I forgot to play gospel music this morning. I have touch of the flu and was up late.
What’s going on?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.
Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.
The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.
Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.
Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.
We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.
People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.
75% of people clapping liked the show!
A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.
Come on, man.
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.
The lights are all blinking red.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.
some guy
another banner day for our Al Qaeda allies in Beirut:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/violence-erupts-after-funeral-for-slain-senior-lebanese-intelligence-official-wissam-al-hassan/2012/10/21/db30f77c-1b94-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html?hpid=z4
PsiFighter37
Been a quiet Sunday for me. Ate some leftovers for lunch, got my workout in (ironically, the same one that Paul Ryan does), and now just surfing the tubes. Seems like Gallup daily tracker is still off the rails, and the IBD/TIPP tracker moving the other way (has Obama up by nearly 6). The polls are all over the freakin’ place, but I have to say that as long as the LV screens show a tie, I think we win. Obama has the superior ground game, and no amount of outsourced GOP GOTV work (from the Talibangelical crowd to the Kochs) will help. It’s much better to have a grassroots force that is motivated to work for your candidate, instead of only against the other side.
16 days is too long to wait until the election, but I’ve already got it marked on my calendar. I have to figure out if there’s an Election Night party getting set up somewhere in Manhattan. I also do hope that we pick up seats in the Senate. We have a real shot, but we need Tester and Heitkamp to hold and for Donnelly, Berkley, and Carmona to bring their best GOTV game (or, in Berkley’s case, get dragged across the finish line).
Oh yeah, and the Jets play the Patriots today. I expect that to go well #not_really
AnneW
I know there are some knitters & crocheters here. Are any of y’all on Ravelry? (I’m indigoace there.)
John M. Burt
Interrupted Internet access is distressing, especially while recovering from bladder surgery. Have to go find a public hub to go online.
So desperate for a ‘net fix I’m surfing in the middle of a writers’ group meeting.
Alexandra
I’m not sure what’s worse: falling off the wagon with Sully or reading DKos. Tired of reading breathless missives about likely voter screens, margins of error, house effects, cell phones, cross-tabs, robo-polls, outliers, weighting and so on. And I am also continually disappointed by TPM, in terms of content.
There’s only thing for it: drink.
Linda
On the gospel music last week, you forgot about Andy Griffith and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
I would like some good beet recipes and to know the least messy way to peel them.
eemom
Ride the Chariot. Hard to find a good youtube of this, but we sang it in my high school chorus and I’ve loved it ever since.
I am interested that you like gospel music. I’m more or less an agnostic too, but I find musical expressions of faith deeply moving. Like at the very end of this song, the high note on “To see my Lord“….wow.
some guy
the fact that both WaPo and the Times are apparently cheering on Al Qaeda tells us how far we have come from 9/11. “Go Team Jihad” has now become the Villager consensus.
PsiFighter37
@Alexandra: Don’t drink too much and post here…the denizens of this blog don’t take kindly to frequent drunken posting. :P
Just kidding…but honestly, I did it all the time in dKos when I was in college, and no one gave two shits there. Heck, I was probably even more incomprehensible there back in the day. And I wasn’t even drinking good stuff; a lot of times it was the result of drinking Banker’s Club vodka, which has to be some of the absolute worst liquor to ever grace this planet.
Schlemizel
@John M. Burt:
Ouch! Hope your recovery goes well. That sucks.
@Linda:
I was going to mention LBM but thought it was not the style they wanted to talk about.
Funny story there though. The Mrs. brother, who is a racist born-again douche stopped by the house one time & we had LBM on the stereo. He made some comment about “jungle bunny voodoo music” Just as he was finishing his spew the group was singing “amen”. I turned to him & said yeah, I suppose to you it must sound that way when they sing about Jesua”. It didn’t change him but it made me feel better.
Another Halocene Human
@Alexandra: I quit TPM after their second great commenting software change. Fuck. it. And their content was getting sillier and sillier anyway.
Switched to Think Progress. Much better.
danah gaz
Okay, so my Maine Coon really didn’t want to go to the vet yesterday, and my s/o was taking him to get some things looked at.
While in the car, he *broke a hole* in the side of the cat carrier – bloodying his nose in the process, and then he proceeded to roll down the passenger side window and attempted to throw himself onto the highway.
Thlayli
Giants are trying real hard to lose this game.
Hill Dweller
The twitter machine is telling me Mayor Bloomberg criticized Willard today. Anyone else hear about it?
Yutsano
@PsiFighter37: I figure you’re an adult capable of making your own rational choices. Having said that, you booze like you went to my college. :)
Southern Beale
Okay this is hilarious, I have a guy at my place claiming that Mitt Romney is “Clintonian,” that he’s not a flip-flopping hypocrite, he’s just shifting positions to accomplish something! To get something done!
It’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard.
Alexandra
@PsiFighter37:
No, I rarely post anywhere when I’m drinking. It’s dark and cold here in London so am more likely to curl up in bed with some scotch and the phone, finding something interesting to stream on TuneIn or maybe watch some Doctor Who.
There are a few non-partisan political forums I occasionally post in, but a collective hush seems to have fallen over them. The jerks that were there a week or so ago, screaming about a Romney landslide seem to have fallen quiet and the liberals who aren’t posting about their OFA work are left parsing the polls and reading the tealeaves. It’s a little uncanny, like a respite falling over the Western Front.
Wish the 47% video had dropped about now, to be honest, but holding the faith with Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium. Bored with Nate Silver’s understandable but constant hedging.
Peter
I really have to wonder how polling and forecast organizations are dealing with the fact that the Romney compaign’s GOTV and voter registration efforts are utterly anemic. That doesn’t seem like something that could be checked in likely voter screens, and yet something that could seriously affect electoral outcomes.
Another Halocene Human
@PsiFighter37: Just kidding…but honestly, I did it all the time in dKos when I was in college, and no one gave two shits there. Heck, I was probably even more incomprehensible there back in the day.
Okay, just back up for a moment and re-read what you wrote there just now.
dKos is frustrating to me not because of the front page diaries but because the comment threads have so much dross to wade through that I just get fed up and leave. I don’t know if a slashdot style comment ranking system would work because the dumb commenters would just upvote the pinhead comments. But you know a website has problems when the trolls invade and can cause such merry havoc with little effort. Slashdot had similar problems, honestly. Maybe it’s comment threading? I’ve gotten so mightily sick of it.
Just because usenet did it… probably a clue that you shouldn’t do it. Usenet didn’t do much right. It functioned in spite of its structural issues, until it finally ceased to function at all.
Hill Dweller
@Southern Beale: Willard doesn’t have half of Clinton’s intelligence nor political skill.
SiubhanDuinne
@danah gaz:
I’m sorry. That’s terrible and scary and probably expensive, but it made me hoot out loud with laughter!
Chris
@some guy:
If the big central dividing line in the Middle East these days is Sunnis vs Shi’a, it’s noteworthy that throwing in against the Shi’a as we seem to’ve done (because, y’know, Iran is four years away from having a nuke just like it has been for the last thirty-three years, plus can’t rock the boat with Saudi Arabia) de facto puts us on the same side as al-Qaeda.
One of the more interesting thing about the Very Serious People consensus in Washington has been its complete lack of interest in discussing or explaining how the fuck that happened or whether it’s really a good idea.
danah gaz
Here’s the photo of what’s left of the pet carrier I mentioned in my previous comment.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8189/8109926891_517ab30cbd.jpg
We bought him a steel dog crate now. =)
Southern Beale
@Hill Dweller:
No of course not, I just that that was so funny. Talk about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@PsiFighter37:I’m a little freaked-out by those polls, too. It appears that O has a lead in the majority of the battleground states, but the MSM does seem intent on making this a horserace (since that sells copy).
Nate Silver (last I looked) gave Obama a 70%+ chance of winning re-election, but I wish things were a bit more certain. Hmmm…. maybe if it does appear close, that means that Dems will actually show up and perhaps even sneak in a few more representatives and keep the Senate blue, too.
How can people look at Mitt and Ann Romney and not see the decay in their souls?
danah gaz
@SiubhanDuinne: We’re laughing about it, too.
Max is fine. He’s rather durable. We took him into the vet because we thought he might have a cyst or a tumor and wanted it looked at. It turns out that it’s the kitteh equivalent of “cauliflower ear”, so it was essentially harmless. He fights a lot, sometimes with two or three cats at a time. We’d keep him inside if he’d let us, but as you can see from above, he gets his way – or else.
The amazing thing to me was the passenger side window. He’s too clever for his own good. =)
PS: The vet remarked about “what remarkable shape he’s in”, all things considered. =) I think that was his way of saying OMG what the hell are you feeding this monster!, he’s a muscle with fur on it. =)
Also, my s/o just informed me that he qualified for the “senior” discount they give to pets. I guess we should have named him Clint Eastwood or something.
Oh, here he is, catnipped and thoroughly asleep – if I recall, he was snoring rather loudly at this point. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7161874801_6cd9a71037.jpg
Another Halocene Human
LGF has a post up about a Brit who says he was able to donate $10 to OfA online.
CJ suggested this is all shouting to cover the vast sums of foreign money flowing in to PACs due to CU.
I wonder if it also casts doubt on the online donation system that has allowed so many poor people to donate small sums of money to Obama’s campaign? Never have I seen a campaign where one candidate had so many small donors to another’s so few (and maxed out).
Maude
@Hill Dweller:
14
He did a both sides do it.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Was a great laugh. Talented kitty.
PsiFighter37
@Peter: There’s been very little that’s been said about Willard’s GOTV operation. I honestly think that he and his idiot brain trust think that dumping shitloads of money into commercials will have an effect at this point. He has less field offices in virtually every state, and Obama has been organizing a hell of a lot longer, and a lot more competently. I have to think that if any swing state is within a couple points, Obama’s GOTV operation will be able to swing the state. There’s a really good diary at GOS that analyzes the NC early voting and shows that Obama looks to have banked 42,000 votes that won’t show up in the polls because of same-day registration and voting. That is HUGE.
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): I think Nate’s record is going to be worse this year than it was in 2008. The problem is that his model won’t account for the ground operation. It works well on a topline model when the election is not going to be super-close (like 2008 and 2010), but I think it could have a lot of problems when the polls are being as noisy and contradictory as they’ve been the past few weeks.
Southern Beale
Just saw this:
Wonder if now would be a good time to talk about class war again …. ya think???!
PsiFighter37
@Another Halocene Human: This is stupid. For anyone who has given directly to the Obama campaign (and I have, too many times to count, this cycle), there is a notification at the bottom of the email that says your contribution is subject to review.
Fucking clowns…of course the campaign is going to be checking this shit. Now, if you donated money to Willard’s campaign, they’re probably too stupid to check for this kind of thing.
J.
This should make you feel better, DougJ. :-)
Also, how about them NY Giants Cruz-ing to victory over the Redskins?! Go G-Men!
Roger Moore
@Another Halocene Human:
Comment threading works well when people are used to it. I think it was probably necessary on USENET because the nature of the place meant that threads could be spread out over weeks or even months, and there was no good way of getting a real overview of the conversation. It was an appropriate approach for the limited technology available. I think it still works well if your posters tend to be digressive and stray off topic, especially if there’s a way of collapsing subthreads that you aren’t interesting in following.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@Southern Beale: Why do you resent success? Hey, those multi-millionaires earned those 9 mansions and accompanying car elevators!
FSM, I hope my sarcasm is coming through loud and clear….
Southern Beale
@PsiFighter37:
Yes but wasn’t that the point of all of these Voter ID laws? To quash Obama’s GOTV effort?
Joel
@Another Halocene Human: You do have to click a box that assures you of being a U.S. citizen when donating. I’m assuming that not doing so constitutes a felony of some sort, although that would only be prosecutable with foreigners living on U.S. soil.
Southern Beale
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.):
Yep, LOL.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Durn activist judges.
Peter
@PsiFighter37: Yeah early voting has been going HUGE for Obama. I remember right after the first debate it came out that something like 19% of Ohioans had already voted, and 75% of those went to Obama. That’s big. Crunching some numbers roughly, that means that Romney would have to win the remaining voters by ten points in order to win the state.
Southern Beale
@Another Halocene Human:
Haven’t read the post but just because someone donated, doesn’t mean the donation went all the way through or was accepted. But one thing I have heard (and experienced myslef) is difficulty donating to OFA. Credit card refused for no discernible reason, and some neighbors of mine had the same issue. Tried to buy yard signs via OFA and were refused.
So “both sides do it” or some such nonsense.
Cathy D
@AnneW: I am “cathyish” on Rav. I knit and spin, and attempt to weave. In my time away from fiber, people pay me to be an RN.
PsiFighter37
@Southern Beale: I’m pretty sure OFA game-planned for this kind of stuff. And didn’t most of these ID laws get overturned by courts anyways (or at least don’t apply for this election)? I know that, at least in PA, it has no impact.
What really needs to happen is a clear, concise case of why these ID laws are bullshit. Namely: there have been virtually no documented cases of voter fraud. And when it comes to registering voters, it’s almost always the GOP engaging in it. You don’t find a bunch of Democrats throwing away trashbags full of voter registration forms.
I was trying to make this point to my fiancee over dinner last night – but the GOP actively engages in hypocrisy on nearly every level when it comes to policy. You can stand up for family values but fuck a prostitute while wearing a diaper as long as you clear it with God after the fact. You can talk about how freedom but actively try to deny people the right to vote. You can talk yourself to death about how BIG and BAD the deficit is, but when you get the levers of power, you spend like a drunken PF37 posting on Balloon Juice on Friday nights.
They’re all a bunch of fucking hypocrites, and whenever they say the other side does it, it is almost always a case of PROJECTION.
Linda
@danah gaz: I don’t know why, but your tough-guy cat reminds me of a Klingon on the new versions of Star Trek. Maybe it’s the arrangement of his forehead stripes.
This is old news, but I never liked the new improved Klingons. The rompin stompin ass-kickin villains from the old show were turned into a bunch of (literally) boneheaded neurotics endlessly whining about their honor. They were Woody Allen in black leather.
Coming soon, my thoughts on this newfangled printing thingie Mr. Gutenberg has come up with.
SiubhanDuinne
@danah gaz:
Yow.
@danah gaz:
My, he is one big kitteh, isn’t he? (::admiringly::). And from the blessed-out look on his face, that catnip must be very nice bud.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Alexandra:
Well, there’s one other thing, and that’s GOTV. Did my first canvassing yesterday, and got either Not Home or Strong Obama supporter. Reminded people where their polling place was.
Tough work for an introvert. Also spent a couple of hours entering all the canvassing data into the OfA database, which was much more my style.
So if PA turns red, at least I can tell myself I did something to fight it. Besides the “Don’t Blame Me” bumper sticker.
ETA: Just saw you’re in London. To quote Emily Litella, “Never mind.”
Not sure what to suggest, other than ignoring the polls and everything else and doing something productive. The last two weeks of the election are bugfuck insane.
Hill Dweller
@PsiFighter37: Al Giordano called Nate’s descent into Villagism immediately after he joined the NYT.
I’ve been really disappointed in his repeated citing of ludicrous polls as evidence of whatever narrative he wants to push during this election cycle.
SiubhanDuinne
@danah gaz:
Yow.
@danah gaz:
My, he is one big kitteh, isn’t he? (::admiringly::). And from the blissed-out look on his face, that catnip must be very nice bud.
PsiFighter37
@Peter: But it’s important that the voters they are picking up are people who are newly-registered. Those people will probably not show up in the RV screens pollsters apply, much less the LV. That’s why the NC diary (think it’s Matt in TX) is posting at GOS is fascinating – the Obama campaign is banking votes from people who never voted before. That’s huge. If the same thing is happening in OH and IA and other places, that is going to be money.
FlipYrWhig
@danah gaz: Holy hell! Glad he’s OK!
Roger Moore
@PsiFighter37:
I’m not sure about the holes in Nate’s model. I think it depends on how important different parts of GOTV are. If the important part is getting people excited about voting for their candidate, then it ought to show up in measures of voter enthusiasm that are part of likely voter screens. If the important part is cajoling less enthusiastic voters to actually cast their votes, then it’s not going to be well accounted for.
MikeJ
@Roger Moore:
If the topic is “politics”, threading helps a lot. If the topic is “this article in the NYT that I’m linking to” aggressive moderation is a much better answer.
I remember being involved in several fairly high traffic newsfroups back in the day, and they typically didn’t go over a couple of hundred posts per day. Every thread on Kos goes over that.
PsiFighter37
@Hill Dweller: It’s true that I liked Nate better when he was just ‘poblano’, and people wondered how the fuck a guy named after a pepper could be so freakin’ good at statistics.
I also liked the old 538 site better, and he basically had to ditch the partisan elements of 538 when he joined. That sucks, because there was a poster on the old site (who got ditched because of the limit on partisanship) that was hitting the road and getting a sense, on the ground, of what people were thinking. In a not-literally-but-almost sense, Silver has foisted himself into an ivory tower.
Oh, and on a profile that was done on him, he said he didn’t vote in 2008 and won’t this year. If that’s really true, fuck him. Not voting isn’t going to enhance your standing in the Village one bit. As someone who is in the politics business, you’re supposed to be one of the more informed people to decide who should run the country.
FlipYrWhig
@Hill Dweller: Well… I think his Big Thing was that he would extract the raw data from all polls and apply adjustments to make even the screwy ones useful. So he can’t really stop that now without introducing a whole new set of problems.
But I do think it’s fishy, in that Sherlock Holmes dog-that-didn’t-bark kind of way, that after the first debate there was a barrage of polls that got everyone talking, and after the second one, just the usual trickle. I catch a whiff of skulduggery there… And Silver treated them all with a degree of seriousness, which is a large part of why so many people got so freaked out.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@Linda: Funny stuff, Linda… Number me among those who prefer the old-school Klingons who were swarthy and sweaty but at least had a bit of wit: “You’re right… I didn’t mean to say the Enterprise should be hauling garbage… I meant to say it should be hauled away — as garbage!“
muddy
@Linda: Here’s a beet recipe I like: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/borscht-with-meat/detail.aspx
I try to get organic beets that are not too big and I eat the skins.
Davis X. Machina
@danah gaz: Maine Coons were selected, and were bred, as much as they were really bred in any strict sense, for service as barn cats through a Maine winter, pine martins, fishers, and all, or for anti-rat duties on coastal shipping.
These are not places for pinkies-out, teacup rattling moggies.
Hal
The popular vote is nerve racking, but state by state it’s not nearly that bad.
What blows my mind is Florida. Don’t the 55 and older crowds have kids, grand kids, friends 54 and under? Why on earth would you want to leave a coupon for your friends and loved ones while you ride off into the sunset on your Medicare funded lark? It’s just amazingly selfish.
This country, just arrrghhhh! Hulk smash! You want to vote out the guy who’s policies are actually reducing unemployment and improving so many peoples lives for a super rich android whose running for President because he wants a bigger tax cut? Fuck the fuck off.
Hill Dweller
@FlipYrWhig: It’s the blog posts that piss me off more than his modeling. As you pointed out, there were some really ridiculous polling coming out after the first debate, conducted by obviously hackish pollsters like Gravis and Mason-Dixon, but he would cite them in blog posts as credible evidence for whatever horse race narrative he was pushing.
At the old 538 site, Silver would have laughed at those pollsters.
divF
Glad to see you post Sam Cooke’s gospel work with the Soul Stirrers.
As with last week’s (?) gospel thread, I will give a plug for Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. Several tracks from “Front Porch Music” – “I’m Goin’ Home Tomorrow”, “Job, Job”, and a medley of spirituals – are on youtube, but unfortunately, a superb version of “Good News, the Chariot’s Coming” is not. (Sorry for no links, still don’t trust myself w/wordpress).
Also, too, “Say Amen, Somebody”, a documentary on gospel music. It looks like the entire movie is posted on youtube.
Alexandra
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Well done. However, that’s not something I can get involved with, not being an American and living across the pond.
Not entirely sure why I’m so invested in Obama… it just might have something to do with George W. Bush and the Republican party, but more importantly, I’m a little anxious to see this thirty year experiment with economic neo-liberalism rolled somewhat back amongst ‘western’ economies and the drift of parties of the left towards the economics of the right, including New Zealand, where I’m originally from, which has led to increasing stagnation and inequality to the point of Labout parties wanting to increase the retirement age.
And yet, the left has also failed to mount an organised and substantive critique since the Wall Street crash. Occupy was a stunt, in my view. Gesture politics with little apparent impact on institutional thinking.
Bleh.
+1, JW Black Label
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@danah gaz: Finally! An escape artist to match our German Shepherd, who found an open window, shredded the screen, got herself onto the windowsill, and jumped to freedom. From a second story window!
bemused
@danah gaz:
Wait, how did you get him back home or does he calm down once he knows he’s done with that awful place and going home? Our cats usually make a beeline for their carriers, safe havens, after the vet is done examining them.
How much does your big guy weigh?
We had a fairly large white neutered male that terrorized the neighborhood. We couldn’t keep him in either. I wish we could have put a kitty cam on him to see what he was up to. He would come home beat up and sleep for a couple of days straight. One time he had cuts on his face and, I swear, black eyes if cats can get black eyes. Another time he was having a face off only a few feet apart from a snorting deer in our yard.
Hill Dweller
@Hal: Even if they don’t give a shit about their kids nor grandkids, Willard’s plan will hurt seniors currently using Medicare, because he wants to repeal Obamacare, which would make Medicare insolvent by 2016. Consequently, congress will either have to chip in more money(doubtful), force seniors to pay more, or cut their benefits.
suzanne
I am having a don’t-leave-the-house weekend. I went grocery shopping on Friday evening and haven’t left the house since. it’s been so wonderful. After this weekend, pretty much every weekend for the rest of the year is booked solid. Next weekend is canvassing. I feel like I need a drink already.
FlipYrWhig
@Hal: Florida elected Rick Scott, a billionaire felon guilty of large-scale Medicare fraud. Mitt Romney is like a paragon of integrity by comparison.
Kathleen
@PsiFighter37: I think that while rethuglicans truly do not want we the great unwashed to cast our ballots, I’m starting to think their voter id laws are a shell game designed to distract us from how they plan to flip the vote: http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4748
It appears the Romney family has a financial interest in the company that will be “counting” the votes in Ohio.
kc
Test. Wondering why I’m in moderation on previous thread.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@Alexandra:
Yeah, I agree on all counts.
cckids
@PsiFighter37:
We can but hope. I’m voting for her, but yikes, she is not a good candidate. She’s good while in office, but in debates, public speaking, etc? Not inspirational at all. She’s very flat, monotoned, . . . not sure what exactly it is, but if she wins her race, it will be because we’re all voting for the D, or against Heller/R’s, etc. She hasn’t given people much to vote for.
(tho if you take the time to look at her record, she does advocate for vets admirably. You’d never know that from her ads. GRRR. Learn to fight for yourself, not just against teh other guy.)
Spaghetti Lee
I honestly don’t get some of the neurosis here. On the one hand, the media is trying to artificially intensify the election by showing Romney closer to winning than he really is, and the Obama ground game, which doesn’t get nearly enough credit, is going to deliver a comfortable victory. On the other hand, those same people are tearing their hair out over how close the polls are and how stupid this country must be. If the polls are a media invention, then why are people so worried about them? Honest question.
PsiFighter37
@efgoldman: Then we need to pass a federal law, plain and simple. This should be a really easy case to make, although FSM knows the right-wingers will scream about how the Constitution said only white property-holding men could vote. This seems like a slam-dunk and something that I think Obama could do really well on.
@cckids: My impression is that she’s underperforming because of some non-scandal concerning her husband, who is a kidney specialist? I have no idea about what she is like in person (I don’t think I’ve even come across a clip of her on the Internet speaking).
What is the state of the Dem bench in NV? For its increasingly blue lean at the federal level, we seem to have a dearth of good candidates to run.
FlipYrWhig
@Spaghetti Lee: I think the sentiment may be something like “How stupid are we as a nation that Obama won’t/can’t win by an even MORE comfortable margin?”
gogol's wife
@danah gaz:
Oh, squee! What an adorable monster!
Hill Dweller
@Kathleen: Chuck Todd said the voting machine conspiracy theories are no different than birther conspiracy theories.
PsiFighter37
@Spaghetti Lee: People like to have their gut feeling validated by an ‘objective’ third party.
WereBear
@danah gaz: You are right. He really didn’t want to go.
Hope everyone’s okay.
I had my Norwegian Forest Cat mix pop the door off it’s hinges. I had to put the door back and wrap the carrier in duct tape to get him to the vet.
PsiFighter37
And the Jets have already given up 2 touchdowns after scoring first. I guess I really shouldn’t get my hopes up, but they were looking good.
On that note, off to Whole Foods to get some ingredients. Making chicken meatballs from the ‘Meatball Shop’ recipe book for dinner. If anyone lives in/near NYC, you should check the actual restaurant out (multiple locations, but I go to the one on Allen and Stanton in LES). Amazing meatballs for cheap (4 for $7), and their ice cream sandwiches (2 cookies with ice cream) are godly.
cckids
@Hal:
Its anecdata at best, but I’ve read & heard comments from seniors who are confusing Ryan’s “vouchers” with discount coupons. They are thinking that they’ll get a voucher/coupon that will reduce the co-pays or whatever they are paying towards Medicare now.
It is beyond scary how uninformed people can be & still walk around. And these are retirees, or maybe working part-time, who should be able to pick up a damned newspaper once in a while. Jesus wept.
Spaghetti Lee
@PsiFighter37:
I think it’s kind of like that old quote (Mae West, probably) ‘what men want is a virgin who acts like a whore.’ People want an objective third-party opinion that agrees with them all the time.
I dunno. I don’t follow Nate Silver, but I seem to remember him mostly being beyond reproach, until he started talking about how Obama’s numbers were going down. Then, all of a sudden, he was actually a Villager concern troll the whole time. At the risk of starting a fight, writing off any data you don’t like as coming from an obviously biased source is a dangerous way of thinking: see any conservative site where anyone not on-board with the daily groupthink gets slammed as a RINO or a liberal. And I really hate the way ‘concern troll’ gets slapped onto anyone who doesn’t agree with the prevailing opinion. People can have a different point of view on something and not be malicious about it.
Linda
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): The old Klingons also knew how to use ray guns. The boneheads warp halfway around the universe, beam down, and tackle Starfleet with…giant pizza slicers?!?!?
I do give credit to the fight choreographer for making the giant slicers look like halfway realistic weapons. And they must have been popular with the audience; one still sees the occasional Klingon, slicer in hand, wandering around Renaissance festivals.
cckids
@bemused: Our neighbors had a huge, unfixed tomcat named Einstein, who was the biggest cat I’ve ever met–his back was at knee height on me. He’d run to greet me & stand on his hind legs like a dog, planting his front paws on my thigh to get petted. His head would reach my waist!
He loved to roam as well, and RULED the street, mainly through intimidation (cats & dogs), though he fought at times. One day I found him in my back yard, flat on his side, with huge purple/red bulges across his stomach. I was sure he had finally fought something too big & was dead.
When I got closer, I saw that the bulges were plums-he’d been sleeping under a plum tree & some of the fallen fruit had suck to his belly fur. It was a relief! That cat was a sweetheart.
nellcote
@Hill Dweller:
So the msm will be discussing it 24/7 from now till the election?
Gwangung
@Spaghetti Lee: great deal of truth to what you say, but I think there’s also a tiny bit of truth to the objections to Nate’s analysis this year. Some very wonky polls are bing included in the mix; they are not pissing the sniff test but are being given full weight.
Though in the end, this concern over polling is like the desire to win the news day. It’s short term thinking to the exclusion of the big picture.
geg6
I don’t really like cats all that much, but the giant cat comments in this thread are cracking me up.
Still wouldn’t convince me to get a cat, however. I’m a dog lover, always have been. The pure love they give you is a balm to my spirit every single day. I get enough attitude and passive-agressiveness from the humans in my life. I don’t need it from the animals in my life.
cckids
@PsiFighter37:
Yes, the “scandal” is that she advocated for keeping the transplant center at the University/County hospital open (the only hospital in NV that will do such things for the uninsured/underinsured) Her husband works for it.
Because we all know that kidney specialists have a horrifying time making money, right? I’m sure he’d be unemployable at any other hospital. /snark
It is a nothingburger of a scandal, as far as I can tell.
cckids
@Hill Dweller: Chuck Todd can ESAD. The sooner, the better.
Spaghetti Lee
@cckids:
Of course, the goopers who think that’s a scandal think that the corruption angle is the only possible reason why she’d want the hospital open. The idea that she might think it’s a good hospital that a lot of people depend on escapes them.
Hill Dweller
@Spaghetti Lee: A lot of us have followed Silver since he was at his old site, which is basis for our complaining. He’s been assimilated into the Village. Everything is “balanced”, which ultimately means giving credence to shit he’d laugh at before joining the NYT.
WereBear
I am currently being held down on the bed by two cats, who are melted puddles of love. One comes running to greet me when I get home from work. The other seeks me out to demand some lap time.
Cats can be just as affectionate and caring as dogs. People who don’t have that… are doing something wrong.
danah gaz
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s a sweetie unless you have for legs. He’s my teddy bear. =)
bemused
@cckids:
Neutering our male at 6 months didn’t remove his drive to dominate. He thought he was boss of every critter around. He couldn’t quite master his humans but he never stopped trying. He would be cuddly with us but other animals, watch out. He’d torture our other kitty, a totally sweet female, once in awhile when we weren’t home. We’d find tufts of her hair around when we’d get back. I’d want to strangle him.
We also couldn’t keep any food on the counter…he’d chew through cereal boxes and bread bags. We did some remodeling and later found his tooth marks in fat extension cords…yikes. With all his adventures, I thought he’d finally meet up with some animal that would do him in but he died suddenly at 9 of an aneurysm or something in the house. We weren’t too upset..we were kind of relieved he didn’t live to a very old age, he was that annoying. The vet office sent us a sympathy card and I started laughing…we needed sympathy while he was alive. We didn’t add another cat while our other kitty was alive. We thought she richly deserved to enjoy being only kitty for the rest of her life and she did.
danah gaz
@bemused: “Wait, how did you get him back home or does he calm down once he knows he’s done with that awful place and going home?”
He doesn’t mind the vet. We figured out that the combination of being in a cage, in a car was the problem. From now on we’re going to let him loose in the car. He tends to hide under the seat instead – of course we just found this out now. meh. We also got a steel carrier now. It was just a matter of carrying him back to the car when he was done.
” Our cats usually make a beeline for their carriers, safe havens, after the vet is done examining them.”
Our other kitteh does that. =)
How much does your big guy weigh?
If I told you, you’d probably not believe me – I didn’t as I thought he weighed more – but right now he’s a mere 13lbs.
Crazy, I know. He’s incredibly powerful though. He’s easily the strongest cat I’ve ever owned, by a pretty big margin.
ranchandsyrup
Started to make turkey chili and the stove crapped out. Did a quick change to the grill to brown the turkey and veg and now everything is in the crock pot. We don’t really use the crock pot because our Aussie cattle dog jumps up on the counter and has knocked it off the counter before. So I have to keep an eye on it or him at all times.
Now slowly diagnosing the issue with the burners with our 2 year old “assisting” by handing tools over. Good times.
gogol's wife
@Hill Dweller:
I saw lots of complaints here about Silver before Obama’s downturn in the polls. FWIW.
WereBear
@danah gaz: I have a Maine Coon mix who is over 16 pounds. Of course, that’s small for the breed.
One of his nicknames is Panzer. He’s got paws like a Chunky chocolate bar.
bemused
@danah gaz:
He’s a very buff cat! His rumbles in the neighborhood keep him fit…a lean, mean fighting machine.
I love Maine Coons. We had a couple of litter mates, male and female, that we think had a lot of Maine Coon in them. They were large, long-haired cats with little tufts of hair at the end of their ears. In the winter, the hair around their necks would grow so they looked like they had manes, especially the male. Beautiful cats with great personalities.
WereBear
Here a picture of our Maine Coon with our little foster kitten:
Reverend Jim watches Bors
Jay S
@efgoldman: OK, I find the story a little suspicious, but I don’t see a need for opposable thumbs to bat around a window crank.
JPL
@Jay S: Miss Moxie will sometimes go to bed before me and a few weeks back, I went into my room and the fan light was on, along with the TV. She was cuddled softly on my pillow which is not allowed btw.
Paws and remote control buttons are amazing things. (Moxie is my 18 pound mutt)
danah gaz
@efgoldman: I’ll almost buy that he managed to find and operate a power window button.
This. I’ll admit to being a tad guilty of embellishment when I said “roll down”, but I claim poetic license in my defense. =)
And if you still don’t buy that, there’s not much more I can say, as I don’t have video of the event. I *will* say that we will be engaging the master override on the driver’s side whenever he’s in the car from now on.
Linda
Thanks for the beet suggestions!
The right cat, the one who picks you out, will love you with a white heat that I have never seen from a dog (and I love dogs too). But it has to be THE cat. The cat who is not THE cat will be a congenial roommate, nothing more.
This is why I never saw much sense in shipping pedigree kittens.
danah gaz
@Jay S: To be completely fair, I should point out that the car has power windows, and that the buttons are very easy to get at.
Also, it’s not actually a car. It’s a big ugly SUV that we absolutely loathe. Saying “car” is force of habit. I’m not one to own a truck – ever – and we’re just borrowing this one =)
dance around in your bones
Last time I linked to Mother McCollum and ‘Jesus is my Air-O-Plane‘
Just makes me smile every time I hear it.
Also, Furry Lewis ‘When I Lay My Burden Down’.
danah gaz
@WereBear: “Norwegian Forest Cat”
oooh!
I’ve always wanted one of those monsters. Of course, if I bowed to every temptation in that regard I’d be a crazy cat lady by now. =)
WereBear
@danah gaz: I have four. I think that qualifies me as a crazy cat lady.
Anne Laurie
@Davis X. Machina:
See also, Siberian and Norwegian Forest Cat. Since Danah’s on the far northern left coast, I suspect Max is a fine, robust specimen of the evolutionary advantages for that particular set of feline genes in a cold-climate, low-human density pine forest-coastal environment. Being big enough to fight off other small predators & furry enough to track through snowdrifts are worth the caloric expenditure required!
cckids
@danah gaz:
Yes, this is quite easy to do, if they are the flat kind that just needs to be depressed to engage. My Pomeranian locked me out of the car once, when I was picking my daughter up from Girl Scouts.
Now THATS embarrassing.
PurpleGirl
@AnneW: I have a Ravelry account but I hardly ever go over there. I’m Woodside Crocheter.
BillCinSD
@Gwangung:
in statistics you have to have a better reason than not pissing the sniff test to leave out any data
PurpleGirl
@danah gaz: Wow. That’s a powerful and determined cat you’ve got there. I hope it’s nose is okay.
Another Halocene Human
@Southern Beale: Income inequality has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression, and the recession has done little to reverse the trend
Well, that’s already one idiotic statement and the sentence isn’t even finished: recessions, i.e. deflationary contractions, exacerbate inequality. Feature, not a bug.
So if anything is unexpected, it would be the success of government in keeping the inequality from becoming worse.
Another Halocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: But I do think it’s fishy, in that Sherlock Holmes dog-that-didn’t-bark kind of way, that after the first debate there was a barrage of polls that got everyone talking, and after the second one, just the usual trickle. I catch a whiff of skulduggery there… And Silver treated them all with a degree of seriousness, which is a large part of why so many people got so freaked out.
This.
More than a whiff–there was a big dump of partisan polls right after the debate, which of course didn’t capture anything post debate but would look bad because “post hoc propter hoc” is a facet of human cognition (one that trips us up a lot–it’s a survival-advantaging heuristic, but a really, really sloppy one).
They were setting O up for an “angry black man” moment and then the post-debate narrative would be him losing the white vote because of his angry blackity blackness. He deftly evaded all of that but you had the fake drop anyway. Yes, I think there was a pickup in Republican enthusiasm which was real but stupid Dems/libs fed into that because GOPers blood starts flowing at the sound of liberals’ wails.
Another Halocene Human
@Linda: This is old news, but I never liked the new improved Klingons. The rompin stompin ass-kickin villains from the old show were turned into a bunch of (literally) boneheaded neurotics endlessly whining about their honor. They were Woody Allen in black leather.
They went from French empire of the 18th century to France of the 20th century so that’s always a bit of a letdown.
Kathleen
@nellcote: Yes. Along with the story of the RNC operative dumping ballots in a dumpster.
mainmati
@some guy: Lebanon’s a complicated place. I’ve worked there a number of times. It’s about the size of the state of Connecticut, i.e. small but it’s all high mountains and the Litani River valley. Beirut reminds me of my hometown of Pittsburgh, all big hills and ethnic communities with big food and drink and cultural proprieties except, of course it is on the lovely Medieterranean.(And like Lebanon, Pittsburgh also has something called Mt. Lebanon.)
Anyway, the Christian community is partly in the Ashrafiyieh district, where the bomb was and it was clear the Lebanese Intelligence chief was the real target. But this is part of the long-standing Syrian-Lebanese conflict and was not sectarian in nature.
If anything, nowadays the Christians and the Sunnis are tactically allied against the Shi’a represented by the Hizbullah (Nation of God), which effectively are like the GOP in the USA (somewhat snark).
Lebanon is a great place in the wrong time. In fact, it has been a great place in the wrong time for about 2000 years (sigh).