Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Let’s finish the job.

He really is that stupid.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

After roe, women are no longer free.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Saturday Night Fever Open Thread: Readership Capture

Saturday Night Fever Open Thread: Readership Capture

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  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    I saw this in the thread below where Aleta posted it — it put a big smile on my face. The passion!

  2. 2.

    Chetan Murthy

    That Matt Viser tweet: Obama is a good ally.  I should be so decent, as to be the sort of ally that Obama is.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I voted today. I went to the Madison City Hall, and there were only three people in front of me. As I was waiting, I chatted with the poll worker who was managing that part of the line. She told me that turn out at that location (there are 12 others in Madison) was huge. Apparently, the line had died down just a few minutes before I arrived, so I had a really short wait. Every other election i have voted in in Madison was done on paper ballots that were fed into a scantron machine. This time, due to Covid, we voted on a machine that then printed out a paper ballot. I got to verify my choices three times, and then I got to see my choices printed out on the actual ballot. I then went to another station, put it in an envelope, sealed it, and signed it. After that, poll worker countersigned the enveloped, and I put it an old fashioned lock box. I thanked all the poll workers and got my sticker. Then I went and bought ice cream.

  7. 7.

    West of the Cascades

    @HumboldtBlue:  if you underreport the number of Covid dead, there’s a chance Thiel can spirit the bodies away and drain their blood before anyone notices.

  9. 9.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, do you have a pointer to a description of the system ?  It sounds …. comprehensive (in a good way).  I’d like to compare it to what Los Angeles is doing this cycle.

  10. 10.

    RaflW

    Not germane to the thread, but is there a more special person than the committed Jo Jorgensen voter who is also on twitter?

    Meteor.
    Please.

  13. 13.

    Kay

    Aaron Rupar
    @atrupar
    ·45m
    Wow — Trump pushes a baseless conspiracy theory that US coronavirus deaths are overcounted because “doctors get more money and hospitals get more money” if they say people died of Covid instead of other co-morbidities they might have

    You would think they would tell him to talk about something else at these rallies. I mean, it doesn’t MATTER what he talks about- they’ll cheer for anything. He really seems determined to keep the focus on his greatest failure. No one else even has to bring it up- he spends so much time denying it’s happening it’s all he talks about.

  16. 16.

    David ?Booooooo!? Koch

     

     

    You think the usual neurotic suspects in our camp are panicking

    Republicans are releasing far fewer internal polls than Democrats (a bad sign usually)… and the ones they are releasing *publicly* (almost certainly biased) actually show Trump losing considerable ground from 2016. https://t.co/WZ7DffAjXo

    — (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 22, 2020

    They only release the polling that makes them look good (the outliers) and those are still bad.   The ones they hide (the non-outliers) are horrific.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Delk: So do what you’re fucking told.  Visit the damned Dells.  Actually, the Dells themselves are pretty cool.  The tourist trap that has grown up around them is less so.

  24. 24.

    zhena gogolia

    I highly recommend the documentary Pizza: A Love Story, especially if you’ve ever lived in New Haven. It brought back many happy memories. It’s on Amazon Prime.

  25. 25.

    jl

    @David ?Booooooo!? Koch: Yes, this is a good article, and it echoes what other pollsters and survey statisticians are saying about the pattern of GOP leaning pollster outfits’ releases this cycle. Most of the recent polls that show Trump winning in some of the swing states that have had a steady lead are from mediocre or worse GOP outfits that swoop in close to elections. Fact that they are further from average better quality polls than usual is a sign that something is up that the GOP insiders don’t want to talk about.

  26. 26.

    James E Powell

    In California, Uber, Lyft, and others are running a flat out lying campaign on Issue 22 and they’re going to win. I hate this shit.

  27. 27.

    Jeffro

    @David ?Booooooo!? Koch: 

    which is why this whole weird “shy trumpov voters” thing is just stupid: if those folks were out there, the trumpov campaign would have picked them up and found a way to show STRENGTH!!!!1!

  29. 29.

    Kay

    if they say people died of Covid instead of other co-morbidities they might have

    Can someone in medicine just conclusively clear this up? Because “co-morbidities” aren’t new. I mean if you have diabetes but die of pneumonia no one says “well, but he DID have diabetes so… who knows?”
    Why is this just now unknowable?
    Either don’t apply it to covid or apply it to everything.

  33. 33.

    James E Powell

    @jl: 

    I was reading someone’s breakdown of a Civiqs tracking poll in Pennsylvania. White, non college voters 59-39 for Trump. They are still angry, ignorant, hateful bigots and they will never desert the president who says what they are thinking.

  34. 34.

    craigie

    First day of in-person early voting in Los Angeles. My wife cast her first vote as an American citizen – she was very excited. Moderately long lines, but nothing dramatic.

    Now we just pace back and forth in the waiting room, waiting to break out the cigars if/when democracy is (re)born.

  35. 35.

    SoupCatcher

    @James E Powell:
    We had been blissfully ad free until recently. But watching the World Series, we’re inundated. I’d forgotten what network television was like.

    Drove down to Santa Cruz today, and then up the coast. Idiot Trump banner goblins on the overpass at the Lexington Reservoir.

    Fortunately, our favorite pumpkin patch and strawberry farm survived the fires.

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    OT maybe but what is going on with this #FakeMelania stuff?  Did they try to pass off a double or something?

    Also, I see that Pence’s Chief of Staff now has Covid-19 and will have to isolate…

    These super-spreader Republicans, I tell ya…

  37. 37.

    pat

    I was driving through rural Wisconsin this afternoon and the trump to biden signs are about 10:1 (did not actually count, just a guess).
    And the moron-in-chief will be doing two more superspreader events here in Wisconsin in the next few days.
    So glad La Crosse told him no, not here…. Airport would not allow it, and he couldn’t find another venue.
    My absentee ballot was signed and sealed in the presence of the Town Hall clerk as soon as I received it. Pleeeease, WI, do not let us down this time!!

  38. 38.

    jl

    @Jeffro: There have been a number of studies indicating that the shamed Trump voter is not nearly as big a factor this year. And, there is solid well tested methodology for sussing that out, so not some sketchy poll ‘bro’ science BS done on the fly.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @pat: If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t see a single Trump sign on my voting and custard buying excursion today.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    @jl: right!  the Repubs are freaking out over their own internal polls…which, one would think, could have folks saying, “Pssst…this is a poll from the GOP…who are you supporting?”

    It’s not like they’re doing super-duper-secret polls and feeling good that there’s a secret 10-15% out there who are going to either ignore pollsters or just somehow show up on election day.

    Biden’s up by 8-12% depending on the district, state, and/or day.  That is cause for serious encouragement!

  46. 46.

    James E Powell

    @WaterGirl: 

    They are claiming that Issue 22 provides things to employees when in reality it would exempt them from regulations that apply to every other employer in California.

    Their ads basically claim that if Issue 22 passes, there will be no more Uber, Lyft, etc.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: I noticed that you spent all your words about voting here in this thread, but you got a sticker anyway.

    Curious whether you have seen this from Lawfare, and if so, whether you have any thoughts on the matter.  Most of these started as individual Lawfare articles on their website.

    The Laws and Norms of a Disputed Presidential Election: A Lawfare Compendium

    Contents:

    • Chapter One: “Ballot Collection Laws and Litigation,” Alexandra Popke, Haley Schwab and Christopher Wan
    • Chapter Two: “Election Observation: Rules and Laws,” Jacob McCall, Mathew Simkovits and Haley Schwab
    • Chapter Three: “The Powerful Norm of Accepting the Results of a Presidential Election,” David Priess
    • Chapter Four: “Avoiding Post-Election Chaos: Wilson vs. Hughes, 1916,” Matthew Waxman
    • Chapter Five: “The State Laws That May Decide a Disputed 2020 Election,” Richard Altieri, Scott R. Anderson, Todd Carney, Eric Halliday, Christie Mayberry and Nathaniel Sobel
    • Chapter Six: “How to Resolve a Contested Election, Part 1: The States and Their Electors,” Scott R. Anderson
    • Chapter Seven: “How to Resolve a Contested Election, Part 2: How Congress Counts the Electoral Votes,” Scott R. Anderson
    • Chapter Eight: “How to Resolve a Contested Election, Part 3: When Elections Fail,” Scott R. Anderson

    Personally, I am most interested in chapters 5-8.

  51. 51.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kay: I have been hearing this since April. APRIL.

    It’s one of those things where there’s a very small of truth but it’s really obvious bullshit. But Trump voters have lashed themselves to it. because it makes Trump look less awful. Just like some conservative college friends who told me to “keep drinking the kool aid” when we were talking about masks.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: I noted in the “I Voted” thing that I voted.  I haven’t read that Lawfare stuff.  I’ll take a look if I get a chance and am not in hide inside Netflix mode.

  53. 53.

    TS (the original)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Then I went and bought ice cream.

    In my youth when vaccines were via lining up at school, my reward for not panicking out half the school (which I had been know to do)  was icecream.

  54. 54.

    Chetan Murthy

    @MisterForkbeard:

    it’s really obvious bullshit.

    One of the things that I learned in troubleshooting large, complex systems, and that I’ve heard repeated multiple times on medical procedural shows, is that there’s a difference between chronic, and acute illnesses.  Sure, he’s got high BP, cholesterol, and is overweight.  But the bleeding out of the hole in his abdomen?  Yeah, that’s probably not related, b/c the *hole* is an *acute* symptom.  Happened less than 12hours ago.

    I think reputable medical professionals apply this sort of reasoning to patients with covid, too.  But sure, there are disreputable medical professionals out there.

  55. 55.

    jl

    @Kay: “Can someone in medicine just conclusively clear this up? ”

    I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on TV, but I do work in health services research. Most death certificates allow listing of more than one cause of death. Usually you have entries for  underlying, immediate, and at least one contributing cause of death. Also spaces for comorbidities. Figuring out this stuff is essential for understanding costs and trends in mortality from all sorts of things, smoking, obesity, chronic infectious diseases.

    For example, if we just looked at immediate cause of death and ignored comorbidities, we’d conclude that almost no one died from smoking, alcohol abuse or morbid obesity. Edit: and there is a whole cottage industry devoted to cross checking and validating between different ways of estimating how many people died because of what causal factor. Matching up other methods with death certificate data, for example, is a really exciting field for statisticians like me (ha ha, /snark alert, man it is dull stuff, takes a certain kind of statistician to get into that area).

    I forget the all the variations on the nonsense regarding ‘died with’ versus ‘died from’, and fussing over comorbidities the covid-19 truthers have put out.

    I can’t find a convenient open access guide to how to analyze this stuff. But below is a link to the handy dandy CDC physicians’ handbook on how to fill out a death certificate:

    Physicians’ handbook on medical certification of death

    CDC, 2003 revision

    https://www.cdc.gov/Nchs/data/misc/hb_cod.pdf

  58. 58.

    Jean

    @Omnes Omnibus:  I’m originally from Wisconsin (now in VA). My friend was Dahmer’s intake officer at the Milwaukee County Jail. She said he was the “most polite guy” there.

  59. 59.

    TS (the original)

    @James E Powell:

    Always seemed to me we elect governments so they can “get stuff done”. Going back to ask people about any government action/policy is not something that should happen – other than for constitutional changes. Also seems like a very American thing. I don’t see it happening in other countries.

    Sure fills up the ballot papers & how many people don’t have a clue what they are voting for?

  64. 64.

    jl

    @Kay: “Either don’t apply it to covid or apply it to everything.”

    And, for respectable statistics, put out by the CDC, different stats are put out, from immediate cause of death to estimates of the ultimate cause of death for everything. From hepatitis C, to smoking, accidents (old person’s hip fracture leads to lying down leads to pneumonia), abusive drinking, drug use, history of stroke and heart attack, cancer, etc. CDC and state agencies put out multiple stats precisely because people want to have a lot of data to match up different stats and data bases and keep different estimates as consistent as possible.

    What I’ve seen of the covid-19 death truther stuff is just infantile nonsense that violates common sense. I remember one that focused on covid deaths with no comorbidities versus many more with comorbidities. Well, duh, that is exactly what you’d expect of a set of common pre-existing comorbidities are important risk factors for serious illness. The covid-19 truthers implicitly admit this when they fuss about letting the disease rip among younger folk and finding some mystery method of protecting vulnerable over an undefined time period.

  65. 65.

    lgerard

    @Kay:

    if they say people died of Covid instead of other co-morbidities they might have

    This is just trump recycling a wingnut myth from a few months ago when someone discovered that the CDC analysis showed that 6% of death certificates listed only Covid, while the other 94% listed additional conditions. This led to the nonsensical claim that Covid deaths were being over reported and that 94% died from other causes. That was widely debunked.

    The truth is that whatever the death certificate lists as the cause of death has little to due with hospital reimbursement.

    If you are admitted to a hospital with pneumonia and are subsequently diagnosed with Covid the reimbursement is higher because the cost of care is higher in time and resources. It makes no difference if the death certificate says pneumonia, pneumonia secondary to Covid, or just Covid.

    It is the same if you are HIV positive or have diabetes as those conditions require an extra level of care.

     

    Medical billing is not done from death certificates.

  66. 66.

    jl

    @lgerard:  Excellent point. I wish the bills were, since most people who go to the hospital don’t die. So, wish we lived in a world where if we have to go to the hospital and don’t die there, no death certificate and no bill to pay.

    Maybe someone should suggest that to Trump for his health care reform proposal that will be announced with McConnell any day now.

    Edit: I think left out of your comments is that the Trumpsters spread nonsense that hospitals got enough extra money for covid admissions that they had an incentive to inflate the number. And the bogus claim about CDC death certificates was used to support that nonsense.

  67. 67.

    lgerard

    @jl:

    If someone was diagnosed with Covid there is a test result in their medical history showing that.

    “Upcoding” is a crime (see Rick Scott), and no responsible medical facility would do that as a matter of policy, particularly when it would take a pretty large circle of conspiricists to do so.

    I think there is a simple explanation as to why 6% of the death certificates only list Covid.  At the beginning of the pandemic a substantial number of people died at home.  Unlike a hospital or nursing home there was no attending physician or medical history to draw upon.  They were DOA to the coroner. With bodies stacking up in refrigerator trucks and the risk of handling these people there was no extensive autopsying being done.  It was simply noted that they tested positive and that was given as the cause of death.

  68. 68.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I love Obama. Probably be the best president of my lifetime. The guy is the whole package. Smart, decent, family guy and cool. I like Biden but he’s not Obama and I really like Kamala Harris but I don’t think she has Obama’s political smarts.

  71. 71.

    Fair Economist

    @lgerard: The certificates of people who died from COVID mostly list COVID as the cause of death. (About 1/3 don’t due to lack of testing) 94% have *additional* comorbidities, mostly because most people have some kind of comorbidity – obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, assorted chronic organ conditions, etc. In many cases the comorbidity was *caused* by COVID – kidney failure, liver malfunction, strokes, heart failure, etc. COVID is essentially always the cause of death – none of the other have changed, but we’ve had about 300,000 excess deaths so far this year.

  72. 72.

    jl

    @Fair Economist: 
    ” About 1/3 don’t due to lack of testing ”
    Good point. When hospitals were overwhelmed, and a severe shortage of tests, diagnoses were sometimes made on other clinical criteria, lung imaging, etc.

  74. 74.

    mrmoshpotato

    “You were my first!” a female volunteer told him.

    “I’m very grateful,” Obama said. “Though you should probably say it in a different way.”

    LOL!

    Has Joe won yet? It is the afternoon of January 20, 2021 yet? I’m so ready to have a President again.

  75. 75.

    frosty

    @Omnes Omnibus: We passed through the Dells on a cross-country trip, camped overnight and thought we should come back.

    So we did. The best part was the boat tour. Some pretty cool geology. We skipped the tourist traps. I’ve never seen so many water parks concentrated in one place.

  76. 76.

    Mai Naem mobile

    • @jl: I doubt COVID19 is a moneymaker for the hospitals. First you’ve got people dying who probably aren’t going to have the money left in their estates to pay the bills. Also, my guess is that some of the sickest ones who need and get a lot of care are the ones who didn’t have insurance so they didn’t show up at the ER until they absolutely had to. Most of these people will end up declaring bankruptcy. On top of this are the huge costs of PPE and a ton of overtime etc for labor. Also, don’t forget compensation of employees who died from getting COVID on the job or got permanently disabled from COVID. Add to this, the money you aren’t getting from the real moneymaker surgeries that aren’t happening because of COVID and that staff that you aren’t using but still paying some to maintain.
  77. 77.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus: 
    I also have not seen one trump sign here in socal. I know the voters exist, I work with one. He does get out of my way if I’m walking the opposite direction.

  78. 78.

    VOR

    @Mai Naem mobile:  hospitals are losing money and laying off employees because they can’t do the normal amount of non-COVID things. Elective procedures and non-emergency things. People putting off hip replacements, gastric bypasses, plastic surgery, you name it.

  79. 79.

    Ruckus

    @James E Powell:

    Well there probably won’t be. If they have to pay an employee by time rather than by some cost made up on the fly by a computer the whole concept will fall apart. And that’s considering that last time I checked Uber still was not profitable. If they have to pay all the drivers as employees they would never be able to have a going business at what they charge. They work in leu of taxies because they can charge less. No equipment charges, you use your own car, pay for your own gas. No SS tax, you have to pay that, 7.8%. Now if you have a taxi license you too could charge closer to Uber pricing, but those don’t seem to be available most places, as the allotted number of licenses are already issued.

    It’s still a bad prop but Uber and Lyft exist because they don’t have employees and automobile costs.

  80. 80.

    rikyrah

    I just got a citizen app notification. I heard the dispatch call. “Thousands of Black people gathering, the complainant doesn’t know why they’re there.”I checked the comments and the map. It’s a voting line. I truly hate this world. ??‍♀️— mary swagdalene (@CandyCornball) October 24, 2020

  82. 82.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @jl: Just FTR, you are aware that the definition of “statistician” is

    Someone who likes to work with numbers but isn’t personable enough to be an accountant

    arncha? ;^p

    (Actually I repurposed the definition of “economist,” but I’ve worked with [or been] both, & IMNSHO it’s every bit as applicable. Though we are more decisive. “If every economist in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.”

    (Also I’ve collected a few decent engineer jokes from the time when I worked as one [for what they paid me they could’ve called me late for dinner & I wouldn’t have complained]. Axe me somtimes. /tmi)

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