Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The willow is too close to the house.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Books are my comfort food!

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

This really is a full service blog.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Encouragement, Endorsements, & Otherwise

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Encouragement, Endorsements, & Otherwise

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(#bydhttmwfi = But you don’t have to take my word for it)



 
And if you like a little schadenfreude with your weekend breakfast…

Journamalistic botfly Tara Palmeri, at Puck — “Mylanta in Short Supply at Mar-A-Lago”:

We’re less than a week from Election Day, and the mood inside the Trump campaign has undergone yet another transformation. Last week, I reported on the preemptive but undeniably palpable sense of euphoria washing over Mar-a-Lago as data rolled in depicting early-voting surges in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. But now, as the early results from Pennsylvania reveal an influx of first-time female voters who will likely break for Harris, a newfound anxiety is taking hold. While Trump continues to claim he has a massive lead, setting the stage to contest any unfavorable result, some in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was two weeks premature.

Pennsylvania is obviously a must-win state for both campaigns… but it’s really crucial for Trump. While his inner circle feels confident about winning the Sunbelt, they recognize that they have a good chance of losing Michigan, where the gender gap is stark and students are coming out in record numbers. (A new CNN poll shows Harris up 5 points in the state.) So the situation in Pennsylvania—where women have outpaced men by 13 points in the early vote—has sent the campaign into a tailspin during the past two days.

Not unlike 2020, Trump and his allies are preemptively making outlandish and extreme assertions to lay the groundwork for a claim, if they don’t prevail, that the election was stolen. They’re also engaging in the early stages of election lawfare. “They’re going so crazy here,” said a campaign source. “Anyone who hears how rabid they are about this issue can’t walk away from this and think they feel comfortable about where they’re at in PA. They’re talking about criminal referrals. They want to find poll watchers who they feel are engaged in voter suppression so that they can refer criminal prosecutions.” (An R.N.C. spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.)…

As I reported two weeks ago, Trump has already zeroed in on Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley as his scapegoat if things go south. The lawsuits have also already begun—one of which they won in Bucks County, when they complained that a poll watcher had turned people away till Election Day because the lines were too long. (The judge ruled in their favor, extending the drop-off day for mail-in ballots to November 1.) Democrats, meanwhile, have sued over alleged ballot problems in Erie County, according to Politico.

And while Trump may want to blame Whatley and his “election integrity unit” for a loss, the campaign is also preparing to blame outside groups who were supposed to handle Trump’s ground game. Sure, figureheads like Kirk at Turning Point and Elon Musk at America PAC are firmly planted in Trump’s inner circle and would probably walk away unscathed. But the same can’t be said for Phil Cox and Generra Peck, who have essentially commandeered Musk’s America PAC and are seen as too closely aligned with Trumpworld’s collective enemy Ron DeSantis. “We’re solely focused on winning, and we’re not looking at anything else. That’s the only thing that matters,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung…

Saturday Morning Open Thread 34

(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

141Comments

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    LOL at Trump and his team *just realizing* running a fascist-anti-women-racist-dudebro campaign might’ve been a bad idea.

    Oops!  They did Nazi that coming!

  5. 5.

    Baud

    It would make me so happy to see women and young people standup for themselves. If labor joins them, that would be the coup de grace.

  7. 7.

    frosty

    Re: “The ground game is insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    I’ll be out this weekend and Tuesday to see if this matches 2008, the year I showed up for an afternoon shift and they told me all the walk lists had been covered and handed me door hangers for every house, R and D both.

    I haven’t seen anything like that since. Here’s hoping!

  9. 9.

    sdhays

    It’s interesting, of course, to know what the Trump team thinks, but Trump doesn’t hire for competence. I just have to laugh at their “confidence” about winning the sunbelt. Sure, maybe they can pull it out there, but if they’re not similarly “confident” about winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, that means that things are bad enough that their delusion field isn’t strong enough to make them believe.

  10. 10.

    lowtechcyclist

    ·Nov 1, 2024

    @Phil_Lewis_

    Inbox: Lessie Benningfield Randle, one of the last known living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, cast her ballot for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. She turns 110 on Nov. 10.

    “All of our children deserve a president who will inspire them to learn from history, not a tyrant who will try to erase it,” Randle said.”

    I just saw this in the overnight thread, and now tears are running down my face a second time.

  15. 15.

    Ken

    “Mr Trump was too undisciplined, and his attention span too short, to stay on message much less stage a coup.”

    High praise indeed from the WSJ. I wonder if they also considered “too stupid” and “unable to form intent due to diminished mental capacity”.

    Also I assume the point of this, um, endorsement is that  they’re trying to argue that he didn’t plan a coup, and January 6 “just happened”, which means they hope none of their readers paid attention to the Congressional hearings.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    they hope none of their readers paid attention to the Congressional hearings.

     

    More precisely, they hope their readers are cult members who will shut down their brains and incant the talking points they are given.

  17. 17.

    narya

    @Baud: I record the evening shows (I don’t watch TV during the day) and then just zip past anything that’s annoying me. I haven’t finished his show yet, but both he and Reid were concentrating on the stakes rather than the horserace. Reid also had on the head of NBC’s election desk; he walked viewers through what’s going to happen when on Tuesday (e.g., some states can’t start counting these ballots until THAT time, etc.). He was also entertaining, because he was kind of a schlub–he looked like he had to borrow his blazer from someone–but also knew WTF he was talking about. I became a fan of Hayes during the pandemic; he focused on having knowledgeable people on. And sometimes O’Donnell is interesting. Basically, I listen while I’m doing needlework or something like that.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    Seen the WSJ op-ed from retired general McRaven?

    These are things a disturbed 15-year-old boy would do, not the commander in chief, not the man who holds the nuclear codes, not the leader of the free world. Source

    Missed to mark by 10 years, but still….

  20. 20.

    New Deal democrat

     

    Via Meredith McGraw:
    https://nitter.poast.org/meridithmcgraw/status/1852532277198147987#m

    Trump’s final stretch of rallies:
    SATURDAY:
    Gastonia, NC
    Salem, VA
    Greensboro, NC

    SUNDAY:
    Litiz, PA
    Kinston, NC
    Macon, GA

    MONDAY:
    Raleigh, NC
    Reading, PA
    Pittsburgh, PA
    Grand Rapids, MI

    4 rallies in NC
    3 rallies in PA

    His campaign must see those as the ultimate swing States. I agree. He must win both: if Harris wins either one, he’s toast. The 4 rallies in NC really stand out: he must be afraid he is losing it.

    Harris by contrast is doing two rallies in Nevada and one in every other swing State. Which I take to mean that she is worried about Nevada but pretty confident about the “blue wall” States. Otherwise why spend time in AZ and GA, which are reaches for her.

    Trump’s one and only winning issue is immigration. The Puerto Rico insult at his MSG rally was a double edged sword, because lots of people (sigh) think PR is a foreign country, so it reminds them of that issue. But everything else he has done since highlights his worst issues – with women, cognitive decline, general thuggery. That’s a good way for the campaign to close – for Harris.

  22. 22.

    narya

    PENZEY’S ALERT! 50% off everything in stores (except saffron, vanilla, and gift cards); 25% off online orders. I think you have to have an email for the stores, but online the code is LOOT for 25% off.

  24. 24.

    montanareddog

    OT

    Kemi Badenoch elected Tory leader

    The Tories have chosen a black woman to lead them, not because they are “woke” of course, but because she is an even more extreme RWNJ than the other RWNJ candidate, Jenrick. The Trumpification of the Tories is progressing nicely as they try to draw Farage supporters back into the fold.

  25. 25.

    Trollhattan

    Visited the Wake campus where signage everywhere presents resources for early voting, dealing with voting difficulties, rides to the polls. Good!

    Trump ads are uniformly apocalyptic and feature a sound bite of Hair Fuhrer and his buzzsaw voice. Don’t wish to meet anyone inspired by them. They’re jarring because California isn’t bombarded like this.

  30. 30.

    Ocotillo

    Some observations from a Texas early voting poll worker:

    I am asked to assist people who are having difficulty navigating the mechanics of voting on the machine.  This enables me to often see who they are voting for.  Almost all elderly white people were voting red.

    Women did appear to be outnumbering men at my polling site.  On the last day, lots of women who were voting for the first time but were middle aged.

    Quite a few people appeared to have voted only in the top of the ballot races, we have 6 pages of races but the voters were finishing too quickly to have voted in all the races.

    Trump campaign people were the only uncooperative campaigners requiring the police to come enforce distance rules.

    Despite constantly being busy, I think actual numbers were down from 2020.

    I remain optimistic for team blue.

  31. 31.

    eclare

    @narya:

    Ooh thanks!  I need some things.  Penzey’s emails to me go into my promotions folder, and I can’t figure out how to change that to primary folder.

  33. 33.

    Eolirin

    @Ocotillo: Allred pulling an upset greatly improves our chances of holding the senate. Not exactly gonna hold my breath, but it would be nice.

  38. 38.

    TS

    @Ocotillo:

     Almost all elderly white people were voting red.

    I find this incredibly sad – do they not care about their children/grandchildren? I would be defined as an “elderly white woman” and I cannot think of anyone I would be less likely to vote for than trump.

  39. 39.

    sab

    @NotMax: I think the problem with Chris Hayes is that he did his best when he had a Saturday show. Then his guests were people with serious day jobs who only had time to appear on weekends. They had actual expertise rather than pundit celebrity. Now as a nightly regular he tends to get the usual cast of professional pundits. The people with real expertise don’t do weeknight talk shows because they need to go to bed to function in the morning at their real day job.

  40. 40.

    Almost Retired

    @Trollhattan:  I can only imagine what Trump ads must be like in swing states.  Caravans of trans-gender athletes are en route to your hometown to wrestle your daughters and take your guns?

  42. 42.

    citizen dave

    @eclare: It’s a good Gmail question, and this looks like it could do the trick (via google search, of course):

    How do I change where certain emails go in Gmail?

    To stay in control of where your email goes in an inbox category, you can: Move a message from one category to another: On your computer, drag and drop an email into a category. In the notification, to confirm that you want to send all emails from the sender to the category, click Yes.

  44. 44.

    OlFroth

    There was a Harris canvasser in my neighborhood on Halloween.  He saw my signs and asked “Is it safe to assume you’re voting for Kamala?”  I told him it would be safer to assume that my wife and I already voted for her by mail.  We filled out and returned our ballots as soon as we got them in early October.  Meanwhile, Trump’s ground game, such as it is, seems to be doing nothing but strewing Trump signs all over the public rights of ways and destroying Harris signs on the same.

  47. 47.

    eclare

    @Geminid:

    I’ve visited there because relatives live in Greensboro.  It’s very nice.  Close to mountains, not too far away from the beach, historic downtown, easy to get around.

  49. 49.

    catclub

    Trump campaign people were the only uncooperative campaigners requiring the police to come enforce distance rules.

    in early 2021 there was a GOP push for ‘true the vote’ style poll watchers.
    Does anyone know if that is happening? It is the GOP version of a ground game.

  50. 50.

    Ocotillo

    @Eolirin:

    My dog interrupted me and I forgot to mention, many more first time Gen Z voters this time around.  My polling station is in a red part of San Antonio but women, young people and non-whites appeared to all be turning out in higher numbers.

    This is not scientific but in my little slice of the world, I have guarded optimism.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    Curious how FYWP handles the time change tonight for its own inbuilt witching hour of 2 a.m.

    We may all be shunted into a parallel universe on Sunday.
    ;)

  52. 52.

    Trollhattan

    @Geminid: Snapshot only, pleasent smallish city with a vibrant downtown featuring arts and entertainment and free parking after 6.

    Wake campus is splendid and clearly impacts the community. Have not seen enough neighborhoods to gauge living quality, but like everywhere we’ve been in NC, the car is king. “We’re very suspicious of the whole ‘sidewalk’ thing.”

    Southern hospitality isn’t a myth. Folks seem happy to have you at their establishment.

  53. 53.

    citizen dave

    @eclare: Yes, computers!  Doesn’t often work the same way as shown in a google search.

     

    My issue is reducing my gmail and hotmail due to running up against their limits

    Just went to my Gmail.    Didn’t try to move one, but I highlighted an email in “Promotions”; then right-click, and a choice down the menu is “Label As”.  I’m thinking if you change the check mark from “Promotions” to “Personal” that might do it.

  56. 56.

    catclub

    @Geminid: I grew up there and agree, although much more suburban sprawl than 50 years ago.  Traffic seems pretty heavy.  But I would go for ‘The Grecian Corner’ restaurant.

    Housing seems pretty affordable.

  57. 57.

    Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Almost Retired: Here in Berks County PA the enormous number  TCFFG’s ads are now blameing Kamala for Astronomical Prices, the BORDER CRISIS of thousands of Muuders and rapists entering the country at her invitation to get social security and Aalso that we are on the brink of WW3 and her “weakness because her weakness had already caused 2 wars.  I wish I were exagerating.

  59. 59.

    Ocotillo

    @TS:

    Yes, I share that with you.  Oddly a lot of Vietnam vets and some Korean War veterans going for Trump.

    I play neutral and do the job professionally but I was biting my tongue wanting to scream at them.

  60. 60.

    catclub

    @Trollhattan: Wake Forest University was founded by Baptists, and has one extremely weird trait that no one really thinks about [except me, natch].

    Their sports mascot is the ‘demon deacon’.

    Realize that a deacon in the baptist church is a church elder.

  61. 61.

    Ken

    @NotMax: Curious how FYWP handles the time change tonight for its own inbuilt witching hour of 2 a.m.

    It worked OK last year.

    @NotMax: Curious how FYWP handles the time change tonight for its own inbuilt witching hour of 2 a.m.

    It worked OK last year.

    @NotMax: Curious how FYWP handles the time change tonight for its own inbuilt witching hour of 2 a.m.

    It worked OK last year.

  66. 66.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Almost Retired:

    I am in the opposite of a swing state, southern California, and the ads I see claim that Harris will open the border to a flood of murderers who will be provided with free sex change operations.

  69. 69.

    dmsilev

    I guess maybe it’s at least starting to dawn on Elon Musk that actions have consequences and he’s making himself a lot of enemies.

    Too bad it didn’t happen several years ago. Enjoy the ride, Elon. Maybe you can fuck off to Mars and we’ll all throw a giant party when you leave.

  70. 70.

    TBone

    @frosty: yes!  But watching the faces in the crowd in that video of K.D. live – they know they are witnessing something they’ll not see again in this lifetime.  Plus, K.D.’s FACE during same and at the end when she bows…

  71. 71.

    narya

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I love both of them. She continues to grow–she impresses me so much–and his “eat the rich” approach to organizing is so fierce! I have to think that his work has put more votes in the Dem column.

  72. 72.

    RaflW

    Some not in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was wrecked on the shoals of that Nazi rally in MSG. It’s also absolutely delicious that a whole new generation is being outraged by the Access Hollywood tape.

    In a weird way, the mainstream media having total amnesia about that may hav made it’s resurgence on TicTok more powerful. It seems to have come as a bolt out of the blue for younger voters, and it serves as a further condemnation of 1) the lazy press and 2) older voters who failed us in 2016.

  73. 73.

    Lapassionara

    @NotMax: If so, I’d like to be in the parallel universe where Hillary won the 2016 election and Trump crawled back into his hidey-hole.

  75. 75.

    AWOL

    @NotMax: He used to say on MSNBC that we needed a strong GOP to keep Liberal Excess in check. I stopped watching that Bronx AssClown after that.

  76. 76.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    I want NC.

    If Trump wins, he’d probably sell it to you for the right price.

    In ‘as is’ condition, of course: no point in doing any more fix-up after Helene if he’s selling it off.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    Closed caption funnies just now.

    Dialogue: It comes from the heart.
    CC: It comes from the hot.
    :)

  78. 78.

    TBone

    Yesterday, my cousins provided me with a copy of a birthday book they put together for their mother, my AuntJ.  It’s her 80th birthday!  They wrote to all of her friends and family and we all contributed a few paragraphs, and my cousins added photos.  When I saw all that love concentrated into a .pdf, it was…

    Anywho, I sent two .gifs of Levar Burton back to my cousins yesterday, one with that exact quote.  WE LOVE YOU LEVAR, thank you for coming to Philly!

  79. 79.

    Another Scott

    @montanareddog: Plus, they’ll be able to blame her when the continuing disaster continues.  And an OxBridge white guy with good hair will be able to swoop in after her and “fix it” some time later.

    Same as it ever was.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    Captain C

    @dmsilev:

    Maybe you can fuck off to Mars and we’ll all throw a giant party when you leave.

    Perhaps the people at Space X whose job it is to protect the actual company from him can convince him that they have a Mars base ready to go but they absolutely must have him, and only him, onsite to make it work.  If they throw in one of those sexbots done up to look and sound like Grimes he might even go for it.

  83. 83.

    JiveTurkin

    @New Deal democrat: Starting to think PA might be more difficult than GA, maybe even AZ.  AZ has the advantage of having the lunatic Kari Lake on the ballot.  In GA, black voters make up 30% of the electorate, and female black voters greatly outnumber male black voters.  And female black voters hate Trump, we might be saved by black women.

  86. 86.

    MinuteMan

    … some in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was two weeks premature.

    Or, maybe there was never a there, there. That’s what happens when you ingest your own BS!

  87. 87.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    data rolled in depicting early-voting surges in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.

    According to Meidas Touch, exit polling seems to indicate that those early-voting surges were not in the Republicans favor. Plenty of Republicans seem to be crossing party lines, not surprisingly.

    Even among the few entertainers they’ve been able to get to their rallies, a lot of those are publicly announcing that they’re voting for Kamala.

  88. 88.

    JML

    Elmo is in the paranoia stage of too much drug use. Clearly doesn’t realize that liberals don’t really care about him all that much, only when he shoves himself down our throats, because we can tell that he’ll destroy himself just fine on his own.

    I really hope the ground game is working and pushing the Harris margin higher and higher. I believe that she’s going to win in PA and MI…a little worried about WI (fucking hell there’s a lot of angry crazy in the state these days, but it seems like the suburbs and exurbs of MKE are getting tired of the antics and crazy of TFG) but I think it comes home. NC and GA are the ones I’m watching the closest. Flipping NC and holding GA would be pretty massive and guarantee the win even if there’s fuckery in NV.

    The GOP’s usual shit targeting is in force in my area: I’m getting texts to vote for TFG, the local congress critter has hit me with 3 mail pieces in the last week. Utter waste of money, but they’re not IDing anyone, just spamming the whole district.

  89. 89.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax:

    Fuck 2016, I want to go back to 2000 and keep Palm Beach County from implementing the Butterfly (Effect) Ballot that cost us Florida.

  90. 90.

    Yarrow

    @TBone:  Yeah, it’s sad. She had cancer and was in hospice so it wasn’t a surprise. Her sign at the golf course will forever be an all time great.

  91. 91.

    FDRLincoln

    The weekend before the 2016 election, the warning signs were already flashing. HRC was still ahead in the polls, but EMAILZ was dominating the news, the Access Hollywood story was fading, and there were rumbles of things not being as they should be in the blue wall states, with local pols sounding the alarm.

    Totally different vibe this year. Completely.

  92. 92.

    Another Scott

    @Trollhattan: Good summary.

    W-S has (unsurprisingly) lots and lots and lots of tobacco history and museums and giant houses and so forth remain from those days.  Lots of textiles history there as well (Hanes).

    It is pretty spread out, pretty hilly, pretty countryside.  Some quite poor areas, some exceedingly expensive areas.  If you want a 15 acre homestead within about 20 minutes of downtown, you can find it there.

    Lost of growth in the near suburbs in the last 20-30 years.  One could see it turning into a new Asheville as that area continues to get more expensive and huge.

    Most of the city and areas to the NW is represented by Virginia Foxx. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    Shalimar

    @sab: I don’t listen to anything more than the ads for it, but Chris Hayes has a podcast which sounds like it is basically an in-depth discussion with one guest.  Maybe that is like his old Saturday show.

  95. 95.

    Tony Jay

    @montanareddog:

    Badenoch is exactly what the modern Tory Party membership want in a leader. Insanely Hard Right and willing to become even more so on request, contemptuous of all Woke, Cultural-Marxist opinions, but black, so can be used as a shield against accusations of racism while, actually, giving licence for them to be super racist.

    She should be an absolute gift to newnewlabourinc, but I’d put money on them instead trying to stake out a position on cultural/immigration issues slightly to her left and fumbling it so badly they end up losing votes on the left and pushing other voters further to the right by normalising their terminology and choice of ‘issues’.

    It’s sad, but an inevitable result of the UK’s political establishment lunching so far to the right we’re tipping into the North Sea.

  96. 96.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @TS: There’s no racist like an old white racist. To the bone. Welp, as my old pastor used to say, “It’s a sin to wish someone would die, but it’s just being a good Christian to pray that they have a peaceful death.”

  97. 97.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @catclub:

    Every presidential election I hear there will be organized voter intimidation wingnuts at the polling places.  Usually I hear about the wingnuts actually planning it.  In 2020 of course we were hearing that Trump’s incompetent goons in Portland must be a ‘trial run’ for that.

    It never happens.  Personally I think it’s because conservatives are too lazy and cowardly.  Scream and carry a toothpick, that’s the conservative way.

  98. 98.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @JML: As I said in the overnight thread I grew up in Grand Rapids MI and my parents still live there. It’s on the other side of the State from Detroit and is far from a hotbed of Detroit sympathy. When I talked to my mom last week she said everybody there was pissed about what he said about Detroit. I mean if they’re pissed all across the State that says something. Guy can’t stop insulting people he needs to vote for him.

  99. 99.

    Shalimar

    @AWOL: I understand what he’s saying from a poly-sci theory perspective.  In practice, the US has never had enough liberals to excess.  The coalition that makes up the Democratic party is too broad for that.

  100. 100.

    citizen dave

    All along my working assumption is that Orange Man cannot, will not, get more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020.  Per wikipedia, for PA: Although Trump had won the state in 2016 by a narrow margin of 0.72%, Biden was able to reclaim the state, winning it by a similarly narrow 1.17% margin.

    Biden had around 19000 more votes.  The Dems are surely working the state like hell, plus those hundreds of thousands newly-pissed off Puerto Rican voting citizens…

    One very weird thing to me is that an orange man/couch humper administration doesn’t seem like it would even be functional, in that there are not enough competent people to join that shitpile.

  101. 101.

    gene108

    @Trollhattan:

    Makes for instant subtext when they play the Blue Devils.

    Duke University was originally Trinity University, a Baptist institution. The Duke family, who owned American Tobacco and lived in Durham, poured a lot of money to build their campus* and get the name changed.

    Wake Forest University was originally in Wake Forest, NC, a town just north of Raleigh in Wake county. In the 1950’s, one of the big tobacco heirs (forget which off the top of my head) gave them a lot of money and land to relocate to Winston-Salem.

    *Duke’s campus copied the campus if either Princeton or Yale (I can’t remember which Ivy) because that’s what the Duke family wanted for their large donation.

  102. 102.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Melancholy Jaques: Now THAT is a unique campaign strategy. I did not have it on my bingo card that Trump’s campaign would run as the 21st century version The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

    Kewl.

  103. 103.

    caringandsensitive

    @eclare: In gmail just drag the email to your primary folder. You will be asked if you want all further emails from them to go there. Say yes

  105. 105.

    jowriter

    @Trollhattan: Spent last weekend in Texas with a dear friend and saw the bombardment of ads aka lies for Cruz and some PAC ads for the orange grossitude, plus good ads for Allred and Harris.  Since I’m from NY, it was a revelation. Ugh. My friend lives in Austin so lots and lots of Harris/Walz signs, far more than for the other guy.

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @catclub: I have never set foot in Winston-Salem, but I’ve driven past it many times traveling between Virginia and Atlanta. I figure the climate has to be good, and I can tell just looking from I-85 that the North Carolina Piedmont has a lot of economic growth so far this century. The resulting demographic changes are much like the ones here in Virginia that have turned my state from red in 2000 to purple and now blue.

    My friend Debbie keeps me posted about a friend of hers who moved last year from Charlottesville to Greensboro. The woman has North Carolina roots. Her parents and grandparents lived in Munroe County, North Carolina and were very much involved in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 60s.

    Debbie’s friend really likes living in Greensboro. She likes it much more than she liked living in Charlottesville, which for all its liberal reputation is not that great a town for Black people to live and never has been.

  112. 112.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    It’s kinda weird, but I hardly know NC at all.  It’s weird because I know Virginia quite well (except for Southside – I’ve never spent any time there), I know SC pretty well from having lived in Columbia and Florence while in grad school, and also have a decent knowledge of upper east TN from having worked there for 5 years (while living on the VA side of the line).

    So my life has NC practically surrounded, but other than one trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Smokies with my then-GF back in 1982, and a couple of brief visits to Asheville, I’ve spent almost no time in the state.  Probably spent less than 3 weeks there all told, including time spent driving between VA and SC.

    My older sister just bought a house in Greensboro, so I figure we’ll be down there for a visit before too long.

  113. 113.

    E.

    @Lapassionara: I’m holding out for the timeline where Gore beat Bush, there were no Gulf wars, no war in Afghanistan, and Joe Lieberman got run over by a car shortly before the inauguration.

  114. 114.

    lowtechcyclist

    @E.:

    I’m holding out for the timeline where Gore beat Bush, there were no Gulf wars, no war in Afghanistan, and Joe Lieberman got run over by a car shortly before the inauguration.

    And September 11, 2001 was just another stunningly beautiful early fall Tuesday.  And we actually started to do a few things to slow down global warming.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    The weekend before the election the NYTimes chose to focus on “wokeism” – a really long opinion piece disguised as straight reporting on…The Threat of The Woke. Not tax policy, not health care, not womens health, not immigration. The Woke.

    I cannot imagine paying 120 bucks a year for this sloppy, thrown together garbage. Their customers are suckers.

  120. 120.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @New Deal democrat: Trump’s appearing in Salem, VA.  Please, please, please let that mean that the main intermediate school bully of my youth, Morgan Griffith, whom I had to hit to make him stop picking on people (I did NOT get in trouble as this was the 60s) is in deep Kim Chee in his Congressional race.  That would be SO SWEET.

  121. 121.

    Captain C

    @Kay:

    I cannot imagine paying 120 bucks a year for this sloppy, thrown together garbage. Their customers are suckers.

    I think at this point the upper management of the FTFNYT is deliberately trolling their readers.  They can’t honestly think their garbage is worthy of the self-proclaimed Paper of Record, can they?

  122. 122.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I hope you get down there. Greensboro is a nice day’s drive from where you live. It’s not far from the Ridge Ridge Parkway either. The Parkway from Mt. Airy to Roanoke is an especially easy stretch so you could make a nice loop on your way home.

  123. 123.

    AWOL

    @Shalimar: Yes. Academic in some centrist farthole of a university in 1951, I guess.

    I was born in 1959. All I’ve seen is fascist excess, from the assassinations of 1968, Kent State (fuck you, Thurman Munson), the shootings of anti-KKK protestors down South in the early 1980s that seems to have escaped memory , the burnings of Black churches that seem to have escaped memory, Reaganism, Bushism, Cheneyism, anthrax attacks that seem to have escaped memory, the worship of greed, the fascist anti-truth brigades, the worship of weaponry and war and the brutal, ignorant police, and of course, the current pile of shit we’re all stuck in due to these psychotic genocidalists just beginning to get their death on thanks to that drunken Ohio incel (that’s the next step).

    What Liberal Excess, Mister Hayes? And yammering this on prime time in the 2010s???

     

    Fuck him.

  124. 124.

    Citizen Alan

    @OlFroth: Any news on whether that little bastard who got caught stealing 60 Harris signs actually got arrested? I wanted to see video of his hateful mother crying over it.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @Captain C:

    It’s smug and self satisfied. They’re assuming their boy, Donald Trump, will win and all the wokesters will be silenced.

    It’s an early Trump victory celebration.

    I’m to the point where I want Kamala to win solely to beat these insufferable essay writers.

  127. 127.

    Dave

    @Kay: I’m impressed that it still loons so large with them given that whatever excesses of “wokeism” that mostly existed online and occasionally in pandering way in universities and corporate boardrooms have largely faded.

    Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the Times is still on it. They manage to be, like so many of our private institutions, incredibly parochial in their perspective.

    They were made a bit uncomfortable and it will take the institution decades to get over that.

  128. 128.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: It’s worse than that.

    southpaw

    ‪@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social‬

    so uh who in the newsroom asked for this post-publication edit?

    ‪Editing the Blue-Gray Lady‬ ‪@nytdiff.bsky.social‬

    ·
    16h

    Change in Abstract

    [ image ]

    ALT Text – Before: Mr. Penny is charged with manslaughter in the May 2023 killing of Jordan Neely, whom he put in a chokehold in a subway car. Video of the incident spread online.

    After: Mr. Penny is charged with manslaughter in the May 2023 killing of Jordan Neely, a homeless man menacing passengers in a subway car.

    November 1, 2024 at 8:12 PM

    They’re fascist-enabling monsters.

    FTFNYT.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @Cheryl from Maryland: So far as I know, mediocre Morgan Griffith is not in trouble. Neither are the two other House candidates scheduled to appear at the Salem rally, 6th District Rep. Ben Cline and state Senator John McGuire who’s running in the 5th CD. And while Republicans say Virginia is “in play,” they know it’s not. So this rally has people scratching their heads.

    It’s got party official Rick Anderson waxing nostalgic though. Anderson told local media about how he fondly remembers seeing President Richard Nixon speak at the Salem Civic Center in 1969, on behalf of future Governor Linwood Holton. It sounded like this was the high point of Anderson’s Republican childhood, maybe his Republican adulthood too.

  130. 130.

    Mark’s Bubbie

    Anybody else read Tim Alberta’s latest article in The Atlantic about the Trump campaign? It reads like a post mortem! As my mom used to say, we live in hope!

  132. 132.

    lowtechcyclist

    @AWOL:

    What Liberal Excess, Mister Hayes?

    Oh, they still remember all of the liberal movements of the second half of the 20th century as the “excesses” that conservatives regarded them at the time.

    The funny thing is, practically all of what people on the left side of the political spectrum back then fought for is now taken for granted.  Civil rights, women’s rights, opposing the Vietnam War, cleaning up our air and water, gay rights, Native American rights,  laws protecting worker safety, laws for making children’s toys safe, laws against sexual harassment and marital rape.  Fighting for all these things was viewed by a good chunk of the population (and probably by the editorial board of the FTFNYT) as excessive at the time.

    So if one forgets the particulars of what was being fought for, there’s this residual image in people’s minds of liberals forever going overboard in what they were demanding.

  134. 134.

    AWOL

    @lowtechcyclist: You captured it perfectly. And to these lunatics, as we know, all these enlightenments have been Stalinism—or whatever misdirected label they can apply to it—to them, the regressives.

    But again, MSNBC is a station that promotes revisionist history of the modern GOP, and two or three decent hosts in the evening can’t ever take the bad taste out of my mouth.

  139. 139.

    OlFroth

    @Citizen Alan: No idea, but as I was coming home from my daughter’s riding lesson this afternoon, some MAGAott had knocked down all the Harris signs at the I-279/ Camp Horne Road interchange at the Josephs Lane/Camp Horne Rd. intersection.

  140. 140.

    satby

    @Yarrow: Oh, I thought her passing was close, she hadn’t tweeted in a few days. Her daughter tweeted her award of an honorary doctorate just two days ago. RIP to Janey, (this used to be her proudest achievement, with her one woman protest in Scotland against Trump, but somebody is a baby about the word).

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