I’m back, and while I’m rested and refreshed, I cannot tune out the news, even though I’m trying.
Over on Spoutile, Christopher Bouzy has some predictions that are hopeful and I know he gets a lot of grief, but he does the work. And his 2020/2022 predictions were pretty close. I’ll take any optimism I can get at this point. Bouzy and Alan Lichtman give me hope.
(no idea happened to the screenshot, but it’s here now)
Trump: “I want to protect the women of our country … I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not” pic.twitter.com/mfMEpaWEAX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2024
Harris rapid response team has been on fire:
“Whether the women like it or not” pic.twitter.com/lFbx5rbWrd
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 31, 2024
Not even going to talk about the safety vest…low-hanging fruit. But if you haven’t seen it, check out the video where he almost falls over trying to get in the garbage truck (again, low-hanging fruit, but how perfect is that truck metaphor for his campaign?)
***
Earlier this summer, I believe a bunch of us here sent President Biden thank-you letters/cards. Today I received a very nice letter that made it clear someone at least read mine, which gave me all the feelz.
That’s it for me…I’ll crawl back under my rock. Trying to decide, since I went to lunch with someone over the weekend who tested positive for covid, that even if I test negative if I should hand out candy. I am fully vaccinated…any thoughts? I can pretty much keep a Great Dane’s distance from the kids – that’s who they want to see anyway. Too bad I can’t trust them to hand out the candy, LOL
Open thread
Jay
Wear a mask, you can stuff Skittles or M&M’s in them and snack like a horses feed bag.
Why should the kids get all the candy?
TaMara
@Jay: I have to get rid of the candy because otherwise that’s all I’m going to eat between now and Tuesday. Well, unless I buy some potato chips to go along with the chocolate.
Jay
@TaMara:
Red Wine goes well with chocolate.
TaMara
@Jay: I’m more a whiskey gal.
Alright, I have no idea what day or time it is, I’m on a two hour jet lag and probably should get some sleep.
HumboldtBlue
There’s no low-hanging fruit with this pig, everything about him is disgusting, call it out.
Also, I just came across this.
KatKapCC
G-d almighty, he’s like one inch away from full-on blackface. How does he actually think he looks good like that? He looks like a fuckin rotisserie chicken at the deli counter.
HumboldtBlue
@TaMara:
You should post one of them Noodles pics I just sent you.
Jackie
@TaMara: Wear a mask under a fun Halloween mask. The kiddos will enjoy, and you can enjoy, too!
eta: You shouldn’t have to wear masks constantly – unless you have a butt-load of trick or treaters in your neighborhood.
Jinchi
Funny, but anyone can have a clumsy moment. The real shock is the way his hand shakes and his leg spasms as he tries to reach for it. The guy has some serious physical deterioration going on.
JD Vance sees himself soooooo close to the brass ring, right now.
Jinchi
@KatKapCC: It is kind of weird that the Republican nominees for president and vice president both have a thing for conspicuous makeup.
JoyceH
@Jinchi: is there a link to the video you guys are discussing?
Jackie
@KatKapCC:
Thanks for that image. I’ll never enjoy rotisserie chicken again 😢
beckya57
Sorry, the Bouzy map lost me with the Harris wins FL prediction. Not gonna happen.
Anoniminous
Late night Hopium from Previous Thread:
We’re Winning But Have Not Won It Yet – My Deep Dive On The 2024 Election With Tom Bonier 6 Days Out
Good information
SFAW
@Jackie:
I was going to attempt some type of smart-ass joke about that, but then I realized — you’re right. Damn. And I
likeliked rotisserie chicken.eclare
@JoyceH:
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851768576509608275
Mel
@TaMara: N95 masking will go a long way towards protecting the kiddos for sure (and you – former teacher here, and elementary kids are so adorable but they are mobile petri dishes!) 😺
A friend who was on chemo a few years ago bought a new trash grabber tool, and covered her hand with extra long sleeves so it looked (to very young eyes) like she had a long mechanical superhero arm. It bought her about 2 1/2 feet plus arm’s length distance from the Trick or Treaters. The tiny ones were amazed, and the older kids just thought it was a cool way to hand them their candy.
A neighbor has a front window that opens on to her porch. She made a little candy chute for the window using cardboard boxes, and put up a sign on her door, directing the kids to put their bags one by one under the chute. She’d toss the candy for each kiddo down the chute from inside the house, and the kids absolutely loved it. It took her about 20- 30 minutes to make the chute. It was pretty easy and inexpensive- just old cardboard and tape, nothing fancy or fussy.
Hope you have a great Halloween, and fingers crossed that you don’t have to deal with Covid!
Jay
@Jackie:
@SFAW:
Rotisserie chicken is delicious, flexible, cheap and easy,
more like Melanoma for two of the adjectives.
He looks more like a mud flap at a construction site.
Chet Murthy
@TaMara: TaMara, I don’t think you’ll have a problem. Let’s be extra-paranoid and see what the risks are.
TL;DR you can distribute candy to kids without worry, even unmasked. Seriously.
(1) can you do it outside? That is, the kids stay outside your house? (I’d guess so). Then the standard masking rules don’t apply, b/c you’ve got outside air, yes?
(2) but hey, maybe you’re infectious! And you’re touching candy! So hey, wear gloves! Problem solved! [it’s also pretty much the case that COVID is rarely transmitted by fomites, right? That’s what we learned during the pandemic, yes?]
(3) And last, maybe you can put candy into a couple of bowls, put it on a table on your porch, and just -supervise- the kids taking candy? that would reduce things even further.
Is there any other vector we can think of? I think that should cover it, right?
Of course, sure, you could mask. And as Jackie says, wear a mask under a H’ween mask. But honestly, if it were me, I wouldn’t worry too much. And I wear a P100 mask every day on public transit, in foreign buildings, and when I lift weights. I’m probably one of the most covid-paranoid people here.
HumboldtBlue
I’ve been a renter my adult life, I don’t think I have ever sat around on Halloween and handed out candy.
As a kid, Halloween was a big deal, and coming from an artistic family, hand-made masks were a requirement. The masks were then filled out with costumes that come from a family of eight kids with a penchant for theater, drama and music.
Halloween was a kid-centric night back then, it’s shifted dramatically to an adult party nowadays.
frog
I am watching Lawrence O’Donnell on YouTube. He put up a screen of likely voters in PA, WI, MI. At the top of the columns of percent numbers are pictures of Harris and Trump.
https://youtu.be/CZj5GiAJbrU?t=628
My brain finally clicked on where I have seen Donald “drink bleach” Trump’s picture before. He bears a striking resemblance to Joe “Send your money to meeeee” Isuzu.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=joe+isuzu&iax=images&ia=images
Melancholy Jaques
@Anoniminous:
Thanks for the link. It was very informative.
cain
Trump being on-brand with doing things to women whether they like it or not like grabbing their privates.
NotMax
@TaMara
Got gauze?
This calls for a mummy costume.
;)
JeffH
@beckya57: it was within 3.5 percentage points in 2020 and the garbage island comment is apparently getting tons of attention in south Florida with some big social media names publicly flipping over it. It’s still not likely but it is absolutely possible. It now my most likely state to be the equivalent of Indiana in 2008, namely the one that gets a serious “Really?!?” reaction in a lopsided victory.
EngineerScotty
I’ll say one thing for the (modern) LDS church; they have, for the most part, left their racially bigoted past behind. They still stink on LGBT issues and women’s rights, but on the subject of trying to become a world religion, they are walking the walk.
My LDS neighbors, both Asian immigrants (from different countries): The husband is probably voting for Harris. The wife probably won’t vote, as she doesn’t care much for Harris (not sure why), but cannot stand Trump. Of course, it’s Oregon, and Harris will carry this state easily.
EngineerScotty
It is interesting that in PA Dems have close to 2/3 of the early vote–and there still are concerns about Will It Be Enough, because in the Keystone State it’s believe most Republicans won’t vote until Election Day. Whether that’s simply to support the “red mirage” (which the political media seems well aware of; nobody in 2020 was foolish enough to call it when Trump took an early lead), or because there are plans afoot to ratfuck and exclude mail-in voters and throw the state to PA (unlikely, if for no other reason that the 2020 campaign was conducted under similar conditions), I dunno.
I remain highly optimistic, though–I hear far more reports of Democratic enthusiasm than the GOP variety.
K-Mo
Here’s what I’m thinking:
1. The polls remain uncannily close.
2. It’s likely that the polls are off by a point or two. The problems are a) non response is very high; and b) actual turnout is not measured well by these polls. In any case, the discrepancy is much bigger than the poll margins.
3. There’s been a bit of movement in the polls during the last week but otherwise they have been very stable for weeks. I think the most likely explanation is that there has been some movement in poll response. These things are hard to control for, and the numbers have shifted a small amount. It’s shaky to draw much of anything from this.
4. The way I think about it, the election will be driven by a) the prevailing dynamic which is best represented by the long term stable numbers from the last couple months; and b) how voting differs from a.
5. It’s very tough to know , but but gut feeling is that there are got to be enough “reluctant anti-Trumpers” for Kanals to outperform the polls by a couple points. Principally because I think the Trumpers in many areas are over-aggressive and there are a significant number of people who will vote for Kamala in private without saying much about it publicly. I think the scenario portrayed here is on point for enough people to matter. https://www.wonkette.com/p/george-clooney-says-boys-can-keep
6. All this is just my opinion, but essentially it is why I’m
cautiouslynauseously optimistic this Halloween.ColoradoGuy
Watched Orange T nearly take a tumble before he climbed into the garbage truck. He almost tripped himself before he (barely) recovered, spun around, and clearly struggled with the stepladder into the truck. He came very close to cracking his head on the steel steps. I wonder if he was aware how close he came to a serious medical incident.
He really is deteriorating by the day. I imagine JD Vance can hardly wait.
Ruckus
@Jackie:
I used to love barbecued chicken. Then I enlisted in the USN because I thought that being a walking target in Vietnam just might be a bit risky. I had more than a few days being served chicken. Not BBQ, not rotisserie, not in any way actually eatable chicken. More than once had to help unload semi trailers on the dock with 50 lb boxes of what would end up being meals that were supposed to be actually eatable but the only reason one would eat them was because starving was very, very slightly worse. VERY SLIGHTLY. The worst was when someone transferred to the ship and stated that the food was far better than he got on his last ship. Knowing that what we tried to eat was better than what others had experienced really, really did not make us feel better in any way.
Ruckus
@ColoradoGuy:
I’d be surprised if he knows what day it is. He certainly does not know what reality is.
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
King Charles shivers…
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Hahaha…
NotMax
@Ruckus
Not an aficionado of powdered eggs?
;)
My limited understanding is that submarines got the good grub.
TS
@KatKapCC:
How dies anyone think he looks good like that – I do not know how these folks live with themselves – are they paid to be there?
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Mummy costume decked out with a fancy bespoke hat and matching handbag?
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
See? That’s sexy.
TS
@K-Mo:
There are hundreds of RW polls coming out – to make trump happy because he has to be ahead. When he loses he will scream fraud – because the polls said he was ahead.
No other explanation needed.
Chet Murthy
@HumboldtBlue: Oh wow, that clip is a new release, isn’t it? 1080p! So clear, so much detail!
👻David 🎃Booooooo🎃 Koch💀
I see Dump is already wearing his orange prison jump suit
scav
That man spends an increasing amount of time in speeches mocking and belittling his own staff, his “people” who are always telling him what to say or not say, the opposite of which he is building himself up to utter to great pauses for applause. “Imagine that he pays them money!” I suppose a) being the butt of public abuse is an integral part of the job in his administration as is b) being the designated scapegoat for any missteps. He doesn’t know anything about hiring or vetting a comedian participating in his own major venue prime-time rally (hell, his veep isn’t even paying attention to what is said during their own events.) By all means, let’s put these craven, self-abusing lickspittles into all the real engines of the nation under their oblivious and off-road leaders.
Stuart Frasier
In fairness to Trump, men his age often have low-hanging fruit.
Eolirin
@JeffH: There’s also the abortion protection ballot measure and the general frustration at DeSantis and the state legislature.
While 2022 went very poorly there, the special elections since have swung hard the other way.
I wouldn’t put any money on it, but it’s definitely not impossible to see a win there.
SomeRandomGuy
Well, don’t forget you can send new messages, if you have something new to say. For example, when Kamala wins next week, think of dropping him notes, saying “while everyone is talking about Kamala, for good reason, a lot of us remember Joe Biden who helped save this country from Donald Trump *twice*.”
Especially if you were on the “replace!” side in the summer, include something about how he deserved a chance to wipe the floor with Trump a second time, but you agree with his choice. (Note that this diplomatically splices the facts to form a reasonable truth – rhetoric is *not* a without its uses. By eliding how you maybe agreed with his decision, *before* he made it, you turn a backward compliment into a pure one.)
lowtechcyclist
@HumboldtBlue:
From your quote:
Evangelicals claim to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. And the Bible is quite clear that God loves the foreigner in our land, and we are to do the same, on account of having been foreigners in Egypt. (The Bible talks about this way more than it allegedly speaks about homosexuality, btw.)
But of course they’ve got all sorts of ways to exclude passages that they don’t want to pay attention to. I used to ask, how do I tell the difference between the “THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD!!” passages, and the “what the Bible is really saying here is…” passages. Never did get an answer to that one. So it’s not surprising that evangelicals don’t give a damn about what the Bible says about how we should treat the foreigners in our land.
H.E.Wolf
@Eolirin:
285 of my 450 postcards this year went to FL, encouraging Democrats to renew their Vote By Mail registration.
With an abortion initiative, and also a woman running for the US Senate, I wondered if FL might vote blue-er than usual.
I hadn’t anticipated that citizens of Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage would be denigrated by the Republicans. That too could result in blue-er voting patterns in FL.
Chris
@HumboldtBlue:
Say what you want about the evangelical missionary church I briefly belonged to, but while they were nauseatingly right-wing when I knew them in the Dubya years, a lot of them had gotten disillusioned come Trump, not to the point of voting Democrat but at least to the point of not voting. And yes, it was in no small part because of immigration.
RevRick
@TaMara: Since the pandemic, my wife and I have setup outside a small table with a bowl of candy on it while we sit a few feet away. Dress yourself accordingly.
My wife made little signs on index cards saying “Take Two” since we get bags of the bite size.
The vast majority of the kids are Latinos from downtown Allentown, and, except for a couple of little ones who don’t understand the concept of two, the sign is heeded.
Everybody stays safe and we get to see the costumes and cuteness, and get the “thank yous.”
We had about 180 kids show up.
way2blue
My mother-in-law, as her cataracts worsened began to paint with more orange (she liked to paint in oils). I’m wondering if Trump’s eyesight is drifting that way. Might explain how crazy his already crazy face paint is trending darker… On a related note, the kids in my neighborhood walk to school past my house; this morning one was a Darth Vader, one a tombstone, one a Trump in an orange hazard vest (rising to the moment)…
Jayne
@lowtechcyclist:
These days, asking an Evangelical to share their thoughts on the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is a pretty good way to get them to sputter and stomp off.
really, most of the Book of Matthew is good for that. I suspect he’ll get cut from future editions of the Trump Bible.