Excellent news for us broads (and gentlemen, and gentlethems) abroad, particularly us Pennsylvanians:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit by six Republican members of Congress seeking to make Pennsylvania election officials institute new checks confirming the identity of soldiers, sailors, and others who vote from overseas and to make sure they’re eligible.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner said he agreed with the defendants — Secretary of State Al Schmidt and one of his top deputies — who argued there were no grounds to sue and that the case was launched too late and too close to Election Day.
The Pennsylvania congressmen “provide no good excuse for waiting until barely a month before the election to bring this lawsuit,” Conner wrote. More than 25,000 overseas ballots had already been sent out when the case was filed in late September, the judge noted.
I have nothing more eloquent to add beyond fuck these cockweasels. At every level of government since the turn of the century, the GOP’s constant mean-spirited, bad-faith jockeying for advantage has left our nation weaker and all of us more suspicious and cynical – a process that has been doused with accelerant since that monster came down the golden escalator in 2015.
I want Kamala Harris to win for lots of reasons, but mainly because I want to get out of the defensive crouch. Returning to a posture of mere vigilance, as opposed to panicked hyper-vigilance, will seem like sweet relief. I can only imagine how it feels for our transgender and POC neighbors. Again: fuck these fuckers.
Further to yesterday’s discussion, I wanted to flag up some more data that’s just been published. This time it’s a presidential poll out of Kansas:
TOPEKA — A statewide online survey of political and public policy issues reveals nearly half of registered voters in red-state Kansas who plan to cast a ballot in the presidential election support Republican Donald Trump and more than 43% favoring Democrat Kamala Harris.
The 48.2% for Trump and 43.2% for Harris suggested further narrowing of the Kansas advantage for Trump, who has been the GOP nominee for president in 2016, 2020 and 2024. In 2016, Trump carried Kansas with 56.6% against 36% for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump won Kansas in 2020, but the gap closed modestly with Trump at 56.2% and Democrat Joe Biden at 41.5%.
Only plus 5% for the Rough Beast, you say? In Kansas? Innnnnnteresting.
Anyway: run through the tape, friends. I’m distracting myself by building up my candy stockpile for the hordes on Thursday. Monty is keeping track of inventory for me:
I think I need more Snickers bars. The Child has advised me that I really ought to get Cadbury Wispas and some Haribo Tangfastics in as well. The latter are like a timid version of Sour Patch Kids. I can’t quite bring myself to endorse them.
Open thread.
Steve LaBonne
David Frum hit the nail on the head in 2018: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Andrea Mitchell is retiring in early 2025. About time.
RaflW
It should be shouted from the rooftops that SIX sitting Republican members of Congress launched a giant F– You to our people in uniform around the world. Suing to try to mess with military (and other) ballots cast overseas is just abhorrent behavior.
And also a sign that these treasonweasels cannot win fair and square in a normal election. And they sure behave like they hate our military!
hrprogressive
Under no illusions about Harris winning KANSAS, however if she really does only lose by a couple of points in what’s been a blood red state for generations…
That’s the type or coat tails that could really make waves in states where the EV’s matter (lookin at you, NC!) and or donwballot races.
We’ll see, of course.
JiveTurkin
Last week I said that Harris not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast was probably a mistake. I thought it was a good chance to contrast with Trump and let his audience hear someone who is smart, articulate, and can go 10 minutes without talking about windmills causing cancer. I also figured that it would be a fairly easy interview and might humanize her to a relatively hostile segment of the electorate. Now it turns out Rogan’s people wanted her in studio for three hours. Sure, the sitting VP who is running for president is going to take half a day+ to do an interview with Joe Rogan. She would be crazy to devote half a day to an interview with anyone.
MattF
Re: Snickers et.al.: Commentary from a candy engineer.
Rose Judson
@JiveTurkin: I saw Rogan mewling on social media that she wouldn’t come to him in Austin. Her, the vice president, not coming to him, God’s Own Podcaster! Christ, the entitlement. Hope he chokes on his next protein shake.
hueyplong
@Rose Judson: I’m already disappointed because he didn’t choke on that last protein shake.
jonas
@JiveTurkin: Reminds me of that Apprentice producer who dished a bunch of stuff about Trump recently. One of the reasons the show ended up featuring Trump is that they couldn’t find any real business tycoons who were willing to spend a big chunk of their week taping a stupid reality show. Most of them were too busy, you know, actually running real companies.
He also said that the actual executive offices and board room of the Trump Org were so run-down and shabby they had to build one in a studio so it wouldn’t look shitty on TV.
Lobo
Voto Latino this seems relevant give the events at MSG. Also Mana to appear with Kamala. I wonder how those reggaeton bros feel now?
sab
We got way too much Halloween candy and then only three kids came to our new house. In our old neighborhood we got several hundred kids every Beggars Night (our city does Halloween on the Saturday before actual Halloween.)
So we have to eat a lot of candyourselves. In the mixed treat bag they had Haribo Golden Bears. Those little guys are very bland.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
From downstairs, no:
https://deadline.com/2024/10/andrea-mitchell-ends-msnbc-daily-show-1236161081/
My guess is Mrs Greenspan simply didn’t want to deal with the daily grind of hosting a show. We can’t be rid of her that easily.
JML
I would love to see Kansas (and other plains states) coming around and rejecting the noxious stew that is the GOP, but I will remain skeptical of online polling. That said, if the story is “Kansas trending towards Harris” pump that sh!t up all damn day.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
That’s BCrack-level prose there which means it’s no surprise you’re a front-pager (or wtf y’all are called)
JBWoodford
For the past several years Loving Spouse and I have been giving out small bags of varietal salty snacks (chips, doritos, fritos, etc.) and Rice Krispies Treats to the neighborhood kids, and the kids seem to appreciate them.
Marmot
Hang on, now!
I know I’ll get “but it’s Texas!” from some of y’all, like I’m supposed to know what that means. But in 2020, Biden was only 5.58 percentage points behind.
Is it the recent, more rapid movement in KS?
Sure Lurkalot
@jonas:
Yeah, thanks asshole, for spilling the beans 9 years too late that Trump was the game show host of last resort on your shitty show. Millions of people still think “he’s a businessman” when in truth he’s nothing but a con man heir to a fortune who bankrupted thousands of companies including his own.
Mousebumples
I notice that Kansas polling doesn’t have either candidate above 50%. Did they not push the undecideds?
Yarrow
For those that didn’t see it when I posted it at the end of a dead thread below this is absolutely brutal. Click on the alt text of the picture if you don’t know who the people are.
RaflW
@JML: Like most everywhere, Kansas is changing.
(I noticed when drilling down into the precinct data for Kansas’ vote on abortion, that any town with a population of like 1000 or more, bam it swung more for protecting access. It didn’t even have to be ‘urban’ by my sense of things.)
Marmot
@JML:
Heck yes.
stinger
@MattF: Nice article, but those aren’t Snickers on the conveyor belt in the video. Snickers are rectangular, not square. Now I’m hungry.
Marmot
@Yarrow: Whoa!
Yarrow
Also, re Texas, Ted Cruz or some PAC is now running a couple of different ads. One calls Allred schizophrenic for supposedly saying one thing and doing another.
Second one has Gov Abbott supporting Cruz. That’s a bad sign for Cruz that he has to bring in someone like Abbott to help him out.
Seems like a good sign for Allred but usual caveats apply because Texas.
KatKapCC
I love that.
sab
In Ohio the Republicans are trying to deny my Congresswoman her vote because she registered to vote usimg her house in Akron and they say she should have used the address of her husband in Columbus. And we all know she mostly lives in DC when Congress is in session and mostly in Akron during campaign season.
This issue was litigated in 2009 when John Husted
listedregistered at NW Ohio address although his new wife lived in Columbus. He won, but he was a Republican.That party is hacks from top to bottom anymore.
RaflW
@RaflW: Holy cow! Kansas Democrats should be hitting the GOP over the head with a (metaphorical) hammer over this:
KatKapCC
@stinger: I don’t think the article was implying they were Snickers. The video was just to show the “enrobing” process of candy-making.
FDRLincoln
Observations from Kansas.
Metropolitan areas in Kansas can be broken down as follows:
Kansas City and western suburbs: areas with large black population, mainly Wyandotte County, are very blue. The rich white suburbs, mainly in Johnson County, were reliably Republican until about 15 years ago, when they shifted purple and then light blue, mainly because the Kansas GOP went all-in on the religious conservatism and anti-LGBTQ stuff and that didn’t play well in the suburbs, plus Johnson County is starting to diversify ethnically.
Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas, is superblue.
Manhattan, home to Kansas State University, is purple/blueish.
Topeka, the state capitol, is purple/reddish, split along ethnic lines between very blue minority areas and reddish suburbs. Suburbs in Topeka are not liberalizing nearly as quickly as they did in the KC Metro, probably due to the very very strong reactionary church culture in the city.
Wichita is similar: minority areas are blue, but the majority of the city remains red, thanks to defense contractors and very strong evangelical and catholic presence.
Small college towns scattered around tend to be light red with blue areas around the campuses.
Small towns without colleges are red.
Rural areas are fascist.
All that said, the governor is a centrist Democrat and rather popular. She would win re-election if she could run again but is term-limited out.
The legislature and the congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered. KS-3, the district around KC, is held by a Democrat, Sharice Davids, who is both native American and LGBTQ. She will easily win reelection.
Kelly is much more popular than the legislature, which has a supermajority GOP despite the fact that it keeps doing unpopular things like trying to ban abortion and not expanding Medicaid. It stays red due to gerrymandering and the dominance of the rural areas, although even those areas are losing patience with the Medicaid issue. There is a decent chance they will lose the supermajority.
KS-2 used to be competitive, but the legislature gerrymandered it to be GOP by moving Lawrence into KS-1. KS-1 and KS-4 are hopelessly red.
Can Harris win Kansas? No. But she CAN cut Trump’s margin. He is NOT popular in Johnson County. The bigotry doesn’t play well there, and it is the richest, most populous county in the state.
Scout211
@Yarrow: Yikes! 😳
Joy in FL
@MattF: This is one my favorite things about Balloon Juice. I learn about so many different things that I would never have bumped into on my own. That is an interesting article about Snickers! Thank you for posting it. (comment #6)
Trollhattan
@JiveTurkin: Less than an hour in MVP would inevitably, “Joe, is that the steroids talking now?”
Scout211
Not unexpected, but still good to hear.
Attempted Chemistry
@FDRLincoln: Appropriate that Lawrence is blue and Manhattan is purple.
Sure Lurkalot
Good link to screenshotted article (click on screenshot to embiggen) about the myth of Republicans being better for the economy. Point noted that the Republicans federal income tax cuts lead to higher, more regressive taxes and higher deficits.
https://nitter.poast.org/realKyleKeegan/status/1850961232288743483#m
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@FDRLincoln:
Thanks for the overview.
I drove thru rurl KS, basically along US-24 eastwards from Colby, then on KS-18 last month. Camped overnight in Lincoln.
Every small town had somebody with a massive set of Trump crap festooned along the front.
My wife’s cousins in the El Dorado area (and still some in Salina) are all RWNJs.
Having gone to Topeka many, many times for work over the last 20 years, it’s definitely not seen the political changes but then, it’s not been able to attract people. Pre-covid, they were advertising a $20K bonus to get people to move there.
Anonymous At Work
Obviously, salt-by-the-pound for the Kansas poll, but…a ten-point swing, entirely on gender, would put Texas and Florida into play and doom lesser candidates downballot. My sole worry, and I had this with Biden in 2020, was a “Vote out the felon (but vote in his accomplices)” limited down-ballot successes.
But unless the sample is horribly skewed, this is nothing but good news. Even a +2% performance over Biden 2020 puts the top of the ballot into landslide territory.
Trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
$20k doesn’t buy nearly as much wine as people think.
beckya57
You fit right in here at BJ, Rose, and it’s nice to get a perspective from abroad.
Trollhattan
Rogues gallery of tech bros:
7 Tech leaders cozying up to Trump before election day.
They don’t mention the “Tim Apple” thing.
KatKapCC
@JiveTurkin: She should’ve told him, “Sorry Joe, unlike my opponent, I actually have a job.”
JaySinWA
Out sister-in-law’s surgery is being delayed in part because of Helene’s aftermath. Be careful out there, because there is a shortage of IV fluids.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/health-brief-helene-aftermath-iv-nutrition-patients/
Jeffro
@Dorothy A. Winsor: may we see many, many more snooze media retirements in the very near future
Here’s to you, Andrea!
-Jeffro, #1
satby
Major props to Mark Elias and his law firm for defending voting rights against all these frivolous Republican lawsuits.
At the farmers market today two people still were in their shitty little trump hats. Might as well announce you’re a sociopath.
JiveTurkin
@Trollhattan: What’s really maddening is that the concept exists at all. None of these asshole billionaires are cozying up to Harris because she’s not for sale. Trump overtly lets it be know that he can be bought. The other thing is more basic: if you have ten billion dollars why is your first thought “how can I get my next ten billion”?
Almost Retired
@FDRLincoln: Super interesting, and I agree with your take to the extent I know Kansas. My Mom moved there 30 years ago (long story), so I have made the drive from Los Angeles many, many times. One thing I’ve noticed is that the only towns in the West that are doing sort of well have substantial immigrant populations (Dodge City, Garden City, the ironically named Liberal). Also Kansas got a sneak peek at Project 2025 under Brownback and they didn’t seem to like it (cf current Democratic Governor).
Peale
@RaflW: If the rural folks in Kansas are like the ones around me in Wisconsin, I’m imagining that this happens:
1990: I’m never going to California. Too many gays and goodless people. I can get everything I want in Kansas City anyway.
2000: Christ, haven’t been to Kansas City in years. They opened a gay bar the minister told me. And too many gang bangers or whatever they call them these days. Why go there when we have Wichita close by.
2010: When’s the last time I went to Wichita? Who’d go to that hell hole. We have a Walmart and a Fleet Farm over in Wamego that has everything I want. And cheap gas, too.
2020: I’m never setting foot in Wamego again with all those atheists walking around. Someone told me that there’s a non-binary receptionist at the county clerk’s office. I’m going to the Dollar General in Corbin.
topclimber
Did you know that antifa was behind Jan. 6th? We’ve all heard that for damn near four years.
Trump now claims he is the opposite of a fascist. Which is sort of what antifa is all about.
So yes indeedy, TCFG was not only the mastermook behind the insurrection, but was on the side of the good guys. And he continues to fight fascism by pointing out that KH is the fascist, not him.
stinger
@KatKapCC: So, “Here’s a long, detailed article about the making of Snickers, accompanied by a video of making… something else.”
Why?
wjca
Not under that illusion. But I find myself musing, Suppose it’s Thursday, and we are still waiting for Kansas to finish counting votes to determine the outcome.
“You’ve got to have a drwam,
If you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?”
Jeffro
GREAT point.
TBone
Paul Pelosi’s attacker, DePape, got life in prison, no parole in the Finding Out.
https://abc7ny.com/post/david-depape-man-serving-30-years-attacking-nancy-pelosis-husband-sentenced-life-prison-parole-ca-charges/15485314/
Trollhattan
Entertainment/life after Nov 5, list of forthcoming teevee shows. Most new, with Bad Sisters bringing Season 2–plenty of time to binge #1 (which IMO you can’t not do. Hilarious.)
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241028-11-of-the-best-tv-shows-to-watch-this-november
Princess
It’s not just that Trump is only 5% ahead; it’s that he hasn’t even broken 50%. That’s astounding in Kansas.
stinger
@stinger: Too late to edit. Here’s a video (from about 5:30 to 5:40) of the chocolatifying (enrobing) of actual Snickers bars. The author surely could have found this, if I did!
KatKapCC
@stinger: It’s one brief video in one small part of a very long article. The author simply wanted to show people this process to make it clearer to them what it looked like. This is a very weird thing to get so hung up about.
Peale
@topclimber: Its one of those things that make me frustrated. I think they’re going to show up to harass the poll workers in Philadelpha again this year. We should show up and knock some sense into them. Not Antifa. Just normies. Because I’m getting sick and tired of Maga trying to disrupt things through riot. Same with whatever rally they are going to plan on Jan 6. Last time we stayed away and that didn’t do anything. But if we ever did, you know we’d get blamed for not being “peaceful.” They’ll just memoryhole why we’re showing up and blame us for being so strident.
catclub
There is also the RNC versus Mississippi case on counting mail in ballots that are postmarked before election day but do not arrive until after.
I think it is not going as well as the RNC would like, but the Mississippi GOP legislature is in on the scam. They offered to change the law and the RNC said they did not want that, they want a case they can take to the SC.
catclub
@catclub: I was wrong, at least as of oct 25.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4954413-federal-appeals-court-rules-mississippi-mail-ballots/
From The Hill:
stinger
@KatKapCC: I love Snickers and was disappointed to be shown something else, unidentified. This is a weird thing to keep trying to “correct” me on.
sab
@Almost Retired: I heard on MSNBC that Kris Kobach ( KS AG) has joined the Texas anti-mifepristone case in Texas, citing their new idea of standing that all of those aborted fetuses in Kansas could have grown up to be Kansas voters, so Kansas could lose a Congressional seat if the fetuses aren’t saved.
Does that mean Kansas also has standing to prevent its pregnant teenagers from going to out of state Florence Crittenden homes to birth their babies before adoption? In my pre-Roe youth, girls always went out of state to save embarrassment to their families.
wjca
Simple. And it applies even at a couple 10s of millions. It’s a way to say to others: See, I’m better/more important than you because I have more money [which I actually have no use for, but so what?].)” In other words, it’s a dick measuring contest, nothing more.
That’s why “confiscatory” taxes on incomes above $1 million a year, or other wealth taxes, really don’t hurt them (their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). They can still boast about their gross/nominal salaries to try and impress each other. Which is what they really care about.
Trollhattan
@TBone:
You mean that ANTIFA wannabe assassin?*
* Per the R memory hole.
Jeffro
@sab: good lord
They’re THAT desperate
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: ::reads alt text:: Damn!
Jeffro
Jamelle Bouie: That Revolting Rally Was a Sign of Weakness
(gift link)
Almost Retired
@sab: Kobach is a dangerous buffoon. That’s the first I’d heard of the link between abortions and Congressional representation. And… yeah… the flaw in the logic is epic. Young people have been leaving Kansas since young people have been born in Kansas…
Velocifowl
@JiveTurkin:
It’s not really about being for sale. It’s about what they want.
Thiel and Musk have the same Silicon Valley mindset. They want social security, medicare, medicaid, and everything like that gone completely. They don’t want any regulation or to pay any taxes. Instead all of the money that went to programs for the people will funneled into tech. They want to crash the economy and the dollar and move to crypto as a replacement. From the ensuing chaos they want to change from a democracy to a corporate model where the CEO of America INC is decided on by a board of CEOs of major corporations.
They aren’t alone in this. Several major SanFran players are trying to pull this off on the local level in the city.
We’ve hit the point where post WW2 things haven’t gone the way that the greedy rich, white nationalists, and Christian right wanted. Enough has changed that the situation is no longer tolerable to any of them. So they are not going to stop until they burn it all down to the ground and can reshape the country in their image.
It’s not going away after Trump. I think we are going to win and Harris is the right person for the moment. I also fear three things are going to happen. First Harris has already backed off some from Biden’s economic populism and this is a mistake as it hasn’t gone far enough. Second I feel that the DOJ is not going to aggressively go after the Thiels and Musks and other super wealthy who are orchestrating all this. Third I think Americans are going to get complacent when Trump is gone and disengage from politics thinking the threat is gone.
None of that is from a lack of trust in Harris or a Harris administration. I’m just wracked with fear over the fact that we as a nation have a habit of letting things go and not dealing with the problem we face and then doubling down on neoliberalism once the threat is gone. Eventually it’s not going to work. Eventually the monster will win. And I know I’m not the only one who’s just felt on the knifes edge for almost a decade. Each time the monsters get beaten back they come back angrier. Each step forward we take turns more people into monsters. It’s soul crushing.
Marmot
@Princess: Ah. Thanks!
bob7094
@stinger:
The article states “The flow of the tempered chocolate needs to be controlled precisely to give a coating of the desired thickness without leading to tails at the bottom of the candy bar.”
The actual Snickers have tails. Perhaps the author didn’t want to show a mediocre coating process.
Jeffro
@sab:
@Almost Retired:
I have been mulling this for a few extra minutes (a LIFETIME on the internet, in other words) and…he’s really going to try and say that pregnant women have some sort of obligation to not have abortions, in order to keep Kansas’ Congressional delegation’s numbers up?
(Hey Kris Kobach, you monumental douche: if restoring the rights women had under Roe were to say, happen nationwide, well that’d be a nationwide thing, affecting all states and their precious Congressional delegations equally)
(Plus, Kris Kobach, isn’t your Orange Messiah constantly talking about how great it is to send this issue back to the states? Well, that means a variety of outcomes…which means a variety of impacts on Congressional delegations…so go talk to him about it. Go ahead, we’ll wait)
Jeffro
@Velocifowl: one election and/or one problem at a time, friend. ;)
Trollhattan
“I met Hitler, Hitler was a friend of mine and buddy, you’re no Hitler.”
TBone
@Trollhattan: exactly/
Marmot
@Trollhattan: You know who else had a lot of support?
Hitler!
Scout211
SCOTUS says no to RFK, jr.
LOLOL.
Anoniminous
@JaySinWA:
You can thank “Financial Engineering” that “eliminated the dead wood” to “free capital” to buy back the stock to amp the stock price so corporate management can give themselves a nice bonus.
The result is no redundancy which puts people’s lives at risk.
As too ditto for Boeing and planes and doors falling from the sky.
Ken
Yes, but… someone is wrong on the internet.
JML
I think what’s particularly interesting about Kansas is that because of it’s size movement can happen faster. Moving 100K in voters goes a lot farther in KS and it does in TX, so one of those “how the hell did THAT happen flips” is easier to drop in. And the fact that KS has a Democrat as the governor (whereas no Dem in TX has won statewide in a long-ass time) shows that it can be done. Now, it also may be like KY, which likes D’s in the statehouse but would pour all the Bourbon into the river before voting for D for president, but the dynamics are very interesting.
I’d love to flip a plains state just to change the look of the map, LOL.
sab
@sab: My post sounds heartless, laughing even. Roe v Wade was decided after I graduated high school, so my mind is still before Roe v Wade. I promise you jackals that I am not laughing. My dad was a pathologist. He posted ( i.e. autopsied) women who died in pregnancy and women who died in illegal abortions. We heard about it all through my childhood.
Geminid
@JML: I look at Kansas as an indicator, because politics are more similar across regions now. If voters are swinging to Harris in Kansas they are likely swinging to her in “battleground” states like North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Trollhattan
@Marmot: Right? And one of Hitler’s biggest supporters: Hitler.
“Let me introduce you to meine sehr gut Freund, ME!. Sieg heil!”
“Sieg heil!”
And, scene
Montanareddog
@JaySinWA: Baxter has been unlucky with hurricanes these last few years. The company has several facilities in Puerto Rico where production was severely impacted by Maria in 2017
TBone
@Ken: 😆 I love the classics
JML
@Geminid: certainly potential to see it as a bellweather.
Of course, I’ll take any good news on the momentum scale, since i know the idiotic media only wants “it’s SUPER CLOSE! ZOMG you won’t believe how CLOSE it is!!!” stories
bbleh
Dunno whether anyone else has posted a link to Bouie’s column on the MSG rally, but mark me convinced.
I know what failure looks like. At Madison Square Garden, I saw it on display.
Gift link
TBone
The names of the assholes that brought this, yet another frivolous lawsuit, so we can remember and ridicule them:
Reps. Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, G.T. Thompson, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly and Scott Perry. The other plaintiff is PA Fair Elections, a group led by Heather Honey, an election researcher whose work has fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures.
Velocifowl
@Jeffro:
Tell that to my liver!
Anoniminous
Oddly enough Liberal Kansas was the home of one of the most radical newspapers in the late 1800s:Lucifer: The Lightbearer:
Moses Harmon kept getting jailed for violations of the Comstock Act by *gasp* writing about contraception *eek* and how to do it.
KatKapCC
@Trollhattan: Ah, yes, Hitler. The man who famously had no support amongst the populace.
bbleh
@Peale: “Outside? With all those 5G rays and chemtrails? NO no, I have my groceries delivered and I do all my research from home! And we have the attic lined with DOUBLE sheets of tinfoil!”
Msb
@satby:
and the Brennen Center contributed an excellent amicus brief signed by 5 expat organizations & 7 expat PA voters!
This is wonderful news – now all 3 suits aimed at suppressing the overseas vote (as pathetically small as it is) have been dismissed!
Whoopee!
scav
@sab: Will Kansas soon outlaw moving out of state in order to keep its Congressional representation up? Can’t let those kids go to out-of-state colleges either! (Besides, education, ughhh.)
Geoduck
You’re going to have that many trick or treaters? I barely get a handful every year. And yes, I live in town.
Bill Arnold
@Sure Lurkalot:
I just straight up say things like “As we all know, Republicans are worse for the economy than Democrats”.
Or “As we all know, Republicans are bad for the economy”.
sab
Toxic masculinity.
I live in a house with me and my husband, and seven cats ( 4 girls, 3 boys.) Toxic masculinity is not a thing. They do it, but girls are a necessasary part of life. So the boys wimp out at every encounter.
And I am not toxicly female. I am so passive that my husband has to bang my head against a wall to get me to make a decision that isn’t about house stuff. My brothers in law agree about us girls (except for the fierce 50 yo baby he married.)
Chris Johnson
The Republicans would be doing SO much better if they didn’t insist on being Mecha-Hitler. They’re turning off people who desperately want to sweep the fascism under the rug and vote like their Grandpa voted, and just can’t hang with all this overreach. I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of the rejection.
I continue to think they are only doing it because Russia is making them do it, which is easy for Russia to do because (a) Russia are idiots wedded to their 2016 tactics, and (b) at no point did they want Republicans actually to be powerful. Instead they’re supposed to fight other Americans and weaken the country so Russia can take over the world. This is a dumb-ass plan and it’s working about as well as you’d expect it to.
Understanding this makes it easier to watch the vatniks flail.
sab
OT : We adopted a couple of satby’s rescues last month.
Cats are timid and wary ( the world is scary and we only weigh 12 pounds.)
Things have been slowly progressing, as they do with cats ( the world is scary and we are small.)
We have already five cats and a pitbull ( who loves cats.)
Our new cats thought scary world upstairs. That was Solly, who went to the basement. His sister Echo stayed upstairs under bed.
A month later ( today) I came upstairs and there was huge Solomon sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for food in the basement. That was good.
Then somehow somebody tipped over the five gallon community water bucket, so we spent lots of time mopping up. Solly ( who probably tipped the bucket) fled to the basement.
So we start all over again about feline feelings,
Progress: two steps forward, one step back. And that’s a good day.
satby
@sab: But he’ll be up faster next time. Besides, your basement is a light, bright, kitty heaven with cat trees, hiding places, beds, foot and water.
RevRick
@JML: One of the reasons that Kansas is suddenly becoming competitive is because a large portion of its population is college educated.