: The latter. Her Serene Highness should be used to it by now as I read here and at Wonkette and the comments (or non-comments, over at Yr Wonkette) always have snark that one reacts to.
Villago Delenda Est
@divF: The incompetence permeates the Donald WH from top to bottom. “Leadership” in action.
laura
@raven: she seemed to be very excited about everything all the time – especially you. I’m thinking about the poem you share to comfort others on the loss of a boon companion. Wishing you that comfort.
catclub
@Cheryl Rofer: Any reports of people being silently dropped from voter rolls? I thought that happened too much to be accidental in 2016 – Wisconsin.
glc
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Little Free Library
CarolPW
@glc: That was lovely, and exactly what I needed right now. Thank you so very much.
SFAW
@catclub:
I thought WI was big into preventing darkies from registering. Hadn’t heard about voters being dropped. Not saying it didn’t happen, just surprised I either missed it, or had forgotten.
WaterGirl
@SFAW: With all the early voting, I would think we would be hearing about it. If voters are being dropped from the rolls, they would discover it when they tried to vote early, i would think.
hoping so, anyway.
Ruckus
@germy:
I agree with that 100000%.
As a cancer survivor I wanted it gone, as soon as possible but I didn’t want it to take me with it.
It took my sister, I knew what little time there really is and that cancer can’t tell time. It goes as fast as it wants and takes everything it wants. And while we can and do fight it, if it wants us, the only thing we have is time, a limited amount at that.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Most people do like I did when I paid for health care insurance for my employees. I told my broker to look at the programs he was trying to sell me and select 5 that he would buy for his employees and tell me why those and which one specifically he liked best. I then looked at the five and the whys and made my choice. Most often I didn’t choose his choice and when we discussed it he understood.
Everyone is different, with different needs and different reasons for a choice. And at least we have that, for now.
Ruckus
@janesays:
CA won’t officially know till Nov 20th. As the number of mail in ballots equals the total number of registered voters and they can be postmarked up to 8pm Nov 3, the state has given till end of day Nov 20 as the last day to arrive. So unless the number of counted votes for one candidate is higher than total possible missing ones cast it can’t be called till then.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@NYCMT: I’m so sorry.
Fuck COVID.
Yutsano
@Kay:
This is not news to you but there is a simple solution: Make the entire John Lewis Voting Right Act immune from Supreme Court jurisdiction. In fact do that for any important legislation the Democrats are going to pass over the next four years. That could make us vulnerable on the federal level except we expand the Appellate courts to dilute any conservative shenanigans. Easy peasy.
cain
@Aleta:
2016 election night was scarring for me. I was so taken aback.
cain
@different-church-lady:
Indeed. There is going to be tomfoolery from tuesday till January. Trump that motherfucker is not going to give up. Once that oath is administered (behind bullet proof glass)
cain
@debbie:
Wasn’t that during a blue moon? :-)
janesays
@Yutsano: How exactly would you do that?
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
Your argument makes sense. Of course, “makes sense” all too often has met the “reality” of the Liar-in-Chief and his minions, and lost.
No One You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: Warren Buffet quote, “Drop me in middle of Namibia and see how much money I make,” applies. Civil infrastructure, from roads to laws, precedes predictable profitable business.
sdhays
This is actually a tiny bit encouraging:
That’s the Republican Speaker of the Texas House.
texasdoc
@germy: Late to the thread, but I think all those Medicare Advantage ads should have a sotto voce tag at the end that if you sign up for their plan, you may not be able to see the doctor you need because of restricted networks. (Sort of like how the drug ads all have a thing at the end that says drug X may cause mumble, mumble…and death.)