I was out running errands today and saw that campaign signs are popping up for our November 2 municipal elections. New York Republicans, at least the ones around here, would be moderate Democrats in some other states. We still have a few in our town government, though most of them have been voted out in the last couple of elections. Normally, you see red signs for Republicans, and blue for Democrats, but this time around, our Republican town candidates have chosen shit brown as their color.
We also have an anti-abortion, anti-mask and anti-vax nutcase who was able to snag a third-party line on the ballot. (We have a few parties here that basically put their line up for sale.) This woman has scrubbed her social media and has a milquetoast website, which is a common tactic for nutcases who want more than a few votes. She’s a Republican in all but party affiliation, but her signs are green.
Nice to see that the Republican brand is so toxic that they’re even running away from their color.
MP
I was just listening to some Neil Young. If you’re a fan haven’t done so, give Cowboy Junkies cover of Powderfinger a listen.
Tony Gerace
In fairness, shit brown as a color represents truth in advertising. The color of ivermectin!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@MP: That’s a good cover.
zhena gogolia
Sometimes the Repub candidates here use blue on their signs! Pisses me off.
But in Russia you find people entering your race using not only your name but your appearance (Guardian):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/three-near-identical-boris-vishnevskys-on-st-petersburg-election-ballot
NotMax
Supply chain shortage of red paint.
//
Another Scott
Here in VA, the GQP is using blood-red signs with white text. Some of the Youngkin signs even say “Vote Republican”. I think it’s the first time in decades that the GQP hasn’t tried to hide the party on their signs here. Maybe they figure that since they kept Amanda Chase from getting the nomination that they can appear reasonable to the normies, or something. Dunno. I expect and hope they will get crushed by TerryMac’s machine, but we have to work as if they might win.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty
@zhena gogolia: In Florida, they just use your name.
germy
Elise Stefanik has been using “replacement theory” rhetoric in her latest mailings.
I live in upstate NY, and every other week I drive to a pet supply store for cat food. “UNMASK OUR CHILDREN!” signs lined a street on the way. Last week they were gone. I’m not sure if the sign people changed their minds or not.
hells littlest angel
Weird. Michael Steele was ahead of his time.
debbie
A few signs around here are purple. ??♀️
Even odder is that every candidate seems to insist on two signs in each yard. I may consider that as disqualifying. ??♀️
Baud
@germy:
Maybe they won a Herman Cain Award.
Danielx
@Baud:
Or Darwin Award, much the same thing.
NotMax
@debbie
Experience on Maui is that for those with property on prime visibility lots, the people are so nice they grant permission for yard signs to all comers.
Which kind of defeats the whole purpose.
laura
@MP: The pacing on their cover is so sublime.
It’s a huge relief to have the CA recall in the rearview mirror and I’m cautiously optimistic for statewide races coming up. Elise Stephanic seems comfortable flying her racist freak flag while other candidates seem pretty desperate to hide their true identity from the voters cough Younkin cough.
Highway Rob
This possibly should go in the pet thread below, but that one’s dwindling and this one’s open so here goes, & pardon the interruption and the long setup for a short question.
Our 11-year-old squirrel-tormentor/ed mix has a bump that we thought was a skin infection (she gets them a lot) gone wild. No major pain or discomfort so far as we can tell, she let me do five-minute hot compresses like the vet suggested. But it hasn’t gone away, they ran another test and found no infection, so it could be something really bad, or at least evidence of something really bad, and we can’t know until we put her through a surgery to find out. Yet another couple of weeks to a month in the cone of shame.
Does anyone have any links/sources for thoughts on how to balance a very good dog’s quality-of-life and length-of-life? This is our first pet, my first pet as a grown-ass dude, so it’s uncharted waters for me but obviously not for the rest of the pet-owning world.
Major Major Major Major
I walked past some bizarre protest in Times Square today. All the signs were about how the virus is a hoax for social control yadda yadda, but the speaker was ranting about AI??
Protestors smelled acutely like shit, more than normal for the area.
Lyrebird
@Highway Rob: Best wishes to you and the wonderful puppeh. No wisdom to offer, but I bet others will have good links.
germy
@Major Major Major Major:
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
Showers are a well known method of social control.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: that explains it!
Did you see that some ladies from Texas sent the hostess at Carmine’s to the hospital after she asked for their vax cards? A couple days ago I saw somebody storm out of a counter service line when they were asked, yelling “fuck you!”
sab
Jeez. I have nothing. Maybe calm down and pray. Things may well work out. They often do.
I had a dog with lymphoma (like Cole’s Lily. ) We were broke at the time, and the treatment started with them doing surgery (chopping him up to explore the situation.) He was a Humane Society adoptee with a difficult medical history. I said no, it will hurt him and his medical life has hurt him enough.. My vet was furious. My vet was right. We put him down too early to save him pain, and instead cost him a couple of years of life. I still have nightmares about that day in the vet’s office when we had him mercy killed.
ETA Reply to hiway rob
He trusted me above all others, and I fucking failed him dismally.
Baud
Speaking of idiots, anything happen at the DC sedition fest?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
oddly, there’s no supply change shortage of lunatics
sab
@Highway Rob: I replied above . It didn’t show as a reply. Good luck and go wary.
Gvg
Oddly enough in the very red north Florida county I used to live in, the republicans started using blue signs with no listed party about 2006 on. Glad I don’t still live there. 30% vax rate.
zhena gogolia
@Highway Rob: I wish you all the best. I only have experience with cats. Whatever you do, if you do it with love it will be fine. There is no one right answer, ever.
germy
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, those Texas women didn’t know the law in NYC? I wonder why they thought they could act like NYC is Texas?
zhena gogolia
@sab: I disagree with you. You don’t know that the vet was right.
Yutsano
@Baud: WaPo was unimpressed.
germy
@Yutsano:
I thought the press was thrilled.
They got to go on a Cletus safari without actually having to travel to Cletus Town.
Baud
@Yutsano: Thanks. Good news.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: oh I’m quite sure those entitled fucks knew the law… in between the hostess telling them and them beating her up, at a minimum.
I assume they also knew beating up a hostess is illegal.
Baud
@germy: Heh. Good point.
topclimber
@Baud: Useful along with buckets in a plea bargain.
Geminid
@Baud: Charlottesville antifascist activist @Molly Conger went up to D.C. and tweeted some reporting. It sounds like reporters outnumbered protesters. At one point a picture that included the Q-Anon Shaman was projected on a big screen, and a woman shouted, “Free the Horned God!”
sab
@zhena gogolia: You are right. We won’t know. We all are just sad. Thanks. You might be right and I saved him a lot of pain. Medical choices are hard. I do know I made the choice on preventing his pain, and not our vet bill.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Oh my, Carmine’s. Tasty family style Italiano. Not quite on a par with old standby Tony’s Di Napoli (found their seafood to taste fresher, especially anything with clams) but otherwise a worthy contender.
Major Major Major Major
@Geminid: Omg no way
zhena gogolia
@sab: Absolutely. I know the feeling — I have second-guessed myself every single time. But it isn’t something that comes with a ding-ding-ding you’re right! It’s always a judgment call.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major: That sounds as if some jackals got in and were spoofing them.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m getting ads on this site for Kelly Loeffler’s “Save America Tour.” Except they’re spelling her name “Loefller.”
LOL. Nothing gives me greater joy than to see evidence of incompetence in my political enemies. Not that any of her stupid followers will even notice, probably.
Geminid
@Major Major Major Major: Conger spoke of trying to count “sincere” participants, and it could be that the shouting lady was just goofing. But Conger did describe her as wearing a long American flag-print dress, so she may have been sincere.
Highway Rob
@zhena gogolia:
Thanks. Although given the looks I got giving her a bath just now, I’m not sure she thinks much of my “with love” efforts right at the moment. :)
Redshift
@Another Scott: From what I’ve seen, only Youngkin (the gov candidate) is using red signs, the LG and AG candidates aren’t. Maybe because he’s a big-money Republican play-acting at being one of the crazies to get their support, and the other two are sincere crazies.
VOR
@debbie: Back in the late 1980s my father ran for city council. It’s non-partisan so no party affiliations on the ballot. I did some door knocking my Dad’s campaign. One guy demanded to know which party my father was in. I told him it doesn’t matter, it’s a local election. But he had to know. I said “Republican” – in retrospect, one of the sane ones. Guy yelled “they killed Kennedy” and slammed his door in my face.
Redshift
I was out door-knocking for the Dems here in NoVa today, and it went pretty well. Lots of people not home, of course, but that’s normal. Plenty of the people I did get to talk to were unaware that early voting started yesterday (which is new; thank you, Democratic majority!) and were happy to know that.
It’s all about turnout, but I feel pretty good about our chances.
zhena gogolia
@Highway Rob: She knows, she knows.
NotMax
@Redshift
So old can remember when red and blue carried no political baggage. With the advent of color TV the networks would use those colors to show winning states but also every four years would alternate which color was assigned to represent a party.
zhena gogolia
@VOR: I miss the days of crazy Dems!
Baud
@Geminid:
You sure it wasn’t “Horny Baud”?
Baud
@Redshift:
?
Major Major Major Major
@Geminid: so hard to tell these days
Geminid
@Redshift: I think red used to be the color of the conservative Democratic Byrd machine. Perhaps it was a reference to Virginia’s state bird, the Cardinal. After Virginia’s party realignment in the 1970s, I think Mills Godwin and other Republicans kept using it, well before tv media started using the current red/blue system.
zhena gogolia
For the Cauvin fans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPbEUtygjXY
Highway Rob
@Baud: Are you sure you want to admit to horny Baud being free? Speaking for myself, I may be easy, but I’m not cheap, much less free.
debbie
@Yutsano:
The attendees interviewed on NPR were convinced everyone else there was Antifa.
Another Scott
@Redshift: I can’t explain it and found it surprising. The yard I’m thinking of has all the GQP signs in red. Sears is hard to read because the logo seems to be designed for a white background.
Dunno.
I see that Sears laid off a big part of her campaign staff recently. That’s always a good sign in a political campaign just before an election. ;-)
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: Dunno, if somebody is deluded enough to think the vaccine is more dangerous than COVID, they’re probably deluded enough to think it’s OK to beat up somebody they disagree with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: that’s an…. informative thread. I knew the idea that JFK Jr was not dead was somehow tied up in Q-Anon, I didn’t know they thought they had found him (edited)
also…
Suzanne
@Highway Rob: I have no links. But my best guidance is: when the good days and hours are more than the bad ones. I had a cat (Nico, the best cat ever, and a true soulmate) who went into kidney failure. She was an old girl, I was broke and in graduate school at the time, and the vet suggested a kidney transplant at a cost of $9K. There was no way I had that money, and no way I would put an old cat through that. I am not one to put animals through too much treatment-wise if it will cause them a lot of pain. Hugs.
Baud
@debbie:
We need to stoke that fear.
FlyingToaster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nobody’s ever explained how he got out of Vineyard Sound, and whose body he left in the plane. ?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
At least it wasn’t Uptown Girl.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
And Dolt 45’s uncle stole time travel tech from Nikola Tesla. Also too.
(Not making this whackaloonity up.)
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Molly Conger is often fun to follow. She covered the January 6 insurrection, and that was a little scary though. At one point she described getting a message from her father to get out, and not long after she did.
Winston
“An unfinished life” on Netflix now is one of the most poignant movies I’ve ever watched. With Robert Redford, J Lo and Morgan Freedman Damien Lewis. Pure Prairie League type of film.
debbie
@germy:
Pity Carmines wasn’t in Little Italy. They’d never have made it back out the door.
zhena gogolia
@Winston: Good cast.
I keep thinking I have to get Netflix
ETA: It looks really good, I never heard of it before.
Another Scott
@FlyingToaster: The Illuminati don’t want you to know this, fnord, but it might be John Dillinger. Fnord.
Could be!! Those Illuminati are sneaky!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@Highway Rob:
some breeds get fatty deposits under the skin, they only get uncomfortable for the dog when they get to large.
debbie
@FlyingToaster:
Or why they think he would be sympathetic to Q.
Redshift
@Another Scott:
Huh, interesting.
Yeah, I read the stories about her entire campaign staff getting letters from the consulting firm that they were fired, and the consulting firm is now running the campaign directly. The weak “it’s perfectly normal to have some staff changes as we’re positioning ourselves for victory” was hilarious.
Mary G
@sab: No, you did not fail him. You had no money and didn’t want him to suffer, so you made the right decision for those circumstances. He had a great life with you and didn’t know how to tell time, so never knew how much more or less he had. There was no GoFundMe or Balloon Juice (I assume) to raise money. Your vet was an asshole.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sab: what @Mary G: said. I think your vet was grossly unprofessional, and unkind.
JoyceH
@NotMax:
They allow yard signs? When I lived in Hawaii, yard signs and billboards were forbidden. But that was the ’80s, and Oahu. I rather liked it, because candidates would send their supporters out along the major roads during rush hour to hold signs. You could kind of tell how much support a candidate had by how many sign holders would be out at 5:30 AM along Kamehameha Highway. And then the day after the election, the winners’ supporters would be out wearing leis and waving Thank You signs. It was cute.
grandmaBear
@Highway Rob: I went through this recently with my 130# golden who will be ten in January. Cancerous tumor in a rear leg. The oncologist thought the surgery to remove it was likely to be successful. So I said yes to surgery and 2 weeks of cone of shame and living in a crate, but no to amputation or chemo. This was his 2nd cancer surgery and he’d also had the equivalent of ACL surgery when he was two. I happened to have the money and time this time, so I did it. Even so, I wouldn’t put him through it again. The oncologist was actually very understanding of my choices. She described goldens as cancer factories. He’s doing fine for now, but he’s reached his expected lifespan, so she and I agreed to pain mitigation in the future if it returns.
debbie
@NotMax:
Corner lots always have doubles, but this is the first year it’s also basically every yard!
Omnes Omnibus
@Winston: I saw it a couple of weeks ago. Very good film.
CarolPW
@Jay: @Highway Rob: All my dogs made it past middle age and all of them in their later years got fatty tumors between their skin and the muscles below. None of those fatty tumors caused any problems.
A vet can usually tell if a lump is one of them without a biopsy by moving it around to see how or if it is attached to anything. Not just a vet thing, the oncologist who did my first mastectomy did the same lump moving thing a couple of years after the mastectomy when I had a couple of new lumps under my skin. Since it is now 35 years later, his fatty tumor no big deal determination seems to be holding.
They also make much less problematic cones of shame these days, so that should not be a factor in your decisions. Good luck to you both.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Yeah, roadside sign wavers are still ubiquitous. One candidate even used to stand by the roadside while mounted on his horse.
When traffic was less congested and roads not multi-lane it was a quaint custom. Nowadays I view it as a dangerous distraction for drivers, too many of whom will significantly slow down without warning to wave back.
Highway Rob
@Lyrebird: @sab: @zhena gogolia: @Suzanne: @Jay: @grandmaBear: @CarolPW:
Thanks everyone. She’s good for now, no difficult calls are imminent (he said, with his fingers crossed). But this thread has been helpful & reassuring. Wags to all.
Geminid
@Geminid: Conger did cover the insurrection from half a block away. She was close enough to see paramedics treating the protester who died of a heart attack. And like with this demonstration, she teamed up with her Richmond colleague, @Goad Gatsby. Gatsby also tweeted out reporting on today’s demonstration, but he lacks Conger’s ironic humor.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: The colors used to be all over the place. David Brinkley quipped that Reagan’s 1980 landslide had the map looking as blue as a suburban swimming pool. Some networks used yellow and blue, if I recall correctly.
And internationally, red tends more often to be used for left parties and blue for right parties–though, in the US, Commie-baiting anyone left of center was such a powerful force that the Democrats probably would not have wanted to permanently pick red as a party color for that reason.
What solidified red for Republicans and blue for Democrats was the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election–people who had previously not paid much attention to the Electoral College spent a lot of time talking about electoral maps, and there was a popular one printed by USA Today that happened to use those colors.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the sight of a red baseball cap makes me raise an eyebrow these days
Matt McIrvin
…I’m not sure that party-color iconography has ever carried over to yard signs very consistently, though, aside from almost everyone using red, white and blue a lot. Trump’s campaign signs usually had a blue background. Most of Romney’s were white. Biden had a lot of white ones too.
lowtechcyclist
It’s always good when their numbers add up to (practically) nothing.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: interestingly the Red Sox haven’t used a red hat since 1979. They literally stop using them after the Bucky Dent game.
J R in WV
@sab:
I’ll disagree, I think you did the best you could do with limited information. Don’t beat yourself up. You intended to prevent his suffering, which was the best you could do at that time. And shame on the vet, also …
Stuart in Austin
@Highway Rob: We are long time cat rescuers. (I assume you are relating to a dog.) First question to ask is the critter in pain? You said no apparent pain. If there turns out to be something serious wrong consider how willing is the critter to tolerate treatment. With cats the range is wide, from keep your hands off of me to whatever. We had a cat diagnosed with diabetes at 10 who lived well into his 17th year because he had no problem with half a dozen insulin shots and 4 or more blood sugar tests a day. It is tough to judge someone else’s quality of life, don’t be in a hurry.
Morzer
So Republicans are now making sure their signs and their shirts match?