Someone stole our “Harris-Walz” sign today. My wife’s response; pic.twitter.com/FNrc2SDCBA
— Jim Rosenthal (@JimRosenthal4) August 24, 2024
After Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz recorded their highly anticipated CNN interview, Walz split off to go to NC for a few stops. @AP
His first stop? Cook Out, at the recommendation of Gov. Roy Cooper.
Walz’ order? Mint chocolate chip shake. pic.twitter.com/m58cw7WT8b
— Makiya Seminera (@makseminera) August 29, 2024
otoh, we will still be talking about Arlington https://t.co/5wiEKlWtEE
— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) August 30, 2024
Postmaster general is confident about ability to process mail-in ballots https://t.co/w4ukeMMY2s
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 29, 2024
DeJoy better not be lying again. “Postmaster general is confident about ability to process mail-in ballots“:
… The Postal Service has been undergoing rapid changes, including the opening of large hubs, but some of those changes are being paused before the election to ensure they don’t interfere with performance, DeJoy said. And it will be all hands on deck to ensure the millions of mail-in ballots are delivered swiftly to their destinations.
“We’re going to be in great shape for the election. I’m pretty confident about everything that were doing,” DeJoy told The Associated Press ahead of an official rundown Thursday of election mail practices. “The American people should be confident.”
It’s a far cry from four years ago, when DeJoy, just a few months into the job, was being criticized as a Donald Trump crony who was dismantling mail-processing machines and removing blue postal boxes to undermine the election as Trump, the president at the time, sowed distrust in the Postal Service. Despite being excoriated, DeJoy’s Postal Service performed admirably under a crush of mail-in votes during the pandemic, and strongly pushed back against what they said were false claims of any intentional effort to damage the postal service before the 2020 election…
U.S. Postal Service officials briefed news reporters Thursday on measures that are being taken to ensure election mail reaches its destinations, building on its performance in 2020, when 97.9% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days, and in 2022, when 98.9% of election mail was delivered within three days. DeJoy said he’d like to inch closer to 100% this election cycle.
The lack of drama is a welcome relief from four years ago, when the Postal Service was dogged by backlogs and accusations of voter suppression ahead of the 2020 presidential election, in which more than 135 million ballots were delivered to and from voters.
DeJoy was criticized for restricting overtime payments for postal workers and stopping the agency’s longtime practice of allowing late and extra truck deliveries in the summer of 2020. And the previously scheduled dismantling of dozens of mail-sorting machines and removal of blue boxes, corresponding with a massive drop in first-class mail, provided additional fuel to critics. The postmaster general, who was a major donor to Trump, was thought to be on thin ice, especially with the election of Democratic President Joe Biden…
U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, a frequent critic of changes under DeJoy, said Thursday that he’s confident Postal Service workers will “will ensure every ballot cast by mail is safely and securely delivered.” But the Virginia Democrat also said that oversight is important and that “Congress must remain vigilant on decisions made by the postmaster general in the days leading up to this election.”
The Postal Service is proceeding with a 10-year, $40 billion Postal Service modernization plan in which it’s renovating aging facilities, opening modern regional hubs in Georgia, Virginia, Oregon and elsewhere, and starting the process of purchasing 100,000 vehicles to replace older delivery trucks dating to 1987. The next-generation delivery vehicle was displayed Thursday at a separate event in Indiana that was aimed at promoting the Postal Service’s investments.
The Postal Service also showed that it can make adjustments when it abandoned a criticized plan to reroute Reno, Nevada-area mail processing to Sacramento, California, that had created an uproar among northern Nevada residents.
If there’s anything the public can do to help, DeJoy said, it would be to avoid procrastination when it comes to mailing ballots. “Vote early! If you’re using the mail, help us out,” he said.
On The Road – frosty – Farmer’s National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. Interior
sdhays
Mail is slower and less reliable today than it was 10 years ago. I don’t do lots of mailing, and it’s still noticeable to me. DeJoy has been a disaster. I hope the pause in DeJoyification does in fact help protect the processing of mail-in ballots.
Trivia Man
A key economic policy of the next administration should be authorizing post office banking. I can’t think if a single step that would have more positive impact on the poorest among us.
Baud
@Trivia Man:
Requires Congress.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We made a trip to the ER late yesterday afternoon because Mr DAW had a one-sided headache and his BP was 190/110. EKG and brain scan were normal and showed no signs of brain bleed. His BP dropped into the normal range while we were there. So they sent us home with instructions for him to log his BP twice a day. His BP is normal this morning though he still has a mild headache.
Anyway, the upshot is we missed the Harris/Walz interview. It looks like it went well. I’m reading the BJ threads on it in another window.
New Deal democrat
My go-to poll watcher, Dan Guild, has updated his top of the line State vs. National polling averages with lots of post-convention data:
https://nitter.poast.org/dcg1114/status/1829488218850709897#m
The State by State polling, which in the aggregate is more reliable, has Harris up by +4% and plateaued there, with little convention bounce. The lagging national polling is close to catching up.
He also writes that Labor Day weekend polling has in the past tended to be very close to the ultimate Election Day result. His conclusion: “Harris’s lead is about the same as Obama’s in ‘12, and larger than Clinton’s in ‘16” (although smaller than Biden’s in 2020).
BethanyAnne
Using phone text to speech make that speech to text because it’s hard to type in the hospital. I had hernia surgery on Wednesday night lost 2 foot of small intestine and my appendix so today I’m just laying around.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: I think all we can really say is that this is winnable. There isn’t going to be any huge swing in popular opinion that does it for us, but I have a hunch that turnout is going to be very different from expectations set by 2016 and 2020.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BethanyAnne: Holy crow. I surprised you can even speak into the phone. Take it easy.
Betty
@Matt McIrvin: It remains depressing that it can still be this close. It makes you question your faith in people.
Baud
@Betty:
It’s your fault for still having faith in people.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Also, I’ve been waiting for a more or less open thread to tell you about the nice thing that happened yesterday. Someone contacted me saying they were getting married on Sept. 21, the same day Dragoncraft comes out. They were giving away blind dates with a book as wedding favors and thought it would be cool to have book that came out on the day. My editor and I are working to make that happen, assuming the distributor can get the books ready on time.
And btw, that sounds to me like an excellent set of wedding favors.
Baud
@BethanyAnne:
Surgery bad.
Laying around good.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Nice.
Starfish
@sdhays: DeJoy said he is going to further degrade mail service AFTER the election so technically he did learn not to do it before the election. But he is a disaster, and these tweets look like a puff piece about him before he ruins things further.
Ken
@Baud: That’s why I put my faith in NFTs and Bitcoin. You can’t put people on the blockchain.
Michael Bersin
In Missouri campaign sign theft is a class four election offense:
115.637. Class four election offenses. — The following offenses, and any others specifically so described by law, shall be class four election offenses and are deemed misdemeanors not connected with the exercise of the right of suffrage. Conviction for any of these offenses shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than one year or by a fine of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars or by both such imprisonment and fine:
[….]
(19) Stealing or willfully defacing, mutilating, or destroying any campaign yard sign on private property, except that this subdivision shall not be construed to interfere with the right of any private property owner to take any action with regard to campaign yard signs on the owner’s property and this subdivision shall not be construed to interfere with the right of any candidate, or the candidate’s designee, to remove the candidate’s campaign yard sign from the owner’s private property after the election day.
I use permanent marker to write inside the sign or on the edge “stolen from [my address]”. In the past if someone was caught with a pickup truck bed full of yard signs there’d be no proof of where the sign(s) came from. With the fifteen seconds it takes to write on the sign that’s taken care of.
In 2020 a friend used trail cameras to catch a thief. It worked.
Campaign sign theft is voter intimidation. There’ll be a point where if enough people face serious consequences the sign theft and vandalism will stop.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s the hope. It seems as if we beat turnout expectations in most of the elections since 2020, except VA and NJ in 2021.
Baud
@Ken:
They’ll put people on the chain gang though.
Jeffro
Completely OT but: earlier this week, I organized our office a bit and used up some random note cards we had here and there, sending them to friends and relatives with a “just because you’re awesome” kind of note. The response has been off. the. hook. You’d think I was the Second Coming or something (narrator: he’s not)
Make someone’s day the easy way – with a note and a stamp! (They have John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg stamps btw ;)
Related, and back on-topic: my “Postcards to Swing States” bundle arrived yesterday and I have already knocked out about 30. I’m just going to leave them on the kitchen table, and keep doing 5-10 at a time whenever I have a few minutes. I’ll get to 300 in no time! (The hard part will be waiting until late October to mail them =)
Have a happy Friday, Jackals!
Frankensteinbeck
@Ken:
The future is CoinCoin. It’s the only currency that has real, tangible value because it’s a physical object.
Leto
@BethanyAnne: welcome to the club!
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I hope Mr DAW is doing better today, and that he can kick that headache. Also that’s really cool about your book being a wedding present!
Is this the same DeJoy that killed the postal service replacement vehicles being fully electric, thereby reducing tons of emissions, and instead making sure they had ICE engines that were like 1-2mpg better than current vehicles? That same fuck stick? Yes, he’s still a Trumpov loving piece of shit who needs to be axed from the job. We dedicated professional public servants, not these assholes. He’s basically a Project 2025 hire.
Jeffro
But have we tried, really tried yet?
Baud
@Jeffro:
Peter Thiel is working on it.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Suzanne
So, I missed voting in the primary this year due to a late-breaking work trip, and I HAVE LEARNED MY LESSON. In Arizona, I was on the Permanent Early Voter List (PEVL), which meant that I enrolled once and subsequently had every ballot mailed to me for completion at my convenience. Fantastic. But in PA, you have to request an early ballot with significant advance notice. I had thought I would be voting in person at the church down the street, so I didn’t request a ballot. Then boss scheduled the trip only giving me about five days of notice. Not enough time to request a ballot. Absolute bullshit.
But now that I’ve made that mistake once, never again. This is a monstrous pain in the ass, requesting an early ballot for each individual election.
strange visitor (from another planet)
also OT. i’m in the second leg of prep for my second colonoscopy (because i guess i’m officially old now). my stomach is SO not happy with me.
if they perforate my intestines and i die of sepsis, i just wanna say i really like this place and (most of) you jackals. you guys have been a good crowd through thick and thin over the last few years.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty: Occasionally I think Trump should win because we deserve him, and all the chaos, suffering and death he will bring.
But the problem with that kind of collective-punishment thinking is that the people who get the worst of it are never the ones actually responsible.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, almost everyone’s minds are already set in stone. There are maybe 2% or 3% of remaining persuadable voters.
And I suspect you are right about turnout, and the reason will be Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs, and Dobbs.
Also I suspect Black turnout may rival that for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
As an aside, I had an (alleged) flash of insight the other day, that Harris is running Obama’s 2008 “Hope and Change” playbook, with the exception of leaving out the “there is no red/blue America” b.s. And that includes his targeting of rural areas, with the idea of “losing by less.” For the first time, Trump is not running against the Democratic “Old Guard,” and so much of his anti-insider demagoguery now rings hollow.
Baud
Regarding polling stability, that’s probably right, but we’ve also never had a candidate come in this late in the process, so we’re in uncharted territory.
Suzanne
@BethanyAnne: @Dorothy A. Winsor: Goodness! Bethany and Mr. DAW, hope you’re both hanging in there today!
eclare
@BethanyAnne:
It sounds like laying around is all that you should be doing!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
And all the savvy political insiders know it. Which is why political discourse is they way it is.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Very cool!
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: We have our mail ballots for the state primary, but the deadline is close enough that we’re probably going to drop them in a dropbox instead of using the mail (it seems like for the primary, unlike the general election, they’re not making allowances for postmarking by a certain date).
I think there are only a couple of contested races in the primary, Register of Probate and something else a bit oddball.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
2020 turnout was really good, IIRC.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@strange visitor (from another planet): The second leg? That would be the liquids-only-and-then-drink-crap phase? Yuck.
The last colonoscopy I had they let me have vanilla yogurt and vanilla ice cream on that day. That and making sure I had electrolytes helped me feel some better. Though nothing makes that drink better.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Trump over performed polling however. I think that’s what Matt is alluding to.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: Gender may be a bigger variable here than race. 2016 suggested it was a larger handicap but Dobbs will also be a contributor.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: 2020 turnout was really good, but it was especially good for Trump, so the traditional Democratic benefit from high turnout really didn’t apply (and some have suggested that it’s upside down now, with Republicans benefiting from high turnout because they get lower-propensity voters).
What’s happening now, though, is a huge wave of youth registration.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I hope the young people show up. They have a lot on the line.
ETA: Same with labor.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I am just so annoyed that PA requires a separate ballot request for each election! And you have to request them at least a month in advance or something! That’s so fucken dumb! It seems totally out of step with modern life.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Frankensteinbeck:
Didn’t Baud have something like BaudCoin going at one point? I sent him $100K on his assurances that it was “better” than BitCoin but have yet to see any return. Or any of the principal. Hmmmm…..
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yeah, the second half of the powder+ gatorade. it’s weird. the first time i did it, all they wanted me to do was the powder. this time, there’s helper pills, there’s anti-gas pills and some other beverage, the name of which i forget and hadda go pharm-hopping to find.
like, nearly fifty bucks spent on TOP of not eating for two days and spending most of a night and a morning on the porcelain throne.
fun times.
Fake Irishman
@New Deal democrat:
Also, the Dems will have their ground game fully deployed unlike in 2020 when they shut down a lot of in person campaigning. Polisci has never really gotten a great handle on campaign effects, but I wonder if that played a part in the GOP over performing polling.
If so….
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Right. Not overall turnout, but the partisan pattern.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: We’ll see what effect the revitalized campus protests have, if they materialize.
Baud
@Fake Irishman:
Good point.
Eolirin
@Baud: Both of those were pre-Dobbs.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: MA lets you request both of them at once, online.
My daughter had to do it by mail, though, because the web form’s entry field was too short for her college mailing address!
Baud
@Eolirin:
True.
Matt McIrvin
@Fake Irishman: On the one hand, there was less Democratic ground game. On the other hand, being stuck at home actually made it easier for many people to vote (even if they had to brave the virus to do it).
Sheila in nc
@strange visitor (from another planet): Tell me you are not scheduled for a colonoscopy over the holiday weekend!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The ease wouldn’t have had a partisan effect. The ground game issue hurt us disproportionately.
catclub
Our fellow citizens! and fellow Voters! The common clay of the west….
TBone
@Baud: indication (anecdotal though it may be) at my college town’s Dem voter registration drive on the main drag outside the Dem campaign office (lines of returming students signing up at both tables) is that the kidz are going to vote in droves. I’m expecting success.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Suzanne: We’re on permanent early mail-in voting. One advantage I hadn’t thought of is that I can look up all the candidates for down ballot races, especially those who are “non-partisan.”
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Sheila in nc: i’d tell ya i wasn’t, but then i’d be a liar.
they’re expecting me at noon. i get to be er, in the movies at one.
catclub
and Dobbs, and abortion rights state amendments.
By the way, Trump promised to have a strong press conference on how he will vote on the Florida Amendment. … any day now.
Matt McIrvin
@strange visitor (from another planet): I think they just had me use a combination of two different OTC laxatives, a powder and a bunch of Dulcolax pills. Mixed them with Crystal Light.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 😍❤️
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Biden’s 2020 coalition included a large youth turnout, tho. That’s why the drop of youth support for him earlier this year was so concerning. Fingers crossed that they show up this year.
Sheila in nc
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m a veteran of MANY colonoscopies (don’t ask) and I have never been able to drink the crap Golytely or whatever. I have permanent dispensation to drink a different prep consisting of a week’s worth of Miralax dissolved in 64 ounces of Gatorade. At least I can get it down.
TBone
@Starfish: hubby is registered rethuglican, and the Donold campaign sent us a mailer this week urging rethugs to vote by mail as well as in person.
I had the cat vomit on that stupid rendering of Donold as Uncle Sam.
gene108
@BethanyAnne:
Get well soon.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Most reports you see that aren’t focused on the *partisan* aspect of 2020 come from these reports:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2020-presidential-election-voting-and-registration-tables-now-available.html
One overview analysis that delves into the demographic elements of 2020 in a more accessible way than simply plowing thru the Census data:
https://catalist.us/wh-national/
It’s really worth your while to follow the previous link and look at their 10 takeaways. It answers most of the questions getting posed here. It also reiterates what many of us repeat here like a Greek Chorus:
Black Voters [Are] Key to Winning Coalitions.
This is a really handy resource when looking at election stats, laws, security, etc:
https://www.lgbtmap.org/democracy-maps/ratings_by_state
RevRick
@Betty:
@Baud:
The GOP is the white people’s party. They hand out participation trophies to white people, and especially white men, spreading the lie of unearned superiority.
Eolirin
@TBone: Please don’t tell me they used those words. As well as? Like, implying you should vote twice?
If they’re trying to backtrack the aversion to voting by mail, that makes sense, campaigns want that so it’s easier to track GOTV efforts. But I could see them being so inept in delivering that message that they make it seem like you should do both.
New Deal democrat
@Fake Irishman: Ditto Baud. Good point.
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That is SO awesome!!
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: I think it was an “or”.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I love that about mail in voting. We get our ballots early and I can research if need be. We never mail the ballots back however, always drop them off on Election Day. Fully masked and decked out in appropriate Dem gear (no law about that gear since we’re not actually voting at a polling place, just dropping ballots at County office).
RevRick
@Suzanne: My wife and I are on permanent vote by mail in PA. We get an email notification when the ballot is sent to us and an email when the Election Bureau receives our completed ballot.
Yarrow
Ted Cruz is now running commercials on network TV against Colin Allred. In August. In Texas. That seems notable. It’s early for him to be running attack ads. Are his internal polls bad?
Also, from a July Axios article, Cruz is pouring money into Spanish language ads. There’s been a movement toward Republicans by Latinos in Texas. Cruz seems to be leaning into that.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: I would hope so, but I make no assumptions about anything coming from the Trump campaign.
TBone
@Eolirin: I don’t remember the exact wording now but I posted about it here using the exact wording so I expect an astute Jackal would have picked up on that before the mailer was covered in my cat’s vomit the next day. As well, if it had been blatant like that, I’d have reported it.
They’re just attempting to reverse the previous anti-mail stance. A desperate hail Mary at this point.
TBone
@RevRick: 👍💙
Starfish
@TBone: I would be interested in checking with the county clerk and see if that behavior gets one ballot counted or both thrown out.
narya
Also OT material: I was participating in a clinical research study; I had to record my food for a week, and on Wednesday I spent a day at the clinic, where they took a bunch of bodily substances. As part of it, I had to drink a vanilla Ensure, and OMG that shit is NASTY! Plus it gave me indigestion. And the (nice and cute) EMT doing side-work as a phlebotomist missed the vein in one arm. That said, the whole thing was kinda fascinating.
TBone
@Starfish: 😆 we get to follow up on our ballots being received and counted here in PA (via email). We are not fucking around!
satby
So, interesting reading from Public Notice about something that will be no surprise here:
What’s Wrong with the Fact Checkers
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: There’s been a lot of handwringing about young men going fash, with the implication that the youth will actually go for Trump… but you look at the actual numbers and it always seems to be “young men aren’t as much less horrible than GenX and Boomer men as we would like”. The yawning gender gap that people are fretting about is mostly from young women moving way to the left.
OId Man Shadow
It’s really absurd that Dejoy hasn’t been fired.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Yarrow:
FWIW, Allred’s actually outraised Rafael “Calgary!” “Ted” Cruz, at least as of July, $41.2m to $40m.
“Calgary!” Cruz had $4m more on hand at that point so maybe they felt they had the luxury for a big campaign buy to capitalize on something as outlined in this piece:
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/19/texas-republican-latino-hispanic-voters/
sdhays
@TBone: Your cat vomits on command? Respect!
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That has always been a huge benefit for me. Some of the ballots are really long and there’s some obscure issues that I’d like to dig into. Arizona also mailed sample ballots out, so when I voted in person, I’d take that thing and mark it all up in advance and take it with me to the polls. Another thing PA doesn’t do.
Get it together, Commonwealth!
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Is there some reason you can’t look up the candidates if you’re not on permanent early mail-in voting? Can you not see a sample ballot in your state?
I can see my sample ballot, so I go through ahead of time and research all the candidates. Then go to the polling place with my list. It can only be on paper.
trnc
“Democrats’ love affair with ice cream overshadows policy preferences”
– NYT
Suzanne
@RevRick: So is permanent early voting in PA like a legacy thing? Because I have looked it up!
ETA: Are you talking about Annual Mail Ballots?
Steve LaBonne
One of the very few things Ohio does well is a long early in-person voting period with generous hours. Since we live a few minutes from our county BoE, that’s how we always vote. But also you can confirm on line that your mail ballot was received.
TBone
@sdhays: no, the cats usually vocalize their discomfort with a special yowling howl in time for me to run and place paper strategically on top of whatever they’re about to vomit upon. One of my cats will now wait in a certain spot in the hallway, loudly howling “hurry up!” while I come running with the vomiting paper (I comfort him as he does it 😆).
Of course at night, all bets are off and I always step in it upon waking.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: Can I ask what the clinical study was for? That does sound interesting. Except for the nasty drink and missed vein.
trnc
Did they look under the operating table? Those things are slippery.
Hope you’re zooming around soon.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Off the charts compared to any other national election of my lifetime. 158.6 million Americans voted in 2020. By comparison, 137 million voted in 2016, and even that was nearly 6 million more than in any previous election.
TBone
@Suzanne: we signed up once and they mailed us a form to confirm, but yes as I understand it we are lifetime mail ballot recipients as long as that law stands.
There is a box to check online when you sign up if you want mail ballots for all elections.
Sure Lurkalot
In Colorado, there is vote by mail and in person, early and on Election Day, numerous drop boxes. Everyone is sent a ballot. You can track it from when it’s mailed to when it’s counted. Both the state and municipalities send out voter information books outlining all the races and ballot issues. It’s very accommodating.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Voting percentage is more revealing. Takes account of population increase.
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m part of All of Us (I can send you info if you’re interested), and, as a result of participating in THAT, they offered this one. The particular effort was around gastric emptying, I think–I had to fast, and they gave me the Ensure and some Tylenol, i.e., standard, well-known substances, then took blood at multiple intervals. I also gave a variety of other samples, either before or during the visit, and tracked my food intake, and filled out a lot of surveys. I think they’re not entirely sure what all of the info will be used for, but I think they’re trying to recruit 10k people, so it could be interesting!
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: It is worth saying that the polls weren’t too far off when it came to the 2022 “Red Wave” being more of a trickle. It’s just that pundits played it way up and cherry-picked the scariest polls.
p.a.
As someone said: Democracy isn’t just voting. It’s counting the votes. I know the Dems have teams ready for oversight. ACLU also, I know, maybe others. And Dems have the executive, although voting oversight is very much the states’ purview again- Thanks, SCOTUS //s. I’m concerned abt election-day intimidation & violence (and pre-election drop-off & mail-in fuckery) as much as post-election shit. As Atrios says, “Someone wake up Merick.”
geg6
@Suzanne:
Don’t know what the process is in Allegheny County, but here in Beaver, they send a form early in the primary process with which you state an intention to vote by mail for all elections that year. You fill it out or go online and do it. They then mail you your ballot for the primary and for the general election no sooner than 50 days out. So I’ll get mine in a couple of weeks. I went on the website just to confirm for myself that I’d be getting an “absentee” ballot. Too late now, if Allegheny County has a similar process, I think. But check it out for the future. You can still vote in person if you want. Just bring your mail-in ballot to the poll with you and they’ll take it and give you a new one to vote in person.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Tankies and other assorted hard lefties who hate the Ds are not as popular as they like to think they are.
eclare
@Steve LaBonne:
We have two week early voting with generous hours in TN, too. Good thing because you have to prove you need a mail-in ballot to get one here. And the requirements sound pretty onerous.
Steve LaBonne
Our newspaper of record once again
does a deep dive into policyrecycles a Republican hit job. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-times-strikes-againAnother Scott
Meanwhile, … WhiteHouse.gov:
Good, good.
Something something near-perfect correlation between gas prices and presidential approval.
The election is about much more than TCFFG. Gotta defeat all of them.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@trnc: Harris seems to like cake. Maybe the NYT will make a Marie Antoinette comparo.
Steve LaBonne
@eclare: Ohio also allows anyone to request a mail ballot and even sends out applications automatically. Our SoS has played games with drop boxes but otherwise Republicans surprisingly have refrained from fucking this stuff up.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I like the message in the replacement sign “You can steal my sign but not my vote” it sums up what is at stake and the utter prettiness of MAGA.
catclub
Labor day gas prices lowest in three years.
I hate the gas price indicator. Gas prices go down in recessions. [Very notable exception, summer 2008,
something crazy in the oil futures markets, oil prices at record highs.]
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor: that is wonderful
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus:
She has good taste! Caramel is delicious and hard to make from scratch.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: One thing that’s changed is that the situation with swing-state governments is actually better this time around than in 2020 (with the notable exception of Georgia), which is why they’re concentrating on trying to obstruct things at the county level.
It drives things into a more absurd realm, though, in which people end up making the argument that some county official could have nullified any presidential election in history at any time.
I also get concerned that some of the scare articles about how the fix is in will have the effect of suppressing the vote. And sometimes they’re based on misinformation, like this whole idea that even if Harris gets a majority of electoral votes, Trump could somehow force a House contingent election.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: Good on you for doing this.
SFAW
Mint chocolate chip shake? That’s it, he’s lost my vote.
He probably like’s Hawaiian “pizza,” too.
moonbat
@p.a.: I think Mr Garland is awake. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Convenes Election Threats Task Force
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Sounds a bit scary, I hope he’s OK. Best wishes to you and Mr DAW.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Can’t blame you! Here on the south side of the Mason-Dixon line, Maryland let me set it up so that I will receive mail-in ballots for each primary and general election until I tell them to stop doing so.
Another Scott
For you folks that just won the lottery or found 100,000 shares of nVidia in the attic, Charles Gaba (yeah, I know) has helpfully collected a list of “endgame” quasi-close state and national elections that have decent Democratic candidates.
Blue24.org/EndGame
Links to ActBlue pages are provided.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Gloria DryGarden
@Sure Lurkalot: I love how we do it in Colorado. It’s so sensible. No fancy extra hoops to jump through.
it could be the model for other states.
Prescott Cactus
@OId Man Shadow:
I’d forget about Heimlich if he was choking on a piece of steak.
Gloria DryGarden
@Sure Lurkalot: I love how we do it in Colorado. It’s so sensible. No fancy extra hoops to jump through.
it could be the model for other states.
@narya: I was thinking of doing that…all of us.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: But gasoline prices did crash in late 2008 when the Great Recession was in full swing. And Republicans actually tried to use that to bash Obama because they’d risen from that low as the recovery started.
They tried the same thing with the price crash associated with the COVID recession–the base from which they’re measuring Biden’s gas-price spike is when the economy was completely broken from COVID.
Frankensteinbeck
@p.a.:
I hear this every election. I remember Trump forming his own goon squad and a front pager saying that its fumbling antics were a trial run to control polling sites. I remember conservative groups loudly declaring their intent to stage armed voter intimidation groups at polling places. It never happens, and Republicans are much less motivated than 2020.
New Deal democrat
@catclub:
Except that gas prices are something people notice every day, and for many people, the price to fill up the tank is not at all negligible. So, yes,lower gas prices do have a positive correlation with Presidential approval (but of course many other things play into P. approval.) And gas prices do decline for supply reasons, nut just a falloff of demand in recessions.
This morning’s personal income and spending report was excellent, with real consumption setting a new record high, and real income the highest since the pandemic stimulus months. This is exactly what you would want to see as the incumbent political party going into an election.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Presidential votes 2016 vs. 2020, in three swing states:
Arizona 2016: 2.41 million
Arizona 2020: 3.3 million
Georgia 2016: 3.96 million
Georgia 2020: 4.93 million
North Carolina 2016: 4.55 million
North Carolina 2020: 5.42 million
Those are big increases, in three of the nation’s fastest growing states.
Gloria DryGarden
@BethanyAnne: heal well. Get well soon. And enjoy your couple days of pain meds and catered food, such as it is. Hope hey take great care of you.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Seriously. One of the best (but hardest) realizations I ever accepted was that roughly half of my fellow Americans will absolutely vote for the Nazi. Every time. No matter how great our candidate and policies are.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: Well, it never happens except to the extent that it always happens. My understanding is, there are deep-red areas where the armed cops standing around at the polling place to scare away brown people are a longstanding tradition.
Sometimes they try more. When the “Tea Party” was a big thing, I recall some of the groups around Worcester sending “observers” to harass the people who were providing proof of address to get off the Massachusetts inactive-voter list. But they got a court order to cut it out. This is one of those things that primary elections are good for, flushing the bugs and pests out of the system.
pieceofpeace
I live outside of SF and have a beef with the USPS/USPO, actually, 2 beefs and would like to know if anyone else has any information on this. Fully realize my suspicious antennae are on full alert.
#1 – All 3-4 main postal locations no longer have local numbers, only 800s, but I kept local# for nearest one, and for some reason that works. The 800# seems to have an especially long waiting period, and I’ve yet to speak with anyone and the auto-operator doesn’t recognize my question.
Here’s my question: having had photo email service for some time (daily photo of mail and packages to be delivered that day, already on mail delivery truck. Worked like a charm and was extremely useful for this year, as being out of town has been frequent.
Two weeks ago, this suddenly and with no notice/nor explanation, stopped. Going to 2 of the stations, they say it’s a ‘glitch.’ Nothing more is known by anyone. Anyone having similar problem? Yes, am aware of the timing, and that’s now main concern, even that they’d have any problem at this time, this year, only.
cmorenc
FWIW the CookOut in Raleigh where Waltz and previously Biden stopped off for milkshakes is a half-mile down the road from my house, and it’s where I occasionally go to indulge a milk-shake craving, especially later on at night.
Second NC Gov Cooper’s recommendation to Waltz – this kind of joint is right up Waltz’s All-American Midwestern alley, even though we’re talking a joint in NC.
Gloria DryGarden
@Michael Bersin: say more about trail cameras. I am concerned if I pu5 up a sign, I might get different kinds of harassment.
Starfish
@TBone: We do too, here in Colorado.
But I am still curious if Trump’s advice to vote both ways is going to get the voters who do that disqualified completely. The county clerk may want to put out a message saying “Hey, don’t do this” if that behavior will get both ballots tossed.
There are some mistakes that can be cured, but there are some mistakes that cannot be cured.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: +900,000, in each of these states.
what about in the other swing states, is it Pennsylvania, nv, mi, wi?
also wondering how many registered voters in each state. I understand it’s going up as we speak…
geg6
@Suzanne:
It must be an Allegheny County problem. The Beaver County Democratic Committee sends out sample ballots here.
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There’s another piece to the nutrition stuff that would require eating food they provide. It pays a lot, but I’m not sure I could stand two weeks of processed food. I haven’t received the actual study info yet, just some overview stuff, so we’ll see.
@Gloria DryGarden: It’s pretty interesting! I learned that 7% of my DNA is from West Asia/Caucusus, for example. The first part is pretty easy–lots of online stuff and one blood draw.
cmorenc
@UncleEbeneezer:
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: but PA doesn’t require a separate ballot request for each election. We require a mail ballot request annually that covers all elections for that year. The request form is automatically mailed to you, like it’s a reminder!
PST
@narya:
I think we must be in the same study. Mine was called Nutrition for Precision Health. I’m glad I wasn’t in the arm of the study where subjects wore glasses with cameras to record everything they ate and drank.
Suzanne
@geg6: I think the process is similar. We can request the absentee ballot for any reason, so I did that this time.
SuzMom likes to vote in person at the church — she has expressed freakout about the idea of her ballot getting lost in the mail — so I have been taking her, and then voting in person myself. But I missed an election because of it and I’m so pissed about it!
I missed an election once when I was in college, due to a fuckup getting in absentee ballot when I was in the dorms. The fact that I still remember this, which happened over 20 years ago, should indicate how much this drives me crazy.
H.E.Wolf
OMG, yes. I’ve had this Electoral Vote blog comment bookmarked for a long time:
“given the D+8 lean of white college graduates and the D+80 lean of Black folks, for every Black voter who skips the midterms, the Democrats need 10 new white college voters to take up the slack.”
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Senate/Maps/Sep20.html#item-8
[scroll down to the final few paragraphs to find the quote]
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I missed the 1992 Democratic primary because I was absentee and the state party had a fucking caucus. I’ve hated caucuses ever since.
Baud
@H.E.Wolf:
It’s a similar reason why older voters are more valuable.
Another Scott
@catclub:
DataForProgress.org – Biden Dis/Approval and Gas Prices
Yeah, it’s stupid and has caused all kinds of problems over the decades. But it’s there, and humans are weird.
I actually wrote to my state reps once when the VA governor pushed through an “abolition of the gas tax” which was no such thing. They just pushed it onto the wholesalers so that it’s not a separately visible tax as far as the person using the pump is concerned. I said that the gas tax was too low, and pretending to abolish it was lying to us and counter-productive. Didn’t get a reply…
Price is an important signal in an economy. If we want people to use less gas and oil, then it needs to be more expensive. Yeah, it sucks if you’re used to gas being $0.35/gal and filling up the tank for $5. But it also sucks to: send hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to countries that oppose our interests; spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a military systems and defense doctrines to protect oil fields and shipping lanes and tankers; heat up the planet burning ancient carbon and change ecosystems and the biosphere in dangerous ways in the span of decades when the fossil record tells us that changes like that over millions of years are hugely disruptive; etc., etc.
:-/
[/rant]
Given all that, and the dangers in the world right now, it’s good at the moment that Team D isn’t having to fight the bedwetters that post disingenuous stuff like OMG it cost $357.82 to fill up (my 850 HP V-12) pickup (with 120 octane AvGas)!!1
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@geg6: Well, I don’t know if it’s a County thing or if it’s just a screwup. I get other mail from the County, including other election mailers, but I have never received a sample ballot. I have gone online and found them, and then I write it all out by hand.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@BethanyAnne: Oh, no! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that! I hope the process gets better from here!
chemiclord
@Matt McIrvin: That was one of the reasons why I was entirely agnostic on replacing Biden. Because it’s really not going to matter in a way that eases our minds.
NO candidate was going to make this election cycle free from worry. We are going to be wringing our hands all night because it’s going to be close, regardless of the name on the ticket.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Tom Bonior has been reporting on a jump in voter registrations since the Harris campaign began.
Ed. Voter rolls close in a little over a month and we’ll get final figures not long after.
I noticed North Carolina’s 2020 turnout percentage was substantially higher than Georgia’s. This may have been because there was a Governor’s race on the ballot.
Mousebumples
@pieceofpeace: I’m in Wisconsin and still getting photos of my mail. Hopefully it’s a glitch that’s short term for you.
hueyplong
@cmorenc: cmorenc knows this, but for nonresidents, if you go to a Cook Out at 10 pm on a hot night for a shake, you’ll be waiting a while to get it.
lowtechcyclist
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I just had a colonoscopy on Tuesday (due to turning 70; my last one was at age 60), and really, once you’re done with the prep, the procedure is no big deal. They knock you out, do the procedure, wake you up, and you resume your normal life. At least, assuming they don’t find anything concerning while they’re in there.
TBone
It truly irks me to no end that medicine tries to make us think that nutrition prevents disease. To an extent, yes of course it may help a bit, but it is not a woo magic bullet in any sense. The fittest, healthy-diet-following person can drop dead of a heart attack at any moment. Mom put us all on the healthiest of health food diets for years and Dad still died of colon cancer despite eating roughage at every meal. We had no salt (we used Mrs. Dash), no sugar, and only Mom’s homemade better butter or canola oil. Red meat? Unheard of.
When she got dementia after/during Dad’s last battle, she wanted only salmon and full fat vanilla ice cream after all those years of deprivation. No wonder.
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: I’m with you! My absentee ballot arrived (out of state) the Wednesday after the 2008 Presidential Primary, and I was so annoyed. On Election Day, I half debated trying to register at a border town to just vote for the Presidential race, but I didn’t think that would actually work. The 6+ hours to get home was not workable.
Wisconsin has a “Vote By Mail All Year” and “Indefinitely Confined” option. We do the former each January or February. When the kids get older, I’d like to go in person with them, but I’m usually out of town for work meetings for February primaries and November elections.
Wisconsin voters – go to http://myvote.wi.gov to sign up to vote by mail.
geg6
@Suzanne:
I’d check to see if the county Dems send out sample ballots. My sample doesn’t come from the county, but from the party.
HumboldtBlue
Windows 11 sucks in ways that even the GOP doesn’t suck.
Bupalos
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Except it now could just as well be a Trump election-denier sign since it has no Harris ID. The idea of a political sign isn’t to talk to the kind of people who steal signs.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Also, a lot of that ease is still with us. 2020 really made early voting and especially voting by mail into a normal thing in most parts of the country, and many (most?) states have made the 2020 changes permanent.
Hoodie
@cmorenc: I was a little disappointed he didn’t take him to the Roast Grill.
narya
@PST: Yes! I was given that option, but I have too many different pairs of glasses (readers, when wearing my contacts; regular glasses; computer glasses that I also use when reading a book at dinner) so selected an app instead.
Suzanne
@H.E.Wolf:
This is an interesting stat. (I will note that “college graduates” could be really any age over 22 and that “college voters” usually refers to voters who are currently in college, so likely to be in the 18-29 age cohort, but I see the overall point.)
What interests me the most is wondering how long this will be true. The population of people going to college has changed a lot. Lots more women, lots more PoC. Women have been moving further left, Black people have always been the keystone of the Dem coalition, Latinos are more mixed. Lots of shifts happening.
skerry
I’d like to raise awareness of a League of Women Voters website vote411.org
By entering your home address you can register to vote (probably not all states), verify registration, see what’s on your ballot, find your polling location and more.
ETA: It may not be fully populated at this time but will be prior to the election
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: There were systemic polling misses in 2022 in a number of places, if you look at the projected margins. In both directions, even. Florida and Texas were worse than the polling suggested, parts of the midwest, Arizona, and even places that were disappointing like NY were off by several points in our favor. What was closer were the outcomes. Not that many races were flipped because the margins were off.
But those margin misses are important to consider when you’re looking at close and tossup elections. There are fewer and fewer of those, granted. And it’s an open question whether 2024 will look more like 2018, 2022 or 2016, 2020.
frosty
@p.a.: That “someone” who talked about counting the votes was Joe Stalin.
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yeah, that’s something my wife and I noticed and took advantage of for the primary this spring. We took advantage of the opportunity to find out which school board candidates were the good guys and gals, and which ones were the book-banning types, and voted accordingly.
Danielx
@Trivia Man:
Would be great but would require rebuilds of a lot of post offices.
Bupalos
Actually that’s very much in there. The slots given to R’s-for-Harris were very high-profile and she had potent lines in her acceptance speech about cross-party consensus.
WhatsMyNym
@pieceofpeace: Do they show up on your Informed Delivery by USPS account?
The Audacity of Krope
@HumboldtBlue: So do I, but that usually results in smiles.
NotMax
Trying out perusing the blog on a phone. Honestly, dunno how so many of you routinely manage it.
;)
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue: After moving the Start button back to the lower left, I came to terms with W11. Still miffed they took seconds away from the calendar clock. “Who needs that?” somebody somewhere, decided.
Me, when setting my camera clocks.
The Audacity of Krope
@NotMax: I’ve actually come to prefer it on my phone.
TBone
@NotMax: howdy!
Captain C
@lowtechcyclist:
“Um, sir/madam, how did you get a lightbulb and full dinner set up inside yourself? And the lightbulb was turned on! How? Why?”
TBone
@skerry: I love the League!
E.
@H.E.Wolf: Isn’t a lost white vote the same as a lost black vote? All that stat says is, given a person eligible to vote, if they are black it is ten times more likely they will vote D than if they are white. What am I missing?
NotMax
@TBone
Testing out the new and nifty Bluetooth keyboard with built-in track pad. Were is not for that would not attempt typing at all using the phone’s keyboard.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Sure, but it’s pretty obvious that the voting-age population couldn’t have increased nearly as fast as the vote totals have. America didn’t grow by 50% between 2000 and 2020.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Agree. 2020 was a high turnout year.
Fake Irishman
@Matt McIrvin:
You also had R- affiliated polls flooding the zone with scary-looking numbers that didn’t match internals or non-partisan public polls and distorted averages.
On one level that’s self-defeating. But narratives can influence resource distribution. I do wonder if incumbent Dem senators (eg Murrary and Bennett and Hassan) who were seeing polls showing them in much more competitive races than they ended up being in for example sending a couple of hundred thousand extra to Wisconsin in September and October could have gotten just enough traction for Mandela Barnes to take down Ron Johnson.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve LaBonne:
As the saying goes, FUCK THE FUCKING NEW YORK TIMES.
Stolen valor on Gov. Moore’s part? No, just a fucking paperwork screwup, a fact of which they’re aware but was buried deep in the story. But they made sure the headline implied stolen valor. Fuck their asses.
eclare
@TBone:
No salt and no sugar? Wow. My mom loved to bake desserts, especially fruit cobblers, sugar was a mainstay growing up.
Matt McIrvin
@Fake Irishman: Kind of reminds me of how political candidates always sound waaayyyy more pessimistic in fundraising appeals than they sound in voter appeals.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@NotMax: [BJ on a phone] When I’m at work I use my Android phone because my work computer belongs to my client. It takes some getting used to and typing is a pain. The worst problem is when somebody posts a comment that “breaks the blog”
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: People run away with it to a degree that few doctors would endorse, too, like the people who insist that their keto diet means they don’t need vaccines.
TBone
@eclare: Mom was a voracious reader and became extremely health conscious in the late 70s/early 80s with the pro health culture of the time. My aunt (her sister), a former true hippie, influenced her as well. At least she didn’t make my aunt’s carob cake recipe 🤣 – she just took out the bad and replaced it with healthy. We had Sweet N Low (until that was found to be awful too). I never bothered with it though.
At first it was a shock for us kids and Dad – one day, she went through the kitchen and BLAM we were eating healthy from that day forward. After a week or two it seemed normal. Of course, we still had special occasions with unhealthy foods, and pizza or Chinese once in a while.
Jeffro
@cmorenc:
@hueyplong:
re: Cook-Out…I’m sure their shakes are good but their “BBQ” sure is awful
brantl
@Betty: More than anything it makes me question the common sense and intelligence of the American people.
I think average IQ must be dropping right into the toilet.
NotMax
@Mr. Bemused Senior
On an Android phone*, viewing with Firefox Focus browser.
*No phone functionality with U.S. carriers, it’s a device I use as a mini-tablet for watching programs and movies on the plane because it has a generous size really nice OLED screen.
TBone
@TBone:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-carob-traumatized-a-generation
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Caucuses suck and fortunately Democrats in Virginia have moved away from them. The General Assembly also stepped in with a law mandating primaries for Congressional races. That enabled John McGuire to knock out Bob Good in the 5th CD primary this June.
Eolirin
@trollhattan: They’re putting seconds back, if they haven’t already
Though it’ll be behind a setting.
brantl
@Leto: project 1885 hire.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin: How close are you to Worcester? I have moved to the area in the past two years.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: It baffled me–the Virginia Democrats had a real presidential primary in 1988 (I remember because I voted in it) but then they went to a caucus in ’92.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: Not very close–I’m in Haverhill, just this side of the New Hampshire line.
catclub
Think of how stupid the average American is. Now realize that half of them are even stupider.
There was some goofy study that claimed some group was getting stupider because of the reduced crop of Nobel Prizes. It did not normalize for age, or population, or the fact that more prizes are going to different places. I would say the kids are no dumber
and probably smarter.
laura
@BethanyAnne: best wishes for a swift and complete recovery. Word of advice- if you are fitted with a velcro abdominal restrictive girdle, be sure and wear it for the prescribed period of time. You do not want to find yourself with a future hernia and repeat surgery.
Eolirin
@HumboldtBlue: I actually can’t stand using Windows 10 anymore now that I’ve gotten used to Windows 11’s right click menus. They’re so much better at reducing travel and number of clicks for basic tasks. The only real issue is with legacy context menu extensions, though we can just hold shift to get at those now.
The improvements to snapping windows are also very nice and makes multiple window management on 10 feel awful in comparison. The only thing I don’t like is the Start Menu’s all apps view UX.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@H.E.Wolf:
Another key takeaway from the catalist.us site:
It’ll be really interesting, post-Dobbs, as to how the above shifts this year.
TBone
@NotMax: I have become so adept at using the tiny keyboard because I can sit anywhere and not stuck in front of a CRT screen or with a laptop weight in my lap. I resisted cell phones for many years, until I formally retired in 2018 and like to be outside as much as possible – if not in the glory of the wild, at least tick-free under my carport in a comfy outdoor Lazy Boy recliner where the grass grows only few feet away. I’m lucky to have the beauty of suburbia here (my neighborhood is truly beautiful), it’s almost a solace after moving out of the wilderness.
I hope you’re having as much fun as possible on your away trip!
Eolirin
@catclub: Bleh. Intelligence seems to be distributed on a bell curve. The majority are actually the average, it’s not half above and half below.
Yes, there are as many above average people as below average people, but they’re both rare, and increasingly so the further you get away from the middle.
Suzanne
@brantl: Average IQ has been climbing. May be a testing methodology issue.
SatanicPanic
@brantl: Intelligence is like inflation, it’s pretty much always going up.
gwangung
@New Deal democrat:
Any pollster who DOESN’T uptick Black turnout this year should be drummed out for malpractice.
Gravyboat
@trollhattan:
@Eolirin:
Putting seconds on the Windows 11 clock:
Settings -> Personalization -> Taskbar -> Taskbar Behaviors
Check the “Show seconds in system tray clock” checkbox.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: It’s not just. There’s also signs of broad educational improvements in the population, and there’s been broad improvements in access to nutrition and some other important markers. We know from a lot of good research that IQ tests are not purely measuring a static inborn value, and that such a value likely does not exist.
A more educated population should score better on an IQ test in the aggregate than a less educated one all things being equal. Same thing for a better fed one.
The tests are recalibrated periodically to adjust for that constant upward rise. It’s been going on since the tests were invented.
So they’re mostly good for measuring relative capability inside a specific generational cohort. And there’s a ton of issues even with that.
rikyrah
Danielle Moodie (@DeeTwoCents) posted at 7:32 AM on Fri, Aug 30, 2024:
.@DanaBashCNN reformulated GOP smears and talking points as questions. She, a white woman, asked a Black and Indian woman to explain her Blackness—the same way Trump called for a birth certificate… how does this garbage pass as journalism?!? 1/2 #WokeAF
(https://x.com/DeeTwoCents/status/1829497444150964481?s=03)
Eolirin
@Gravyboat: Okay, cool, that did go live. It was in the insider builds a couple of months ago. I wasn’t keeping track as to whether it got pushed out to normal users.
BethanyAnne
@trnc: it’s always the last place you look hee hee
BethanyAnne
Thanks for the good wishes everyone I really appreciate it
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: I’d heard that over just the past few years, the Flynn Effect stopped and began to reverse. I don’t think anyone really knows what this means, though I’m sure the worst people in the world will be drawing terrible conclusions from it.
Michael Bersin
@Gloria DryGarden:
Trail camera pointed at the sign (r), usually in a nearby tree or pointed out a window. Infrared. Motion detector.
The local cultists in my neighborhood have started putting up their shrines to Fascism.
I’ve had signs stolen, destroyed, and nasty stuff stamped into the snow in my yard. I’m not letting those @#$%ing Fascists get away with it.
The replacement (October 18, 2020)
Michael Bersin
@cmorenc:
Ah, yes, the “Good Germans.”
I’m not ready to make nice (October 21, 2024)
mrmoshpotato
I don’t trust him, so I’ll be dropping my ballot off again – or voting in person if I don’t get it like in March.
SatanicPanic
Anyone planning on having babies when Trump gets the government to start paying for everyone’s IVF treatments? I’m shopping for baby stuff as we speak.
NotMax
@TBone
Thus far it’s covered the gamut.
Broadway show Wednesday night, attending a cremation service Thursday afternoon for a quasi-relation who died on Monday.
;)
frosty
@Jeffro: We tried Cook Out once. Their burgers were meh too. Better than BK and McD but not up to In n Out or Five Guys.
wjca
Starfish:
At least in this part of California (don’t know if it’s state-wide) our registered voter list at the polling place (and at the county election center) is updated in real time. If they receive a mail ballot, you are marked as having voted, and can’t vote in person. If you check in to vote in person, that is instantly reflected where they process mail-in ballots, and any mail ballot arriving after that moment is discarded.
So basically, you can try to vote twice. But the system is designed to prevent it. And, as a poll worker, I have personally seen at least one case where it happened.**
** Guy’s wife used his envelope to send in her mail ballot. So he was shown as having voted.
The Audacity of Krope
@frosty: I love In ‘N Out, but I’ve always found Five Guys exceedingly disappointing.
NotMax
@The Audacity of Krope:
No Five Guys on Maui. Tried the one in NY near Mom’s place pre-COVID.
One bite was enough. Could barely choke it down; pitched the rest into the nearest trash barrel.
frosty
@The Audacity of Krope: It’s the best I can do on the East Coast. :-(
tam1MI
No love for Steak’n’Shake or Shake Shack? (I’d add Culver’s to the list as well, except I only go there for the deep fried cheese curds).
The Audacity of Krope
@NotMax: I love Cajun style spices. Can’t get enough.
Five Guys Cajun fries taught me I can get too much.
@frosty: I’m stuck here on the East coast with you. I make damn sure to hit In N’ Out when I’m elsewhere, though.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: My intuition would be that we’ve reached the limits of about a hundred years of improvements on childhood nutrition and education and are possibly backsliding some. At some point that persistent rise was going to stop though. A lot of reasons suggested for why it trended upwards over time weren’t things that could improve forever; a lot of them were tied to a state of being impoverished, financially and intellectually. The more the baseline is consistently well off on those factors, the less room there is for things to move.
Something similar with the effects of childhood nutrition on height. Kids don’t eventually start becoming 7 or 8 feet tall. If you feed all the kids well you cap out eventually.
Eventually there isn’t as much room to see that kind of continued improvement.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Hope distributor comes through. What a great idea!
wjca
What would be far more informative would be percentages for a) registered voters vs. eligible adults, and especially b) percent of registered voters actually voting.
As you say, those are fast growing states. So the raw numbers are pretty meaningless.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Just to be clear – I should have added this initially – I’m not advocating blindly giving to the particular candidates listed there. I’m advocating as using it as a starting point for other investigations – e.g. looking at funding levels, etc.
If you’re getting screaming e-mails begging for donations, but they have 10x as much money as their opponent and more than enough to make a strong run, then maybe someone else could use your prospective donation more. Etc.
I haven’t looked closely to see how Gaba decided to include people on these list. Again, it’s just a convenient starting point.
Caveat emptor! :-)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kristine
@narya: A few years ago, I took part in a study for the J&J Covid vax (evaluating 2 shots instead of 1). I had worked in pharma for over 25 years, but on the product R&D/development side. Experiencing the clinical side of things was really interesting.
The Audacity of Krope
Never been to Steak’n’Shake. Shake Shack was fine, but not really stand out. I slot it into the category with Panera; “somewhat good, but for these prices I can do better.”
Betty
@Suzanne: I don’t know why it would be different for overseas absentee ballots, but my PA ballot came this year with no request on my part.
Kristine
@PST: Oh, I would’ve loved that!
I’m going to be on the lookout for similar studies.
TBone
@NotMax: oh, I love live shows! I hope you really enjoyed that and were able to be ok through the other gathering.
My favorite Broadway show was Bubbling Brown Sugar as a kid.
Garden guy
@Mousebumples:
Same here in NC. My spouse is a retired mail carrier and former union president: she’d all over shit like this glitch. I wouldn’t worry.
sdhays
@The Audacity of Krope: I’ve never been to In ‘N Out, but agreed on Five Guys. Almost inedible.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@sdhays: Julia Child was an In ‘N Out fan. Me too.
john b
@Jeffro: Why would you go to a burger and shake joint for barbecue?
Ukai
@catclub: “You know…morons.”
(Quoting Blazing Saddles, obvs)
divF
@strange visitor (from another planet): By my experience, the colonoscopy makes you only semi-old. I got one last year, and when the Gastroenterologist’s report came back, she added a note saying “Congratulations! You will never have to do this again”. This because I’m over 70.
mrmoshpotato
@The Audacity of Krope:
In ‘N Out must be awesome then.
The Audacity of Krope
@mrmoshpotato: I only had the opportunity once, taking a day trip during my CA vacation from San Clemente to Las Vegas. We stopped in (I believe) Fresno and I spent five of my last ten dollars, no regrets.
Everything was prepared after I ordered, tasted so fresh. Fries and burger cooked and seasoned perfectly. I know from a documentary I read that they locally source their ingredients as much as possible. Even the condiments stood out as extraordinarily tasty.
Ivan X
Ok, here’s a stumper: New York lets you apply for an Early Mail ballot, or an absentee ballot. I have spent a half hour trying to figure out why there would ever be a reason to request the absentee ballot rather than the early mail ballot. Does anyone know?
My best guess is that there is no reason; absentee ballots had already existed, and then the Early Mail ballot was created. Bureaucracies being what they are, the absentee ballot remained.
jonas
@mrmoshpotato: Five Guys has better fries — I like the crispiness and seasoning — but I’ll take an In-N-Out burger over a Five Guys one any day. Their shakes also rock.
Timill
@Ivan X: Early mail ballot applications are time-limited (max: all elections this year) and need to be renewed, whereas absentee ballots are permanent until cancelled.
I think.
https://vote.nyc/RequestBallot
Matt McIrvin
@Ivan X: A similar doubling of systems exists in Massachusetts, and as far as I can tell, inertia is the only reason there.
The absentee ballot system has always required some kind of excuse. When no-excuse mail ballots were first introduced in 2016, they were not available for all elections, only for the biggest statewide elections. They were expanded to cover all elections as an emergency measure during the COVID pandemic and I believe this is still the case. But absentee ballots still exist.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: That’s pretty much my guess too, but I’ve seen some alarming headlines about a rapid drop in general IQ and that might have been down to stresses associated with the pandemic.
Of course, there are always people fretting about some kind of dysgenic drift causing genetically less intelligent people to outbreed smarter ones (as in “The Marching Morons” or “Idiocracy”) requiring sober men to step in and regulate human reproduction, etc., etc. Sometimes it’s overtly racist, sometimes it’s not. The J. D. Vances of the world like to seize on it.
The Flynn effect was always a good rejoinder to these people but if we don’t have it, we lose our best argument.
sab
I know a few months ago the post office was warning us not to put mail in boxes after the pickup time, for fear of mail theft. Since our latest pickup time is about 11 am, that sucked.
Since then they have altered all the mail boxes. You cannot reach a paw in to steal stuff. The slot now is so thin you can only fit a thick letter in. So we can safely mail things after hours.
Yay post office even with DeJoy in charge. There was a problem and they fixed it.
Kayla Rudbek
@sab: they took away most of the drive through mailboxes/drops at my local post office, so now if you have anything larger than a letter, it has to be dropped off inside. And the inside after hours package drop will frequently be jammed (in fairness I probably have jammed it up a few times).
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish: every signature is verified, and I think a second ballot would flag, after the first one went through. I never worked on that team, but I would think they catch it, flag you, put it a pile w double voters, and come after you for fraud.
I missed this, trump is telling people to vote twice? Openly? Telling people to do a highly illegal act? There must be a law….