I'm trying not to puke I'm so nervous.
This is a trend that should scare the dickens out of the state's incumbent Republican candidates including Gov. Pat McCrory, U.S. Senator Richard Burr, a gaggle of state legislators - and, of course, Donald Trump.
I haven't seen any informed speculation about what Trump is likely to do way downticket. It'd be nice to turn some of those state legislatures in the direction of human decency.
Two years of human decency and people might start to like it.
In LA County, they're saying that 100 people turned up on the first day of early voting, compared to 12 people on the equivalent day in 2012. Not exactly a swing state, but could portend turnout in places like Nevada (and help rack up the popular vote total, important symbolically).
nah by then they'll be bored of it.
Bored by human decency is a pretty good description of conservatives.
It certainly makes for bad movies, but it's actually quite enjoyable.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good, but I'm nervous because there's a long time between now and November 28th.
11. On the other hand I would be unsurprised if a significant section of Trump's base turn out to vote on the 28th, because Trump's base.
Trump just gave a speech reminding people to go vote on November 28ths.
Just being explicit in case it wasn't.
This is funny because the actual election day is November 8th.
This is funny because the actual election day is November 8th.
North Carolina elections are special right now for a number of reasons. One is that the legislature is frantically trying to lock inequality and prejudice in place before the state turns into Virginia in a few years. Another is that it seems to be the test site for the experimental attempt by corporate interests to bring national money into state legislature politics, just throwing a hundred thousand dollars of anti-Democrat negative ads into a race one day without even telling the candidate you're supporting that it's going to happen -- and the answer seems to be yes, you can buy a state legislature for less than a single US senator. Maybe even less than a US congressman given that most of them are in safe seats.
And because November 8th comes before November 28th, anybody who makes this mistake will be unable to vote.
It's a code. November 28th is the day of the Revolution.
Polling places in "certain locations" will be filled on November 28 with people there to make sure nothing goes wrong. Which I suppose means children in gymnasiums at majority black schools wondering what all those weird white people are doing there that Monday.
There were no Democrats on the ballot for state legislature in the district where I vote. That's unfortunate. Ordinarily it would be a stretch for a Dem to win in that district, but this seems like a winnable year.
It's a code. November 28th is the day of the Revolution.
Also my birthday. Sad!
23: It's okay, history will remember it as December 11th.
||
Does anyone else remember an article, probably about the kinder gentler personal side of Trump? I remember a vignette about Trump sending a car to pick up the narrator and when she looked up front, he was the chauffeur.
It is on my mind because I'm fairly sure one of the interviewees talked about Trump taking her furniture shopping. And he said in the tape he hit on the married woman by taking her furniture shopping. Is furniture shopping a regular technique for him?
|>
25: Yeah, when he was hitting on me, he dragged me to Ikea.
I'm sorry if I'm bringing up bad memories for you.
26
You joke, but I asked my current boyfriend out to an IKEA date as a way of hitting on him. He had class at the time I went, so I asked him if I could pick up any furniture for him, primarily so I had an excuse to go to his place and drop it off. He had me buy a desk lamp he didn't actually need because he also wanted an excuse to meet up with me. Later we both realized the desk lamp was a pretense on both our parts for hooking up.
28: Do you still have the desk lamp?
I still have the desk lamp that I used to bonk Donald on the head when he grabbed my balls.
28 is why graduate students are horrible.
28 would be perfection if rather than a lamp it had been an inkstand.
I do still have the desk lamp. It is beside me in my campus office as we speak.
Read all this and you get a feeling he's this kid who had a lot of money and thus never had to learn to be human. In other circumstances one might be sympathetic.
29: Hunh - someone here has bonked Donald. Usually, or so I have been led to believe, he's the one doing the bonking. Not quite clear on the bit about doing it on "the head", however.
32: If you can speak with it, then I withdraw 30.
Read all this and you get a feeling he's this kid who had a lot of money and thus never had to learn to be human.
He probably still has a sled from his childhood that he treasures. It has gold-plated runners and "TRUMP" written in big letters across the top.
37 to Stabby's statistician friend.
Anyway, a black man in Illinois in just managed to scare more people by answering a survey than Nat Turner did by murdering dozens.
What's the over/under on (1) How many women will come forward with allegations of Trump sexually assaulting them and
(2) how long it will take before the GOP manages to find some excuse for impeaching Clinton?
My takes (over): (1) eight (2) two and a half years.
28: It's like "Gift of the Magi" meets "Fight Club" and it works.
41.1: I'll definitely take the over on eight. There are four new ones just tonight, in addition to the one or two that were already out there.
I'm thinking over eight too. But I figure it's unlikely to reach 16 or more,so I picked about the middle of the range.
I dunno, at this rate 16 doesn't seem implausible.
If you have a private practice in a swing state, you could set up a small ad along the lines of "Have you or a loved one been molested by Donald J Trump? If you have, you may be entitled to compensation. Call the law offices of So and Seaux right away."
Also, who looks at a ten year old and thinks, "I'll be dating her in ten years"? I've known honest to God sociopaths who are less creepy. Well, only one, but still.
It's really weird that somebody who would look at a ten-year-old and thing about dating her would wait ten years instead of eight. Donald Trump: Creepy and ignorant about the age of majority.
Maybe he meant he would start in eight and they'd still be together two years later? That doesn't really seem like his style, though.
Probably she was 10 but she only looked 8.
I don't see the problem.
It would be hilarious if it turned out that Trump's lawyers didn't actually send a letter to the NYT but just addressed one that way and released it to the press.
Well, the NYT is sort of the press, isn't?
And another (warning: autoplays sound).
People on Twitter sure seem to think 53 is accurate. Not that that's exactly an accurate measure.
(No, I'm still not on there myself. I just check in on Ellickson via the web interface.)
53: I sure hope that the Times' reply refers to the answer given in Arkell v. Pressdram.
I sure hope that the Times' reply refers to the answer given in Arkell v. Pressdram
"Fuck you, clown"?
Arkell, the app that sends legal threats automatically! Pressdram, the app that writes back to say fuck off!
The Clinton campaign is starting to hit the Russia stuff. http://m.chinapost.com.tw/international/2016/10/12/480871/Clinton-adviser.htm
Also, the One Black Guy For Trump reminds me that a few years ago, there was a poll in the UK showing a sudden and alarming surge in support for the BNP, basically neo-nazis. The full table showed that the surge was driven by the result for Wales...and more specifically, Welsh women aged 25 to 49 in North Wales. This crossbreak was obviously tiny, about four respondents.
And then somebody remembered that BNP leader Nick Griffin lived in North Wales, with his wife and two grown-up daughters. The autodialler had rolled the dice and hit the Griffins, and the weighting did the rest.
They took three people from the same household?
More precisely, I think one of the daughters lived a few farms away. But that was the simplest explanation anyone had for it
60. Bruce Schneier warned about people editing hacked documents before release a month or so ago. The problem is it's such a perfect get-out-of-jail-free card. Anything leaked that makes you look bad? "Oh, the Russians edited it."
I suppose all documents could be required to be signed/certed PDFs in future.
How much coverage is the hacking getting in the US? It should be bigger news by far than Trump but seemingly not.
It is astonishing how it's being covered. It's not exactly being ignored, but it's not really being treated as a horrifying destabilizing new era in politics. It's being treated less scandalously that, say, Coach Joe at Penn State, and more like, "you know those libertarian hackers that you can't keep track of and a lot of stuff seems to happen in Russia...they're doing stuff."
66: And "look at this isolated chunk of private correspondence that I can take out of context and thereby further the hacker's ends."
I know there is no honor in mocking Dinseh D'Souza but I think he is advocating Droit du seigneur for CEOs.
I guess it is now fine for men to use women's bathrooms but not for the CEO of Miss Universe to walk into a woman's dressing room
If Trump was going in to take a dump, I think this would all be fine.
I have no actual point. Just wanted to put that mental image out there because it was stuck in my head.
A mental image we're all in fact living in, I think.
69. So you're cool with senior executives defecating on your make-up table?
Let's say the Democrats get a clean sweep. Is there anything they can do now to hinder gerrymandering in 2020? I find it hard to believe the Republicans won't win in 2020.
72: I thought dressing rooms had toilets.
68
Do these people not understand how public restrooms work?
73
Is there anything they can do now to hinder gerrymandering in 2020?
AIUI, a clean sweep of Congress wouldn't do much about gerrymandering. Governorships or state houses, though, those would make a big difference, yeah.
I find it hard to believe the Republicans won't win in 2020.
Eh, I agree, but not because of gerrymandering, just because one party holding the White House for 16 years would be a big deal. Hasn't happened since FDR and Truman, I'm pretty sure (can't get to Wikipedia now for some weird reason and I don't know of any other way to look things up), and changes in circumstances since then make it less, not more, likely.
76.last: Correct. And 12 years has only happened once, with Reagan/Bush the Elder.
77: D's won three in a row in 92/96/00.
How about a mandatory voting law? Worth a shot.
79: And give up our precious freedom?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with tears of boredom.
I wonder if the mandate of the Census could be expanded to have them provide recommendations for redistricting based on non-partisan criteria. Then, state legislatures would at least have to explicitly reject maps that are fairly drawn in their rush to gerrymander the shit out of everything. And people running for office in 2020 would be forced take a public stand about weather they intend to accept the Census' recommendations. It might help in a few states.
I suppose all documents could be required to be signed/certed PDFs in future.
I get all my email in digest form. Message digest.
This is more optimistic than I usually am, but I'm not sure the Republicans can get it together in 4 years. Being in a bad demographic situation is one thing, but not only have they lost their damn minds, but everyone can see that they lost their damn minds.
I was thinking that, too. They're not regrouping, they're imploding.
The letter from a lawyer for the NYT, responding to the threat of a libel suit from Donald Trump is quite satisfying.
They should have copied that guy from the Browns and written, "I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters."