Danica Roem won a third term as an out transsexual, which leads me to believe that if you deliver for your constituents, they don’t give a fuck what or who you are and won’t get wrapped up in bullshit like CRT or other nonsense. Remember, she ran on real things- roads, etc., and has delivered. Maybe Joe Manchin will learn from this. I doubt it, though.
I suppose another nice thing is that this happened today, when I have already been in a four week funk, and tonight have a splitting sinus headache that is pushing out my eyeballs and making me molars hurt and I am stressed about money, so I had planned to just sit in my chair and watch Apocalypse Now and eat cereal while grumping at Thurston.
I just want to retire and move off grid and live with my goats and cats and dogs and rescue pig.
CaseyL
…rescue pig?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
wmd
Goats? When did that happen?
Jerzy Russian
You have goats and a pig?
waspuppet
There’s only one possible lesson from Virginia. I mean, if even Terry McAuliffe couldn’t win, it’s just obvious that Democrats have to be even older, even whiter, even more conservative and do even less. I mean, that’s just math.
John Cole
Goats and a rescue pig are aspirational.
Morzer
I thought John Cole was the GOAT…
frosty
Looking forward to the stories about the goats and pig. Helpful hint: don’t assume the goat will mow your lawn for free. Lawnmowing sheep didn’t work out so well for Jeremy Clarkson’s Farm.
laura
@John Cole: Please consider a whopping hot ginger tea for your sinuses- a metric shit ton of ginger and a gob of honey.
SectionH
A rescue pig? Goats? That seems to be news to more regular commenters too.
Ok, take ’em all with you. In an emergency, you and the rest of the critters can eat the goats.
NotMax
Nope. not gonna go there, just gonna let that sit.
However, as to how that elephant got into my pajamas….
:)
Cameron
@John Cole: Y’all been spending too much time following Esther the Wonder Pig. And, damn, scout, I’m 70 and you sound like you could be my granddaddy. Time to grow down, not up.
Barbara
@waspuppet:
Tell that to Doug Wilder.
RaflW
WaterGirl’s Four Directions thermometer has also gone from an already excellent $13,150 to $14,750 just this evening. An election day sharpens the mind.
LongHairedWeirdo
For some reason, this reminds me of the hog with the wooden leg.
(Old joke: stranger asks about the hog with the wooden leg, and the farmer explains, telling three stories about how the hog saved a child from drowning; pulled one from in front of the plow, and broke down the door to rescue the family from fire. “I agree, I agree, that hog is a wonder, but that doesn’t explain the *WOODEN LEG*.” And, the punchline, “why man, you don’t eat a hog like *that* all at once!”)
Juju
That’s nice news about Danica Roem. The Virginia election didn’t turn out the way I’d have preferred, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. The redistricting issue will be something to watch. You win some you lose some, but you shouldn’t give up, because if you do things certainly won’t get better. I say this after a hellish week, of a hellish few years. A favorite aunt died after a fall last week. My mother suffers from a dementia that affects her short term memory, and I’ve had to tell her again and again that her sister died. Today she remembered and I didn’t have to tell her again, which was nice. Sometimes you just have to deal with stuff and work and hope for the best.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@LongHairedWeirdo: made me think of magical spiders and talking barnyard animals
Juju
@John Cole: please don’t taunt your aspirational rescue pig by eating pork based meals in front of it. That’s got to be bad karma
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brian Williams, whose salary google tells me is $6M/yr, is on my TV pretending to say he gets how your regular Joes feel about the rising price of gas.
Not that he’s wrong, that gas prices are probably about 60% of what people mean when they say they’re worried about inflation and the economy. But his faux-populism, and he does it a lot, is so grating
VOR
My local school board had 4 open seats and 4 anti-CRT/anti-mask candidates, all from the heavily Republican area of the district. All 3 sane incumbents won and only 1 of the antis got a seat. Big sigh of relief, off year elections are always challenging. I drove around today and saw a lot of signs for the anti candidates so they had funding behind them.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I confess, I prefer your story, but I’ll maintain that, properly told, mine is funnier.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Has electing Republicans ever lowered the price of gas?
Brachiator
I can relate. I have been dogged by some medical issues and family business recently and have not paid close attention to political issues.
Any electoral losses will be painful, but there are also some victories, and fighting on is the only real option.
WaterGirl
Note to self: do not wake up at midnight and think, oh , I’ll check the election results in Virginia.
Juju
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Brian Williams drives me nuts because he’s Mr. Dems in disarray. It’s tiresome.
RaflW
@James E Powell: Via Forbes “During the first two years of his first term, [Dubya] Bush oversaw low and relatively stable gasoline prices. But prices were higher in his third year in office, and they continued to rise through his eighth year in office. Between his first and seventh year, the average annual price of gasoline doubled. No other president in modern history has overseen such a huge percentage rise in the price of gasoline.”
Juju
@James E Powell: Yes, I can think of a few times. When the economy crashed under Bush 2 and a lot of people didn’t have jobs, and when the pandemic hit and not many people were going anywhere.
janesays
If this were limited to the Virginia governor’s race, I’d chalk it up to just being CRT nonsense.
Unfortunately, there’s a very real possibility we’re going to lose the NJ governor’s race as well, something nobody was predicting. It’s very clear that the crappy poll numbers for Biden and the Democrats are probably worth paying attention to, because whatever is driving them is going to get us steamrolled next year if we don’t get this shit figured out.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I just got done long argument were I trolled an anti-vaccer into losing her cool, just to see what this is really about. People get upset, they stop with BS say what they really mean by accident. The short of it;, her entire anti-vac argument was basically “look at me! Look at me!”. When she finally lost her cool she started going on about herself and she completely forget about vaccines. So being an anti-vaccer is simply to get her attention. I here was thinking it was something the anti-vaccers were embarrassed about, into new age medicine or religion (like worshiping Nergal) or fear of needles. No, just brats to get attention from the adults. Bit disappointing really.
I think it’s easy to underestimate the number of dumb as dirt horribly immature people in this country. I can see why the Republicans loaded to gills with grifters can get them to vote for them.
Ken B
@James E Powell: Trump kept the price down.
Of course, he was trying to make it go up…
And there was the little matter of a pandemic being allowed to burn through the country
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Josh was pointing out that Virginia is more tuned into DC politics than normal because it’s basically housing for government workers, so that’s were the Blob votes, all those fans of the Forever War and they are pissed about how dare the Democrats ended their wonderful Afghanistan adventure.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@frosty: Goats are like deer; they browse (as opposed to grazing). They’ll eat grass, but prefer dandelions and roses and oak leaves.
The Dangerman
For sinuses, hot and sour soup, the hotter and sourer the better. If you aren’t sweating and maybe tearing up, you’re doing it wrong.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ken B: Gas prices crashed last year because the demand crashed during the pandemic. The reason it’s spiking because the Oil Industry shut down a lot of refineries last year and then the recovery happened. The freighter that blocked the Suez canal aggravated the situation. One of my conservative friends who works in the oil was explaining the whole problem in the oil supply chain to me.
This is stuff the MSM should be reporting on, if they could be bothered to do more than Cletus Safaris.
lurker
good to hear you are watching such a cheerful optimistic movie…
If you want a rescue pig, might as well make it a spider-pig. There was this guy a while back who was going on about them, Homer something…
lurker
@The Dangerman: pretty much every time I eat Japanese food the wasabi clears out my sinuses. I always expect to use the restroom to blow my nose soon after I start eating Japanese food.
NotMax
@lurker
I don’t much care for sushi but will gladly scarf down the accompanying wasabi by the spoonful.
RinaX
If nothing else, I’d rather have this rude awakening now than in 2022. I don’t know what the answer is.
Mary G
@John Cole: Follow @m_crouton on Twitter for cool rescue farm animals including a goat and some pigs. Crouton is a steer with a charming disposition. There is also a large contingent of boxers, possibly the goofiest of dog breeds.
John Revolta
Repub was up by a couple of points in NJ a while ago but as of 2 AM it’s basically a dead heat with 87% counted.
JoyceH
I’ve had a rather surprising reaction to today’s election. I’d come to think of VA as reliably blue. I’ve lived here for over 30 years, many of those years under Republican governors. And when the state government was Republican, my previous reactions tended to be exasperation and embarrassment. But the GOP has changed so much in the past few years, that now… honestly, I’m a little scared. And infuriated to consider that the school board screamers won. Will they put the statues back? Are the Nazis returning?
And what’s really exasperating/infuriating about the current social and political climate is that all our problems have solutions! It’s not like we have to wait for advances in technology, we can solve them right now! We could be on the brink of a new golden age – if people would just get on the damn plane and let it take off! Instead – I am now convinced that by the time this pandemic finally wanes, it will have killed a million Americans, and the vast majority of those fatalities will have occurred after highly effective vaccines became widely available, easily accessible, and free. Because too many goobers would rather believe Russian trolls than doctors and scientists. Man, if I started slapping all the people I wanted to slap, I’d never stop.
Elizabelle
@JoyceH:
I would like to slap the teeth out of Joe Manchin’s head. For starters.
JoyceH
I’ve switched from news coverage to soothy New Age music. Gonna make a lap for the cat and play games on my phone. And come tomorrow, back to diet and exercise program and see if I can get this book moving again. Because in the days ahead, it would be prudent to be thin and fit and rich.
frosty
@LongHairedWeirdo: Hell, improperly told as it was I laughed. Now I’ve got to find someone to tell it to.
frosty
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): But not the willow. Don’t tell me they’ll browse the willow.
Ken
@JoyceH: You should have never thought of VA as reliably blue. CA is reliably blue and NY just became reliably blue. You just had a moment when the state government was all Democratic. But that should give you hope about your state.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ken:
Only in the last 20 years or so, after Chairman Jerry’s first two terms we had 16 years of GOP Governors.
Subsole
@Juju: How so? Pig’d eat pork, too. They ain’t picky. Hell, they’d eat you if they could. And they’re smart enough to figure out how to do it, too.
Subsole
@WaterGirl: I was lucky. I saw a blurb on Youtube, so I got a little cushion on the heartache.
Guess the Slimebag Media got what they wanted. So happy for them.
As someone who suffers under Greg Fucking Abbott, I cannot fathom this country at times…
Sigh. Gonna go meditate before I pop a vessel.
Subsole
@RinaX: The answer is wait for the next Timmy McVeigh, because that’s literally the only thing that’s gonna get this dumber than dogfuck country to actually pay attention.
Maybe let Atomwaffen actually turn Manhattan into a pillar of fire next time, or let them just fucking machinegun congress.
That’s about the only thing I can see that’ll get CNN, NYT, Manchinema, the Beltway, the Blob, the Church and your average balls-for-brains Independent to stop fellating every conservative they can fit in their mouth.
Ugh. Sorry. Really upset right now. Needed to vent.
sab
@frosty: I bet they won’t. Isn’t eating willow a lot like eating a bottle of aspirin
ETA I was wrong. They love willows.
sab
Odd local result: Coventry Twp is where our local cops all moved when the state s ct knocked out residency requirements. They had four levies this election: police, ems, fire and roads. Three of them passed by a lot. The police passed by only 15 votes. They all live there and it still barely passed.
Biff Baxter
Virginia has a history of this. Such as:
2000 Presidential: Bush wins Virginia by 8
2001 Virginia Governor: Warner wins by 5.
sab
Locally here, most of the levies passed (roads, cops, ems, fire.) Lorain did not pass its rich people school levy, which is unfortunate for them. Almost all of the anti-CRT school board candidates lost. Apparently voters want incumbents who know WTF they are doing.
Ohio state legislature nitwits have introduced a Texas style bounty hunters anti-abortion law. We already have a 20 week cut-off. They are just signalling now. I have pro-life Catholic in-laws who are horrified by the Texas bill. This could get interesting.
debbie
@sab:
Here, Issue 7, which would have moved $87 million from the city fund to an unknown and unaccountable “energy group,” was voted down by more than 80% of the voters. A small ray of hope!
sab
@debbie: I am very flad to here that.
JimV
Homer Simpson had a rescue pig. Didn’t work out well.
Morzer
@Juju: Long pig – the only thing Republicans have to offer.
G
I wouldn’t think much [if at all] about VA governor race — outside of McAuliffe right after Obama’s second election, the VA governor’s race all the way back to Jimmy Carter (D) and John Dalton (R) has always been the other party.
National – VA
Carter(D) – Dalton(R)
Reagan(R) – Robb(D)
Reagan(R) – Baliles(D)
GHWB(R) – Wilder(D)
Clinton(D) – Allen(R)
Clinton(D) – Gilmore(R)
GWB(R) – Warner(D)
GWB(R) – Kaine(D)
Obama(D) – McDonnell(R)
Obama(D) – McAuliffe(D) *
Trump(R) – Northam(D)
tam1MI
@janesays: It’s very clear that the crappy poll numbers for Biden and the Democrats are probably worth paying attention to, because whatever is driving them is going to get us steamrolled next year if we don’t get this shit figured out.
We’ve got it figured out. Manchin and Sinema saw to it that Democrats have nothing to run on.
Czar Chasm
Me, I blame McAuliffe for running again: This is why you never believe your own bulls—t. We had several great options in the primary, who could have beat the pants off of Youngkin, but they were all drowned out by the flood of money McAuliffe spent. I’m pretty convinced that any resentment that Republicans had towards him (and, by proxy in many of their deluded minds, Hillary) galvanized them enough to turn up.
I’m also ashamed of the poor turnout, but that’s a completely different topic I won’t bring up in this thread.
nclurker
the problem is simply the same as it was in ’16.
50% of the american voting public is so fucking stupid,they can’t
recognize bullshit when they’re slapped in the face with it.
truly,we have become a nation of morons.
TheronWare
“We train young men to drop fire on people”….
RaflW
Rural white voters and non-college white women clung to the original sin of this country.
When faced with a choice of accepting the history of slavery and that we have work to do, or hearing a white guy say ‘it’s woke people makin’ you feel bad’ well guess what, the racism won.