It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
This infestation has gotten out of hand pic.twitter.com/u5oJpQpg1a
— jg33x (@jaygx2) October 15, 2021
Lifted from a comment thread last night, a note from our beloved asiargrrlMN:
Hello, Balloon Juicers! *waves vigorously*
I wanted to stop in and thank everyone who sent good vibes, positive thoughts, and prayers my way while I was in the hospital. I read the posts about me after I was home from the hospital a few weeks (which is a strange experience, believe you me).
I firmly believe that I made it through the dark times with the aid of three things (in addition to my kickass medical team): luck, Taiji, and love. Y’all were a big part of the last and I can’t tell you how touched I was when I realized how many Juicers helped carry me through the darkness.
I’m still recovering from my ordeal and I’m finding my way to a new normal. It’s not been easy, but it’s been quite the journey, let me tell you. I thank all of you for the reams of positivity you sent whizzing my way. I needed it as I fought my way back to life.
I raise my rusty pitchfork in tribute to you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart (which is doing great, by the way!) I will never forget the outpouring of love I received from y’all.
======
Elsewhere, the work goes on…
Democrats have almost reached an agreement on a social-spending bill that is a pared-down version of President Joe Biden's priorities, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi https://t.co/g8s5rZeMkm pic.twitter.com/yO34JkKep5
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 25, 2021
Pelosi saying there may be a deal as soon as Monday seems like a big deal https://t.co/aKKrQ6CiFq
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 24, 2021
Important perspective from a former House Ways & Means staffer. I’m far beyond annoyed w Manchin & Sinema. And I’m not convinced Sinema will ever agree to a deal. But even a third of Biden’s proposal would be transformative.
And don’t write off 2022 https://t.co/3nDEL6IZ98
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 24, 2021
Baud
And Ivermectin.
Congrats on the speedy healing.
JPL
Such good news from asiargrrlMN, and I glad she was able to post the update. Thanks Anne for reposting it.
SiubhanDuinne
Wonderful to hear from asiangrrlMN. I missed seeing whatever thread her comment was in, so I’m especially thankful to AL for reposting it this morning.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Seconded. Mighty glad to read she’s recovering.
SFAW
Thanks for the good news on her recovery!
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s good to start the BJ day with good news.
I opened twitter, saw that Gosar promised a blanket pardon for Jan 6, and then saw that Mandel says Ohio should close govt schools and move all education to churches and synagogues. Then I closed twitter and ran away. How can this be reality?
SFAW
And today’s least-surprising headline (so far) goes to the WaPo:
“Insiders say Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg [spit] chose
lining his own pocketsgrowth over safety”(Of course, the bracketed word was not in the original headline.)
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m so old, I can remember when Ohio was not insane, and psycho fascists were not elected to Congress (or at least, weren’t so out-and-proud about it).
Kay
At the Ohio GOP senate candidate debate the Republican candidates promised to abolish all public schools and appoint Supreme Court Justices who would remove Biden and install Trump.
No difference between their far Right House incumbents/candidates and their far Right senate candidates now- they are all Marjory Taylor Greene.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s one way to keep kids with decent parents safe from Covid.
NotMax
Not sure whether the death at 82 of Jay Black, whose purity of tone led Jay & the Americans, has yet been noted here.
JPL
@Kay: Wow! Tim Ryan will be able to use those quotes against the nominee. l saw a Vance quote that says they hate the right people. It’s scary to see so many fall down in a cesspool.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The reality is they’re still moving further and further Right. The Ohio GOP senate debates are now indistinguishable from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Roger Stone events.
Just so embarassing how many fancy people promoted JD Vance. OSU should issue an apology. They played a big role in promoting him as a serious person. Are they watching this?
JPL
Rolling Stone Magazine has an article connecting the dots between Congressional members, the White House and members of the January 6th mob. It seems like the story should be all over the news.
link
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
What bothers me about Ohio is the number of voters who will happily waddle in to the polling station lace to support that kind of bugfuckery as well as the number of voters who know its bigfuckery but hate Democrats so much that they’ll go along.
SFAW
@Kay:
Theocracies ‘R’ Us?
If I’m ever installed as God-Emperor of this country, there are a bunch of these insane, fascist mofos who had better hope I don’t find them.
[NB: They should be OK with the concept of me as G-E (at first); after all, they’re trying to install TFG as one.]
Kay
@JPL:
It really is good for Ryan. It will still be hard as nails for him to win but the whole GOP field is nutjob Right wing. They get all the attention too, which would ordinarily be bad, but in this case they have to to vie to outdo one another in how radical Right they are, so they get more and more insane.
Keep in mind who they are replacing- Rob Portman.
debbie
@Kay:
They’re hiding behind Dr. Strauss. //
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Kay
@JPL:
I’m sorry it’s Rolling Stone. They have credibility problems and have had for years. I recall reading their article on the 2004 Presidential race in Ohio and the issues with voting. It was nonsense. The reason Democrats can’t spout conspiratorial nonsense about election process is because it discredits voting rights advocates and real election experts. Luckily Democrats didn’t fall down a “stop the steal” type rabbit hole, but bullshit “reporting” didn’t help. They’re just not a credible news outlet to me.
OzarkHillbilly
WaPo: The geography of the Great Resignation: First-time data shows where Americans are quitting the most
debbie
@JPL:
If that’s not grounds for expulsion, I don’t know what is.
germy
rikyrah
@Kay:
I was wondering what lunacy would come from that debate ??
rikyrah
@JPL:
Uh huh
Uh huh ?
Kay
@JPL:
I’d like to see Democrats take it head on and defend public education. A full throated defense. Maybe Ryan will. It’s a stronger issue for state candidates but since it’s apparently going to be the GOP go-to for 2022 they should all come up with something to say about it and it should be coherent and consistent across the Party.
germy
@debbie:
That would make a great rotating tag.
rikyrah
@Kay:
No spine Portman ?
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are correct about defending public education
rikyrah
@Kay:
We should go to them
Reminds me of the Villagers who defended William Barr and Kavanaugh ???
But, yes, they should apologize
Geminid
In other good news, jury selection will begin today for the civil lawsuit Sines v. Kessler, in a Charlottesville, Virginia federal courtroom. The plaintiffs are suing organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally for injuries suffered because of the defendants’ conspiracy. The lawsuit is sponsored by the civil rights group Integrity for America.
rikyrah
Thank you for the good news, AL??
MomSense
Nice to start the day with bat cats and happy news from Asian Grrrl.
Lapassionara
@Kay: This. We found out how important public schools are when we live in New Orleans, where the public schools are massively underfunded, and many people spend more on their children’s k through 12 education than they spend on college. Madness.
germy
You’re right, and that’s true even with their entertainment reporting.
For years, their music reviews were based on whatever personal grudges Jann Wenner held at the time. One critic gave an album a good review, and then was told by his editor to make it a negative one instead. The critic complied. That was the culture.
Since Wenner’s death, the ownership of the magazine has passed to Penske Media. It’s not exactly Pro-Publica.
Baud
@rikyrah:
All of them, Katie.
lowtechcyclist
There’s a big difference between writing off 2022, and acknowledging that it’s a huge gamble to rely on a Dem Congress being able to build on this in 2023.
We should work like hell for the possibility that it can, but anything that’s absolutely necessary (:cough: climate change :cough:) needs to be in this bill.
rikyrah
Legacy admissions-biggest Affirmative Action program going??
Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) tweeted at 8:19 AM on Sat, Oct 23, 2021:
“Among white admits to Harvard University, 43 percent are recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff — and roughly three quarters would have been rejected if they had been treated as non-ALDCs.” https://t.co/Tw46Yd6n0c
(https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1451901180033081355?t=n0Z_YDBLngLLn5BALNAxtA&s=03)
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The bill will be what it is.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Doubtless, he’s in his office, standing before a window, looking out, wringing his hands gently, and tsk-tsking his dismay. //
Gammyjill
I’ve been out of the loop for a year or so (took a rest from reading political sites) so I didn’t know about Asiangrrl. What happened to her? Whatever it was, I’m glad she’s on the mend.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There is a video of Roger Stone getting interviewed and it’s clear he is tweeking big time; twitchy, hands doing wierd things, strange facial expressions. So Stone is a Stoner, because that’s the world we live on. The guess is Stone’s on Addrell like Trump is. So wide wide spreed prescription drug abuse among the Conservative leadership is on brand, considering their enthusiasm for the War on Drugs. Conservatives always project.
So that’s a hell of though that this era of America history could end up defined by wide spreed drug abuse.
MomSense
I want to say thank you to the person who recommended Carlos Mazda’s youtube video How To Be Hopeless. It helped me so much. Maza is gay wonk on social media. He has a new video out about Critical Race Theory that is worth checking out.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Don’t laugh. I’ve said for months now that covid would be what finally allowed the GOP to destroy public education in this country.
Nelle
@Kay: And even when that works to our detriment. There was clear malfeasance in one of the Congessional races in Iowa, where ths R was declared winner by 6 votes. Worthy of a challenge as at least 20 valid votes for the D were discarded that could be identified. The D took it to the House, where, i believe she was counseled to concede as the D’s could not go the route of a cusingvthe election as fraudulent.
rikyrah
Why Fox should be sued into oblivion ??
lowtechcyclist
That’s the absolute truth, and funny how it’s never remotely on the radar of the people who get upset about affirmative action.
As the saying goes, when people tell you what they’re really about, believe them.
germy
MomSense
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
My son who is in finance told me that when the investment banker types throw big parties they put bowls full of adderall out. I’ve seen photos of some of the party locations and they are fancy AF. Kid just wants to leave and open a little financial advising shop in Maine. The culture in finance is just as fucked up as ever. Oh and COVID spread like a wildfire in that community. So we should even more stupid in the future.
snoey
@Kay:
If I remember right, the 2004 article was RFK jr. and about as sensible as his antivax stylings.
This is from Hunter Walker, who has the bio of a real reporter.
We’ll see.
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: so probably split between people who left to take care of someone recovering from COVID, people who left because the pandemic was raging and they felt it wise to stay home because their workplace wasn’t doing enough to protect them, and those who left because their workplace was “too woke” and making them mask up.
lowtechcyclist
Hell yeah. I just can’t believe they can keep on doing this without facing serious legal consequences. They are a mass murderer.
prostratedragon
Way to go, asiargrrlMN! That was good for an early morning smile.
Kay
@Nelle:
I don’t think that’s the way to go either. D’s are absolutely allowed to follow the legal process and challenge if there’s a legit issue. I’m talking about D’s NOT following grifters like the Green Party or Rolling Stone and making baseless and uninformed allegations of election fraud or tampering.
The truth is Bds of Elections in Ohio are deliberately and by statute composed of equal numbers of D’s and R’s. If a polling place close to a college campus does not have sufficient capacity for the number of voters and there are long lines that is 100% of the fault of the D’s on the Bd of Elections. It is their job to plan for that and get the machines they need in place. They can’t “run out of ballots”. That should never happen.
Cameron
@debbie: Did you mean Leo Strauss or another Strauss? Or Dr. Seuss?
JPL
@germy: It surprised me that the representatives named didn’t issue a strong denial. Some of the rioters were familar with areas of the building which could mean that they visited beforehand . If so, there should be a paper trail of visitors.
MomSense
@Kay:
There were actually problems with voting in Ohio in 2004. I don’t want Democrats to defend the ordeal that mostly black voters had to endure in Cuyahoga County in 2004.
Kay
@Nelle:
Mitt Romney’s son owns stock in Diebold and Diebold patched software the week before the election. That sort of garbage. That has to stop. We have real problems. We don’t have time for nonsense promoted by grifters.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Pure speculation, but this list of states tells me that you had a lot of people quitting their crappy local employer owned job and going to work for national companies for higher pay and benefits.
Anne Laurie
@JPL: The Rolling Stone article is so practically perfect in every way — anonymous ‘sources’ pointing fingers at *exactly* the people we all suspect of being complicit — that, as a devout Cynic, I am… willing to wait on further reporting.
Reminder: Rolling Stone‘s “A Rape on Campus” has its own Wikipedia page. On the one hand, there’s been a *lot* of editorial turnover since that story appeared; on the other — there’s been a *lot* of turnover, and I’m not 110% certain the new editorial team has the visceral memory of the “ARoC” blowback that some of us do…
Soprano2
Eh, they’ve believed this should happen for quite a while. It was what Betsy DeVos wanted to do. But yeah, the January 6th stuff is quite shocking. Unfortunately, it’ll probably sink like a stone in a day or two, and nothing will happen to the Congresscritters who were directly involved. I hate it, but this is probably true.
Kay
@MomSense:
But the problems weren’t mysterious and they had nothing to do with Diebold. If your issue is long lines then address the lines. Veering off into Rolling Stone’s crap analysis where they conflate long lines and software harms the credibility of voting rights advocates.
They wrote an article about Ohio elections and it’s riddled with errors about Ohio election process. It’s trash.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Peale: I wondered what percentage were early retirees too. There are a lot of people in that 62-65 group.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: I seem to recall TFG stopped releasing the visitors log. For all I know, they stopped keeping it.
lowtechcyclist
@MomSense:
I won’t argue that, but for years after the 2004 election, I’d hear about the stolen 2004 election in blog comments and other places online.
I’d always ask, “what’s the evidence?” and I’d get a bunch of handwaving, if that.
To me, there’s a clear and convincing case that 2000 was stolen. But I’ve never even seen a decent argument that 2004 was stolen, just the accusation and some word salad to back it up.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I think some staffers may end up being charged, if prosecutors can develop the evidence. Staffers tend to be more radical than their principals, and more reckless.
Baud
@Kay:
We tend to focus on the coddling of right wingers by the media, but there’s a smaller industry out that that makes a buck coddling to our preconceptions. We need to always be on guard.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
Good God, for real?
I am not optimistic about 2022, but this sort of thing gives me hope. That kind of talk just has to sound like crazy nonsense to people outside the Trump rally bubble.
On a Fox News appearance, our nutty governor in FL floated the idea of paying out of state cops who lose their jobs due to vaccine refusal $5K to come work in Florida. I’ve got to believe that sounds like wasteful madness outside the Trump bubble.
Maybe this insanity will bite at least some of these people on the ass. Like you said, they’re all MTG now.
Kay
@MomSense:
The only thing worse than Republicans lying about elections and promoting conspiracy theories is Democrats joining them. Then we really will lose the country. Democrats did NOT fall down the rabbit hole. They did not start attributing every loss to election fraud or point to nonsensical “this so THIS” type conflating of legit issues with invented issues. That’s good. Good job, Democrats.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: He took the hard way to come around to the same conclusion I reached a long time ago.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
IMO they see it hitting in Virginia so will roll it out national. If it wins in VA they’ll go full-on “abolish public schools”. They don’t have anything else. Look, problems really are opportunities. I kmow that sounds like a work seminar, but they are. Democrats can be the pro-public education people. We can win this. Take it on. Jump in and emjoy the fight. We can win it.
Baud
@Kay:
I hate to make an exception to my look forward, not back approach, but this is the main reason that the 2016 primary still casts a shadow, despite the fact that things are much improved in 2021.
debbie
@Cameron:
Dr. Robert Strauss, the team physician who raped hundreds of wrestlers. The guy Gym Jordan wouldn’t rat out.
Kay
@MomSense:
You probably already do this, but if you read “not enough voting machines” look for horses, not zebras. Someone fucked up and they fucked up at the county level. They can get machines. In fact, their JOB is to get machines, not on election day but 2 weeks prior. They are supposed to assume at least 70% turnout.
Taken4Granite
@rikyrah: And this problem has been getting steadily worse for decades. I do admissions interviews for my undergraduate alma mater, which is one of the few institutions in our peer group to not do legacy admissions. Our admit rate for this year’s freshman class was 4%, compared to about 1 in 3 for my freshman class back in 19XX. I don’t think I could do these interviews if we did legacy admissions, because those legacy admits would be taking so many spaces away from more deserving scholars.
And you are correct to describe it as affirmative action for white people.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: And he said his decision was based on “science.” Cue up Thomas Dolby……
Kay
@Baud:
Agree. The Bernie people alleging fraud was disgusting. I look for it. Eric Adams in NYC floated it too. It should be denounced.
Kay
@MomSense:
I would condition “long lines” a little. Voter ID slows the process. But that can be fixed. They have to expand capacity if they’re taking 10 minutes to process a voter versus 2 minutes.
Cameron
@debbie: Thanks!
Baud
@Kay:
Yep, absolutely. It’s hard to maintain discipline when we see the other side letting their freak fly, but IMHO we will lose big time if we try to play their game.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Governor DeathSantis is now offering bonuses to recruit unvaccinated cops to Florida:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/25/desantis-offers-5k-bonus-outofstate-unvaccinated-officers/
MomSense
@Kay:
I do think there are problems with diebold but that’s because I’ve been doing voter protection for a loooong time and helped to recruit a national voter protection team before the 2008 election. I’m not relying on the Rolling Stone article about it.
Back to Ohio, two people in Cuyahoga County, the ballot manager and election coordinator of the board of elections, were convicted each of a felony and misdemeanor for pre-selecting ballots that would not cause discrepancies with the diebold tallies when hand counted.
OzarkHillbilly
No comment.
Another Scott
@Gammyjill: She had a sudden, scary, medical event.
https://balloon-juice.com/2021/09/06/keep-minna-in-your-thoughts/
We’re all very glad she is doing well.
Welcome back!
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The Ohio Republican Senate debate was sponsored by the Center for Christian Virtue, and held at a Baptist church. The Baptists had a long tradition of separation of church and state, but ambitious preachers sold that birthright for a mess of political pottage.
Philbert
@Kay: True.. this weekend’s WSJ had a 3/4 pg opinion piece that public education is unconstitutional because it limits parents’ free speech by limiting parental control of what kids learn. Or something. WSJ editorials are the stamp of approval for GOP policy so looks like this may be a major push. Arrgh.
Starfish
@rikyrah: Some students and professors are working to get rid of legacies. It looks like Johns Hopkins and Amherst have both done away with this. There are other less competitive places where it was not a big factor that also did away with it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Philbert: I guess nobody at the WSJ has noticed that nobody has to send their kids to public schools. That in fact a whole lot of people don’t.
Soprano2
Republicans have been going after public education for decades. They don’t like it because it educates everyone, not just the people Republicans think should get an education. I agree that Democrats should go all in standing up for public education. It’s popular with people; many of them could never afford to educate their children without it, including millions of middle-class people.
sdhays
@OzarkHillbilly: Everybody has to pay taxes to support them, though.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: The Baptists must have sold that birthright many decades ago, or maybe their erstwhile respect for the separation of church and state never extended south of the Mason-Dixon line. One of my grandfathers was a Southern Baptist preacher, and the entire denomination was lying about prayer being banned in school when I was a child.
Starfish
@Gammyjill: You can go back and read about it.
Here
Here
Her brother kept an entire journal of it here.
I want to let Minna know that there is an option to turn a caring bridge to something that is only visible to friends.
We might want to consider deleting or hiding those posts in the future too upon Minna’s request.
Basically, because we live in the darkest timeline, findable medical history can be used to discriminate against people looking for jobs. I think that this is irrelevant to Minna’s situation; but if it comes up again, we might want to consider stuff like that.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Hey, for anybody looking for some well-written atmospheric horror for Halloween week, Chapelwaite on epix is outstanding.
Gammyjill
@Another Scott: Thanks for bringing me up to date, Scott. And, yes, I took time off since the election. Went only to Raw Story and Political Wire, but last week decided to add Balloon Juice into the mix.
Soprano2
I listened to a story on Morning Edition this morning about some people who quit their jobs because of vaccine mandates. No context was given; they cited numbers of people who quit without saying something like “Out of 63,000 workers in Washington State, around 1,800 quit rather than getting the vaccine”. It’s irresponsible to report on this without showing what a small percentage of people it actually is. How about some stories on those who were glad their employer mandated the vaccine? Haven’t heard any like that yet.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Here is a very smart, imo, approach to Dem messaging on education, from ASO Communication We Make The Future messaging guide. They’ve done extensive research on which framings work best with voters. The full guide covers just about every issue/policy but it focusses especially on education and the CRT witch-hunt bs:
EDUCATION
MESSAGE 1: School is a place where childhood happens. Most of us believe that every child, whatever their color, background or zip code, has the right to learn in a supportive environment that respects their humanity, upholds their dignity, and responds fairly to mistakes and mis-steps.
But today, certain politicians fuel divisions so they can take resources away from our schools while they let the wealthiest few get away with not paying their fair share. They then blame parents, teachers and students to distract from these failures. They send police into schools to harm students who are Black, brown, LGBT or disabled for making mistakes that — for wealthy white kids — are deemed part of growing up and learning.
Our schools must treat every child as equal, especially in situations of conflict.
We make the future, and by joining together — parents and teachers, Black, white, and brown — we can make every neighborhood public school a place where all children can learn, grow, and thrive.
MESSAGE 2: No matter what we look like, where we live, or what’s in our wallets, most of us want our neighborhood public schools to inspire imagination, cultivate critical thinking, and ensure our children can live fulfilling lives.
But certain politicians try to divide us, ensuring well-resourced schools with mostly white students have money for computers, teacher training, and parent engagement, while sending police to monitor and punish Black and brown students in schools that have already been deprived for too long. Then they turn around and point the finger at families of color for the challenges at our neighborhood public schools, while letting the wealthiest few refuse to pay their fair share.
We make the future, and by joining together across race and zip code, we can rewrite the rules to ensure every school has the materials, up-to-date strategies, healthy meals, after-school programs, and emotional support to set kids up to be all that they dream.
OzarkHillbilly
@sdhays: Yes. And the point is? Maybe an educated populace benefits all of society?
We also all pay taxes to support our military even tho most Americans are never in it. We all pay taxes to keep our roads in good repair whether we drive on them or not. We all pay taxes for all kinds of things that don’t directly benefit us because they benefit the society we live in.
geg6
@Kay:
The reporter for RS, Hunter Walker, is a TPM alumnus and a pretty good reporter. He was never a part of any of the RS journalistic problems. He was very good at TPM.
And having now read the article, I think he has the receipts.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: As you say, they have mixed religion and politics for many decades. This accelerated greatly in the 1970s, when a conservative faction of the Southern Baptists took over the seminaries and the denomination itself. They used secular politics as a wedge.
The takeover of the NRA by hardliners led by LaPierre occurred around the same time.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
What I always remember is that they gave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. one of his biggest anti-vax breaks with a bogus story about a supposed conspiracy to cover up thimerosal in vaccines.
(Was the voting story Greg Palast? He does some good work but he frustrates me by always leaning into the most maximalist and conspiratorial interpretation of everything.)
MomSense
@geg6:
Agree
Starfish
@geg6: At TPM, he had a solid editor. The problems that have occurred at Rolling Stone are due to a bad editorial process.
I am not familiar with Hunter Walker or his work, but editors are an important area that this magazine does not seem to invest in.
MomSense
@Starfish:
So similar to The New York Times in that regard?
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: There was the story A Rape on Campus that left a bunch of Republicans running around with their big ideas about campus rapes being fake. I won’t forget that one.
There was also the recent Ivermectin story where the person that they were speaking to was one doctor who no longer worked the hospital that he was talking about.
sdhays
@OzarkHillbilly: Just pointing out what really is bothering the WSJ – having to pay taxes to support society. Such a drag.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: Screwups like this give so much ammunition to the other side. Of course we’re operating with double standards. But we ought to be able to get these things right.
Jeffro
It’s not even really describable as ‘right’ anymore. More like moving further and further crazy/devolving/going full-on nihilism.
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually, we pay our taxes to fund public schools, since schools rarely float bonds and must be payed out of revenues. We fund roads by not paying taxes and instead floating bonds and then not paying for repairs, which is why most of that infrastructure bill is about repairing existing infrastructure. We’ve paid for higher education expansion in the past 40 years by having individual students take out ever increasing amounts in loans as taxpayer support for higher education has shrunk. Rather than the schools or governments taking out those loans, we’ve found it more convenient to have kids do it. Which has worked wonders.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Matt Taibbi – made-up numbers on the bail out.
It’s the worst kind of grifterism, right? Because it takes a real problem- voting process, the stranglehold the finnance industry has on the economy and political system, and discredits the problem.
JPL
The attack on public schools is not new, but it is expanding. Many parents just assume that they are not talking about their school, but the others. The end game is tax deductions for private schools.
OzarkHillbilly
@sdhays: I know, and I gave my standard reply to such BS.
Peale
@JPL: Federal backed daycare loans for everyone.
OzarkHillbilly
FTFY
JPL
@Peale: That and pre-k would do wonders for the lower and middle class. It’s not unusual for quality daycare to cost 20,000 a year. I’m caring for number 2 grandson three days a week until he is six months old. Not everyone can do that. Mom just returned to work after three months. Not every company offers three months paid leave either.
Jeffro
@Kay: I think you’re right. How many parents really want to homeschool their kids? Not a huge % apparently.
And for folks who think they’re going to somehow take back their tax dollars and pay to send Junior to a school of their ‘choice’, I got news for ya: your taxes aren’t paying anywhere close to what it costs to school your kid for a year. Here’s $3k back…now get ready to pay $10k for Junior’s 4th grade year.
Ohio Mom
One thing to remember is public school systems are a form of local government:
they serve a specific geographical area (jurisdiction);
the voters in that area get to choose the governing (school) board, just as they elect a city council or county commission;
the residents of that area can address the board, the district’s records are open to the public, if you are a voter and don’t like the direction of the district, you can run for school board, and I might have left a few things out.
If public schools were abolished, there goes a level of democratic government—poof! Leaving citizens with no say.
Of course at this point we already have ample evidence that the Right-wing/Republicans are anti-democracy, this is just a small piece of that.
MomSense
@JPL:
Yup it’s common to spend more on daycare than you earn but if you don’t work while your kids are of day care age then you find yourself unable to get a job when they are old enough to go to school.
Kay
@MomSense:
Sorry- wildly exaggerated by the Green and Libertarian Parties. The Green Party in Ohio are not credible on elections. They do this ONLY to pad their list and solicit donations.
I just went thru pollworker training in Ohio- a refresher course because I haven’t done it since 2006. The EXPLOSION of conspiracy theorists on the Right is really alarming. Question after question on whether the electronic scanners were “connected to the internet”. It was 90% about fraud. It should be 1% about fraud.
If we can just mandate and run an accurate and fair state recording process we don’t need to look for zebras. Just take care of the horses.
MomSense
@Kay:
Is the LA Times ok?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jan-25-na-ohio25-story.html%3f_amp=true
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: On the left, the worries about election-rigging after 2000 and 2004 made it easier for people to believe that the DNC had somehow rigged the 2016 Democratic primary.
Kay
@Jeffro:
But you have to DEFEND public education. To do that, Democrats are going to need some coherent, consistent thoughts about public education, and they don’t really have any. They have a mishmash of technocratic “solutions”. They need to believe in something and impart that. What is public education for? What do we expect from it? Why do we value it?
They did this with health care, and they now own health care. They could do it with education but they are going to have to work at it.
snoey
@Matt McIrvin:
The 2004 Ohio election story was also by RFK jr.
Palast (and damn near anyone else who can follow a syllogism) is better than that.
sab
@Kay: Since he is married to a public school teacher I am hoping he will.
Ohio Mom
I don’t think I will ever be convinced that GW’s second election was not as stolen as the first, and that my state, Ohio, was pivotal in that steal (Sorry Kay).
But I also know that my private skepticism means nothing. It doesn’t change one thing one way or another, history can not be undone and I already had lots of other evidence Republicans are a danger to democracy.
lowtechcyclist
How much of that, though, is because kids are applying to way more schools than they used to?
When I was applying to colleges in the early 1970s, the guidance counselors encouraged us to apply to three colleges: one ‘reach’ school, one school that should be about right for us,, and one ‘safety’ school.
When my nephews were applying to colleges a few years back, they were applying to 15-20 different schools.
I know that’s anecdata, but it seems like the norms really have shifted quite a bit.
Kay
@MomSense:
But it wasn’t a scheme to “rig” the recount. I get it. The Green Party got a scalp to distract from the fact that the recount didn’t come close to changing the outcome, but this is evidence of nothing.
How is this different than Republicans pointing to the tiny number of actual voter fraud cases and justifying changes in voting process or discrediting elections?
I was a voter protection lawyer in Ohio in ’08 and ’12 for Obama. There was zero focus on this stuff. We worked on provisional ballots, long lines, and voter ID. No Diebold.
Baud
@Kay:
According to the news, there are wild zebras roaming around in Maryland. Coincidence? Or omen?
rikyrah
@JPL:
I still want to know who requested the plans of the Capitol.
They have to sign for those. Black Jesus loves a paper trail..LOL
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
I just can’t.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s ruined in GOP Ohio counties. There is zero focus on getting them voted. It is now 90% focus on “are the machines connected to the internet?” or “are disabled voters LYING?”. The Bd of elections employee had to tell them they may not demand proof of the disability.
Wait until they have some close local races in GOP counties – Republican v Republican. We have races that are won or lost on 4 or 3 or 1. Reap the fucking whirlwind, assholes. The paranoid fantasies are off the charts. They’re no longer capable of running an election.
zhena gogolia
For those charmed by the Golden Book parody tweet on the Covid thread, I think the artist being parodied is the great Eloise Wilkin:
http://literature4kids.com/eloise-wilkin-illustrator-little-golden-books/
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
They went as far as they could with the Charter School scam. Urban School Districts were easy pickings. They have encountered sharp resistance trying to move to the next level – suburban schools. You know, the people who moved specifically to these areas because they wanted to send their children to the public schools there. So, why would they want to turn THEIR public schools over to charters.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I remember so many blog commenters in the Bush era who became convinced Diebold was just going to flip a switch and falsify every election result. Even if Diebold machines weren’t actually involved.
MomSense
@Kay:
I know what was worked on in 08 and 12 because I was doing it too. I also know that we have a problem with electronic voting machines, not just diebold. It’s not the machines themselves (although they do malfunction) but the humans. We have a problem with machines when there isn’t a paper trail. I would argue that the use of absentee ballots which provide a paper trail had a lot to do with why we were able to win in 2020. It is much harder to pull shenanigans when there are paper ballots that can be counted and recounted.
I know of a town clerk in NH that intentionally reported incorrect numbers in 2007 and it was the basis of a challenge because there were witnesses to what she did. Humans are not always honest. If the machines don’t have receipts or the election workers cut corners or manipulate the recounts then we have problems.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
They were forced into that possibility by COVID.
A whole lot of folks who considered homeschooling are now in the ‘ HELL NO ‘ camp. It’s a lot easier to make the argument when millions of parents were not forced into homeschooling against their will, and now are like – ‘ I think I’m gonna just work with the school’.
L85NJGT
@JPL:
I’ll hazard a guess the issue is aligned with declining church membership and affiliated school enrollments.
MomSense
@Ohio Mom:
You are in good company. Bob Bauer agrees with you. I’m sure Kay will tell us that he is also no different than some Republican crank.
zhena gogolia
Charles Fucking Blow concern-trolling Biden again this morning. I wish the people on our side would be as loyal as the Trumpies.
Taken4Granite
@lowtechcyclist: Students applying to more places is part of it, but nowhere near all. Yes, kids these days can apply online, whereas back in my day (it was typical for kids my age to apply to about six colleges) we had to type each application separately, using typewriters, and send the applications via what by the late 1990s would be called snail mail. We also had to provide the teachers who were writing recommendations with stamped envelopes, because even then we recognized that teachers were not highly paid.
But that doesn’t explain all of it. Most top-level colleges, including my alma mater, have not expanded capacity at the same rate as the college applicant pool has been increasing. This is especially true at the highest levels, where the applicant pool is worldwide, but even within the US the fraction of high school students wishing to obtain a college education has been increasing as the need for credentialing has increased. The size of the freshman class at my school is maybe 10% larger this year than it was my freshman year. Just the domestic applicant pool, let alone the worldwide pool (when I was an undergraduate we would see the occasional Chinese or Indian grad student, but undergraduate applicants from those countries were still rare), has grown substantially more than that.
sab
@MomSense: My college alma mater town (Kenyon) was one of those problem areas that got written up a lot in 2004. That was just a weird quirk, not malice. It’s a tiny town with a mostly out of state student body that all of a sudden decided they would vote as Ohioans when traditionally they didn’t vote at all or voted at home absentee. So a couple of thousand students registered to vote at the last possible minute and then actually voted. If Ohio hadn’t been seen as a swing state they would have voted as usual.
As Kay says, in Ohio the boards of election are equal dem and rep, with Sec of State breaking the ties. If there are ballot shortages that’s on both sides of the local board of elections. I know a lot of southern states don’t have balanced boards of elections, but Ohio does.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Touche!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
On the “deal” not being good enough or something else?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
Now that’s a rotating tag if I ever saw one.
sab
@Kay: Rob Portman likes to say we did go down that rabbit hole and that therefore we started the “stop the steal” issue. I am so glad to see him going. He has this moderate sensible-but-weak reputation that he does not deserve. He is just good at putting a moderate face on toxic thinking by bald-faced lying. He’s good at it.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s not reality. It’s republicanism. At one time even John Burch Society conservative members of congress would actually do their jobs. Now? The only premise they have now is don’t get in the way of our wealthy betters and shift with every shitty breeze. This is what a dying cult looks like, do everything to maintain the concept because otherwise we are 100000000% wrong about everything, and we are conservatives and we can not be wrong. Oops too late, wrong about everything.
Jeffro
Can verify this was still the case in the late 80s ;)
Can also verify that today’s young-uns are applying to at least 10 schools each. At least.
MomSense
@sab:
There were actual convictions. If Democrats are part of the fuck ups or the negligence or the malfeasance that doesn’t make it any less worthy of scrutiny.
I think the Secretary of State also matters in the administration of elections. Why would Ohio be different than other states with corrupt Secretaries of State?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Conventional wisdom:
Dems should NEVER ask for more than what they are willing to settle for in order to get things done. Dems should also NEVER open negotiations with what they are willing to settle for because then you are just negotiating with themselves.
Good luck with that.
edit: make that half the people in your own fucking party.
Baud
@sab:
The right can almost always find precedent from the left to justify the things they want to do. The fact remains, pandering to conspiracy theorists happens only on the fringes on our side. For the GOP, it’s the core of who they are.
sab
@MomSense: The comvictions were for mix ups in Cleveland, where over-whelmed long-time elderly election workers ( Black) were convicted for some innocent mistakes. I am still steamimg about that. Those women went to prison while the Trump followers who really did try to fix the election and throw the results are still trotting around free and still causing trouble.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
“I’m thinking of a number. If Dems guess wrong, they deserve to lose.”
WaterGirl
@Baud: So true.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Yes. Sorry if I wasn’t being very clear here – by ‘not a huge % apparently’, I meant pre-Covid % of students being homeschooled.
Per Kay’s earlier point about actively defending public education, I have to agree. I’m a big fan of the ‘rule of three’ so I’m trying to think of which three of these reasons would be the best to make the argument.
I really like the thought of ‘going to bat’ for public ed and now my wheels are turning…
zhena gogolia
@Baud: His “tepid” defense of voting rights.
ETA: Blow spent the entire Trump era screaming hysterically about how terrible it was. Now TFG is gone, so he just keeps chipping away at Biden because he’s not perfect.
HE’S NOT TRUMP, have you noticed?
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
My cash money’s on Boebert, and Greene, and maybe Gosar or Goetz.
Shalimar
@Kay: It’s only a matter of time before they favor abolishing child labor laws too. If you have 7 kids because abortions are illegal, and you can’t afford to send them to school, might as well have them making money on the Amazon warehouse floor to help support the family.
Fair Economist
@snoey:
Rolling Stone uses a “cover story” system for spreading disinfo. They mix disinfo with genuine good reporting, and the mix is wild enough it’s got to be intentional, not just variability in quality. This is common among media outlets, with the NYT being the epitome.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: “Sports”!!
There are occasional stories about home schooled kids’ parents demanding that their (often unvaccinated) kids be allowed to play on public school teams. It’s the usual slice-and-dice nonsense, IMO, and should be rejected out of hand. But they keep trying…
“Home-schooled Junior should be able to use the school labs and act in the musicals and participate in the spelling bee and science fair because Jesus says so!!”
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@MomSense: We aren’t different with corrupt Secretaries of State, but it is just much much harder to do it, and impossible to do it without being caught. The Sec of State can only break a tie. The local boards of election would have to break down completely, because they are still equal between the parties. That is a huge protection.
The Sec of State can approve inadequate voting machines ( Ken Blackwell approved Diebold) but the administration is all at the local level with both sides watching, so they catch those inadequacies. That’s why those unfortunate women in Cleveland ended up in jail.
My county had some real problems with voting role purges. They split up the purges with Dems doing convicts and Repubs doing snowbirds.There should have been Dems and Republicans doing each task. Dems purged the convicts too much, Republicans didn’t purge dead snowbirds at all, but that was because the two sides didn’t watch each other sufficiently. The local activists caught it amd fixed it in time.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
“Remember 1960 and Richard Daley digging votes out of the cemetery? Huh? Do you? Proves Democrats will do ANYTHING to win….”
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Blow is not wrong to be alarmed about what Republicans are doing to suppress voters and undermine elections. More people should be freaking out about it, IMO. It’s also reasonable for Blow to expect more of the president than being not-Trump.
That said, in his column, Blow was overly nit-picky about Biden’s responses on CNN. I think his equivocation, if that’s what it was, is related to the delicate ongoing negotiations, not a lack of concern for voting rights.
The admin has said that’s the next issue they’ll take up. Blow can reasonably argue that it should have come first, but there’s no reason to assume they won’t give it everything they’ve got. Their own jobs are on the line, along with democracy.
Sure Lurkalot
@WaterGirl: Make it so!
sab
@Baud: I agree. That is why Portman and Kasich irk me so much. Everyone talks like they are moderate and honest when they aren’t. A lot ( not all) of the Justice Democrats aren’t even Democrats at all
Fair Economist
@Baud:
One of the top benefits, currently, is probably mask and/or vaccine requirements, which are common for national companies but very rare for small business in those listed states.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Kids and parents get to opt-in to the areas/subjects to participate in at public schools.
What could possibly go wrong?
Soprano2
A long time ago I had an extended argument online with a woman who kept saying “Just give me my tax dollars and let me pay for a school of my choice”. I told her “No, what you want is the tax dollars everyone pays for your child to go to school, because that’s what it would cost to actually send your child to a private or religious school. You can have your $1,000 or whatever, but you can’t have mine or anyone else’s”. I finally got her to admit that what she paid for schools alone wouldn’t be nearly enough to send a child to any kind of school.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: He’s adding to the general aura of “shambolic Biden.” If he really wanted to help the cause, he wouldn’t do that
ETA: He could focus his ire on the Repubs, for example.
sab
@Jeffro: Also too, whether you send your kids to public, parochial or secular private schools, your home value depends almost entirely on the quality of your local public schools.
SixStringFanatic
@germy: Jann Wenner is dead? That’ll be news to him.
taumaturgo
@UncleEbeneezer: This issue is the intersection of classism and racism. It pits working folks against each other, fighting to go ahead in the line for crumbs while the top 10% is scared shitless of any possible solidarity on any issue that would upset the status quo.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: People like Anat Shenker-Osorio have done research on this stuff and there are some very good framings already for defending public education. You can read hers here.
I think the main challenge is that we need to make sure our Reps/CouncilMembers etc., use smart framings and have a cohesive message. Alot of times, especially more local govt officials, just haven’t been made aware of which ways are better/worse to talk about issues. I think this is a subject that would be fit for a Front-Page series of posts for discussion and our own edification.
sab
The South wasn’t floundering economically for a hundred years after the Civil War because Sherman was brutal in marching to the sea during one year. It floundered because its separate states didn’t give a damn about educating anyone but the elites until the 1960s.
The Midwest used to care. There was a point in the 1970s when South Dakata had the best teacher training in the country. Look at them now. The Midwest is damaging itself badly with its attacks on its own educational systems.
Sure Lurkalot
@Shalimar: Child labor…they are on it!
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/577754-wisconsin-moves-to-let-14-year-olds-work-till-11-pm
Geminid
@sab: @Liz Burgh researches FEC filings. She found an interesting $500,000 donation made last year to the Justice Democrats PAC. It was made by Charles Dunlop, CEO of Amby Genetics. Dunlop mainly supported arch-conservative Congressman Dana Rohrabacher until Rohrabacher lost in 2018. Since then Dunlop has been giving to Tulsi Gabbard, Nina Turner, and the Justice Democrats. I don’t think this is because he’s had a change of heart
UncleEbeneezer
@taumaturgo: Agreed. And that is a point that most voters (even more racist, white voters) agree with when you spell it out properly. As Heather McGhee argues in her book The Sum of Us: How Racism Costs Everyone & How We Can Prosper Together, this goes all the way back to the integration/bussing fights of the Civil Rights era, and even further to the creation of Whiteness itself in 1640.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I agree, there is a lot of resistance to charter schools in my city, and they are completely useless for any rural areas. When the topic of school choice comes up I always ask “What about rural schools?” Their concept of choice is only practical in cities – there often aren’t enough children in a rural school district to actually populate one school, let alone have them going to several different schools! To me this completely gives away the game that “choice” is all about getting tax dollars for white kids to flee from urban schools, and letting suburban parents get tax dollars for the private/religious education they’re already paying for.
taumaturgo
@UncleEbeneezer: Ms. McGhee’s book is a must-read for those seeking to understand the dire consequences of racism and classism especially for the working class. If only democrats defended their base with the same zeal they protect the contact list of donors, no election would be out of their grasp.
MomSense
@Soprano2:
In Maine we have public charter schools with actual oversight and they work really well serving students who would otherwise fall through the cracks.
rikyrah
@Geminid:
Been telling you that those Justice Democrats are up to no good. And, do not mean us well.
trollhattan
Weather Service told us what we already knew, we done broked the rainfall record yesterday. Thankfully, this a.m.’s drizzle has abated and we’re catching a break, because too much of a good thing is too much. The old record stood for 140 years.
https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1452557734516121601/photo/1
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Worked out so well for him that eight years later, he was bashing in hippie heads. “Dems in disarray!”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’m glad to hear a good bill may make it through Congress, but I have to tell you, the sausage-making process has stressed me out so much this fall that I pretty much had to unplug the last few weeks. That plus my wife’s ongoing cancer treatment. (We have been calling it a “mild” case, but the treatment team chastised her for using that word.)
I haven’t been around this blog or read much news for something like 3 weeks.
trollhattan
What in the actual fuck is this nonsense?
I’m quite sure Dickens would not approve even a little.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: The problem was lack of voting machines in liberal precincts, not Diebold machines. I stood the cold drizzle in Schiller Park in Columbus for several hours.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I support combining all red counties in the country into one large state.
trollhattan
@Baud:
If they collectively get two senators, then yup.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I’d even be willing to name it Trumplandia.
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
That was a smart move. Hopefully this week will bring good news, for the bill and for your wife.
Leto
@trollhattan: it sounds better in the original German. Uggghhh.
Kay
@MomSense:
they used the same machines and same process in 2006, a wave year for democrats
Geminid
@trollhattan: Those western Maryland counties benefit from being part of an affluent state. Their residents don’t have to drive very far into neighboring West Virginia counties to understand this. In 2020 Jerry Fallwell Jr. and other Virginia politicians floated a similar scheme for Virginia’s western counties, and called it “Wexit.” It got no traction.
I listen to a radio station out of Harrisonburg, Virginia, that covers West Virginia news, and heard about this there. Governor Justice did not initiate the idea. He has a program going that offers a cash incentive to people moving to his depopulated state, and some western Maryland conservatives asked, would you take whole counties? Justice went along with the joke, but he knows it won’t fly.
Kay
@MomSense:
Bush won Ohio because he flipped Catholic voters by demonizing same sex marriage
thats where he got his margin
MomSense
@sab:
One was black and the other was white.
Baud
@MomSense:
Begone, CRT! I cancel thee!
Jackie
@Baud: I know you jest, but those of us living in Red Counties OBJECT that suggestion!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Geminid:
I checked the map and the demographics – they’d be beyond fucked. Maryland would get wealthier (as would WV, for a time, at least until all the infrastructure collapsed).
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
George Soros, guided by CRT, is my copilot.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
diebold was still in use for Obama’s 08 victory
04 loss w diebold, 06 win, 08 win
our diebold record is good, not bad
by 2009 they had sold the company to ESS
MomSense
@Kay:
You have made this all about diebold which is not what I have said. You know better as always.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: If passing voting rights legislation was a slam dunk, I’d say they should have taken it up first. But it’s not, because Manchinema. So it’s smart to do the things that have a chance of passing first, bank those wins, and hope the “momentum” of those wins helps grease the skids for voting rights.
Then, at least, if voting rights isn’t able to pass, you at least have a plan B, which is run in 2022 on the great stuff you’ve already done and hope it’s enough to give you a second chance in 2023.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I said that the problem was lines and wait times (in a freaking storm) and I said that there are problems with machines because they are operated by humans which is why we need a paper trail for all elections.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That’s the same joke not understood by our perennial “State of Jefferson” losers who want to whack a chunk out of the map comprising NE California, SE Oregon and I guess N Nevada and probably all of Idaho except the middle of Boise, and make their own gosh durn wingnut paradise. Except the region is dirt poor because it’s basically dirt, given the easy lumber is long gone, the mines are played out, and the grazing land all overgrazed. It’s also mostly federal and they can’t just Bundy it all up.
MomSense
I’m fucking out.
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s the apparent advantage with having full blown morons for followers. There’s no level of pandering that is too absurd for them to nod and drool along with.
@Kay: ibid
The Thin Black Duke
Uh, good afternoon, I guess? It’s feels kinda tense in here right now.
Professor Bigfoot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: count me among them at 64.
I’ve had just about enough of their bullshit.
Tim in SF
From the tweet: “We can return for more if we get 2022 right.”
Isn’t this delusional? The party holding the White House nearly always loses seats in the midterms. All things being equal, if we lose more than a handful of seats, we’re out. And all things are not equal, given that redistricting is going to take even more seats from us.
It doesn’t matter if we get it right.
trollhattan
Dixie Fire, the one that burned the Levenson cabins, is officially contained as of today after consuming 963,000 acres. It started July 13.
https://twitter.com/CAL_FIRE/status/1452648563083669504
Geminid
@Jeffro: I was listening to WINA on my way into town this morning. Some pleasant piano music came on, then Barak Obama started telling me that he had been privileged to work with Governor McAuliffe, and that no governor worked harder for his state than Terry McAuliffe. It was a good ad that emphasized how important it is to keep Virginia moving in the right direction, citing in particular our right to vote, fighting climate change, and protecting a woman’s right to choose.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Ok….
is there an issue we don’t know about?
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: In my view, Blackwell did everything that he could to suppress Democratic votes. I don’t believe it was more that that. I was pretty dialed into Dem Party stuff in Franklin County back then. FWIW.
ETA: I am not minimizing what he did. I think voter suppression he did was criminal.
Matt McIrvin
@snoey:
Oh, for Christ’s sake. That guy should not have had a platform.
The thing that struck me about 2004 Ohio was that they were doing so much stuff out in the open that was perfectly legal, like throwing out voter registration forms that were printed on the wrong weight of paper. Don’t know if it was enough to flip the result but it was infuriating.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Dunno about “all time”…
Scientific American on the California Megaflood of 1861-1862.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
As the sausage gets made, I’m very glad that 46 put faces and names to the muthphuckas holding things up, and being against expanded medical, dental , and hearing coverage for those on Medicare. Let them explain that shyt.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Just want to say that I have appreciated you pushing back with facts and details in this thread.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Is there something specific that you are referring to? I missed the Town Hall, was it there?
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: Heart Emoji.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
The ARK storm occurred over about a month; yesterday’s record was for a single 24-hour period. Our records do go back to the 1860s and in 1863 recorded 3.53 inches and was #3 on the books until yesterday.
Should the ARK storm reoccur, the entire Valley from Bakersfield to Redding will be in all kinds of trouble.
Thor Heyerdahl
That cat/bat photo made me think of the Monty Python travel agent sketch where Eric Idle cannot pronounce the letter C, and instead replaces it with B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQODVsl5pFY
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It was awful. Mother Jones jumped on it too- just complete bullshit.
Elections are really remarkably accurate if you look at the error rate. The recounts, whether they’re done by the Grifter Greens or the Grifter Trumpsters, add or subtract in low double digits. That’s out of millions of votes. They hold up really well.
The election professionals, the career people, resent what they consider friviolous or partisan recounts because they never change the results and it’s a ton of work. They just weren’t going to overcome Bush’s lead based on election fraud. That’s why Kerry didn’t challenge. He had great lawyers, and a ton of money. He knew they couldn’t overcome 100k + margin.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
The national Democratic Party itself did an investigation and produced a huge report. Long lines are bad and they supress votes. But even if they took the 129k who didn’t vote due to long lines and split that in the way most favorable to Kerry, Kerry still comes up short 75k. Their conclusion was there were problems with election administration, but I would argue any state that gets that kind of scrutiny will come up with problems. It isn’t that Florida or Ohio or Wisconsin are particularly bad at elections- it’s that they have close elections, so people investigate and trun up issues like the 3 elections workers in Cleveland, or whatever. If Califonia had close elections it would “the 2 elections workers in Los Angeles”.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: I have a friend who runs an orchestra for homeschooled kids – she has teachers who offer lessons, orchestra, the whole bit. She says she lost 2/3 of her kids this year because she insisted they wear masks when they meet for orchestra. She lost some teachers, too. It’s kind of sad, those parents would rather deprive their children of music than have them wear a face mask for a couple of hours a week.
Soprano2
I’ve heard her interviewed on Pod Save America a couple of times; I have no idea why more Democrats don’t listen to what she says and adopt her ideas, because they’re good ones.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@trollhattan:
The white supremacy survivalists eager for total urban collapse are similarly clueless. When the EMP comes, the cities would be far easier to organize, as parks, yards and varieties of green spaces can be plowed and used for planting, piglots, chickens, dairy. Distances are short, horse drawn carts would work well. You know who’d be fucked? Rednecks without fuel to get firewood or grannie’s pills
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Water becomes an immediate problem, depending on the degree of damage. Seeds, farm equipment, hosts of other issues.
Let’s hope this never happens.
lowtechcyclist
@sdhays:
Which sounds plausible aside from gerrymandering. But if enough red and purple states under GOP control create Congressional maps that way overrepresent the GOP, we can run on our great record, win a solid majority of the votes, and still lose the House.
We need to pass voting rights this year in order to keep the GOP from reaching their goal of long-term minority rule.
Kay
This was the Obama election protection effort in both ’08 and ’12. I took the training both times:
I would add “provisional balloting”, which is complicated in Ohio.
Geminid
@Tim in SF: Delusional? I don’t think so. And in any event we have to hold the House and Senate if the programs we pass are not to be zeroed out.
Holding both is not certain, but it’s not an unrealistic prospect. Sure, the historic pattern is that the party of the President loses House seats more often than not. Turnout patterns are in flux now, though, and past Democratic voting fall off in off year elections may not be the case now. Redistricting and reapportionment will cut some Democratic seats. We won’t know how many until the lawsuits are resolved, especially those in states covered by the Voting Rights Act, like Texas. At least three Democratic states will be doing their own gerrymandering. There will still be a net loss through these processes, but it could be as little as five.
I like our chances to increase our Senate margin. One thing we will have going for us next year, I believe, is a good economy. The economic stimulus from the $1.9 trillion Recovery Act and the two infrastructure bills should make for an even stonger economy than that of 1998, when Democrats picked up nine House seats at least.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
There were lots of irregularities with the votes tabulated by touch screen machines, most without a paper receipt. Bauer and the Kerry campaign knew that there would be no way to do a recount because there was no paper trail. Things like thousands more people voting in precincts than registered voters in those precincts, vote hopping, people who voted straight democratic ticket including superior court justice and not voting for president. There were a ton of impossible to explain results that all happened to affect democratic voters. We had worked so hard to challenge the law that prevented early voting in Ohio and we succeeded in doing so. It was heartbreaking to hear Bauer and others on that team basically say they knew they knew the fix was in but there was no way to do a recount. I think iKenyon college was one of the many places where there was a huge undervote in the presidential election. No one can convince me that those kids waited in line up to 11 hours for the one voting machine that was working to skip voting for President. They voted for all the local races and the superior court justice but skipped the presidential vote when they had just registered en masse to vote against a president who was sending their peers to Iraq?
At the time the machines in use were Diebold and ES&S.
The suppression and the machines cost us that election. Even Kerry said so years later.
Fair Economist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
IMO unplugging from the sausage process is almost always reasonable for us. There isn’t much we can do to influence legislators unless there’s an organized effort going. As I’ve said before, lefty blogs serve a think tank function and I think it’s useful to participate in that, but it’s not an urgent kind of thing. We do need to plug in for elections, of course, when possible.
Best to you and your wife!
J R in WV
@Gammyjill:
She had a pretty serious stroke, evidently is recovering well.
Friend of mine had a lung removed (cancer) and had a huge stroke the next day. Hmmm… ? That work was all at a hospital I would prefer not to be taken to for any reason. So far he can respond yes or no to questions, so he’s still in there. Has an opinion at least.
Ksmiami
@Baud: with some ammo and 2 twinkies. Then build the wall
Kristine
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been seeing union ads on cable TV for the last few weeks. I can’t recall ever seeing them before.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MomSense: After the 2007 crash there was a lot of talk about a lot of bad loans and “this time is different!” was being driven by wide spread anti-depressant use in Fiance in otherwise healthy people.
I am also wonder if this whole Anti-Vaccier thing is also the result of prescription drug abuse; like they would have to go to a real doctor who would freak at all the crazy things they are being prescribed by the quack.
Fair Economist
@MomSense:
This is the key thing. There’s no way for us to know if Blackwell was lying when he claimed to have “delivered” Ohio for Bush in 2004. There *have* been almost certain cases of electronic voting machine tampering to deliver elections for Republicans, notably the 2002 Alabama Governor’s race, where 6000 votes got switched in one county in the wee hours of the morning and the Republicans succesfully blocked any attempt to audit. My suspicion is that they didn’t cheat *enough* in Ohio 2004 to have changed the result, but it’s only a suspicion, as is any belief that it would have. There’s just no evidence.
This is why I’m a big advocate of paper ballots. Elections need to be trustable. Even if we didn’t have large and powerful groups actively trying to steal elections, that would be good governance, but it’s top priority now.
Nelle
@Kay: The scuttlebutt I heard was something about numbers changing during tabulation, when the numbers were sent to Kentucky. Nothing about the machines themselves.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: East SF Bay here and I couldn’t go into work today because of the flooding had the roads screwed up, the last time that happened was in the mid ’90s.
lowtechcyclist
Which ones? I know about Illinois, although the map I saw suggested they left some seats on the table.
(OK, maybe not the best figure of speech in this case.)
satby
@MomSense: And you’re correct.
Kay
@Nelle:
It was an error in understanding how vote totals are reported in Ohio. People from outside the state relied on “100% reporting” as a final number, and that’s not the final number.
This stuff is incredibly rule bound and nitpicky. You have to know what each word means in the context of the Ohio code. Again- this isn’t just me. The Democratic Party did the kind of stastistical analysis they use in elections, where they use historical comparisons, so they look at “Miami County undervotes” in 2002 and then the same batch in 2004. It tracks across years. They see the same pattern of undervotes in the same counties.
The one and only reason I object to it is IMO it takes away from what we CAN do and adds this whole aura of unverifiable “other stuff”.
If you’re a bd of elections members in a liberal precinct spend less time worrying about mysterious undervotes and more time assuming 70% turnout and getting the right number of machines. If you can’t get them from the sec of state, file in a common pleas (county) court and demand them. But do that in June, not November. How many students are at Kenyon College? Take 70% of that. Add that to your county registered total. No more lines.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: they have no idea that they are essentially financing the actual cost of their kids’ K-12 education over several decades…this is why it’s so frickin’ irritating when seniors complain about paying taxes to support local schools.
“My kids graduated two decades ago! Why am I paying for other people’s kids?” Um, because you paid about a quarter of the cost of your kids’ schooling back then.
Jeffro
Truth.
You could probably represent it in an equation: Perceived quality of local public schools/actual quality of local public schools + community NIMBY rating (to account for land use restrictions) + proximity to institution(s) of higher learning = home value. Something like that.
Jeffro
@Geminid: funneling Russian money to trolls and chaos agents? That’s what Rohrbach and Gabbard have in common.
Kay
@Nelle:
I wasn’t online in 2004 (for politics) so read no exist polls and that election I actually ran GOTV out of my house. It was my job to report the vote totals (they’re posted in Ohio). I knew by 2 PM we were going to lose and I think the people I was reporting to in the Kerry boiler room knew too. They have to hit benchmarks. They weren’t hitting them. I didn’t want to go back into my own house after one run because I didn’t want the volunteers to read my face.
Bush was loved by the GOP base. IMO, Democrats always underestimated how much his voters really liked him. Kerry, who I thought would have made a great President, was not loved by the D base. It matters.
Nelle
Kay, thanks for all you write here. I value your take and your background on all of this.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: New York and one of the Pacific Northwest states.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I’m glad to hear NY is one of them; that’s one state where a lot can be done to counter what TX and FL will do.
A bit of a bummer in retrospect that your beautiful Commonwealth went to a commission to draw the districts, since with unified control, y’all could have locked in at least a 7-4 advantage.
Geminid
@Kay: Georgia Republicans missed their benchmarks in last January’s Senate runoffs. I listened on WSB, Atlanta that night. Their reporter had spoken to Republican county leaders who were “chagined” at turnout. In the end, the Democratic vote had dropped 100,000 from November, and the Republican vote dropped 200,000. The conventional wisdom had the election in the Republican bag, because of the historic turnout pattern in runoffs.
This is one reason I discount the conventional wisdom that Democrats will lose House seats next year. I think a lot of norms are not holding up, including voting patterns.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: we may come out of next November 8-3. I know 5th District Democrats are gunning for No-good Congressman Good. He won last year by only 5 points in a Republican drawn district.
Kay
@Geminid:
I sort of agree- we’re in a strange new world- but that wasn’t true in 2004. It wasn’t true in Ohio in ’08 and ’12, either- Obama hit all his benchmarks. Ohio has been so battled over and so parsed Ohio Democrats can recite the vote totals they need in each county. It’s VERY “observed”.
Balloon Juice sent me to DC in the summer of 2012 to this “blogger summit” that John didn’t want to go to. Obama’s people just knew the state really well. They were 100% confident they would carry it. That’s what I mean about controlling what you can control and letting the rest go. They focused on what they could count. Do that really well and you’re okay.
Kay
@Geminid:
Clinton got shit for giving up on Ohio but she was right- they knew they weren’t going to make up 8.
My one and only question for her campaign is the set of states move in tandem, so if you’re -5 in Ohio you’re close to even in PA and even in WI. That should have been panic time. Get out of Ohio, sure, but get cracking on the bluer states around it, because that’s a bad number and it carries.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: Alot of our language choices are emotion-driven, so many people cling to their pet phrases regardless of whether they’ve been shown to be ineffective. Fortunately, more Dem candidates do seem to be adopting terminology that has a better track record, it’s just not widespread enough.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I think you’re right about the voting patterns. I worry more about the gerrymandering. We’ll know more about the voting patterns next week, of course.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: there was a long profile of Obama, I think by Ta-Nahisi Coates, that was reported in IIRC from October to December 2016, in the last days of the campaign, Obama and both Clintons were getting very nervous about those “blue wall” states, but the campaign’s numbers people all assured them they would be fine
Kay
@Geminid:
Are you worried about VA? I’m not superstitious- tell me the truth :)
I don’t worry about that race, I worry that if going insane with dog whistles around public schools wins, they’re all use it and it will be a disaster for public schools. So we’re clear :)
You have to stop them there.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
@rikyrah: Is there something specific that you are referring to? I missed the Town Hall, was it there?
46 told that we couldn’t get Community College – Manchin and Sinema
the expanded Medicare benefits – nope, because of Manchin and Sinema.
46 pretty much went issue by issue of what Manchin and Sinema were blocking.
No nebulous ‘ some Senators have objections about some programs’.
He went into the weeds and named those who are hurting us.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s mystifying. They’ve always treated those states as a group. So you’d like go look at Michigan to feel better about Ohio, If MI is +10, OH is +5, like that. Ohio no longer even competitive means PA is really close. And it was!
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
That would be awesome. I’ll definitely be chipping in to his opponent’s campaign.
rikyrah
@lowtechcyclist:
I want Illinois and New York to drop the hammer on those muthaphuckas.
Kay
@Geminid:
Or is it “VA is closer so Dems have to come out”? The much ballyhooed “complacency” bs.
Or we don’t know, because Democrats are fucking infiuriating and who knows why they do what they do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Youngkin has an ad out featuring a “mom” who was horrified by her child’s reading assignment, the explicit nature was so shocking she went to her state legislators!
Her child was a high school senior, the reading assignment was Toni Morrison’s Beloved for an AP English class.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, that’s sad. So we’re at the Ban All Black Authors part of this shitshow.
I blame the anti-cancel culture people, I really do. They handed the Right a weapon and of course the Right isn’t using it against their elite asses- they’re going after high school english teachers. I loathe them for it. Our “public intellectuals” are fucking morons. They shouldn’t be trusted with anything.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I once had a loud argument over To Kill A Mockingbird in the hallway of the high school on parents night.
I am still convinced she didn’t read the book. Just FYI- don’t accuse book banners of not reading it- they go crazy. True though- no way she read that book.
Her son, years later, is a horrible Right wing lawyer I have to see at least weekly, so that’s a happy ending. Decades I’m going to be fighting with these people.
Baud
@Kay:
That is the party motto.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t know if I can listen to “crt” panic for the next year, I really don’t.
It just amazes me that grown ass adults don’t recognize a panic. You know they’re already accusing teachers of pedophilia. We already lived thru this once. Again? Get ready for the day care satanic rituals.
Geminid
@Kay: I am a little worried, but I still think McAuliffe will win by 5 or more points. Youngkin is not to be underestimated, though. He is a skilled communicator with a thematic pitch designed to attract Independents. It helps that he has no political record to defend. And the fractious state party has been able to unite around Youngkin, in part because he has been spreading his money around freely.
Kay
@Geminid:
Thanks. I wondered what you thought. I’m pollworking that day but we have normal school board candidates, a school levy and uncontested GOP races, so it’ll be a snooze. For which I am grateful.
Peale
@Kay: they Christians will probably be all over the CRT teaches socialism and pedophilia. Because they are about to get hit with that scandal. That’s one of the things I was thinking on your post about the OH debate…sure, they want to shut down the public schools and let the churches and synagogues handle it. Just about the time those churches are going to be the last places non-members are going to want to send those kids.
Kathleen
@MomSense: I know this thread is dead and you probably are already aware of this but John Conyers conducted an investigation and published the results in a booklet entitled “What Went Wrong In Ohio”. It’s an outstanding overview and high level outline of the issues uncovered.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Went-Wrong-Ohio-Presidential/dp/089733535X
I ordered it early and have an autographed copy!
Kay
@Peale:
It will be such a shame if they dumb down AP courses and censor anything challenging or interesting. For rural kids, it’s the only “advanced” classes they get.
The absolute worst parents will be selecting the reading list.
MomSense
@Kathleen:
If every calibration error, instance of vote hopping, under voting, repair mid voting, etc only affects one side of the election then that’s a pretty clear indication of tampering.
Kathleen
@MomSense: I agree. I’ve felt that ways since 2004. Kenneth Blackwell refused to answer any questions from the Conyers committee. He mentions how Blackwell changed the weight of the paper that was acceptable for requesting voter registration. I had forgotten about that. It was a big story when it happened.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Most things taxes pay for have a positive effect, even if they don’t effect someone personally. Even if you don’t drive, you need groceries delivered to the store, you might need medicine delivered, or an ambulance.
Or…
I’ll stop here.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I am very happy to hear that! That Biden was naming names, not that they are standing in the way of so many good things.
prostratedragon
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hmmm. My high school senior year readings for English class, probably not complete:
Othello, Shakespeare;
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky;
choice of Sons and Lovers, Lawrence or A Room of One’s Own, Woolf;
We the Living, Rand*
plus various poetry and short stories. That might have been the year we also had Native Son by Wright, but not sure because I think I first read that one on my own.
Any of Toni Morrison’s works would have fit right in to that curriculum. (I was in college when The Bluest Eye was published.)
____
* The teacher seemed both impressed and relieved that as a group we didn’t think much of Rand’s philosophy.
Kathleen
Deleted. Geezer Posting Alert.
asiargrrlMN
Thanks for bringing my comment to the Monday morning thread, Anne Laurie. I really appreciate it! Again, I can’t thank everyone who spared me a thought/prayer/vibe enough as I’m almost back to ‘normal’ (save my stamina–but it’s getting there). Hugs to all!
206inKY
@Baud: Yup, this is what I’m doing until vaccines are approved for little ones. The elementary school here was a mask-free nightmare at the open house in August.