Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

He really is that stupid.

No Justins, No Peace

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Republicans in disarray!

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Consistently wrong since 2002

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Mark Kirk’s New Low

Mark Kirk’s New Low

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The entire Republican party has lost their god damned minds.

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176Comments

  3. 3.

    dr. bloor

    If it was possible to convey the smell of flop sweat through the internetz, I would no doubt be opening my windows right now to get rid of the stench in my living room.

    Character will out. Every. Fucking. Time.

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    Seriously? That was his whole answer? He can kiss his seat goodbye, then.

    What a great answer by Tammy, though.

    ETA: From Wikipedia (won’t link in edit):

    Her American father, who died in 2005,[3] was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who traced his family’s American roots to before the Revolutionary War.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    I’m sure Trump’s soon-to-be-burgeoning media empire will find a cushy spot for Mark “One Drop” Kirk, just as soon as he finishes getting his arse kicked by the woman warrior.

  8. 8.

    lollipopguild

    @Baud: Trump is the next logical step down into the cesspool that the GOP has been turning itself into for 40 years. Create your own reality and then go live there with all of your right wing friends. They feel that the only way to be “free” is to turn America into a Right-Wing dictatorship where they get everything that they want. “Freedom!”

  11. 11.

    Pogonip

    What a jerk. (Kirk.)

    Cole, speaking of jerks, what did they do to the one who nearly starved poor Walter to death? I hope they threw the book at him.

  13. 13.

    Bobby Thomson

    In all fairness, Kirk probably isn’t used to family trees that have more than one branch.

    Party of Trump, indeed.

  14. 14.

    hovercraft

    Every time, dammit, every goddamn time you think there must be some humanity in these people they prove once again that they are simply shitstains.

  15. 15.

    Mary G

    @Baud: True. The contempt in his voice is shocking and you can tell the moderator is going WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK, DUDE for a second.

  17. 17.

    cynthia ackerman

    What a flaming prick. Kirk, Roger Stone, Ailes, and Donald Dump are peas in a pod — boorish horny authoritarians.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @Mary G: I’m just starting to calm down from the verdict delivered in the last thread.

    I’m afraid to watch the video. I can’t even listen to Kirk (my senator, ugh) and I am distraught at even the possibility that he could win. We have our terrible evil R governor that I thought surely couldn’t win, so I no longer trust my instincts on who can get elected in IL.

    Short summary of he said, she said?

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    Although I am (AFAIK) 100 percent Caucasian, I have a similar family tree to Duckworth’s — paternal grandfather came here from Italy in 1902, maternal grandfather traces back to the Mayflower. My name IRL is 100 percent Italian, so people are sometimes confused when I talk about the Mayflower side.

  25. 25.

    hovercraft

    @cynthia ackerman:
    Well Trump hinted that he may be suing NBC for the Access Hollywood tape because that was illegal what they did, having the mic on and releasing the tape. He also said that he won the third debate in all the polls, and then CNN had a poll that showed he didn’t, and then all of the “dirty polls” said he didn’t win.

  28. 28.

    smintheus

    It’s like that last table off in the corner at the wedding banquet where they decided to isolate the jerk cousin nobody can stand to be around. And then they thought that would be a little too obvious if he was there all by himself, so they decided to stick the nice, mature friend who gets along with everyone next to him. And ten minutes in to the meal she has already realized that she can’t possibly get along with him and needs to just stop responding to the d!ckish things he keeps saying.

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @WaterGirl: Never mind. Just watched it. Wow. He’s a smarmy little prick, isn’t he?

    These guys do not like losing to “uppity” women. Elizabeth Warren. Tammy Duckworth. Hillary Clinton.

  32. 32.

    Jeffro

    Glad he’s on his way out.

    It does bring to mind a (obviously rhetorical) question: do none of these clowns have the brains or work ethic or class or temperament or even just a basic interest in taking a Dem on about the actual issue at hand on any given day, in any given debate? (note these were all “or”s – I’m not asking for much here)

    I guess it’s a chicken-or-the-egg kind of thing…are they mean and stupid because they’re lazy, or are they lazy because they’re mean and stupid?

  33. 33.

    Karen S.

    The look on Kirk’s face when he says it. He looks so smug and like he’s just said something oh so clever. What a dick. I live in Chicago and I’ve already voted for Tammy, and I’m so glad I did.

  35. 35.

    CarolDuhart2

    @WaterGirl: One problem is that we tune out the midterm elections. Once we realize that democracy is not just every 4 years, and for President, we could permanently retire a lot of GOP assholes.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @hovercraft: He often walks back his crazy-speak, so I predict not long. Perhaps his comment will have been taken out of context???

    What I sometimes wonder is if he was always this much of a cretin or if his stroke affected his mental state and his judgment.

  37. 37.

    Gravenstone

    The words of someone so steeped in his white male privilege that he thinks it beneath him to even have to defend his position against a woman, let alone one not of undiluted European ancestry. Kirk is scared and pissed off because not only does he indeed have to defend that position, he knows he’s losing.

  38. 38.

    Lizzy L

    Aw, poor boy. Tammy Duckworth is cleaning his clock, and he can’t handle it. I checked FiveThirtyEight: the numbers for the projected vote share are 53% to 43%. The racist p**ck is LOSING.

  40. 40.

    Mary G

    @WaterGirl: Exactly as written in the tweet above, she gives the answer about her family’s military service, the moderator gives Kirk 30 seconds to respond. then Kirk says that one sentence in a contemptuous tone. The moderator kind of stares at him for a second, then rattled, because he thought he had 30 seconds, looks at his papers and says, well, the next question is…

    If Hillary doesn’t have this up in a commercial demanding Trump denounce this by tomorrow, I will eat my hat.

  42. 42.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    So what if his family hasn’t?

    That reads like Duckworth was accusing him of being a Chicken Hawk and that dig at her was the “f – you, for being right”.

  45. 45.

    hovercraft

    @Karen S.:
    I suspect that the jackass is such an ignoramus that he probably didn’t know that her father was “American”, he probably thought her family immigrated here.

  46. 46.

    Mary G

    @CarolDuhart2: I am hoping that along with their redistricting work, President Obama and Attorney General Holder start a massive GOTV for 2018 on Jan. 21, 2017.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    @CarolDuhart2:

    One problem is that we tune out the midterm elections. Once we realize that democracy is not just every 4 years, and for President, we could permanently retire a lot of GOP assholes.

    Post-president (or should I say pre-post-president) PBO is already on this, by trying to make Election Day a national holiday. It’s a small thing but if it were an annual reminder (instead of a quadrennial ‘oh yeah, that’s right, I probably should go vote’ kind of thing) it might help build the habit.

    Looking forward to a “bring your kids to the (voting) booth!” campaign, too. My kids have come with me every election since before they could even walk and they can’t believe anyone wouldn’t make this their #1 priority every election day.

  48. 48.

    OGLiberal

    And Kirk is about as moderate and as decent a GOPer you’ll get in this bunch. What does that say? Can we make fun of his stroke?

    As time goes by, as bad as he was, I think Boehner may have been tbe best of the bunch. I think his tears were genuine and the result of a “why the frack did I want this?” realization. He got out because he was tired of the loonies and saw this s**t show coming. And now he’s sitting back smoking a cig, drinking Scotch, and laughing at wonderboy Ryan’s predicament.

    Or he’s a high paid lobbyist…I have no idea.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    They just ran an ad for Ted Strickland that included Obama talking about why he supports Ted. Interesting that so many ads are coming out after the DNC pulled out of that race.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @Lizzy L: Good! If there’s any leftover cash in Duckworth’s account come mid-November, or in Hillz’, maybe they should run a PSA of sorts: “This is why this jerkwad lost: it’s not hard to be decent and stick to the actual issues…unless you’re Mark Kirk, or really any Republican, I guess”.

    /fantasyland

  53. 53.

    amk

    any recent polling on this dipshit’s chances? per rcp, the last polling was done nearly a month ago, in which duckworth was leading by +14.

  55. 55.

    Zippity

    @Karen S.: I voted for her yesterday, Thought it was appropriate to vote on Hillary’s birthday. Dems all the way down. I cannot believe the amount of money Rauner financed groups are spending on the state house seats in my area.

  56. 56.

    khead

    Holy cow. The video is much worse than the transcript.

    @Baud:

    Like some kind of reverse mic drop. Or maybe a 45 single being scratched from start to finish. And not in a cool, hippity-hoppity sorta way.

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Wow, Trump was a lot more sane back then. He could mostly speak in complete sentences and his affect was completely different. I wonder what happened.

  59. 59.

    Mary G

    Ed Kilgore wrote this about the state of the Senate races:

    Senate polling continues to show relatively comfortable Democratic leads in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin; a consistent but not that comfortable Republican lead in Florida; and very tight races in Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. This all adds up to pretty good odds Democrats will get the four net seats they need for control if Clinton becomes president.

    So Tammy’s got this one and we need to get Murphy, Cortez-Masto, Hassan. Ross, and McGinty over the line. Four out of five are women, but I would add Kandar in Missouri. The last poll of that race is a tie, per RCP.

    I’m already over my October budget, but I’m taking money out of savings and sending each of them $25. I cancelled my ongoing contribution to Hillary, because she has enough money and votes.

  60. 60.

    Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck

    @OGLiberal:
    Boehner was worse than the Tea Party. They didn’t have the power to obstruct jack shit without him abusing his powers as Speaker in ways no Speaker ever has before. Even Hastert didn’t actually use the Hastert Rule, and without Boehner’s even-more-draconian version of it the Tea Party would have been a helpless rump as Democrats and moderate (merely asshole) Republicans passed basic legislation. He was the Teabaggers’ best friend, and all they gave him for it was shit.

  62. 62.

    hovercraft

    @WaterGirl:
    She’s in his way, anyone who gets between him and something he wants, watch out. As long as you are “nice” to him, he will be nice to you. The exception is the blah people, the Central Park Five and Obama never attacked him but he went after them to raise his profile.

  63. 63.

    khead

    Also, with respect to the NFL, someone needs to fire Gus Bradley and the person who is responsible for the uniforms tonight.

  64. 64.

    JanieM

    @Mnemosyne: Wow, that’s pretty close to my details as well. My paternal grandfather came in 1902 on a ship called the Gallia — I have screenshots of the ship manifest from ellisisland.org. He was about 10 years old at the time. My paternal grandmother came, as far as we can tell, a few years later. She grew up in Brooklyn, he grew up in the Ohio town where I also grew up; theirs was an arranged marriage.

    Meanwhile, on my mother’s side, there are two lines of ancestry that I have genealogy books for — not Mayflower people as such, but 1637 or so arrival on this continent.

    I grew up in the midst of a very wide culture/religion/temperament gap……

    What do you call the Mayflower side equivalently to “Italian-American”? I tend to think “old American….”

    *****

    P.s. [email protected]WaterGirl, I can’t bring myself to watch the video. Does Duckworth or the moderator call him out as the ignorant asshole he is?

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jeffro:

    It’s a small thing but if it were an annual reminder (instead of a quadrennial ‘oh yeah, that’s right, I probably should go vote’ kind of thing) it might help build the habit.

    I would love to see the first Tuesday after the second Monday of every November made a national holiday. Even in non-Presidential years, the even-numbered are midterms for the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. And in odd-numbered years, several states elect their Governors and state legislators.

    I keep thinking of countries in which their citizens have only recently been granted suffrage. They stand in line for hours on end, and proudly display their inked fingers to show they have exercised their right to vote. And we are content with a 60% turnout. Insane.

  71. 71.

    hueyplong

    It’s as though someone advised Kirk that the best way to avoid accusations of misogyny is to hide them under a metric ton of racism.

    As GWB might say, Mission Accomplished.

  73. 73.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro:

    Looking forward to a “bring your kids to the (voting) booth!” campaign, too. My kids have come with me every election since before they could even walk and they can’t believe anyone wouldn’t make this their #1 priority every election day.

    I bring my daughter whenever I get the chance–she came with me to the primary, and the one thing that made me a little regretful about early voting this year was that the ladies who work the polls might be looking forward to seeing her again in November (but Samantha might take her). When she was a toddler, I walked to the polling place and voted with her riding in a sling on my hip.

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JCJ:

    These are two pissed off women right now.

    Hope they are both eligible, and motivated, to vote (even if not Illinois).

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @Jeffro: I think it’s more than a small thing. Contrary to the popular belief in “apathy” or purists abandoning the president, voting participation correlates strongly with income, and Dems are much more dependent on lower income voters. Shifting that curve up even a little would be no small matter.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @JanieM: The video was only 48 seconds, just shows what a smarmy scumbag Kirk is. Every word from the video is in the transcript at the top of the thread.

  78. 78.

    Lizzy L

    @Jeffro: This. God, yes, this. My parents brought me to the voting booth every election. One of my earliest political memories is watching the 1956 election returns on the television — we got one so that we could watch. My Democratic parents were Stevenson fans. Presidential elections were BFDs in our house, but every election was important. If this country is going to survive as a democracy, we’re going to have to take voting seriously, fight all the efforts to suppress the vote, get out for the midterms — I believe we can do it. We have to. If we don’t, we might as well just cancel the damn elections as Trump wants.

  79. 79.

    Hob

    @JanieM: After Kirk’s remark there was a pause, the moderator seemed to be waiting to see if he had anything else to add but he didn’t, and then they moved on to the next question. Duckworth responded to that bullshit later on Twitter.

  80. 80.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @WaterGirl: Yeah I mean he was never a genius or highly informed but it’s pretty different from now. His new candidate persona, the whole caveman thing is an act to a great degree, the extreme crudeness and what he sees as toughness, he’s doing it to appeal to people he sees as that way.

    I saw an interview from when he was just starting the birther idiocy and he didn’t seem particularly passionate about the issue itself, but at one point added “And you know, people love this issue!” like it was a product he found that sold like crazy, so he was going with it.

    He’s always been a racist, clearly, but he’s mostly about being a con man, a grifter, a salesman, more than actually giving a shit about any issues. I think a lot of his personality now is just a sales mask.

  85. 85.

    Trentrunner

    This confuses me: So Duckworth just recounted her military ancestry–in clear, plain English–and then Kirk tries to say Duckworth is lying about having an ancestor in the Revolutionary War? I don’t even get the logic of Kirk’s “burn” here. She had just said she had relatives in the Rev. War. Obvs her mother is from Thailand. Wha…?

    Weird.

  87. 87.

    WaterGirl

    @lamh36: Holy shit-ski, every single comment on Twitter was calling out Kirk. Every single one. Wow. Thanks for that!

    P.S. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. :-)

  88. 88.

    CarolDuhart2

    One reason why voting partcipation goes up with income is that the higher the income, the more control over time you have. Paid days off/leave, flexible working schedules, a 1 income instead of 2 income household where the spouse can go out and vote, ability to get paid childcare.

    Can we combine two good concepts and have a Saturday or Friday National Holiday Election Day? Or another Monday Holiday? What do you think about the idea?

  91. 91.

    hovercraft

    @JanieM:
    Neither, the moderator is stunned, he pauses and then moves on. Tammy knows that he just put another nail in his coffin so she just lets it sit there.

  94. 94.

    JCJ

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Wisconsin. We all voted this afternoon. As I mentioned in an earlier thread it was my wife’s first vote for president since becoming a US citizen. She is all in for Hilz and Feingold.

  95. 95.

    WaterGirl

    Goodnight, all. When your phone battery is down to a thin line of read and your laptop give you the “hey, you have no battery life left” message, it’s time to close up shop for the night.

    Mindless TV, here I come!

  96. 96.

    randy khan

    @Mary G:

    And she is an actual member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

    It’s not their thing, but it would be more than swell if they issued a press release affirming that she’s a member.

  97. 97.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The video is not available anymore. Some outfit called “Advanced Digital Media” has made a copyright claim.

    I swear, people like “Advanced Digital Media” have a mission to destroy the concept of copyright entirely.

  98. 98.

    Smiling Mortician

    @lamh36: Those comments are awesome. I like the understated ones: “Whatever is wrong with you, you need to leave the government.”

    No shit.

  99. 99.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: I just gave Ted some more money tonight, along with the B-J thermometer and the PEC thermometer. Even though Ted supposedly is behind, I don’t want Portman to win in a squeaker. Nobody knows what turnout is going to be like, in any of these important races. Let’s do what we can to give him, and the rest of them, a fighting chance.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    hovercraft

    @Princess:
    Well you know those foreigners can be real crafty with their European last names, English, Spanish who knows which where, it’s all so confusing.

  103. 103.

    Peale

    @Redshift: yeah. There are lots of different things that need to be tackled. I do think it’s a good idea to encourage kids to go to the polls. Better yet, bring kids whose parents don’t or can’t vote. It is a habit. One of the weaknesses of the coalition as it stands now is that we have large numbers of people who aren’t in that habit. All the “voting is cool” MTV ads in the world aren’t going to motivate young kids to get to the polls. We also have a lot of naturalized citizen voters and voters whose parents never voted because they weren’t citizens. Also our voters move a lot. I know. I moved ten times in three years to three different states when I got out of college. It was hard to get in the habit of re-registering each time and it didn’t help that if I forgot my voting reminder at home that day, I never knew where I was supposed to vote.

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    The women don’t have to be uppity for them to be upset at losing to one. They are throw backs to a shittier time, but same place. They are bigots, in any way which it’s defined. Said another way, they don’t think their shit stinks. But it does. Very, very badly. I hope that they get their asses handed to them. They deserve it, they are giving the rest of us a bad rap. Some of us old white guys are just trying to get along and they are making that extremely difficult, what with them trying to keep white privilege, rich privilege, racism, misogyny, religious bullshit, conservative politics…….

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @CarolDuhart2: It just occurred to me, today was the one and only day with late hours for early voting–I didn’t check to see if there was any unusual activity going on around City Hall that would indicate interest. Rotten rainy weather, so maybe not. They will be opening for a while on Saturday at a few places around town.

    Edit: Oh, I was wrong–it’s next Thursday, Nov. 3.

  106. 106.

    hueyplong

    I’m assuming the Kenyan Pretender’s jackbooted thugs confiscated all the dog whistles in a horrific violation of the Fourth Amendment, thereby denying the GOP its competitive edge.

  108. 108.

    hovercraft

    @Ruckus:

    he women don’t have to be uppity for them to be upset at losing to one.

    Winning is being uppity. Not genuflecting to the men who they are challenging is disrespectful.

  110. 110.

    Smiling Mortician

    @efgoldman: But this ignores the options of lazy and stupid because they’re mean, and also mean and lazy because they’re stupid.

  114. 114.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Peale: I think the geographic disruptions that happen to college students are a large part of the problem. It’s all very well to go vote for the first time (if you get the chance) when you turn 18, but then you go to college and you have to either re-register (in a town that might well intentionally make it difficult for you), or vote absentee in your home district. I did the latter through my college years, and I have to admit I didn’t follow local politics back home well enough to cast an informed vote in a lot of the local races.

    Then I went to grad school in a different state entirely, and it took a year or two for me to get around to establishing permanent residency in Massachusetts and getting registered to vote there. In the meantime I missed the Silber vs. Weld gubernatorial election. A while back I was trying to remember who I voted for in the 1992 presidential primary, and then I remembered, I didn’t–I was still registered in Virginia and voting absentee, and they had a caucus that year. No way was I making it to that.

  117. 117.

    Lizzy L

    @Matt McIrvin: Don’t most states have Motor Voter Registration, so that you register to vote when you get a driver’s license? That should make a difference to a lot (thought not all) of the college students. It wouldn’t have to me, because I went to college in a city and didn’t have a car, but even in cities with good public transportation, a lot of college students have cars. (Well, maybe not in Boston, or SF, or NY.)

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    I believe he was hiding it then, now he isn’t. He’s always been a smarmy prick, but like the gop he was better at hiding it. He has lost that filter. He really is a product of the gop for the last 60 yrs (and yes it goes back a lot farther than that, but the last 60 has been more noticeable) or the gop is a product of people like him but with somewhat of a filter. But that has been ripped away over the last 20+ yrs and now it’s easy to see what they really are. This isn’t a sales pitch or a con game, this is the real tRump.

  123. 123.

    Peale

    @Matt McIrvin: it takes a few years to understand the politics of a place. I didn’t do primaries until I was 30 because I hadn’t really met any of the candidates. When I lived in DC I would vote for Eleanor Holmes Norton because I had met her a few times and liked her, but couldn’t for the life of me know who to vote for in an alderman primary. It was such a mess at the time that I’d just vote against the incumbent knowing that it wouldn’t matter. I can’t see doing that now.

  124. 124.

    Barbara

    @JanieM: In my husband’s family they say first, second or third mayflower. My mother in law’s family came over as merchants, and then to escape the English civil war and Oliver Cromwell. Not all the ships were named mayflower but people know what you mean. In college I had a very elderly professor of French who was an 11th generation descendant of John and Priscilla Alden. He used to talk about his time in Paris “entre les deux guerres” and he was not a snob at all. It’s still funny to me that yes, they were real and they had descendants. Kirk’s statement reeks of the idea that non-European heritage taints any claim to being American.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Lizzy L: Yes–in fact what I think eventually happened was that my Virginia driver’s license expired, and I registered to vote in Massachusetts when I got a new one. But I wasn’t locally registered in the meantime. (I didn’t have a car either, but I did have a license.)

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Barbara: The hierarchy is Mayflower (who some dismiss as splitters), pre-Winthrop fleet, Winthrop fleet, and pre-1642. I have no Mayflower (splitters), but I have all of the others.

  133. 133.

    lurker dean

    what a racist asshole. and kirk has a face that begs to be punched.

    i posted this kirk comment on fb. my gop/trump-loving brother responded “bigot,” without irony. it drives me crazy that he can’t see that this is representative of his entire party.

  134. 134.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I understand. I’m thinking, if you come from IL to go to school in WI and you want to drive in WI, you need to get a WI driver’s license after a certain number of months, and then when you go to do that, you register to vote at the DMV. But maybe that’s in the world where you also get a unicorn.

  136. 136.

    chopper

    @Hob:

    thx.

    Google would’ve been faster than asking here, but whatever.

    i got to make fun of ol’ grumpy omnes, so it’s a win. also, the computer i’m on is slow as hell, so a working link in the first place is always nice.

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Lizzy L: Legally, you need a DL from your home state. If you are going to school in WI but consider IL to be your home, you have no requirement to change DLs.

  139. 139.

    chopper

    @waysel:

    perfect. thx.

    i’d respond to nora @139, but for some reason her ‘reply’ link only goes to the video. my wife’s computer is a real POS.

  142. 142.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Lizzy L: You only need to get a new license when the old one expires, which could be years later. In the meantime you might have lost the habit of voting, because it’s not convenient for you.

  143. 143.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Peale: They are more likely to be in the same general place. They won’t have the weird problems that students might.

  144. 144.

    khead

    @efgoldman:

    Happy the Hokies won. I have a WV friend that makes fun of the empty Pitt stadiums every time they play because he is mad that Pitt is in the ACC and WVU is not.

    Jags should really be better. They were supposed to be better anyway. Like the Raiders. Just glad I gave up on them weeks ago when it comes to betting. Bradley should be fired before we get up tomorrow.

  147. 147.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Jobs for non-college grads tend to give you relatively little control over your time, though, which makes it that much harder to vote. The law generally says they have to give you some time off, but you know how that goes.

  149. 149.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: It depends on if the state you move to considers you a resident or not. In CA, if you are not a resident the fees you pay to the college, especially if you go to the state university or college system, are enormous. Residents get big breaks. Many college students do choose to become CA residents, and if they do that, they are required to get a CA DL. But every state is different and anyway, this is way far afield of the issue, which is, how do we get people to take voting seriously. Make Election Day a national holiday, check. What about each state issuing a voter ID card?

  150. 150.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Lizzy L:

    What about each state issuing a voter ID card?

    For whom? Fuck voter ID. When you register, you show that you are eligible to vote. Then you show up and vote.

  152. 152.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: A bunch of R-run states now require some kind of ID. I’d be quite happy to go back to the” register to vote, then vote” method, but there are bunches of places that isn’t sufficient. Of course, the thing to do is to toss out the Republicans, but that may take a while.

    Okay, no voter ID. Universal vote by mail, like in Washington state? (I guess even in WA there are some polling places.) No intimidation at the polls, that way.

  155. 155.

    Hob

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I’m puzzled that so many strong proponents of vote-by-mail don’t seem to think that’s an issue at all. Either it’s not acknowledged, or at best they’re like “Well theoretically I guess that could be a problem, but lack of access to the polls is a bigger problem, so whatever.” I get that it’s convenient but… to me the secret ballot is a big deal, and it’s enough to say that it can be a secret ballot for a lot of people if you can’t actually guarantee that it is that for everyone.

  157. 157.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: Could happen, of course. OR, WA, & CO have all-mail elections. Someone’s got to have done some research on voter coercion, but I haven’t checked. Universal vote by mail seems very easy, convenient — except for people with no fixed address. OTOH, there’s a certain community spirit and excitement to going to a local polling place to vote which I rather like.

  159. 159.

    Hob

    @Lizzy L: The “no fixed address” issue already exists with in-person voting, it’s just at the registration stage. Different states have somewhat different rules for this but it generally boils down to “pick a location where you often are, and where you could collect mail if necessary.” And as far as I can tell, Colorado’s postal-only system works basically the same way. My problem with it is not that, but the lack of guarantee of privacy while voting— which of course is still a question with absentee ballots now, but right now in most states we’re not requiring everyone to vote absentee.

    I’m not sure how “research on voter coercion” would even work. By nature I would think subjective reporting would be very problematic and I don’t know what other kind of data you could ever get. In political systems I think the predictive approach of “If such-and-such bad thing is easy to do, and is to someone’s advantage, it will get done – so let’s not make it easy to do” should be considered just as important as quantitative data.

  161. 161.

    Hob

    @Lizzy L: I have to call it a night but your comment did make me curious, and I did a little digging. Here is one example of a study in 2005 discussing potential pros and cons of vote-by-mail in Oregon. I notice that although they mentioned coercion near the beginning of the paper as one possible concern, they don’t say another word about it after that— the actual research part basically amounted to “We couldn’t find any recent instances of outright fraud [as in, party members just plain forging ballots].” Nor did they discuss how anyone might look for or prevent coercion.

    This paper from the feds in 2006 does talk about coercion a bit more, but the recommendations are all variations on “Wait until someone files a complaint, or calls one in to a toll-free help line.”

  162. 162.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    ‏first this

    @ KellyannePolls
    The same Mark Kirk that unendorsed his party’s presidential nominee and called him out in paid ads? Gotcha. Good luck.

    then this

    Simon Maloy ‏@ SimonMaloy 52m52 minutes ago
    yeah what kind of asshole mocks the disabled and veterans

    and this

    Daniel Dresser ‏@ dandrezner 56m56 minutes ago
    You’re the campaign manager for the same Donald Trump who has mocked both the disabled and POWs? Gotcha. Good luck.

  164. 164.

    Mnemosyne

    @JanieM:

    Unfortunately, my mother died of cancer when I was young, and we kind of lost contact with her family. The cultural gap between my parents was a little smaller, I think, because the “old American” side was heavily Catholic (Irish and Italian on my dad’s side, so all natural-born Catholics there). I was told recently that there was a bit of a feeling that my mother was marrying down by marrying a (half-) Italian, and that my Irish-German paternal grandmother was told she was marrying down by marrying an Italian immigrant.

    My older brother has the whole genealogy of our maternal line stuffed in a box somewhere, and I’m a little annoyed I gave it to him for “safekeeping” in the first place.

  165. 165.

    sunny raines

    The entire Republican party has lost their god damned minds.

    what is abundantly clear is that the republican “base” is made up of fundamentally bad people – people that have failed in measures of human decency and morality, many drastically so. Accordingly, it’s not that they have “lost” their minds, it’s that they don’t possess a functioning mind to begin with.

  168. 168.

    Ruckus

    @Lizzy L:
    I had to argue with the board of elections that my mailing address (my place of business) could be used to send me my mail ballot, as that was the address on my CDL. They said it wasn’t a residential area so they had no way to send it there. I asked so what does a homeless person do, they have no address what so ever, they can’t vote? Never heard another no from them, they just sent me my ballot (the business address was where I was living. My bad, I had no idea that everyone must live in an approved area)

  169. 169.

    Ruckus

    @Hob:
    Many states have vote by mail, and I’ve never heard that this is a problem. I’ve been voting by mail for a long time in CA and this does not seem to be an issue here although maybe it is and people can’t complain? I imagine it could be in some households but I’m thinking this would be, all things considered, a minor issue in a household like that. IOW a household with that type of controlling person “in charge” would be one that anyone of voting age should have left long ago.

  170. 170.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    This Mark Kirk (from 2013):

    Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., an Iraq combat veteran who lost both of her legs and the use of an arm in battle, stood on her prosthetic legs on the Capitol steps to cheer on Kirk. She hailed his achievement as one for all people with disabilities.

    What a class act he has turned out to be.

  171. 171.

    low-tech cyclist

    Three of my four grandparents were immigrants. My grandparents on my father’s side, Russian Jews from Kiev and Warsaw (both part of Russia back then), were children when their parents brought them over here shortly before WWI. My maternal grandmother came over from Scotland as a young adult shortly after WWI.

    But I have Revolutionary War ancestors through my fourth grandparent, my maternal grandfather, who was born in Kansas in 1898. Funny how that’s possible.

  172. 172.

    Tripod

    Illinois Democrats are running against Governor Rauner, which suggests he has higher negatives than Trump. If so, that is damn impressive – and he was being touted as a VP pick two years ago.

    Kirk and that appointed Comptroller are the other two GOP statewides left, and they are going down in flames this year.

  173. 173.

    chopper

    @Ruckus:

    another thing is, these days if some asshole wants to force his wife to vote a certain way he can do so in the voting booth as well. like ‘take a video of you voting and show me or so help me god…’

    it’s easier to control a spouses vote in a vote by mail state tho.

  174. 174.

    mere mortal

    That was really quite something, and the transcript does not do the event justice. There isn’t even a modicum of humor that I could detect in his voice.

    I can’t say I’ve seen someone intentionally set themselves on fire since Romney, just after Obama invited him to “proceed, Governor”.

    And Kirk’s use of gasoline made it a bit different.

  175. 175.

    Brachiator

    I hadn’t watched the news or been near the Internets since sometime yesterday. I saw something about this story this morning, and it is even worse than I imagined.

    A jaw droppingly racist failure of the imagination.

    And Duckworth is just a badass boss.

  176. 176.

    Mel

    @WaterGirl: I wholeheartedly agree. Mark Kirk is ridiculous.

    I don’t live near, but from the coverage I’ve read over the past several years, it seems like he always ends up making personal attacks against her, and trying to blow up a smoke screen of fake drama to distract voters from the real issues at hand.

    And Tammy Duckworth always has intelligence, grace, fierce strength and dignity in her responses to the nonsense that repubs throw at her.

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