We're definitely experiencing some fatigue. We have been avoiding even outdoor dining at restaurants, but we gave in over the weekend and found a place on a side street with a patio where there was plenty of distance between tables. It's probably going to be too cold to do that within a few weeks.
how cautiously are you all weighing the polls? If this was any other year, the polls would have us ecstatic, but we all have collective PTSD from 2016.
It's useful to remember that the polls are actually much better for Biden than they were for Clinton. I would also argue that the media has wised up significantly, and even if they hadn't, Barr doesn't have quite the Republican Daddy credibility that Comey did.
I am cautiously optimistic on the subject of election fraud. Individual Republicans are going to have to weigh the possibility that they might not be able to cheat enough to win, and that therefore they are risking getting caught committing a crime for which they won't be pardoned.
In this post-truth era, I often sympathize with our media. Here is the NYT grappling with how to report Trump's lie about Fauci:
Fauci Says a Trump Campaign Ad Misrepresented His Comments
Can you write a better headline? In a sane country with an honest media, the headline would read more like: "Trump Campaign Ad Misrepresents Fauci Comments." But in our country, even with an honest media, I think the NYT got it right. The news isn't that Trump lied, it's that Fauci objected.
It's still been warm enough to do outdoor dining in NYC, so we've continued with that. Our regular watering holes are not planning to have indoor seating even when it gets too cold, so I haven't had to think about that choice. I'm curious whether they'll be able to install enough outdoor heaters to make it not miserable.
We still only do carry out. Almost all from small, local restaurants but sometimes the heart wants Chipotle.
I guess I could try carry out from the Squirrel Cage. I miss the fries.
I've eaten outside on park picnic tables when I got takeout and have not eaten in a restaurant, but I think there is a lot of fatigue.
Deborah Birx was here a few days ago, and she said that public places in the Northeast are very safe, but she is concerned that people are starting to let up and let their guard down around friends and family.
I am so incredibly pissed about Barrett and the whole judiciary. Terrified for my state, and to some extent myself and my job, if the ACA goes down. My department does a lot of work related to our accountable care organization. The legislation authorizing the creation of Medicare ACOs was part of the ACA.
I think we are going to codify Roe and a little more in MA law. We have a restriction after a certain date which is not great for women who find themselves needing one of those. Plus, right now, minors need to go in front of a judge.
If we could swing Texas blue - even turn your House of Representatives blue - that would make me happy.
Heebie - Thank you for your yeoman's work on the blog.
I don't eat at picnic tables because birds shit on them.
I never really stopped secluding myself. I haven't had a social gathering of more than five people, inside or out, since February, and only a handful of times under that. I'm planning on visiting my parents in early November. I expect it will be the last time this year.
I've been going to the pub once a week, for about 5 weeks. I meet the same group of friends -- there are six of us who have a regular table booked at the pub -- and it's all table service via an app, and socially distanced seating. Other than that, we have met up with two other families for a couple of social events, which was more than six people -- 6 adults + kids -- although we've not done that since the rules changed.
I fully expect London to go into further restrictions at some point, though.
I might be repeating someone else's comment, but it seems like a good sign that the guy Barr appointed to release what could have been a Comey-letter-style October surprise, has said nothing will come out before the election. Now, that leak could itself be part of pushback against that, but hopefully (a) the media is more girded against whatever Barr cooks up to release personally on October 26th and (b) the public is also more exhausted with the drip-drip and less likely to be swayed.
Well, to be fair, cats aren't swayed by much of anything.
8: I've gotten together with individuals outside and masked. I drove a friend in my car masked in the summer once, not sure if I had the windows open.
I haven't had anyone over, but that's more because my apartment is small and cluttered, and I didn't like having people over before.
So, I'm fairly secluded. I go to stores and have gotten takeout. I've gone to some doctors appointments. I'm working at home. I go for a walk every day with a mask.
I should probably get another haircut before things get nuts.
We've had beautiful weather here in October, so we're doing well so far.
Can't really re-seclude because we didn't really un-seclude. I thought about trying to buy a hard-to-find outdoor heat lamp for our backyard, and thought..... why? If we didn't have anyone over from May through September, it's unlikely to happen as it gets colder.
We did have a meal consumed outside the house, last weekend, for the first time since this started: fast food from a drive-through, consumed in our car in the parking lot of a self-storage warehouse.
What I'm finding interesting these days: The Rukmini Callimachi story. She's a big star, as actual reporters go, and I wouldn't have wanted to be the Times reporter assigned to hold her and her editors to account. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I were writing for the Washington Post. More from Wemple.
14: I got a haircut a while ago and should go again. They had great PPE. In addition to masks they were wearing stylish glasses. The shampoo person wore a shield over the mask instead.
My dental hygienist wears a shield. It took a while for the docs at my hospital to wear goggles which DPH was recommending a while ago.
I don't even have a shampoo person.
Ever since the soap thread here, I don't even shampoo my own hair more than once a week.
I managed to get back to actually dancing in an actual studio this weekend. Slightly strange experience; everyone in masks, restricted to a 2x2m square for centre work, measured and numbered barre spots. But in the end what really hurt was the impact of seven months of zooms where the teacher can't see my feet. Not surprising really that there was plenty that needed fixing, more surprising that my calves hurt quite that much.
Very sceptical that they won't close down again fairly soon though. I have been hitting the gym a lot in order to get some GAINZ in while I still can; wouldn't want to go back into quarantine without abnormal delts, would we.
The gym next to the bike path I walk on has outdoor group classes. They even take the stationary bikes outside. I don't know how many people are going to want to go in the winter.
Exercise is so much easier for me in the cool. I run best at about fifty degrees regular. Only the warm up is tough.
400 new cases on 10,000 tests, which is at least the right direction. Probably won't be sustained, though.
We're not going to have any additional restrictions until the election, and if Gianforte wins the governorship, we're not going to have any at any time in 2021.
I've eaten outside quite a bit, inside a couple of times. Never in/with a crowd.
Be careful. Your state is kind of fucked.
how cautiously are you all weighing the polls?
I'm not exactly sure what the right question is to ask. No one expects Trump to win the popular vote, and I'm not totally sure about his chances of winning the EC in a fair election (not zero), so the question is how many snafus in how many swing states, whether or not they all lead to a Florida-style catastrophe with lawsuits and riots, would lead to Trump walking away with a victory that can't be overruled somehow. The unpredictable unpredictability, the question of which margins count, etc.... this is why I'm reluctant to take any polls at face value. I don't know how distorting it is to model this like any past election.
I've stayed pretty isolated, in a sort of incompetent way. I see both my parents separately; Newt's living at home; Newt's Canadian girlfriend stayed with us for a month; I spent a week staying with the LDR back in July but didn't interact with anyone but him. Other that that my human contact is masked grocery-shopping and walking or running outdoors.
I thought the reason people had a Canadian girlfriend is because you can't bring them home.
Even the still-probably-too-certitudinous 538 model now gives an 8% chance Biden wins the popular vote and loses the Electoral College, and a 4% chance it's close enough to hinge on a recount in one or more states.
- how cautiously are you all weighing the polls? If this was any other year, the polls would have us ecstatic, but we all have collective PTSD from 2016.
I don't want to be optimistic about anything these days. That being said, any imaginable surprises over the next three weeks seem more likely to be bad for the side that isn't wearing masks while trying to force through a SC nomination. Also, I don't want to overstate how good things looked in 2016. A week before that election, if I remember correctly Nate Silver gave Clinton a 60-70 chance of winning. That's not all that high.
As for social distancing, I'm not sure what we're going to do with the kid. Playdates can't be outdoors forever. On the other hand, we're going to get a car, which should help us make bigger and therefore fewer trips to the grocery store. Should help a bit.
28 I guess that's more or less where I am on the polls as well. So much is so different this time from 2016, nearly all for the better, but Trump and especially Barr do seem dedicated to using the various powers of the federal government to maximum extent. That Durham seems not to be playing his assigned role is gratifying -- it's too late to replace him, really. Speaking of Durham, folks should rewatch The Report for the couple of times Durham gets referred to.
2000 worked out for Bush for a number of reasons, but among there were just how unprecedented the whole thing was. Everyone is expecting this stuff this time around -- all of our big counties already have plans for dealing with attempts to disrupt vote counting, for example, and I would expect that the counties in Pennsylvania etc do as well. A shit ton of 'naked' ballots are going to be tossed in Pennsylvania and elsewhere: there does seem to be a real effort at voter education on this, and one can hope that churches and other community organizations are underlining that.
18 It's a tough beat, but then reporters get lied to about everything all the time.
We well remember that my sin is over-optimism. That said, I suspect we're underestimating Dem turnout. All those new Dem groups (Invisible, SwingLeft, etc) have been working their hearts out for four years. All that sincere grinding work has to have some results.
I just gave some money to the Movement Voter Project, which funds local activists in swing states to increase turnout, especially Black turnout.
I'd certainly like to see friends again in a more regular way. I do have a group of friends that I've met in person with twice to game; we're thinking about trying for one game in early November and early December. That's by big "splurge" for risk.
I helped a separating friend move over the weekend... furniture and stairs in masks is a struggle! But we did a pretty good job of giving each other lots of space when carrying up boxes, and grabbed pizza and retreated to the breezeway or far corners of the room. We used a lot more cars instead of piling in together between the house and apartment... in the end, not ideal, but pretty good.
No eating in restaurants yet, though limited indoor seating is currently allowed in our county. Some takeout and more delivery. I do the grocery shopping myself -- fortunately, the grocery stores are all strict about demanding masks, keeping occupancy down, and 6' spacing.
18: Huh, interesting. I listened to a couple episodes of the podcast a while back and it did seem like it relied weirdly heavily on the stories of the one Canadian guy whose general unreliability was very obvious (and, as Wemple notes, the series used his unreliability as a source of consistent narrative tension). The fact that she doesn't speak Arabic seems like it may underlie some of her apparent mistakes as well as being a problem in its own right.
All the leafleting and canvassing I saw this past weekend was in predominantly minority areas.
My fake girlfriend wasn't from Canada she just lived on the other side of the county.
For the polls, it seem like it should be a trouncing at the presidential level -- most of the debate isn't whether Biden will get more votes, but will he get more votes on election night, or in states where Republicans aren't threatening to back silly suits and substitute their own electors. I'll be deeply suspicious at the level of wondering just how successful election hacking has been if Biden doesn't win the popular vote at this point.
We were pretty good about isolating until we bought the house. None of the many workmen wear masks -- to be fair, I wouldn't, either, if I were demolishing a bathroom and though we keep the place ventilated, it's not very safe.
Tatsu caught the virus along with his entire student house within days of going to university, but since they have all tested positive on his corridor, they can mingle with each other while locked down. I suspect that there has been a lot of enthusiastic mingling. Not much else to do.
Before that, we went to a pub a couple of times when it first became possible, because it was so lovely to sit with other people. But only twice inside. The trains I have ridden on have been almost deserted, and everyone has worn masks.
My Swedish ex caught the virus from a patient, but breezed through it, only to come down with a dreadful case of appendicitis a month or so later.
As for Trump, I try not to keep up with the news. None of the day to day changes things much, and I still think that the collapse of the economy will do for him although he will certainly cheat as much as he can to stay out of jail. The real question is what will happen after him. We can't go back to the before time. How to make fresh barriers against chaos that will hold?
I drove out to western MA yesterday for a change of scenery and drove along a scenic byway. It's a road that used to be busier before the Mass Pike was built, and you can tell that the towns along the way were kind of left behind. Along 60 or so miles, I saw at least 20 Trump-Pence signs. One was an enormous billboard type thing on an old run-down garage. I saw maybe 1 or 2 Biden signs. I had to keep reminding myself that I was still in a very blue state.
From the yard signs, I also learned that there is a write-in candidate for US Senate.
The write-in is the crank who claims to be "the inventor of email". Turns out he wrote a program called "Email" in the 1980s, but was by no means the first. Much more crankery documented at his wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai
(He also ran in the Republican primary, and has in the past as well.)
Miscellaneous observations on the no-hope competitors to various state-legislature incumbents in my area:
* My assembly district: perennial Republican who lost 11-89 against the same incumbent two years ago, most notable for raising place-of-birth "concerns" about him.
* The neighboring assembly district: an independent beat out the Republican in the top-two primary by a whisker, and in the past month replaced her entire website with a rant of white text on black starting "This race does not matter" and below "To the comfortable liberals: fuck your comfort."
* My senate district: Libertarian who got into second place with 0.05% of the vote to the incumbent's 99.95%. Saw telephone pole signs saying "Please vote for [candidate]", with "please" underlined.
42, 43: That would be the westernmost parts of Route 2? and Shiva for Senate?
He's a write-in and also ran in (IIRC) the House election that ended up with Lori Trahan being elected to replace Cory Atkins when she retired. Shiva is the litigious guy who claims that he invented email. He was not and is not, but he managed to get some money out of his lawsuit about it. (As in, "shut up and go away" money.)
46: Jacobs Ladder Byway - route 20.
This is some high-quality wikipedia shade:
V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai (born Vellayappa Ayyadurai Shiva,[2] December 2, 1963)[3] is an Indian-American scientist, engineer, politician, entrepreneur, and promoter of conspiracy theories and unfounded medical claims.
49: I saw that, and it totally cracked me up.
I thought she was with the guy who played the male lead in her series. I can't think of his name, but years later I saw him on Broadway ("Urinetown").
Maybe it was off Broadway? The men's room was filthy, which I thought was nicely thematic.
On the polls etc.: as a corollary to the 2016 PTSD, it does, of course, please me to think of Trump voters now feeling complacent because of the upset last time.
I saw another buck on my walk. He was standing at the Holocaust memorial. He couldn't have been playing Pokemon Go because somebody, quite sensibly, complained that it was disrespectful to have a Pokemon Go gym there.
I've been leaning hard on the Brian Schatz/Chris Murphy Twitter feeds for last minute donation direction.
I mentioned in the other thread that our local paper had set off a shitstorm endorsing a right wing nutjob for office. So, today they rescinded the endorsement, and instead endorsed the reasonable well qualified candidate. Shitstorm worked!
In other media news, my sister's mother-in-law made the Chron: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Closing-in-on-100-retired-Lafayette-hairdresser-15631901.php
Laurence Tribe recommends Alaska's at-large seat, because Alaska is cheap, and it could give the Dems a majority of the delegations which would be important if the presidential election went to the House.
Then I switch to Celsius to stay warm
61: I saw that joke coming after I commented..
Megan and Minivet, what is going on with the Republican Party in California creating fake drop boxes for ballots?
It's hardly ever that cold here during the day, at least for the past few winters.
62: you've more or less covered it. The attorney general just sent a cease-and-desist. The party has an argument that it's the practice of ballot harvesting that was recently legalized (and they hate), but that holds no water as the law requires an individual to identify themselves as the person the ballot was entrusted to.
So would it be OK if they were just handed to the person at the gun store, but not put in a box at the gun store because the process of putting them in a box means that person is no longer entrusted with them because he doesn't know exactly what's in the box?
The first things I saw about this made it sound like these were decoy boxes with the goal of throwing the ballots in the river, or some sort of media stunt to indicate how easy it would be to set up a decoy box and throw the ballots in the river. Kind of alarmist.
65: When I was trained on it in the Central Valley the collector had to attach their own name and contact info for accountability, and we got a special pouch to seal it in after that. However, on research, the exact security procedures may be up to each county. (There are state laws preventing anyone from being paid based on number of ballots collected.)
I just checked my own VBM envelope and it also requires a signature from the collector on the outside, although no under-penalty-of-perjury language. That jogged my memory that two years ago, we were also instructed to sign over the flap after sealing, so it would be harder to unseal in transit.
More on the legal arguments - apparently the GOP argue the collector is instructed to sign, but this is not required by law (no penalty for omitting to) and counties are required to count ballots they receive even if they lack this signature. But Democrats definitely trained me to follow the instructions, black letter law or not. And their routinely calling the dropboxes "official" does seem to constitute impersonating an elections officer.
The Republican Party is deeply committed to reminding people that they are spoiled shitheads.
65: I think part of the problem is that the voter is entitled to know that they have handed off their ballot to a known person who they trust to deliver it to the state. These boxes appear to be official state boxes, so the voter doesn't know who they've given their ballot to -- they think they've made the final delivery themselves.
Laurence Tribe recommends Alaska's at-large seat, because Alaska is cheap, and it could give the Dems a majority of the delegations which would be important if the presidential election went to the House.
It's worth a shot, and Galvin's a good candidate, but it's really hard for me to imagine Don Young finally losing, even this year.
How about just Alaska Democrats? That way you get work for the House seat, but also for Al Gross for Senate, who's a good stretch goal.
I definitely encourage donating to Alaska Democrats.
I think Al Gross may have plenty of money at this point though. I definitely think he's more likely to win than Galvin.
It's worth a shot, and Galvin's a good candidate, but it's really hard for me to imagine Don Young finally losing, even this year.
You never know. Ralph Hall lost the 2014 primary at age 91 after 34 years in Congress (to John Ratcliffe, who is already out of Congress and serving as one of Trump's crazed partisan cabinet officials declassifying things to hurt Democrats). Although Young is only 87 and has spent 48 years in Congress.
88 non-Law faculty at Notre Dame ask Barrett to step down.
Question about Alyce Galvin: Is it pronounced "Alice" or "Elise"? Rhyming with Palace or Release?
78: The latter. Also it's spelled "Alyse."
Watching from a distance, I'd appreciate being educated about Barrett. She's a mad anti-choicer, but on other issues is she a standard Republican lawyer or a Trumpite nut job?
80: I just read this, which was informative. She seems potentially a new Thomas, which is to say much more on the Trumpy, dispruptive side. She coauthored an article that said "Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board", but later went on to say, this time I'm paraphrasing, "don't worry, we'll decline to hear cases if originalism would be too crazy." What a goon.
What does originalism have to say about corporate personhood?
Nut job. Not a specifically Trumpy nut job, but a nut job. Committed to interpreting the constitution as she believes it would have been interpreted in the 1780s, with an explicit exception for cases that she believes are wrongly decided by that standard but would be so shocking to overturn that she'd never get confirmed, like Brown v. Board of Education.
Or, exactly what Minivet said and I failed to read before posting.
The Second Amendment guarantees everyone's right to carry a flintlock musket during militia exercises on the town green.
Even if they have convictions for gun felonies.
83: It's in the penumbras and emanations.
I really want to read an article about ACB's religious group "People of Praise" that's written by someone who is genuinely informed about what kind of weirdness is "normal" in evangelical circles. It's hard for me to tell whether PoP is just weird in ordinary evangelical ways, or whether it's an actual cult. But everything I've read about it is from people who I feel like don't have any sense of what was normal in evangelical culture, whether in terms of housing sharing that you'd expect in evangelical groups coming out of 70s "Jesus people" movements or in terms of "courtship" rituals in "I Kissed Dating Goodbye"-style 90s evangelicalism and so it just reads like "all this normal evangelical stuff is super weird and fucked up." And yes it is weird and fucked up, but that doesn't make it a cult, and I'm curious to know if it's a cult!
Basically that the leader is extremely powerful and uses that power in weird ways. For example, did ACB have the option of not marrying her husband? Or was it essentially forced by the leader's decision? If the leadership calls up ACB and tells her to do something does she essentially have to do it or be kicked out?
I think the orders come from the Federalist Society.
91: Yes, that makes sense. The NYT article I just read makes me think it's not a cult in that sense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/people-of-praise-amy-coney-barrett.html
As a committed originalist, I'm sure Barrett will get right to work applying the Reconstruction amendments according to the original understanding of Radical Republicans.
I don't see why felons shouldn't be allowed to keep and bear arms while they are in prison. What part of 'shall not be infringed' is ambiguous? And surely being locked in with a bunch of dangerous violent people makes the self-defense justification for the Second Amendment that we are pretending is there more rather than less compelling.
I'm not watching her, or paying close enough attention to know, but is she going to join Thomas is his crusade to use the P&I clause, rather than liberty, as a way of striking down state laws that infringe on individual rights to own guns, exercise religious intolerance in their businesses, etc?
95: Not to mention the Framers' view of the Ninth Amendment!
75: that's interesting, because at least one poll had her much closer than Gross. I gave him a tiny gift, like $7.50 and was going to give maybe $15 to Glavin.
I'm kind of annoyed with Greenfield in Iowa. I do want more Democrats of all stripes to win,but I'd also like to boost folks who are less likely to get support from corporate types and who will be more amenable to supporting an agenda like Medicare (Advantage) for All.
So would anything in Article III prevent Congress from combining the Courts of Appeals with the Supreme Court, having the resulting Supreme Court sit in panels, and using something akin to the 9th Circuit's en banc process to draw larger panels to resolve conflicts among panels and be the final arbiter of cases of particular importance?
98: I'd heard a lot more about Gross, probably because one Senate seat matters so much more, but now that I look at the poll aggregators, I see that Galvin leads Young in the one poll taken in October, and a couple more earlier this year, whereas Sullivan leads Gross in most recent polls, yet 538 still projects Young to win 52-48 and Sullivan to win 51-44.
teo, any comment? Who knows, maybe observers are weighting in Young's much longer incumbency and the fact that he defeated Galvin at least once already, by 7 points in 2018.
98, 100: Polling in Alaska is difficult and doesn't have a great track record; it has a tendency to overestimate Democratic strength in particular. Nate Cohn, who is currently polling Alaska for the first time, had some interesting tweets about this the other day. It's not clear exactly what's going on with this phenomenon, but one possibility is that pollsters aren't properly weighting the Alaska Native vote. This could be a particular problem when it comes to Don Young, who has substantial personal popularity and credibility among the Native community going back decades. Sullivan is probably also being underrated by polls but doesn't have the same personal history so I think he's more likely to lose than Young (but still more likely than not to win).
Speaking of guns, there's an SUV parked in front of the high school with vanity plates reading "VENGEANCE"*. It's been there for like three days.
*I'm pretty sure all the letters aren't there, but I can't read it as any other word.
This looks to be where the Repubs are pushing money at the moment. That is a big spend for Alaska.
Mitch McConnell's @Senate_Fund dropping over $22.5M in eight races tonight:
6,121,824->#NCSen
4,505,936->#GASen
3,636,248->#IASen
3,275,192->#AKSen
2,579,361->#MTSen
1,255,998->#MESen
1,008,765->#COSen
138,632->#KSSen
If we're talking Alaska politics, can I say how sad and angry I am about the mayor? I don't know a thing about him, but his wife is AMAZING. She didn't deserve this (not that anyone does).
Wrong thread, unless this is the thread for being sad and angry and the other thread is for being cruel. In my defense, I assumed he was Republican when I started.
104: You're not alone, for sure. Everyone in my circles in still kind of in shock.
Oh, hey, my name is Amy Coney Barrett, and I'm an Originalist! I believe that the ancient Code of Hammurabi should guide our every decision about early-21st-century life, and that we should faithfully follow the advice and example of our ancient Babylonian forefathers. Well, except when it comes to guns, of course (don't be silly: they didn't have guns in 1750 B.C. Babylon!...).
106: If I understand correctly it was with a femal new anchor who left him a threatening voicemail with anti-semitic slurs and was arrested after getting into a fight with her boss at the station?
The heart wants what the heart wants.
Male news is that we males suck to a larger extent than women when it comes to politics. I guess not that newsy, but what a fucking affirmation of the principle this election year has been
Speaking of the media, fuck NBC. I have been watching them, but I hadn't been really boycotting them until now.
Why are we fucking NBC?... oh, okay. I take it Trump still has some pull with the network?
Don't care. No Peacock in this house.
The choice to do it opposite of the Biden one is the really bad part.
Does the Constitution say anything about a peaceful transfer of office? Because apparently ACB won't answer a question about her position on that.
116: I assume he asked and they have no ethics.
MSNBC is the only network I watch regularly.
Update on the phony GOP dropboxes in California: they have hurriedly removed the word "official" from anything and blamed the wording on an "overzealous volunteer", but the boxes are still there and they're not backing down.
This seems like a job for volunteers with stencils or stickers: "This is not an official ballot drop box. Putting your ballot in this box is not sufficient to deliver it to the State of California." Or whatever the wording should be.
I started idly musing about some vigilante work along those lines, but honestly they're probably all in parts of California where I'd worry about getting shot.
||
Cancel culture at universities is out of control!
Harvard University was within its rights to turn up the lights in Sanders Theater and end an employee's performance while he was nude and having intercourse with a sex doll on stage and a video played showing him ejaculating in the doll's mouth, all somehow connected to his argument that Jewish circumcision is evil.