Sam Wang has a whole analysis designed to let people find the maximal value of their marginal dollar.
Where? I only saw his find-a-house-race thing.
Yeah, that's what I meant- donate or volunteer for one of those. He hypes it up a bit more in his posts about being the best thing to do now to help your party: "Whichever major party you support, your optimal strategy as a citizen is to focus on knife-edge cases, i.e. cases where the outcome is in doubt."
Not having read the Sam Wang thing (even on search), wouldn't it have an inherent collective action problem depending on reader/need ratio? If too many crowd into the two or three races an analysis finds most influenceable, that leaves other races unsupported.
Probably Sam Wang doesn't move enough dollars for that effect to kick in.
Also, the campaigns won't turn your money away but it's a little late now for the $$ to have the biggest effect. Donating time is more important. I am going to Nevada but now kinda regretting it bc I feel like there's a house race near here where I could add more marginal value as a volunteer.
I voted by mail this morning. The California ballot is so long that it took me almost 1/2 an hour just to fill out the form, knowing mostly how I'd vote on everything. And there were still one or two propositions I had to look up -- even after organizing and participating in two info presentations about the propositions. It is so fucking insane.
If I could donate time in a bottle....
I just showed my kids the Quicksilver scenes from Xmen.
Good and terrifying podcast on the Russian hacking campaign. Worst part: some jurisdictions don't have hard-copy voters' rolls anymore. Delete a swathe of Rs somewhere, everything blows the fuck up after the election. For extras, there's still an empty chair on the SCOTUS. It's way past time for Obama to call a national emergency here.
Oh, Wang was pointing to something below the fold.
It's way past time for Obama to call a national emergency here.
By far this is my biggest takeaway from the election. I truly don't give a shit (no offense) about the deep thoughts and feelings of Trump voters. The cybersecurity failure is a big fucking deal both for the Democratic Party and for the world. I am dying to know how the details of how Trump and his supporters have protected their data.
My guess would be "not very well but it doesn't matter since what he says when he knows cameras are recording is worse than what Clinton would write if she was going to burn the paper after she finished."
"to know the details"
Oh, Mossy, with this podcast you have FINALLY ended my election-long (lifelong?) streak of not hearing Donald Trump's voice. So that's what he sounds like.
Sorry lurid! I got a bit of a shock myself, I admit.
I thought I was bad having never heard Ted Cruz's voice until somebody put up the "undergraduate asshole" video here.
Damn your eyes, Mossy; that was a streak well worth preserving.
The no-video streak is unbroken. Still photos, you really can't avoid.
Mea maxima culpa. Keeping the trigger-warnings up to date is so hard.
16, 17: Yes, some tech site did a look and I believe they* were on some Windows 2003 servers not up to latest patch levels and some Exchange 2007 Web mail. So did not look to be a fortress...
*I think they said his "organization" so not sure if it was the campaign or business.
Trump doesn't email -- his only means of electronic communication are tweets. His campaign manager communicates with him via her appearances on cable television.
Huh, I didn't know Californians had vote by mail. We have only that, and my ballot this year took under five minutes, thank God. I remember one election about 20 years ago when everyone went initiative-crazy, and the voters' pamphlet was the size of a phone book. Halfway through, I was thinking that a benevolent dictatorship might not be such a bad thing.
In Pennsylvania we have exactly one ballot question, which asks "Should we have a retirement age of 75 for judges?" This is highly misleading. If you get the absentee ballot, it is followed by a longer paragraph explaining that it is really asking us to increase the retirement age from 70 to 75. And if you read the newspaper, it explains that it is really asking us to let Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Saylor, age 70, stay in the job.
We have one like that too, but I'm not sure which judges are behind it.
That's very interesting but I don't think it counts as a Slate pitch.
30: Oh, Jesus Christ. Hey Slate, I still have more questions: can you make it longer and more full of technical details? Ideally, placing a few more paragraphs in the way of scrolling down to that contact-pattern graph? I just think, I mean, we don't want to go the route of "FBI INVESTIGATES CLASSIFIED HILLARY EMAILS FOUND IN SEXTING SCANDAL" because it might influence the motherfucking election in some way.
A loud conversation in Russian just passed my window. Coincidence??
Actually, let's play a game of thermonuclear war. This NYT article I just saw, and kind of didn't quite finish reading, proposes to resettle Democrats in Republican areas: suburbs, or blue enclaves in red or purple states.
The game is to forcibly resettle other commenters. If you don't want to use force, you can use "a job offer" instead. Pick one or more commenters, and a city or state where they will be content. Describe the amenities in the target city. Describe what life problems will be solved. Describe the obviously solely good things that the commenter will do once resettled. End with a link to a real estate listing, if desired.
You may also move people to and from other countries. You may not move anyone out of Pittsburgh.
34 should be a guest post on the front page.
Where I am, the cities are blue, you'll find the reddish bits in the suburbs, but rural areas are pretty liberal.
My attempt to resettle in the most leftist state in teh country seems to be progressing. Basically, the opposite of 34.
32: That graph is pretty weak, no? Not sure how they squint at it to gloss the way they so.
34.last is apparently our family motto.
34 has already had an effect. Instead of being willing to live in any state on the East Coast except South Carolina, I am now also willing to live in South Carolina.
South Carolina has really nice beaches.
I don't even understand that combination of words.
Spoken like someone who's never had a bottle-rocket shot up their nose.
I did once commit negligent arson with one. A bottle rocket, that is.
Here is more from that odious character Thomas Frank: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/the-podesta-emails-show-who-runs-america-and-how-they-do-it
Eagerly awaiting my "job offer" in 34.
Problem is the only place I'd really want to resettle in is NYC.
I'm already homesteading in the red zone. I think the best path to contentment would be resettling my ex somewhere she can't refuse to do Halloween when it's her year but then drive the streets to find us trick-or-treating so she can stop and say hello.
This game is harder than I realized. Surely some of you are more inclined than I am to play puppetmaster with other people's lives? Neb, LB, lourdes and I, Smearcase and Bave, Clytie, and possibly ogged or Buttercup seem like possible candidates. Forcibly moving Flippanter to Georgia or wherever could be a TV series, but probably full of escape attempts with Bond-level gadgetry. I am well aware that a number of you are living this dream already.
Tigre can go live in car-free Växjö and learn green metal Zen.
50: Whoever you sent to Nebraska can email me for tips.
I am well aware that a number of you are living this dream already.
Just doin' the good Lord's work.
I would gladly resettle people, except I don't know anyone well enough to know what would make for maximum reality-TV level amusement in terms of resettlement.
You may not move anyone out of Pittsburgh
Just by Brownian motion doesn't everyone eventually end up in the energy well of Pittsburgh?
I recommend establishing residency in a red-state exurb, and then move out of the country. I've been voting for years now in a red-state exurb from the comfort of Enlightened Topless Europe.
That is genius.
Friendly note to self that the consequences of half-assedly attempting to set up childcare for a random day off from school, and then realizing everything is booked up, are not so good.
I'm very glad for 34.2 then. My high school principal moved to El Paso. Plus, I hear it is very sunny.
I've been voting for years now in a red-state exurb from the comfort of Enlightened Topless Europe.
I'm voting in a swing state under similar circumstances. Less toplessness, tho.
Toplessness is merely the promise, where swinging is the reality.
I can't move anywhere; I'd have to change my pseud.
Although, if DaveLHI wanted to switch states I'd consider it.
I wouldn't be entertaining to move to a red state at all. I'd just watch more TV and have fewer friends. Probably more grilling, too. I like fire, and there's not much scope for it in an apartment.
We grilled tonight. It was difficult, because of the early darkness.
I sort of imagined that in some far-off future I'd take over the family farm in Oklahoma until my grandma said "no you won't, I sold it to frackers."
I guess this is a swing state, not a red state. Which is good because I don't even own an TV.
I don't own a TV and I live in a red state.
I don't own a TV expect in the technical sense where there's one attached to the wall of my living room.
||
Does anyone have thoughts on the nitty gritty of confining chickens, pigs and veal calves?
There's a ballot initiative to ban the practice in MA and to make it illegal for people ot sell products, e.g., eggs, that were produced in inhumane conditions out of state.
I'd like to support this, but I am trying to understand how end retailers would comply.
|>
If the ban passes and you need someone to hook you up with some illegal hog confinement crates, I know a guy.
If veal is outlawed, only outlaws will have veal.
What bullshit. I am still so fucking angry about the foie gras and horsemeat bans here.
Here are my thoughts. You know what is good? Veal. Fuck you shitbags.
If you confine a calf and wait for it to grow up into a steer, can you eat it then?
68 suxx. The ancestral family mansion in Wauwatosa has apparently been torn down; it looked nice in the pictures I reviewed earlier this year. Of course the ancestral parents-of-only-daughter who lived there included a harpy who could trace her descent from mythical harpies and who made her little girl stand still in a corner at a party like a doll until, unsurprisingly, the kid peed all over the floor and then got screamed at -- so that might be kind of a creepy house for my family to live in; also fuck Wisconsin. My home, bitch, but good grief.
(That link is great enough to transcend my unsavory and laughably, er, inappropriate racial appropriation.)
That was supposed to go in the other thread, but it really applies to anything and everything at this point.
Trump is responsible for the two unused platforms in Hoyt/Schmerhorn.
78 It was a shitty farm (e.g. why build a silo when you can just use a bunch of rusted out school-busses) and it serves me right for romanticizing it for even a second.
Wait, a silo made of school buses sounds kind of awesome.
Wait, again. How do school buses substitute for a silo?
That would be awesome but no you just keep the grain (?? corn??? sorghum??? idk) in the old schoolbusses.
As I've already said here, I own a tiny portion of a family farm and occasionally still get stuff from the state of Iowa celebrating our family's years of family farm ownership. Except that we got it because my great-grandfather was a small-time land speculator and local railroad lawyer and we've been renting it out for over 110 years, and can't sell it because there are too many relatives involved. Also there's no farmhouse. Salt of the earth!
87: If they were actual silage-holding silos, I guess a bus would work. With grain, I think all you'd do is attract every rodent in the state.
Sure, silage. Whatever you can keep in schoolbusses is what we kept in them. Also there was a quarry for drowning in.
I hear you can also get rocks from them.
92 Makes it sound even more like the farm in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
78: Holy fuck I didn't know your folks were from Wauwatosa. Do we have to do the did-our-moms-go-to-school-together thing? (Tosa East, I think class of '69.)
Wrong generation! They were all up in Wausau by 1969; the Wauwatosa home was from the 10s/20s/30s, i.e. my grandmother's childhood. My mom grew up in the Chicago suburbs, like Hillary! (On some fundamental psychological level, this election has been "my mom" vs. "everything I was raised to hate," so shit is getting a bit real. I got mistaken for Chelsea a lot in early h.s. and I can't tell which of us has aged better -- we look almost nothing alike now, fwiw.)
Are "my mom" and "everything I was raised to hate" not categories with significant overlap tho? Anyway. I like my new therapist.
Actually the only thing I hold against my mom is her overweening belief in the therapeutic power of talk. And yet when I was 15 she told me "you can talk a relationship to death," which was amazingly astute and... it's not clear to me how she knew that.
96: Ah, no, they moved there from outside NYC when my mom and her siblings were children. My grandparents had both been from closer to Appleton, which is where they met.
Relevant to Clytie's family farm issue, I just got an email from my mom about her efforts to sell our family's trading post and surrounding land to the Navajo tribe (about which I'm ambivalent at best). It turns out they are potentially interested in the surrounding land but concerned about the trading post itself, which is admittedly not in great shape and may be an environmental liability, so they want to know if we're willing to sell the former without the latter. I really just want her to chill the fuck out about this and let me handle it at some point in the future, but I've had a hard time getting that message across. I guess I'm really just venting rather than asking for advice, but gah. This has been a point of contention between us for the past couple years and it isn't getting any less aggravating for me.
The parenthetical in 100 referred to her effort to sell the land, to be clear, although there are many aspects of the way the tribal government operates about which I am also ambivalent at best.
100 makes teo so much cooler. No mere anthropologist, but hereditary frontier zone entrepreneur!
No mere anthropologist, but hereditary frontier zone entrepreneur!
Ha, you must be new here. This is like my whole deal.
But I appreciate it if this revelation makes me seem cooler. This post gives a bit more detail on my background.
Can we murder people who are publicly panicking about the election? It can't be morally wrong, can it?
At this point, Trump is either going to win or he's not. In a week we'll know. Panicking about it ahead of time isn't going to make them feel any better when it happens, plus it makes me want to murder them. Unless suicide by Someguy is the goal?
Here are my thoughts. You know what is good? Veal. Fuck you shitbags.
There's nothing about veal that means it has to be raised inhumanely. In practice it often is (where it's legal), but you don't need confinement for veal. It's been illegal in Europe for a decade, and guess what, we still have veal.
75 and 76: The people who are opposed to it are the egg producers and retailers. There's not a big veal lobby.
The issue I saw was that a MA retailer selling eggs was going to have to be responsible for knowing whether those eggs were humanely raised out of state, and there's no easy way to find that information out about an out-of-state producer. Unless you're selling organic stuff.
Are there not even (state level?) labelling rules in the US?
Gosh, egg producers that want to sell to Massachusetts will now have incentive to label their eggs. What a horrible outcome.
108
I read in the Glob that there is exactly one egg producer in MA that will be affected by this if it passes.
In Massachusetts they seem to be talking about the similar law already passed in California, so for some on the ground reporting, our law was finally implemented last year and practically nobody noticed, as far as I can tell, despite alarmist articles from time to time. It looked like implementation coincided with a nationwide spike in the price of eggs that drowned out any independent impact the law might have had.
109, 110: I don't think the issue is the labeling. I'd assume that everybody who is making eggs with a process less cruel to the chickens is already putting it on the label because people will pay more for them.
There's not a big veal lobby.
WE KNOW.
I was on a university animal care committee and got to inspect the pig facilities (they're just that smart). Turns out they (a) have to be confined when they're in pens (i.e. not free roaming) so they don't roll on their piglets; (b) if you give them a choice, they love being all squished up together rather than having lots of space.
Also (and you probably know this but) organic doesn't mean the chickens weren't confined. I wasn't sure if you meant organic farmers get a by on labelling whether their chickens were caged or not.
Our eggs say "Organic" and "cage free". Our milk has the snippets about the life of the dairy farmer and how much she cares about nature and cows and milk. Our cabinets are full of left over Starburst that probably mention all of their HFCS in as understated of a manner as is legal.
Re: voting, and particularly voting by mail, as mentioned way upthread: Wow, early voting (in person), at least in my state, or at least my county, has huge lines this year.
I attempted to vote early yesterday morning, where by "attempted" I mean that I slowly snaked my way in my car toward the building, then slowly snaked around the parking areas, and eventually toward the extended parking area -- all in a solid line of other cars -- the extended parking area being impromptu rows of cars setting themselves up across the grass areas beyond the actual parking area.
In so snaking, I observed that the line of intended voters extended outside the building, around the sidewalks, etc. It took half an hour just to get around the parking areas ... and I deduced that it'd be at least another 45 minutes before being able to actually vote.
So I blew it off. I eyeballed the same early voting station on my way out of work that evening: same thing. Um, I'll try again tomorrow.
The truth is, if I'm looking at anything over an hour of waiting in line, it's going to be sorely tempting to blow off the whole thing. Mind, I won't do that: it's too important. But still, all I could think was: hey, white girl, welcome to the world of voter suppression.
In conclusion: voting by mail seems a highly, er, good thing. Are there downsides?
In conclusion: voting by mail seems a highly, er, good thing. Are there downsides?
It eliminates the secret ballot. To me that's a deal breaker and I'll never support it because of that. Similarly the various inane vote by internet schemes. Just set up plenty of polling stations and staff them well. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with in-person voting with hand marked paper ballots (with appropriate accommodations for people who need assistance due to disability or infirmity).
119: That is a good point. There's been a fair amount about husbands that don't know their wives are voting for Hillary. If these Trump supporting husbands are big assholes as I imagine them to be voting by mail could be a way they coerce their wives to vote for Trump.
Or employers demanding employees vote a certain way.
119 is true. All your voting machines and crap are insane. AFAICT Mossheimat actually manages elections dramatically better than the US, entirely manually, on paper.
119: Just set up plenty of polling stations and staff them well.
Agreed. The increase or reduction of such in any given state or voting district should be far more transparent than it seems to be.
In the case of my own state, there's been no reduction as far as I can determine: people are just particularly exercised to vote, as they should be. In a case like this, voting stations should be temporarily increased. Is government just too inflexible for that? Perhaps so.
I'm pleased to hear that Obama's post-Presidency plan is to work on precisely these kinds of state-level voting issues.
It eliminates the secret ballot. To me that's a deal breaker and I'll never support it because of that.
Yeah, this. People I generally agree with support voting by mail because it makes voting easier and so increases turnout. But losing the secret ballot freaks me out. I have images (and this could seriously be on either side of the political spectrum) of roomfulls of people filling out their ballots together and having the pastor/boss/other authority figure checking them before dropping them in the mail.
126 is one of my concerns as well. It's easy to imagine megachurch prayer and voting gatherings where it would be very hard to diverge from the pack.
Thanks for bringing this up, togolosh. I honestly hadn't thought of it: my life is lived fairly independently, but that's not so for many.
My order of preference goes:
1. National holiday for voting, mandatory voting requirement at easy, local polling places (not only in your own precinct) put into law.
2. Widespread and easy voting by mail or online.
3. Our current system.
Voting as it is currently set up is massively inconvenient. I voted by mail a few days ago and it still took me a good half an hour to fill out the ballot. If I was hard-pressed to get stuff done on a work day it would have been way worse. Not to mention the PITA factor of having to find your polling place, etc etc.
I guess there's some mild secret ballot concern with voting by mail (though AFAIK it hasn't been an issue at all in places like Oregon that have widespread voting by mail). But that concern is absolutely dwarfed by the bigger concern which is that such an overwhelming number of people don't vote.
Maybe Californians can figure out how to stop putting so much bullshit on their ballots?
I mean even in big federal elections something between 40-60% of the voting eligible population doesn't vote at all. That is completely fucking crazy. A voting by mail system like Oregon's doesn't solve the problem but Oregon does better than just about any place else. That absence of participation is an incredible problem that people have (largely) just stopped worrying about.
Surprisingly little discussion of barenaked ladies on this thread.
Mandatory voting and a national holiday would be nice. Bring back booze at election places. As long as we're dreaming, let's get rid of the electoral college and first-pass-the-post, too.
119: I had a conversation with a coworker who wanted to get rid of the secret ballot and I almost lost my shit. Oh, hey, it's recorded on Slack so I can take him out of context. Fuck this: History may be on your side but this isn't 1895 and 12 year olds aren't mining coal. People are a lot less malleable these days to corporate "power"
12 year olds aren't mining coal
I blame Nintendo and the schools.
Hrm. This is obviously why I wondered about the viability and advisability of voting by mail.
My preferences:
1. National holiday voting day, provisions for short-term daycare for parents at the voting station (ha!), leading to actual let's-go-vote parties of people doing their duty on the day. Not so keen on the mandatory thing, but I'd have to look into various models for it.
2. Same as now, but with significant increase in polling stations. This remains suboptimal: too many people just don't have the time/wherewithal.
3. Vote by mail. I think the concern about the secret ballot is quite well taken.
Local public radio has just reported that early voting in my state of Maryland exceeded 100,000 yesterday alone. In 2012 the total for the entire early voting period was just over 400,000.
And here I'd thought I was being clever waiting until the later days of the early voting period to do it. Not at all so: the numbers are greater and greater, with today and tomorrow still to go. Huh.
I've just looked at a breakdown of the cumulative (and yesterday) voting numbers at various early voting stations in my county: the one I was trying to vote at breaks around 50/50 Clinton vs. Trump/other. Figures. Lotta Trump signs in that area.
Not to get into the weeds or anything.
I mean even in big federal elections something between 40-60% of the voting eligible population doesn't vote at all. That is completely fucking crazy. A voting by mail system like Oregon's doesn't solve the problem but Oregon does better than just about any place else. That absence of participation is an incredible problem that people have (largely) just stopped worrying about.
From the US perspective, it is interesting to contemplate the idea of a world where a large majority of people vote in elections. Here parties have figured out that it's hard to inspire your own supporters and it's easier to encourage apathy and disillusionment among your opponent's supporters. This especially helps when one party opposed to the government functioning properly, because they not only benefit from making people apathetic about their opponents, they benefit from making people apathetic about the very concept of voting.
But losing the secret ballot freaks me out. I have images (and this could seriously be on either side of the political spectrum) of roomfulls of people filling out their ballots together and having the pastor/boss/other authority figure checking them before dropping them in the mail.
I have seen a lot of stories of this among immigrant communities in Britain. Don't know how much of it is scare tactics.
This especially helps when one party opposed to the government functioning properly, because they not only benefit from making people apathetic about their opponents, they benefit from making people apathetic about the very concept of voting.
Fucking fuckers.
I wish I had something more constructive to say.
Uh. Make it much easier to vote.
You know what else Mossheimat has? National holidays for voting and polling places everywhere. I was in and out in minutes each time.
Washington also votes by mail (no polling places). It's wonderful, and there have no been no obvious problems. Turnout was unaffected, though.
Mandatory voting in Australia doesn't seem to change much either, as they get roughly the same results as UK and Canada which do not have mandatory voting.
The UK and Canada have fewer poisonous spiders and snakes.
I suspect that the counter to LB's picture of strongarming voters is the sobering reality that active strongarming isn't really required to get people to vote the same as their boss/pastor/authority figure wants them too.
I have a question about the current/latest polling of likely Presidential election results. (Nate Silver says Trump now has a path to victory ...)
Are these latest polls sampling people who have yet to vote, or are they including people who have already voted? The latter number is not insignificant.
If these newest polls are discounting people who have already voted, well, we're looking at a pool of people who are increasingly likely to be undecided (or just haven't gotten around to it, if they had an early voting option at all).
Nate Silver is desperately trying to prevent ESPN from shutting down 538 after the election.
The polling question is interesting, though. I'd be curious to hear the answer.
I was surprised to learn that low turnout is much more a problem with people failing to register than it is registered people failing to vote. Only 2/3 of eligible voters are registered to vote.
145.1: If it makes you feel better, Sam Wang now has a Clinton win at 97% or 99% depending on which model he uses.
I'm actually reading Sam Wang in another tab because I wanted to feel better.
146.1 is obviously right. The problem is that the statistical analysis conflicts with the need to generate clicks. Also (I think) 538 has generated next-to-zero interest from the nerdy SABR sports fans that ESPN thought it would attract. I like Silver and think he's got way more integrity than most but like with anyone else when your writing is your job your business model is going to affect what you think.
146.1: I was wondering whether he had an interest in prolonging the breathless agony.
On the polling question, having just read this Ed Kilgore piece on the matter, well, no answer to the question, but there's this kind of language:
The thing to look for in the final state polls is whether Trump is making any kind of real move in the "blue states" he has recently targeted
You're not going to make a "move" in the polls unless you're only talking about people who have yet to vote, are you? I can't tell.
Thanks, about Sam Wang's view on the matter.
Returning to our earlier theme, this NYT piece is quite amazing for its misleading headline and ability to get 5/6 of the way through before admitting that the educational data on "voters" that it is talking about applies to white voters only. Way to bury the lede, guys.
If it takes schools to get white people to not vote for Trump, I guess it's a good thing that various forms of discrimination make it disproportionately easy for white people to get an education.
Can somebody give me the email of a Slate editor?
I bow in admiration to that #slatepitch, Moby. Truly.
I'm going to write it up and see if I can't get Kieran at CT to forward it to whoever put his stuff on Slate.
"Hi, you don't know me, but I comment on a blog where lots of people complained about your wife's book."
Kids today don't even know what a Slate pitch is.
I don't think voter non-participation is a real problem. If it's driven by the difficulty of getting to a polling place or ID requirements or whatever I see a problem, but people who don't give a fuck about politics ought not be voting in the first place. If they are willing to let others choose their leaders then bully for them. Obstruction is a real issue, but apathy IMO isn't.
That's fucking moronic. Absence of voting leads to shitty results for poorer people, especially poorer Latinos. And it's a vicious circle where no voting leads to absence of political/policy attention leads to no voting etc etc.
And that's only one of about 15 stupid things about your point. Another is that people who pay more active attention to politics aren't likely to be better informed.
Not sure why I'm being aggro about this. Why not. Fuck everyone.
Fuck you, Tigre. I can't take this election anymore, and I'm ready for some senseless violence.
Lawyers should all be replaced with unelected tribunals of economists who are rigorously trained in the precepts of law-and-economics. Vegetarians should be exempt from copyright laws. Jethro Tull is the only legitimate winner of the metal Grammy.
148, 149. Silver and 538 apparently include data from more than 16 years ago in their simulation model with the net effect of increasing variation. Wang doesn't. The claim is that this year voters are more polarized than 20 years ago, so a model less susceptible to variation is appropriate.
Also, SIlver's other political guy, Harry Enten, is much more pessimistic about DJT's chances in prarticular states than Silver.
Oh, for violence-- profit idea: claymation deathmatch between DJT and Thailand's next King
Metallica definitely should have won that year but the other contenders for metal Grammy were IIRC Iggy Pop, AC/DC, and Jane's Addiction. All great bands but none of them metal. So I can't get too worked up about that.
But I'm still willing, if necessary, to take a chainsaw and a spiked mace and go to whatever goddamn foreign country you live in and fuck up your face. I am a river to my people.
You can beat me to a pulp for alarmism, Walt, because that way I won't have to find out how big a coward I am if Trump takes over. I am not so much looking forward to the revelation that I'm a huge coward.
170: AC/DC isn't metal? I'll give you Iggy Pop and Jane's Addiction, but AC/DC?
AC/DC is AC fucking DC. That is all that can be said of them.
Anyhow, check out this 1979 concert of theirs. The best.
164: I have to give a speech in a (different) foreign country the day after the election. I assume that if Trump wins I will be ripped apart by a band of feral women like at the end of the Bacchae. So I will be spared the aftermath.
I think Tigre is probably right that AC/DC aren't metal. Although I suppose it depends whether you are grouping by genre tropes, or by audience. Metal fans certainly like AC/DC.
AC/DC have monstrous groove, which isn't really a hallmark of metal as such, although Sabbath (inventors thereof) also swing like fuck. So .. who knows.
160: Oh for fucks sake! Forcing people to vote is just more government control for no good end. What's next, fines for not eating your fucking vegetables? If people don't want to vote they should be allowed to stay home and wank on election day if that makes them happy. Telling poor people that you'll fine them for their own good if they don't want to vote is the worst kind of nannyism. Compulsory voting is bullshit coercion that violates people's fundamental right not to give a shit. Are there any other areas of self expression you'd like to make compulsory? Perhaps we could force everyone to learn the tiny fucking violin so they can play it for all the people who can't be arsed to look out for their own fucking interests.
178- I would agree with your rant except for the fact that compulsory voting would be terrible for the GOP.
178: The problem with that (one of the problems with that) is that as Ned said above, parties are putting a lot of effort into making voting feel pointless and be difficult, and that keeps people from voting who (a) have a right to be heard, and (b) for whom I want to live in a society that reflects their preferences -- I'm not just worried about them, I'm worried about me. If voting is made an obligation, voter suppression efforts aren't going to be as effective.
Democracy had a good run and we'll all be sad that it died, but let's not get off track. How can you define "metal" such that it doesn't include AC/DC?
They are more hard rock. Too happy, not angry, gloomy, rageful, or portentous enough.
Wikipedia agrees with you, the fuckers.
I enjoyed 181. This is the first time I've seen yoga pants defined as virtuous. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/victorian-values-fitness-organic-wealth-parenthood/
If I were deep enough to get past the "whoo-oo, butts" stage, I could have written that.
My wife, the metal expert, has ruled that AC/DC is indeed hard rock, and not metal. Let me show you her bona fides -- she considers Metallica's black album their sellout album.
From the link in 181:
Mothers must breast-feed for an extended period, provide only organic food to their children, and keep screen time to nil. Slip-ups indicate failure.
Exactly. And failure means the Germans will break through.
180: Voter suppression efforts wear a lot of disguises, but as long as they aren't making it harder for people who want to vote to actually get their vote counted I'm not seeing a big problem. It's unsavory that parties engage in the behavior you describe, but to me it's vastly more unsavory (putting it mildly) to use the coercive power of government force people to do what they don't want to do. That's something that should be done only when the alternatives are clearly worse.
Increasing voter participation might be nice, but it would be far better to do it by addressing the structural problems that leave us with two lousy choices every election, like an amendment to require instant runoff voting for all federal elections. That would destroy the two party system and give turned-off voters someone to actually vote *for*. Requiring instead that they hold their nose every four years and vote for the lesser evil at the expense of potentially putting their kids to bed hungry that month seems on the other hand...
Compulsory voting won't get us better candidates or better policies. Addressing the structural bullshit that forces two major parties on us just might.
I generally don't care for metal, but I love me some AC/DC. Its hard rock.
Compulsory voting would do more to fix the problems in American politics than IRV. Voting reform is the Georgian single-tax of the 21st century -- potentially a good idea around the edges, but given utopian importance by its supporters. People are dumb and misinformed, and IRV isn't going to make them any less dumb or misinformed.
The problem with people not voting is that it's a collective action problem. People don't vote because they think their single vote won't change anything -- and they're right. It's incredibly unlikely that their single vote will change anything. It's only when the votes are pooled that they can obtain change at the ballot box. Compulsory voting makes that happen.
Compulsory voting as getting less dumb voters. We can't even get "clearly outlawing blatant attempts to reduce turnout."
"as" should be "as utopian as".
I'm going to blame that on Autospell.
It's all pretty utopian, except for vote by mail and early voting, which are happening right now to different extents, and may help to boost turnout a bit.
It's all pretty utopian, except for vote by mail and early voting, which are happening right now to different extents, and may help to boost turnout a bit.
And automatic voter registration, which some states already have and others are pursuing. We have a ballot question on it here, in fact.
Yes, and 194 is actually way more important than vote by mail.
The Jacobin article is fine but Snow Crash deserved a name-check.
196: Huh? I don't remember either book well, but if I'm thinking of Victorian I'd come up with The Diamond Age before Snow Crash. . .
People are dumb and misinformed, and IRV isn't going to make them any less dumb or misinformed.
True, but coerced voting will do even less than IRV. IRV gives people choices that better match their preferences, encouraging them to engage. Coerced voting just gives you a bunch of pissed off apathetic low information voters randomly punching buttons on a voting machine. No better than strange women lying in ponds handing out swords. Also coercion is intrinsically bad and should be avoided whenever possible.
Agreed on 194. Anything that reduces the obstacles to voluntary voting should be done.
Is anyone actively pushing mandatory voting in the US?
199: Nobody high profile that I know of. I think the US has too many knee-jerk anti-government interference types for it to gain much traction.
198 gets it exactly right. The solution to disenfranchisement of Latinos and ex-felons is... not to have disenfranchisement. Universal registration, not mandatory voting.
I think the US has too many knee-jerk anti-government interference types for it to gain much traction.
Including you, apparently.
I used to worry about government mandates until I learned that "Mandatory Metallica" meant that the radio station had to play Metallica every day at 5:15, not that everybody had to listen to it.
205: I admit that my first impulse when confronted with the threat of force is to resist. Liberals as a group tend to suffer from the illusion that government coercion is somehow OK if it's well meant. It isn't. You shouldn't be threatening people if there are other options available. I don't understand why this is controversial among people who'd be horrified if the coercion were in the service of something they don't support like ending abortion. Is it really OK to harm others because you believe they are not acting in their own self interest? Is that a road you want to go down?
Is this really an argument you have often? "Coercion is bad" doesn't seem to me like it's actually that unpopular among liberals, at least when stated at that level of generality. I mean, you said yourself that nobody with any power or influence is trying to implement mandatory voting in the US because it's such an obvious nonstarter.
I think we'll be very luck if we get early voting in this state any time in the new future.
And the Cubs are fucking up again. I wonder if people being cheerful in Northeast Ohio would help Clinton?
I'm watching the box scores on the computer. Maybe the actual game is ahead of what's on my screen.
I think the Cubs should get some credit for having tied on runs and hits despite having made three errors to Cleveland's none. It takes a really good team to make that many errors and still tie.
Apparently, there's such a thing as a "pinch runner." I never heard of that.
And since he wasn't fast enough to get to 2nd, I guess I'll forget I ever did.
When my son went to bed after the 4th inning I warned him about what happened after I went to bed during Game 6 in 1989.
IPMHBASP, but I went into a bar during March Madness (BOGF bar) and as soon as I sat down, Ohio State started winning. So, a very drunk guy said he would buy me beer for the rest of the game if I didn't get up as my taking that seat obviously caused the improvement. Fortunately, I like beer more than I like explaining how some causal claims are bullshit.
Cleveland is catching up on making errors. I sense danger for the Cubs.
Thanks for 104. That's interesting. Very interesting, like the Navajo are substantially unassimilated well into the 1980s.
A tie game going into the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series is, objectively, a hell of a thing.
223 Do it now Spike, so he remembers something good and pure and miraculous from the before time.
The cannibalism posts are the best ones.
"Coercion is bad" doesn't seem to me like it's actually that unpopular among liberals, at least when stated at that level of generality.
That's why I state it in those terms. For some reason when it's more abstract (mandatory voting for example) it becomes less objectionable. See upthread for people defending or endorsing it.
If it was the Mets and not the Cubs I absolutely would.
"Coercion is bad" doesn't seem to me like it's actually that unpopular among liberals, at least when stated at that level of generality.
The kids call it "nudging" these days.
230: Fair enough. I take it you feel similarly about ACA individual mandate?
Yeah 104 is great. Also didn't realize you still occasionally update the blog.
Dammit, I got to work tomorrow I don't want no extra innings.
Overtime can go fuck itself. I'm sleepy. Goodnight.
You know, Halford's been commenting long enough that if you scraped all his comments off the blog and ran them through an AI juicer, you could probably get a pretty good Halford bot. He might even consider commissioning one, just to keep libertarians in line when he's not around.
Also didn't realize you still occasionally update the blog.
I aim to update at least once a calendar month. It usually ends up being toward the end of the month because procrastination, but I haven't missed a month yet.
I'm a demigod and your leader, shitbirds.
Also what the fuck re rain. Also am I right that the last WS game 7 in extra innings was lost by the Indians?
Let the Supreme Court declare the winner.
This game has gone so late that Barry Freed is awake.
Now I really want the Cubs to lose, because I don't want my stupid neighbors' stupid celebratory firecrackers to wake up my kids.
248 And sitting at my desk at work no less.
I was kinda hoping it would keep raining and they would force everyone to stay in the stadium until it stopped. Like everyone waits until 4:30 am and then starts up.
Also I'm rooting for the Cubs but if they were gonna lose it would be nice to have it be because of woman-beating Chapman.
Wikileaks is going to reveal that someone on Chicago once talked about stealing signs.
In other news, someone I follow on Twitter but don't know recently mentioned an ekranoplan and now I wonder if she comments here.
Oh man I am looking forward to the Cubs becoming a normal, hateable team.
Tigre's just in it for the hate, for all values of "it."
Indians though, I dunno. If I was a fan I might vote Trump too because fuck it nuke everything or not, who cares.
As the world's biggest Cubs fan, I say, heh.
But seriously, what does Theo Epstein know that no one else knows?
It is time for Epstein to shatter mirrors in King Tut's tomb.
Basically, he knows how to get hired by smart, rich owners, not fuck things up, and get lucky. The reason the Cubs lost for years was mostly because the Wrigley family and the Tribune Company are both cesspools of failure.
They're due for another championship in 2124.
266: You're talking out of an orifice. The '02 Sox were shit. 28-year old Theo comes in, within a couple years we have a mini dynasty. He leaves, all of a sudden our personnel management is shaky again. I don't know the Chicago organization like I know Boston but he worked miracles here. There are a lot of rich owners, but very few turnarounds like 02-04 in Boston.
WTF just happened, I thought the game was called because of rain?
No, it was a very small rainstorm. They stopped playing for about 20 minutes.
The real estate was almost underwater but they got bailed out by TARP.
The real estate was almost underwater but they got bailed out by TARP.
The whole system's rigged. Vote Trump!
I'm only voting for Trump because God in his infinite wisdom has not yet given me the ability to end all life on Earth.
234: No, I think the individual mandate is problematic, but in the end of the day it's the only way to get things to work. I'd vastly prefer another system, but if we are stuck with private insurance the alternative is freeloaders at emergency rooms and astronomical prices for everyone who actually buys insurance. Mandatory voting has no such rationale. It does nothing but inconvenience the apathetic, a demographic for which I feel considerable affinity.
I guess I could see getting rid of the individual mandate if we let people who could afford insurance but chose not to buy it just die in the streets but I'm not a Republican so I prefer my streets relatively free of the dead and dying.
Isnt compulsory voting a thing in some countries like Australia? Have they studiedit or done polling to see how it's perceived?
Isnt compulsory voting a thing in some countries like Australia? Have they studiedit or done polling to see how it's perceived?
It is a thing in Australia. I think it's what drove Ned Kelly to crime.
I think it's perceived as more as part of a limited class of duties of citizenship, like jury duty, than as being an eat-your-vegetables nanny-state thing, a sort of thing of the making of which there is no natural end.
If it's going to be like jury duty, they should give you free coffee when you vote.
Anecdotally, it's a sort of party day in Australia. Notably, the actual coercion is trivial, a very small fine, but produces near-total turnout.
Casual search says $20 fine, ~90% turnout.
How many times are Australians expected to vote in a typical year? I think we vote more often and for more offices that most people.
Maybe we could try a small incentive instead of a fine. Like 50% off your first parking ticket if you voted in the past two general elections.
Or your tax return gets processed first.
286: Federal, state and (in some states) local council elections. In total, couple of times a year at most. No elections for judges etc.
I suppose if people were only required to vote in the general, that would be only once a year here. Once every two years in most states.
Only a guy who didn't vote right.
Would there be a penalty for writing in Mickey Mouse?
Yes, but only for the intellectual property violation.
Mandatory voting has no such rationale. It does nothing but inconvenience the apathetic
I don't think this is true. It actually inconveniences the entire body politic by increasing its vulnerability to motivated minorities and money. I don't see any problem coercing against that, any more than I do in coercing to enforce vaccinations.
294: If you kept the secret ballot, no-one but the voter could tell.
297: Good point! So, is there anything preventing someone from going into the booth but not actually voting at all?
Why would you want to prevent that?
That's a long established way to protest.
I don't see any problem coercing against that, any more than I do in coercing to enforce vaccinations.
I think the argument is that, in the case of vaccinations or taxes or other such things, coercion actually gets you the desired result, e.g. more people vaccinated or more taxes paid.
With voting, coercion doesn't get you what you want if people just grudgingly show up and randomly push buttons in order to be finished as quickly as possible and leave.
298: Not that I'm aware of. It'd just be a way of voting informally.
301: I guess it depends on the level of cussedness in the community. Could happen that people just think: well, I'm here, I may as well vote for the guy I hate least.
One way to increase turn out would be to sponsor a ballot initiative officially declaring that AC/DC is metal instead of hard rock. That would definitely get people to the polls.
Plus, it would still leave Millennials disaffected, thus headline writers won't have to learn a new trick.
That would definitely get people to the polls back in the van.
Assuming the Russia thread is dead , did people know about this? Russia actively supporting Brexit, the FN and sundry European right-wingers. Full-on Comintern shit. A while back chrisy (?) joked that I was the 'pre-war generation'. Starting to think he's right.
One way to increase turn out would be to sponsor a ballot initiative officially declaring that AC/DC is metal instead of hard rock. That would definitely get people to the polls.
Not sure the youth vote would be energized by this one. How about a ballot initiative declaring that Bey's haters are salty.
It's wonderfully retro. Useful idiots, indeed.
219: Fortunately, I like beer more than I like explaining how some causal claims are bullshit.
The internet is about evenly split on this preference.
(BOGF bar)
Impressive memory.
Well, the High Court just knocked May back on Brexit, said she can't call Brexit without Parliament's consent. The Daily Mail is on song:
"The judges who blocked Brexit: one founded a EUROPEAN law group, another charged the taxpayer millions for advice and the third is an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer".
No! A fencer?
There are so many possibilities if you rearrange those descriptors.
Ex-gay Olympic openly fencer
Ex-openly gay Olympic fencer
Gay Olypmic openly ex-fencer
Openly ex-Olympic gay fencer
311: *searches TFA* Huh! That's my local for when I'm too stingy to go to the hipster bar and don't want to brave the smoke of Mobybar. Or want to watch a game.
311.last: I have good memory for things about bars.
I think maybe hipster bar and cultural-appropriation bar have hurt the crowds at BOGF bar. Except when there are games.
Posted elsewhere: " I'm slightly surprised that the Mail has come out (no pun intended) as anti-fencing; I would have thought that fencing had a nicely ubermensch ring to it that would appeal to them. Heidelberg, duelling scars, monocles and so on. But I suspect that the Mail has always been more Thug Nazi than Elegant Nazi in its approach to life. Not so much the tailored Hugo Boss uniform, the looted Chateau d'Yquem, the open-top Daimler staff car; more the overweight, beer-hall, sweat-stained shirt and broken-bottle type."
Cultural-appropriation bar isn't as tastelessly awful as other such bars throughout the city, so long as you ignore the giant tiki in the back. Nice cocktails. Agree that they've taken some of BOGF bar's grad student crowd. I do like BOGF Bar a lot, but wish they had better insulation. Upstairs gets cold in the winter.
It's more appropriating cultural appropriation.
Yes. Which makes it ok.
Sometimes I go to the Chinese bar/karaoke place, but I dunno if they're going to get enough non-Chinese patronage to continue existing.
Because only white patrons are real patrons.
In case 321 isn't a joke: there aren't really enough Chinese/east Asian people in Pittsburgh to support a lot of businesses. If that's 100% of your clientele, you'd better have low overhead.
Some can play basketball, even.
Not all short people can't play basketball.
Not all Asian people like karaoke.
I've never seen a non-Asian person there who wasn't in my party, and every time I talk to the owner/bartender he's always desperate to expand the clientele.
I think there is a bit of cultural shock in terms of pricing for a night out that they have to get beyond if they want to bring in the larger community. Renting a room for karaoke is fairly expensive. He's been trying to push on me they have a "very good" deal where it's upwards of $350 but you get a bottle (or at least a large amount) of Hennessy with it. Yet if you just bought the room by the hour (at ~$55 still expensive) and drank lager, either American or Chinese, you'll save a few hundred dollars and be drunker (and probably better hydrated, too). So I think they're relying, perhaps too much, on a specific kind of privileged, out-of-town whale consumer. As for the bar itself they don't even have a tap; I think that adds to the charm of it but I doubt many Americans appreciate that.
Fuck, I have opinions. I really want this place to survive because I like trying to pick up on Mandarin (and the occasional other varieties), and it literally is four doors down from me.
I've never been in it. I didn't know it was there until you mentioned it here. I don't think I'm very likely to go to a bar that pushes singing and bottle service.
328: He's not really pushing it; we just talk about business a lot and he mentioned this great new deal. I only go there to drink on school nights and they're very laid back.
How many out-of-town Chinese whales are there?
I can only imagine such a bar succeeding if it caters predominantly to Carnegie Mellon students.
Some. Enough, dunno? I've seen a few fancy cars parked there with fashionable young people in expensive-looking clothes outside smoking. We do get a lot of students from the PRC.
I avoid going on nights when it's like that, although maybe I should see what it's like. It's more fun drinking with the older alcoholics who hardly speak any English.
There's already a karaoke place (which I'm assuming is a bar) on Craig.
I can only imagine such a bar succeeding if it caters predominantly to Carnegie Mellon students.
Mellon-fucking is a different thread.
It's more fun drinking with the older alcoholics who hardly speak any English.
You could go to Dales for that.
That one's pretty well established; this new one has only been there for maybe six months. Squirrel Hill has become visibly more East Asian in the last five years, including our first storefront with no English whatsoever. Here in provincial, backwards Vandalia, kind of a big deal.
Nah then, lad, we talk English good enough for thee and thi kind int' Dales, tha knows.
There is a place in Nassau called the Tiki Bikini Hut, where you can get 4 shots and 4 beers for 20 dollars. If you go there in the afternoon, you can watch the parade of white people staggering back to their cruise ships in the rain.
Would you want to be stuck on a cruise ship sober?
Maybe I'm doing the math on 340 wrong but I think i could walk to dozens of places where in the afternoon you could get that and the 20 would include the tip, though not a very good tip. I don't drink beer or shots so I won't try, but I'm pretty sure. Definitely mostly geared to white people staggering back to their regular lives.
I don't thinnk I could. Shot are expensive here. I could buy 8 beers for 20 dollars easily, especially if I were willing to drink pitchers.
I'd kill for a beer right now. Well, maybe maim for a beer.
I guess it depends on the shot, but at $2 or $2.50 it seems more than doable, especially with dollar beers. I could text my brother and ask, I guess. Or what counts as a shot. You could definitely get a shot of bourbon for $2 but why when for the same price you could get it mixed into something more delicious? etc.
Maybe it's my taste for Irish whisky that's running up my bill.
I think i could walk to dozens of places where in the afternoon you could get that and the 20 would include the tip, though not a very good tip.
Not at tourist-oriented business in Nassau. In addition to already being a stupid expensive place to be on account of being an island, the place is designed to separate vacationers from their money.
8 beers for 20 dollars
Hush your mouth. Bud or PBR or the like are not beer, rather "beer" flavored soda, bearing the same relation to actual beer as super-cheap chemically flavored taffy does to bananas. 8 for $20 is possible in Prague, maybe at a happy hour somewhere with low rent in the US.
As I think I mentioned before, I did a tiny bit of work for the karaoke place in question (a plot plan for zoning), but it included walking through while they were working on it.
Come to think of it, I also almost did more substantial work on the other place, but the owner was cheap, and I don't need to be doing cheap people favors.
You can get Yuengling bottles for a dollar at the pizza place by Kelly's.
I was skeptical, but on googling there are a few bars in LA where you can get a shot (of what?) plus a beer for $5 at happy hour, so 4 beers and 4 shots for $20. But only at happy hour.
Shit, I was wrong about the price... its 4 and 4 for $10. Hard to beat that deal.
353 definitely wins, then. Though as I said, I wouldn't be interested and am definitely not comparison-shopping that. Cheap drinks are maybe a good benefit to factor in for anyone who wants to play the move-a-commenter-to-a-red-state game.
Beers here are 1.5-2 euro purchased individually, but you can get buckets that are much better deals- the largest ones (20 bottles) work out to about 1 euro each and come with some food.
353 $9.99 with a penny tip for the bartender. Sucks to be him.
You know what would be nice? It'd be nice if Obama helped out the Clinton transition team by cleaning out everyone he can reach at the FBI (the appointed level) who participated in the leaks. That'd be a friendly thing for him to do as he leaves.
358- Yeah a nice housewarming gift, an early spring cleaning.
And if he fires them all, she'll have no choice but to appoint new people.
Unfortunately she is going to have a hard time getting anyone confirmed.
It'd be interesting to see whether a bunch of vacancies at the FBI hurt the quality of their work any.
Unfortunately it seems like the real problem there isn't the appointees at the top but the lower-level agents.
I get the impression it's hard to ever objectively measure the quality of the FBI's work, given how fiercely they guard their "independence" (including the norm that the President doesn't get to pick a new director when coming to office).
362, 363: wait! You're both right!
Somehow people drawn to the career of "FBI Agent" are the same people who love to speculate about government conspiracies. This even though they are the exact people who would in fact be carrying out the conspiracies if they existed.
Wait, so Roger Stone actually linked to a document that was sincerely claiming Hillary is down 50+ points so she should consider releasing enhanced Zika, staging riots, or using a dirty bomb, but the best option is to fake an alien invasion? And the FBI has now decided it's officially a fake? Glad they're back on our team, I guess.
bleg: I am trying to figure out whether and how I can usefully fly to a swing state (from NYC) and help with GOTV Saturday-Tuesday. I don't drive. There are bus trips from NYC to PA that I know about, but I am trying to figure out if my energy is best spent in a very close state.
I've been in touch with people I could potentially stay with in Miami, Chapel Hill and the Cleveland area. It would violate the SOOBC to say, but perhaps you can infer who in the latter two places! The friend in Miami hasn't offered to drive me anywhere, and I think transportation might be a challenge. The friend in Cleveland is already connected to GOTV and can deposit me somewhere useful. But I would ideally like to go to a closer state. That leaves NC. But I can't figure out how to connect to GOTV in NC. Searching on the Clinton website just gives me phone banking events. I can call from home with the call tool. If this is pointless and irrational, I'll just stay home and use the call tool. But I am willing to go somewhere and canvass with my body if it will help. How do I find NC GOTV so I can verify that my presence will be useful before I book a plane ticket?
If you go to the James Joyce, I can tell you about the bartenders that were there 15 years ago.
My information as an actual campaign guy is very very old. But in the olden days, strictly from a "what is most useful" standpoint, you'd provide better value to the campaign by donating the amount you'd pay for a plane ticket to a close campaign, maybe the NC Senate race, and doing phone banking from home. It's probably way more fun and less anxiety producing to do something from the field where you're moving around, however.
371: I thought at this point that cash was almost irrelevant, except in big quantities (where it might enable an entire effort that would otherwise be skipped) or to extremely marginal races (which I guess the Wang tool would help with).
Also, is NC really closer to NYC than Cleveland?
Also, is NC really closer to NYC than Cleveland?
I think she means a state with a closer race, not a closer state physically.
I got a similar comment on the Hillary Clinton reddit, where I also asked this. I think I am not likely to put in the hours phonebanking at home, or even in the Manhattan field office, that I would if I flew somewhere. I also am really scared right now and would psychologically benefit from feeling like I am doing a lot (but if it's super irrational to go anywhere that's not enough of a reason).
374 to to 371. And yes, a state with a closer race.
Ok, at the other place someone I know from my local NYC advocacy work connected me with someone who works for the Clinton campaign in NC. It looks like I'm getting hooked up, and they do indeed want me.
Don't, don't you want me? You know I don't believe then when they say that she don't need me.
Anyway, I'm in a bar that isn't the James Joyce but is in a swing state.
The guy sitting next to me just left. Said he'd be back. Left half a pack of cigarettes, a sandwich, and 3/4ths of a beer.
I want to be doing GOTV but hate the phone and knocking on doors. What I'd really like to do is spend Monday driving people to the polls (we've got early voting and I'm doing voting right protection work on Tuesday), but I can't find a group that needs people to that. Frustrating.
Also, AC/DC is totally hard rock, although Thunderstruck comes close to metal.
How about NH? Today's 4 polls have Trump +1 average, it's more important to Hillary's base map, smaller so you'll reach a larger percentage of voters, and also has a close Senate race.
NC looks like it's definitely happening. I'm in email communication with the campaign organizers and they're figuring out where to put me. (It's a little frustrating that they clearly wanted me yet it required personal contacts to figure out how to communicate that I wanted to come volunteer.)
The extremely drunk guy who left and came back is now defending Obamacare and Clinton to the guy sitting on his other side. He's doing pretty well.
I'm saying that Tia should try doing voter outreach while slurring her words.
I have a lisp and talk pretty incomprehensibly fast even when sober. I'm a natural!
It's nice to see Tia around even if we weren't able to satisfy her needs.
The tv in the bar is full of ads about Trump wanting to grab pussy.
even if we weren't able to satisfy her needs
What do you mean "we", paleface?
Now if that isn't VTSOOBC I don't know what is.
For doing GOTV without knocking on doors, I helped build this app, which scores the contacts in your phone by democratness, likelihood they won't vote on their own, and valuableness of their vote given the swinginess of their state and the importance of down ballot races: http://www.civicinnovation.com/. Then you just call or text people you already know, but optimized for maximum effectiveness.
I'm torn between my desire to do GOTV work and my general hatred of human interaction.
I'm doing GOTV Sunday despite hating human interaction. I did it for Kerry as well.
Man, another $161k jobs, another wage jump. Anyone who isn't voting for "another four years of Obama" is an irredeemable asshole.
