Breaking from The Post:
A federal judge on Friday ruled in favor of CNN and reporter Jim Acosta in a dispute with President Trump, ordering the White House to temporarily restore the press credentials that the Trump administration had taken away from Acosta last week.
In a victory for the cable network and for press access generally, Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted CNN’s motion for a temporary restraining order that will prevent the administration from keeping Acosta off White House grounds…
In his decision, Kelly ruled that Acosta’s First Amendment rights overruled the White House’s right to have orderly news conferences. Kelly said he agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied.
He also agreed with CNN’s argument that the White House did not provide due process. He said the White House’s decision-making was “so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me…. who made the decision.” The White House’s later written arguments for banning Acosta were belated and weren’t sufficient to satisfy due process, Kelly said.
So, Trump’s low-quality hires (H/T: Kay) were unable to cobble together a post-hoc justification for Acosta’s ouster nor file written arguments that passed the smell test, even when the sniffer was a Trump-appointed judge. Quelle surprise!
May this decision be only the appetizer course in a banquet of coming legal reversals for Team Shitgibbon!
Now for the bad news: The manual vote recount isn’t going well for Senator Nelson in Florida. It looks like the under-votes in Broward County (where Nelson had to run up the score to have a shot at edging Scott) really are under-votes and maybe caused by crappy ballot design.
Done in by ballot design. Again. It would be comical if the consequences weren’t so serious. https://t.co/NiLembB6dL
— Jonathan Cohn (@CitizenCohn) November 16, 2018
If indeed it’s a ballot design issue, people are going to crap all over the supervisor of elections (a Democrat), and if what I’m hearing from friends in the area is true, she probably deserves it. Perhaps Broward should elect someone more competent to run its elections.
But the fact is, the overall election system in Florida has been run by Republicans for decades and has been a giant clusterfuck — by design! — for just as long. That’s not going to change any time soon since the party that benefits from the dysfunction has retained its hold on the state’s executive branch and legislature and is on track to take both U.S. Senate seats. Le puke.
Maybe we need a ballot initiative to clean up this fucking mess. That’s how we got voting rights restoration past the wingnut legislature and governor. I see canvassing for signatures in my future…
BGinCHI
Kind of makes you wonder why a GOP administration didn’t do anything about Broward.
hells littlest angel
Not looking good for Gillum, either, so good news, bad news, more bad news.
It really is a shame. Florida used to be bluish.
Baud
That’s too bad, but losing is better than being cheated out of a win.
Gelfling 545
According to TPM, the judge in question is a Trump appointee. That’s gotta smart a bit.
Matt McIrvin
Could be again. Margins are small and Florida just repealed permanent felon disenfranchisement, which was a favorite opportunity for election rigging among other things.
Mart
The joke is that Brenda Snipes – Broward County Supervisor of Elections, who is demonized by Fox et al as a cheat, has cost Dems tens of thousands of votes over the many years. She’s a triple secret double agent, on their payroll.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My good news is I got a very nice review of The Wind Reader from Rachel Neumeier, a YA writer I admire.
If anyone wants a signed copy of this book or any of my others, contact me at my nym site and we can arrange the exchange of bucks and books. Christmas is coming!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: We were cheated out of these wins. Just not in a way that there is an easy remedy for. That’s the trouble with messing with voter registration– no recount is going to fix it because the people never voted.
tobie
Sorry to hear the news about Broward. In Maryland, the Governor’s race preceded the Senate and Congressional races on the ballot. In Broward, it looks like the order was reversed with Senate and Congress first and then Governor. I’m beginning to wonder if we have any national standards for ballot design at all. Who decides what race goes first?
Yellowdog
The judge has ordered that Acosta get his press pass back, but will the White House do so?
bemused seniorc
UX Design for elections could solve a lot of problems.
MattF
Re: Acosta:”The reason is I say so.” The WH is just following orders. Orders that emanate from the luminiferous ether.
bemused senior
Typo in the name field of prior comment caused moderation…please release it.
Jeffro
Hmm…I bet a Democratic Congress could propose all kinds of legislation (with funding attached) to help improve the quality, consistency, frequency of voting in this country. And then I bet every Dem in America could run on that in 2020, 2022, and beyond.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: I don’t think there are any. States have a lot of latitude.
Baud
With respect to Gillum, Nelson, Beto, and Abrams, my hope is that the results put an end to the centrist lie that being progressive is a major handicap and to the progressive lie that red states are fully of disaffected socialists who are just waiting to vote for unapologetic progressive Democrats who are not Republican lite. But I suspect those memes still have much life left in them.
Brachiator
CNN should never have had to go to court. A rational White House could have settled the matter quietly. Of course, we don’t have a rational White House.
Also, the press needs to stop playing into Trump’s tiny-fingered hands. He wants to brand them as the “enemy of the people.” They should proudly stand up as the enemy of the pompous, and the enemy of the prevaricators and get on with the business of doing their jobs.
Most level headed analyses I saw suggested that it was unlikely that the remaining votes would change anything, given Florida voter dynamics.
Meanwhile, in California, House races keep flipping in favor of the Democrats.
The sick, sad, thing is that the GOP candidates are buying into and pushing the lie that their defeats are the result of voter fraud and other deliberate attempts to strip them of what is “rightfully” theirs. The Republican Party has decided that they are going all in on every wretched Trumpian tactic, even if it dooms them to political irrelevancy.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I hear you. We unfortunately need a supermajority in too many elections to make up for all the barriers to success.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: Making voting easier and fairer generally has broad support. I think the only real exception is that most people don’t understand why voter ID laws are a problem. But they want districting reform, better and more secure voting methods, early and mail voting, etc. They don’t like it when the incumbent leaders mess with the election either. This is a good platform to run on.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Voter ID is bullshit, but I do wonder whether the most efficient course is to just get people IDs. Maybe a national voter ID card so red states can’t play as many games.
japa21
I really didn’t expect anything different. The margins were quite wide. Still loved seeing Scott go ballistic. However, concerning the ballot design, it basically means 2+% of the voters didn’t even realize there was a Senate race going on. Our Illinois ballots were super easy and I still received questions from people wondering about where a certain race was. They had missed it on the first go around and asked us judges to give them a heads up, because they knew it was supposed to be on the ballot. Not hard to go up to a judge and say, “I didn’t see where the Senate race was, can you point it out to me?”
lgerard
@Mart:
She was originally appointed by JEB!, so yeah
oatler.
“Whatever Harriman’s payin’ you… it ain’t enough.” So long Bill.
James E Powell
After losing the state, and the White House, and thereafter the supreme court to ballot design stupidity in 2000, you would think that whoever is supposed to be running things for Democrats down there would pay attention to ballot design. I mean, give it priority, always consider it, hire consultants, run tests to see if there is any problem.
Whoever is responsible should be taken out and shot! Speaking metaphorically, of course.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: @Matt McIrvin: I understand that the problem with any sort of national ID card is that it creates a path to harass people for not carrying their national ID card (“papers, please”), and we know what sorts of people would get picked on for that. But if that’s what would happen perhaps we can simultaneously come up with a way to criminalize that harassment before it gets started.
Baud
@James E Powell: I think a lot of state parties are a mess. Our side tends to focus on the national party, which leaves state parties somewhat starved of both talent and accountability.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Why is that a greater risk than driver’s licenses or social security cards? Especially if it’s optional and used only for voting. (I understand the risk that people would be tempted to pile more uses on any such card over time).
TenguPhule
@Baud:
I am sick and tired of Florida being a goddamned disgrace when it comes to voting, Never mind all its other major failings, its been 18 years since that state fucked the rest of us over for eternity and the shit is still happening. Maybe it can be reduced to a territory and we’ll have Puerto Rico or DC serve as a replacement until further notice?
TenguPhule
@FlipYrWhig:
This would require Republicans to give a shit about actually following the law instead of being you know…Nazis.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Florida probably isn’t the worst. We just hear about it more because the results are often close enough that it makes a difference.
Sister Golden Bear
For those saying us NorCal folks were wimps for complaining about the smoke…
Air quality index remains officially “very unhealthy” to “hazardous.” Overnight AQI was around 250 (out of a max of 500) near where I live on the Pennisula, with only small improvements this morning. Sacramento is still in the high 300s.
Unfortunately we won’t get the break that was hoped for this weekend, and it probably won’t clear out until next week.
Meanwhile, even though I’m using a P100 mask and have a large HEPA air filter at home, my eyes are badly swollen, my sinuses are full of concrete, and it’s tough to take a deep breathe.
So give it a rest. People (and their pets) are genuinely hurting up here.
Burnspbesq
Per the latest update from the SOS, Cisneros’ lead in CA-39 is up to 961 votes.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear: Who’s doing that? Seems kind of assholish.
Platonailedit
Fucking Floriduh fucks up everything meme is never gonna die, isn’t it?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Matt McIrvin:
My father is one of them that doesn’t understand why Voter ID is a problem. I’ve explained to him multiple times why it’s bad, anti-democratic, and disenfranchises mostly poor and minorities; that it’s a solution in search of a problem. I think he must believe voting is a privilege and not a right, like driving a car.
Yet he hates Trump and votes D.
debit
@Baud: Seriously. I don’t live on BJ but I haven’t seen anyone doing that.
debbie
Trump didn’t even have Fox on his side in regard to Acosta. That’s some deal making. Pathetic!
Yarrow
I saw Floridians saying that Nelson’s campaign wasn’t all that great, that he was kind of relying on his “I was an astronaut” story that didn’t resonate that well with voters now. Also that Scott is a good campaigner and had been spending time all over Florida, partly because he could as Governor, whereas Nelson hadn’t done that kind of work. I even read that displaced Puerto Ricans were going for Scott.
Is there truth in all that? How did Puerto Ricans vote?
Baud
@Yarrow: Nelson and Gillum did about the same in terms of results, so I’m not sure if campaigning skill was the issue.
Yarrow
@Sister Golden Bear: I haven’t seen anyone doing that. Saw lots of discussion about how bad the air was last night, complete with numbers for various areas. Saw lots of “don’t got out in that, it’s dangerous” type comments.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Florida’s Democratic election officers seem to keep fucking the national party in favor of the Republicans far too consistently.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
If they voted according to the projections, not much at all.
TenguPhule
@Yellowdog:
“The judge has made his ruling, now let us see him enforce it.”
TenguPhule
@Baud:
You’re making hope do a lot of heavy lifting there. //
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ooooh! The stuff from peers is always special.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
That’s a good question. What can the court do to force the White House to return his press pass?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Also, my understanding is that while voter ID does have some suppression effect (especially if arcane new requirements get passed right before the election), it’s a small effect compared to some of this other stuff. Indiscriminate registration purges, awkward polling schedules, inadequate voting locations and gerrymandering are a big deal, and most people don’t like them. I think we get a distorted perspective sometimes from listening to wingnuts who genuinely disparage democracy and want voting to be harder; this isn’t actually a broadly popular position. People want voting to be fair.
Burnspbesq
@TenguPhule:
I’ve always wondered what would happen in a throw-down between the Marshal’s Sevice and the Secret Service. We may find out soon if the WH is in contempt of a District Court order.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WereBear: I’m thrilled. Frankly it would be presumptuous of me to think of myself as Neumeier’s peer.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: I think Nelson’s campaign really was kind of shitty. Some folks were expressing panic about it a couple of months ago, and I thought their alarm was premature, figured he as keeping his powder dry until voters were paying attention. Not so much. Truth is, he should have retired this year and passed the baton to someone else. He’s been a Florida politician since the 1970s, as a very effective Scott ad that ran every five minutes pointed out.
It’s not true AT ALL that Scott is a good campaigner. He’s actually THE worst retail politician I’ve ever seen. But he works really hard at building ties to interest groups, and he’s usually disciplined enough to avoid overt partisanship and plays up the self-made business man angle. (That’s why I was surprised when he went full screeching Trumpster conspiracy theorist about the recount.) Scott used the recent hurricane to cut some campaign ads for himself, so that didn’t hurt. Plus, as he did when he ran for governor, Scott pumped tens of millions into his own campaign.
I’m not going to trust demographic info I see about the election until it comes from actual votes, not exit polls.
eclare
How is ballot design an issue? Seriously asking. I vote in TN, and it’s all neatly laid out in a big font. We vote electronically, and there is a screen at the end to confirm exactly what you have and haven’t voted for.
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Congratulations. We are giving the signed copy we bought from you at the library to our grandson for Christmas. I expect he will have finished it two days later, so we will give you his review when we get it from him.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
First come the contempt of court citations.
Followed by more citations.
Followed eventually by orders to federal marshals.
And then things get exciting.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for the first-hand info. I remember you saying that about Nelson. I was also reading elsewhere at the time that people were worried he wasn’t campaigning.
Maybe Scott isn’t a good retail politician but he knows how to get elected. That might have been what I was reading. He’s so awful and I’m sorry you’ll have him as your Senator.
Maybe some good can come from all this. The FL Dem party needs to be reinvigorated and perhaps that can start as a result of this vote.
Matt McIrvin
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: My liberal Democratic-voting parents think it’s bizarre and a bit alarming that I don’t have to present ID in my state. I think (this is not an original observation, read it somewhere recently) that most Americans just find it intuitively obvious that if something is important you have to present ID, and voting is important. And for people who grew up in a culture where driving is a universal characteristic of adulthood, they think of drivers’ licenses as universal.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Congratulations!
Mandalay
@TenguPhule:
Seriously, take a break from the keyboard. You’re like the bore at the end of the bar who everyone avoids because he constantly spouts off on stuff without a hint of understanding.
If you have any evidence that “Florida’s Democratic election officers seem to keep fucking the national party in favor of the Republicans” then let’s see it. Otherwise just STFU.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Democrats that keep their powder dry more often then not find a burning fuse stuck in it by their Republican opponent.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@japa21: I hope he likes it. :-)
TenguPhule
@Mandalay: What part of this did you miss?
Or Karthrine Harris?
Or Miriam Oliphant?
Major Major Major Major
Seriously, how hard is it to design a ballot? California’s seems pretty straightforward.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Lazy memes live forever.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@eclare: Thank you. I’m still excited even a couple hours after the email about it arrived.
Damned at Random
If you are serious about using the initiative process to fix the Florida voting fiasco – please consider vote by mail as we do in Oregon and Washington. Advantages include 100% paper ballots and NO LINES ever. Ballots are mailed out 2 weeks before the election, so if you don’t get yours, you have time to address the problem. If the ballot is long or confusing, you can sort it out at your leisure. I’ve seen people fill out their ballots at Starbucks. I made a mistake on my ballot this year and called the registrar’s office for help in correcting it – if there were 20 people waiting on line for me, I might have just wasted that vote. I’m guessing that the Broward Co ballot design issue would be less of a factor if voters at their dinner tables thought “Hold on- isn’t there a Senate election” – and taken a second look at the ballot without time pressure. It’s a great system from the voter’s perspective and I’m not aware of any complaints from the registrsr’s office either
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s very exciting! Congrats!
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: If you’re trying to use my words to bolster baseless speculation that Dem election supervisors are throwing elections to Republicans on purpose, don’t. That’s not what I meant at all.
Mnemosyne
Four words for you, Betty: nonpartisan ballot design commission. I’m guessing that even staunch Republicans are getting tired of this shit.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Requires competent non-corrupt election officers which Florida seems to be always in short supply of.
Also, the state government would have to actually care enough to properly fund it.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I saw this yesterday about Brenda Snipes:
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: just steal California’s! Stealing non-protected IP is free
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure its on purpose. I’m fairly certain stupidity and corruption at the state party level are major factors.
waspuppet
Today on What If Obama Had Done This: Asserting the right to pick and choose which reporters get to cover the White House.
Notice, as many people have, that the contention that Acosta pushed a woman trying to take the mike disappeared as soon as the dispute got into a courtroom, where there are actual consequences for lying. Remember this for future reference — I always remember the “Clinton’s gonna get indicted!” chorus of the ’90s and how the smart (actually smart, not Beltway smart) set said “Good — let’s get this into an actual courtroom with actual evidence. If anyone ends up in jail, it won’t be Bill Clinton.”
Matt McIrvin
@Damned at Random: This cycle seems to have turned a lot of people off from mail voting because of stories of mass rejection of ballots for supposedly non-matching signatures and such. I think the main moral is that, while this stuff is good, no reform to voting methods wil save you if the state actively wants to fuck with the election. More things need to be left to non-partisan boards rather than elected Secretaries of State who may be gunning for higher office.
Betty Cracker
@eclare: The ballot in question had the senate race (and also a house race?) in the left hand column under a long box containing voting instructions, and it appears some folks missed that. Ballots that had the instructions at the top of the page didn’t have that level of under-votes. Someone here the other day said the house race that was also tucked in under the instructions wasn’t skipped at as high a rate as the senate race, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. It would be fishy if true, but there’s a manual count now, and the counters are reportedly finding that these are true under-votes for Nelson.
TenguPhule
@Damned at Random:
We just saw Republican attempts to disinfranchise mail in votes in several races. Its not a cure all.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Golden Bear:
I definitely haven’t been doing that. We have PM2.5 levels in the low 50s down here and my asthmatic lungs are aching. I can only imagine what it’s like to be trying to draw a deep breath up there.
Now I’m kind of glad I had to cancel my annual trip to the Bay Area. ?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m fairly certain that if Florida Man tried that, all the selections in the boxes would still have the California elected officials on the ballots.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Matt McIrvin:
That sounds about right. A consequence of the creeping surveillance state. It’s occured to me that it’s a lot harder to get away with crimes today than it was 150 years ago.
I know at least Ohio issues State ID cards for those without a Driver’s license. I have no idea if those are free of charge or if they’re issued universally to those that need them. Probably not.
Mandalay
@Yarrow:
Well I voted for him, but with no great enthusiasm. For me (and many others?) he had two big things against him:
– He’s 76, which would have made him 82 at the end of his next term had he won. Far too old.
– He’s been a Senator for 3 terms. Long enough.
In his favor:
– Nelson is a thoroughly honest and decent human being without a hint of scandal or grifting against him. That’s worth something, but it’s not enough.
– His opponent was the spawn of Satan.
Here’s one of his campaign ads that left me feeling “Meh..”. Instead of focusing on his personal virtues the ad should have been saying what he’s done for Florida in the past 6 years in the Senate, except that would have been a tricky assignment.
Yarrow
Awww…RIP.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Depends on the crime.
Law is about 50 years behind on white collar and electronic crime.
Kenneth Kohl
Not to be a total ass-hole, but Mississippi Senator Hyde-Smith strikes me as a bit trailer park-ish…
TenguPhule
@Mandalay:
Florida: “Decent human being or Spawn of Satan?” “Meh, Spawn of Satan it is.”
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: Harris was/is a Republican. Appointed by JEB!
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: lol
TenguPhule
Inadvertently? Its to the point that I can’t tell if its actual incompetence or deliberate anymore.
Justice Department accidentally reveals indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Platonailedit
Looks like Teresa May may survive, for now at least, thanks to the cowardice of ‘real brexiteers’. Guess Tina factor is helping her yoogely.
MattF
NYT has front-paged a summary video of the current state of evidence in the Khashogghi killing. ‘Damning’ is putting it mildly.
It just seems that little Donald feels an affinity with murderers. His kind of people.
TenguPhule
@Yutsano: You’re right, my bad.
SenyorDave
Broward County uploaded Florida recount results 2 minutes late on Thursday
That means all of the recount efforts over the past five days were thrown out. Elections worker Joe D’Alessandro told the canvassing board the delay was due to his “unfamiliarity with the website” used to upload the results.
The aftermath should be that this stupid shit (D’Alessandro) should never have a job of import the rest of his life.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
Maybe Florida could magically be annexed by California if he did steal them. No, that would be a punishment to Cali.
Mandalay
@TenguPhule:
It’s worth noting that you could replace Nelson and Scott with Clinton and Trump, and the spawn of Satan also won on a national level. It’s not just a Florida thing, despite your desperate efforts to make it so.
opiejeanne
@Sister Golden Bear: Who says you’re wimps for complaining about the smokey air? I missed that somehow. I know at lower concentrations I’d be unable to breathe.
Butter Emails!!!
Most people have some sense of empathy and fairness, but it’s based on straightforwardly putting themselves in other peoples shoes. Things that are complicated or require them to think of being that person are a bit tougher.
1.Things like votes that result in massive majorities and victories for the party with fewer votes are easy to identify as unfair.
2. Having to wait in line for hours to cast a vote, or only being able to register between 11 and 12 PM every other Friday pisses people of when they imagine themselves in those positions
3. Things like ID requirements and some of the accessibility games are tougher for them to grasp. They have ID’s, so it should be easy for everyone else to get them. They have cars so things like moving the voting location just off a college campus, or moving it a couple of blocks to a location not directly accessible by public transit doesn’t compute. (Obvious shit like closing the only polling place in a city of 10k+ people and moving it outside the city limits with no public transit doesn’t generally fly though)
TenguPhule
@Mandalay: I’m sorry that I’m ragging on Florida so much. I’m upset.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mandalay:
To be fair, if it wasn’t for the Electoral College, Clinton would be president. To my knowledge, Florida doesn’t have an equivalent of the EC. Nor does it for the US Senate race.
Yarrow
We really need to be supporting Mike Espy. The woman he’s running against is awful.
efgoldman
@TenguPhu
: Do tell
catclub
@tobie: I’m beginning to wonder if we have any national standards for ballot design at all.
hahahahahaha. Next you’ll be telling me the right to vote is in the constitution.
MattF
@Yarrow: She certainly appears to be the genuine article, and not ashamed of it.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Like that guy Charlie Crist I’ve heard a lot about?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
Uh.. that’s a violation of federal law. Yeah, Hyde-Smith needs to go the fuck down for supporting that vile racist shit.
Mnemosyne
@Burnspbesq:
The Hoarse Whisperer (on Twitter) is of the opinion that the White House will publicly bluster for a while and then quietly drop the ban when no one is paying attention.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: Celebrate our many victories. Florida was always going to be difficult.
TenguPhule
Is Mike Pence Loyal? Trump is Asking, Despite His Recent Endorsement
Lol. FTFNYT link.
Betty Cracker
@SenyorDave: D’Alessandro is not just any old election worker; he’s Broward’s director of election planning and development. He implausibly claims that the massive under-vote in Broward is “normal” and had nothing to do with ballot design. Maybe because he’s responsible for ballot design? Just guessing.
catclub
@MattF: I still think the Saudi’s should have said “yeah, we killed him. Yeah, the consulate is Saudi territory.
Yeah, we had a document condemning him to death in SA. Yeah, we are still selling oil, are you still buying?”
It would have saved time, and hypocrisy, for all involved, when the wolrd’s nations continue buying oil from them.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
What made me think of this was watching old westerns. The 19th century (and earlier) was a time where you could escape your past by moving a few hundred miles away. The counter to this of course was that it was harder to travel significant distances.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
This is the 21st century right? I haven’t stepped into some kind of time vortex into the past?
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most:
That was last week. This week is infrastructure week.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: Pence is only loyal to his fellow christian fascists.
chris
@Kenneth Kohl: “…an American politician and lynching enthusiast…”
Yarrow
I’d missed this news:
She claims it’s because the radio format doesn’t allow her to spend enough time with her family. Sure, Laura. ?
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
This is actually still possible. It just means you can’t use credit cards or Facebook.
Aleta
I wonder (for any state), who gets to look at the ballot design before it’s printed? They must use templates. In the Fla ballot, did someone decide to save the cost of printing another page by shifting some boxes around to fit extra on one page? If it’s too political for citizen’s committees to OK, and existing research on design is too much trouble, we could at least use product testers (on a timer, with distractions) in the way ad layout or instruction sets or hey, important things like cockpit design, are tested. Like have a local college department test a mixed age/ability group on the proofs in an exam cubicle room.
catclub
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Suppose some vile racist gives me all his money, and is no longer able to do vile racist things with that money. Meanwhile I can do non-vile, non-racist things with that money.
Should I give that money back to him, because by taking it I am supporting said vile racist?
I do not follow the logic here.
MattF
I’m not going to give a link to the lastest David Brooks column… but it’s worth looking at, if not reading. He considers the Conservative Crackup– in this country, it’s the division between pro- and anti- Trump conservatives, but it’s really happening everywhere. He refers to a recent Atlantic essay by Anne Applebaum, entitled ‘Polarization in Poland’, which I suspect is much better than anything DB could write, so one might start there instead.
Mandalay
@Matt McIrvin:
I feel that way myself, but the problem is that there is an obvious bias in the IDs which are accepted and rejected:
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
Can’t fire the VP, Trumpy. He’s fucking losing it and the new Congress hasn’t even been sworn in yet.
H.E.Wolf
@Kenneth Kohl:
“Trailer-park-ish” as a description has a lot of classist and sexist baggage.
One might more appropriately describe the honorable junior US Senator from Mississippi as an affluent (married to a cattle rancher), racist (makes lynching “jokes”), conservative (100% rating from the NRA; vehemently anti-abortion) white woman.
TenguPhule
Mueller TIME!
Guardian liveupdates.
Martin
@Baud: No, per my election expert coworkers, Florida is the worst and Snipes is the worst elections official in the country. They really have earned this designation.
A Ghost To Most
@H.E.Wolf: Not all white trash live in trailer parks. Most live in McMansions.
zhena gogolia
@MattF:
Everyone should watch that. It’s sickening.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Even more aggravating, Scott had 8 years as FL CEO to get this right. He should STFU with his whining about recounts, etc. “It was on your watch, bub.”
OGLiberal
What is the ballot design issue? Screen shots from that Pema Levy Twitter feed don’t seem to be that confusing. Are the ballots district specific and is what I’m seeing not the confusing balllots?
Martin
@catclub:
Standards? No. Guidelines? Yes. And Snipes ignored those guidelines.
Honestly, we should have standards by this point. There’s absolutely no reason why Congress shouldn’t lay down a set of voting standards that all states must meet. Tie it to some federal tax dollars for enforcement. States can still run their own elections, but they must at least meet the standards.
lgerard
NBC reports that the Federal Marshals protecting Betsy DeVos will cost taxpayers 6.8 million dollars in 2018, That is $18.000 a day! What an incredible waste of tax dollars on someone who goes nowhere and does nothing.
Martin
@OGLiberal: Federal guidelines are that if you have an instruction column that there should be no candidate choices in that column. They should be moved to the next column because voters often don’t read all of the instructions and just dismiss that column and move on. That causes them to miss the race at the bottom of the instructions.
That was a lesson learned after 2000, that apparently some counties are unwilling to learn.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman: Feeling better or same old same old ?
susanna
Nothing like being a camel in PA:
https://altdriver.com/news/camel-in-philadelphia-snow-storm/
susanna
@lgerard: Isn’t her brother of “safe and secure” famed outfit, Blacksomethingsomething? Or perhaps this is their bill?
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Plus Texas is doing shit like insisting that people whose names were misspelled on their birth certificates have to legally change their names to the correct spelling in order to get a “free” voter ID:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.529b0c4735c3
catclub
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: “that most Americans just find it intuitively obvious that if something is important you have to present ID, and voting is important.”
I can think of some counter examples: 1. Church and Communion there.
2. I bet no President-elect has been carded at the inauguration ceremony. Is that important?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Burnspbesq: There wouldn’t be one, the Secret Service’s job only extends to protecting the physical wellbeing of the person they’re charged with protecting. They can do that even if that person is in custody of another law enforcement agency.
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But it was Secret Service who took away his pass.
Gravenstone
@Baud:
Have you any idea how many wingnut (and worse) heads just exploded at the prospect of that? Down that road lies Socialism, young man!
Make it so.
Damned at Random
@TenguPhule: Granted vote by mail isn’t a cure all – but it increases voter participation and isolates the fuckery to the county and state offices which can be held accountable- if one county is rejecting a higher percentage of votes based on signature match, that office can be investigated. I think of it as a pollution issue- point sources are easier to control that diffuse sources. You can put folks in the county office to verify processes easier than watching every location for the fabled Black Panther intimidation, missing power cables, malfunctioning machines, Russian hackers, and so on. At some level, you have to have trustworthy administration, but the easier is to observe them, the more honest they will tend to be – treat the vote count like the cash room in a casino
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
It’s almost all vote by mail in Colorado – no complaints here
Gravenstone
@Baud: Consensus around here from those knowledgeable about Florida was that Gillum’s coattails would hopefully be enough to drag Nelson’s lackluster ass over the finish line. So if their margins were similar, it sounds like that might have been the effect. And also showed its limits.
germy
Let’s keep Pelosi and get rid of Schumer.
Tenar Arha
@Baud: If we built this, it will be weaponized by the courts & the states who prefer to suppress people’s voting rights. No matter how we do it, VoterID will end up acting as a modern poll tax, either in time, money, or both.
Some of the foreseeable problems with national picture based VoterID is that it would likely not be free, it would be for a fee if only for the proper pictures & certified copies of other ID. That fee acts as the first barrier to poorer people getting one. It would likely slot into the existing state bureaucratic systems, with all the shenanigans like closing registries in certain low income neighborhoods that goes along with that. If it required a current street address, you’d have to figure out how to help people who only have a PO Box & those who move a lot because of housing precarity deal with that.
Even if you did it federally by piggybacking on Social Security cards, you’d need to expand their Administrative role & staff & put people on renewing pictures every few years, or add it along with postal banking to the post office’s role. & there’s always the possibility that the usual court cases would kick all this back to the states bc “unconstitutional” interference in local elections requirements.
And finally, the let’s use facts of my personality are practically screaming, it’s a bureaucratic solution in search of solving a nonexistent mythological problem that was made up by the GOP called voter fraud.
/rant
Betty Cracker
@Gravenstone: Nelson ended up with about 40K more votes than Gillum, from what I’m reading on the recounts. The non-presidential election year electorate is generally older and whiter here than it is in presidential years. Turnout was strong this year, but not strong enough, unfortunately.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Butter Emails!!!: This is what baffles me. Repubs think voter ID is absolutely essential for voter integrity. Yet in the same breath if you even suggested a National ID for all citizens they would go into an apoplectic rage about Big Brother.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
What they found out with shit for brains election was that going all in worked. There hasn’t been but a very small percentage of not rabid republicans is years but they thought they had to say the bad parts quietly. With drumpf they figured that saying them out loud worked, so it should work for everyone else. But saying it all out loud seems to offend a lot of the population. Not all of it mind you, but a lot. They are finding out to their dismay that saying the bad (and they know it’s bad, that’s why they used to say it quietly or not at all) stuff out loud really isn’t the best policy. It worked because it was a surprise and because they had demonized Hillary and because they got help and because they gerrymanded a lot of voting areas…… But it also woke up a segment of the population that mostly are not their friends. It has energized that segment like nothing else ever has. So while it worked, this time, and may destroy the country (one of their goals) it was a self inflected wound. Which hopefully will lead to the end of the republican party. Which I doubt, but am hopeful.
Martin
@Baud: We sorta have a national voter id now, with the Real ID standard.
germy
This video:
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Cannot adequately describe how bad the is. Cycled home yesterday when AQI it was reading over 300, which is given a terse “hazardous.” The mow-and-blow guys never take a day off so I got some extra 2-stroke exhaust and yard dust for my troubles. Somewhere out in the exurbs it peaked over 400 overnight (scale ranges from 0-500). Kid’s school district threw in the towel and closed today, so I had her drive me to work. The bike stays home.
No change predicted through next Monday. Anybody thinking about coming to the Bay Area or Sac Valley-Sierra foothills the next few days should consider other plans.
Tenar Arha
@Baud: @Tenar Arha:
Addendum: WOW, I just reread that whole thing. Sorry, I’m evidently quite done with trying to solve problems that the GOP made up out of thin air.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
[Note: don’t read this as confident theorizing, just as outlining a possible scenario.]
The hand recount only examined a subset of ballots, not those that were “normal”. So Scott’s call to impound the voting machines after the machine recounts was interesting; it was potentially (without any public evidence except for behavior and projection) expressing a fear that tampering with the voting machines would be detected, where said hypothetical tampering only switched some subset of votes from Nelson to Scott, or similar. (Need not be machines, if there is another exploitable weakness in the process.) So a forensic examination of the voting machines might still be helpful for building trust in the results. (Statewide sampling for statewide race, with a higher potential for such fraud in Republican-dominated jurisdictions.)
I am not able to read Rick Scott, fwiw. He’s a very weird package. Though Rich Scott also seemed a little too confident in his win.
PJ
@Mandalay: An ID card doesn’t prove in any more conclusive way that a person is a registered voter (and of-age citizen) than a signature. As any teenager knows, an ID can be faked, and as you note, instead of judging whether a signature is valid, people in charge of elections will just move to deciding whether an ID is valid. Where an ID is detrimental is that the process to obtain an ID is often lengthy and sometimes difficult, and, prior to an election, a voter may not be aware just how long and difficult the process may be (particularly in states where they require birth and marriage certificates). (It once took me several months to get my driver’s license renewed because there was a notation in the system that I had an outstanding speeding ticket in Nevada from a decade previously, a state that I had never visited – someone supposedly without a driver’s license had given my name and address when they were stopped by a cop, who let them go with the ticket! I had to get the ticket and warrant vacated in Nevada, then it took some time before the block was removed from the system.)
Amir Khalid
@Litlebritdifrnt:
They don’t want voter ID to ensure the integrity of the vote, they want the thought of applying for one to discourage the kind of people who vote for Democrats.
C. Isaac
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It goes back to the Evangelical wing as much as a anti-Federalists.
A national ID is the first step towards the “Mark of the Beast”, dontchyaknow? Tattoos on our foreheads required for everything and other such ridiculousness. They just can’t say it out loud because it sounds exactly as ridiculous as it is, even to themselves. I remember, when I was a kid, the leaders of our Baptist church always muttering and grumbling about how we should be wary of national whatevers due to needing to guard against the oncoming AntiChrist.
FlipYrWhig
@Litlebritdifrnt: Well that’s because they want OTHER PEOPLE to have to show ID. They’re obviously who they say they are. :/
Baud
@Tenar Arha: I agree it’s a made up problem. I’m just wondering what the quickest feasible solution to the made up problem is so that our people can actually get to vote.
germy
@C. Isaac: You’re too late. The Bar Code was the mark of the beast.
FlipYrWhig
@C. Isaac: Does the antichrist have a big QR code reader? It’s just, like, snap a pic of the code, click to download the soul?
germy
@trollhattan: They’re talking about this over at LGM:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/11/case-letting-malibu-burn
C. Isaac
@germy:
And any of innumerable other things to indicate that THE APOKEELIPS IS A COMIN’ YA’LL!!
Yet these same idiots are the ones who vote against preventing the real ecological apocalypse that’s right around the corner.
I grew up surrounded by these people, forced to attend private schooling run exclusively by them until I was in late adolescence. The amount of screwed-upedness I had to overcome due to that has left me with an unending level of contempt for them and their useless superstitions that do nothing but drag our species down and prevent us from saving ourselves from our own doom.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Barf.
He’s like Trump — everyone else in the world gets his petulant pout, but Putin gets a big smile.
sm*t cl*de
@MattF:
Brooks hews to the school of thought that it’s not really plagiarism if you throw in a passing reference to your source.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Maybe they did learn it?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@germy:
This. I didn’t know Chuck was intervening on Facebook’s behalf. How is that in the national interest? What a corrupt POS.
I’ve had my problems with Schumer in the past, but helping keep regulators away from Facebook is a bridge too far.
His strong endorsement of moving the Israeli embassy was pretty awful too, but at least I can sort of understand the political incentives for that one.
raven
@trollhattan: @trollhattan: My friend in Oakland was a strained with the Bejing CBA team and he said the air is giving him flashbacks.
Betty Cracker
@C. Isaac: Same!
Just Chuck
@Damned at Random:
And Colorado. CO is becoming ever-bluer since going that way.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Damned at Random:
I’d say it is about as close to a cure all as you can get to end most common methods of voter suppression in this country.
More vote-by-mail across the USA, please!
mapaghimiagsik
@Sister Golden Bear:
Sorry the smoke is getting the best. You might consider getting some of those fake tears to wash your eyes out. I used to take my mask off riding the bus, and now I don’t. I feel bad for service employees in the city, who have to hustle for a demanding crowd and don’t have masks. I actually tipped someone an N95 mask. (and money too!)
schrodingers_cat
Are we writing postcards for Mike Espy?
MCA1
@Baud: I remember agreeing with that kind of proposal either 4 or 8 years ago when this issue was being discussed. It really would not be that difficult and/or expensive to organize the distribution of a uniform voter ID card too citizens 18 and older, and educate the public on how to get a replacement when they move or if they lose it. Online, at any Post Office. Every minor could get their card in the mail on their 18th birthday. This country spends like 18 kazillion dollars every year on our military, and we can’t have this sort of thing?
The trouble is that, similar to the ACA rollout, Republicans would do everything they could think of to sabotage the implementation. And they would do so in a way, of course, that led to a disproportionately large percentage of Democratic leaning voters not getting their card.
Baud
@germy:
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I’d like independent confirmation of the facts from someplace other than the NYT.
Baud
@MCA1: But we still have the ACA even though it’s been hampered. But I agree that we would have to retain control 9f the government during the implementation phase for it to be fully successful.
Just Chuck
@C. Isaac: The thing Idiocracy got wrong is that all the stupid people were hapless goofballs. Stupid people in charge are mean and destructive.
Just Chuck
@MCA1:
No. SATSQ.
TenguPhule
@Just Chuck:
Hapless well meaning goof balls at that. The director was an optimist.
Yutsano
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Fun fact: you can still vote in person in Washington! You do have to go to your assigned precinct booth, but otherwise yes you can vote in person on Election day. Not sure if Oregon has the same set-up. I know Colorado does.
TenguPhule
Speaking of bad news….sigh.
TenguPhule
Alexandra Petri nails it again.
She’s a treasure.
tybee
@Martin:
except no one will accept the “Real ID” in lieu of all the other documentation you had to present to get the damned “Real ID”.
Baud
@TenguPhule:
“I support women, just not any woman.”
Sounds about right.
Just Chuck
@TenguPhule: Nails it?
That appears to be the beginning and end of her analysis of Pelosi. I was going to ask “what about Warren?” but in my imagination where Petri and I converse about it, I can’t imagine any good faith argument coming out of that either. My blunt opinion is that Pelosi might be too old for the office, but even that isn’t mentioned.
So what exactly did she nail? Or have I failed to detect some sort of long-form sarcasm in the article?
Baud
@Just Chuck: I read Petri as being sarcastic.
zhena gogolia
@Just Chuck:
the whole thing is a satire of people who come up with excuses for why they don’t like this particular woman (Hillary, Warren, Gillibrand, etc.).
satby
@Just Chuck: she writes sarcasm. She’s channeling the usual misogynistic b.s. about how someone theoretically supports women but when presented with specific women always find an excuse not to support that one.
Just Chuck
@Baud: After reading her article on Voter ID, I’ve come around to sharing your reading. Wrong end of Poe’s Law I guess, couldn’t tell parody from the real thing. The absurdity of the real world continues to outstrip my imagination.
Baud
@Just Chuck: Happens to the best of us, especially if you don’t recognize the name.
TenguPhule
@Just Chuck:
Yes.
satby
@tybee: my USA passport wasn’t enough to get the “Real ID” in IN. I still had to get a lot of other documents, including my SS card, not just residency stuff. Hoop after hoop after hoop. Very effective as a way to discourage people from bothering to get it. Especially if they don’t drive.
Jay
@Just Chuck:
Petrie writes long form sarcastic articles saying the quiet parts outloud.
She writes what the fake Progressive Op Ed writers really want to say, but don’t.
In this case the vein of “I really want the Democratic Party to advance Women Leaders, just not any of the Democratic Party Women that they are”.
The Moar You Know
@Martin: Yeah, that’s a hell of a law.
I’m wealthy enough, white, privileged. Getting my “Real ID” driver’s license here in CA is going to cost me $36, two days out of work, and force me to round up my birth certificate/passport, my original social security card or a valid W-2 (need a job for that) and a utility bill or similar.
Which, because I am wealthy, white, and privileged, I have at my disposal. STILL going to have to take two days off work to go to the DMV in person and deal with this ridiculousness. Which I can do, because I have vacation/PTO. I AM PRIVILEGED.
You tell me how a poor person is supposed to round up the documentation (more days off work, hours on the phone with people who will not help) never mind the rest of it. I was poor 25 years ago, homeless poor. I could not have done this if my life depended on it, because even taking an hour off work was a no-go proposition.
Real ID, if used for voting would be the most brutally regressive poll tax imposed on anyone since the Jim Crow days. The core problem is the documentation. Getting it is extremely costly and takes time a lot of people just do not have.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Madame ran into a problem with Real-ID because her passport was expired, she had to go home and get her naturalization certificate.
MazeDancer
@schrodingers_cat:
Time to up my spamming, I guess.
We’ve been writing for days. Please write more.
Many BJ-ers have stepped up. Many have not, yet. Really, chance to combat racism in Mississippi? What are you waiting for?
Made a special PostCard for Mike referencing the odious “front row” remark in what is, I hope, a meritorious and positive fashion. Comes in two colors, here is the lower ink required version.
Get addresses: PostCardPatriots.com
Click “Write for Runoffs”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know: Madame didn’t need a W-2 and it only took one day to get her Real-ID CA drivers license. As I did point out above, her expired passport didn’t work as proof of citizenship.
Tenar Arha
@Baud: I gather that’s already underway, & since it’s necessary, we have to contribute to this activism (which IIRC there’s organizations that do this) that helps people get VoterID. But I will also always want to kill the rotten edifice with fire.
Help people get the ID’s, win the state houses, sec states, & governorships, then change the laws.
ETA grammar
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Tenar Arha: Being that you need a Real-ID to fly or easily access federal offices, we’re long past where the feds should have pic ID. Pilling more and more stuff on driver’s license is absurd and costly to states and onerous to obtain.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
See my link about Texas above. In some cases, they are insisting that people go through the long and pricey process of a legal name change if the clerk who filled out their birth certificate 50+ years ago spelled their name wrong. Guess who mostly gets told that? ?
The Moar You Know
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am sitting right here looking at my renewal notice. You need:
One of the following:
Certified US Birth certificate
Passport
Permanent resident card
Foreign passport with I-94
One of the following:
SSN card – most people don’t have theirs.
W-2
Paystub with full SSN displayed (something most employers don’t do, mine included, because of the risk of ID theft)
One of the following:
utility bill
medical bill
current school registration documents
$36 US
And I have to do a walk-in to the DMV. The closest (and not the one I’ll be going to) is 15 miles from my house. My license expires in January, the soonest appointment is March. So that’s an all-day ride at the DMV and likely two.
This is from the easiest state in the Union. Can you imagine what they’re going to throw at you in one of the more difficult ones? Can you imagine doing this if you’re poor? Or a single mom/dad? Or young and just too damn busy trying to keep your life, school, education above water?
My point is this: this is a shit way to get people the right to vote. It should be easy, free, and not require any significant investment of time or subject you to any hassle. Real ID is literally the furthest thing from that as currently implemented.
James E Powell
@Baud:
I feel like this was made into an issue by Howard Dean and there was considerable response at the local level, but then the whole thing got caught up an unrelated argument about whether one liked Dean or thought he was a fraud or whether you thought Rahm was smart and practical and everyone else a professional lefty who was going to give us losers. I’m only trying to remember it exactly and I’m already exhausted and disgusted.
I don’t accept that the national, state, and county parties didn’t have the money or the people. We lost a presidential election and two supreme court seats! That kind of stuff has to matter to someone other than me or other relatively powerless voters.
Matt McIrvin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not yet, right? The repeatedly extended grace period on Real ID ends in the fall of 2020… just a few weeks before the presidential election, if I recall correctly. It’s going to be a gigantic mess. Effectively we’re going to have internal passports.
MattF
@Jay: Petri is the funniest writer at the WaPo, but, I have to say, this one on Pelosi is kind of a misfire. Humor is a delicate art, after all. If you’ve read her previous columns, you’ll get the joke– but if not, you could miss the hints that she’s not being serious. I suppose this is a risk of humor in the current day and age.
That said, when she’s being serious, which happens once in a long while, it’s easy to tell– she doesn’t kid around.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know: That information from the state is actually incorrect, it needs to be a VALID passport(as I noted above, she had to go home and fetch her Certificate of Naturalization). Madame has her SSN card, so she didn’t need a W-2. The feds should provide ID if they require it to transact business and it should be free and easy to get. A Driver’s License should be a license to drive, period.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin: I’m OK with a national ID, we’ve already have a de facto national ID with state driver’s license and the Social Security card.
gvg
the other issue with the real ID is that these laws specifically target older black Americans who had to be born at home not in a hospital, and have never really had ID. Now that the rest of society, including their descendants, have created a world where ID’s are common, they are being marginalized. Taking advantage of past racism, to perpetuate it further without most people knowing it, so we go along. We can’t go to requiring ID’s for voting yet. It might work ok in a generation.
In the mean time, these same people have other difficulties also related to no ID’s not proof of birth. Sometimes it means they have never had bank accounts, debit cards, credit cards and are having problems even grocery shopping. collecting social security and pensions are being issues too. without giving in to voting ID’s, it’s actually good if we can get them ID’s. The reasons it happens vary and it’s hard to punch through these no records barriers even with helpful organizations trying.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: That actually seems to be more documentation than Massachusetts requires–from what I can find on their websites, to renew as a REAL ID they only need something from that first category. Could be wrong though. (They also stress repeatedly that you don’t need REAL ID if you have an active passport and don’t mind carrying it.)
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: passport?
Well, if you have a real one….
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin: The Department of State also has a passport card which is easy to carry(though only good for travel to Canada and Mexico). Madame and the kid both got the cards when they renewed their passports.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I know you have several, Steve.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: “Steve”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud: At least a number of other Democratic Senators are getting vocal about Facebook’s misdeeds and lack of accountability…
Recode article link
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: From the article, a quote from my Senator Ron Wyden:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: Exactly, one might even have Steve on it.
schrodingers_cat
@MazeDancer: Where can I buy those postcards from?
Matt McIrvin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I actually do not have my Social Security card, lost it decades ago– for years I was relying for citizenship proof on my original hospital-issued birth certificate that had faded almost to blank. Now I’ve got a new copy of the birth certificate and got around to renewing my passport, which helps a lot with I-9 forms and such. But I might want to order a replacement SS card in case somebody needs it.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Depending on what state you live in, you may be able to request a replacement card online. Otherwise, you can go to your local Social Security Administration Office, but check their website to see what the ID requirements are. Unless they massively changed the process post-9/11, it should be pretty easy to get a replacement.
japa21
@MattF: If you read the whole column, there is no doubt she is being sarcastic.
Sister Golden Bear
@debit: There was at least one comment to that effect in one of yesterday’s daytime threads (which I didn’t get to until late last night).
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: Seattle had smoke this summer just as the summer got warm and it was swimming time. I recall we got over 400. We lost our reward for months of rain and clouds. There have been more nice days to be outside in November than in August and more vistas of snowy peaks 30 to 90 miles distant.
Global warming’s first acts are awful. And Mike and I are headed to his brother’s. The very well off who scream that Global Warming is a Chinese Conspiracy.
They are quieter than church mice when we talk about the thousands we’re making on our solar panels and the yhousands we’re saving on high tech heating and cooling, and the hundreds we’re saving on our wonderful quiet electric car. And the hundreds of people employed at the solar PV factory in their little town. Crickets..
Damned at Random
@Yutsano: No polling places in Oregon, but you can vote at the county election office during business hours during the election period (if you are homeless or prefer not voting at home for some reason)
VFX Lurker
@schrodingers_cat:
PostcardPatriots.com and PostcardsToVoters.org both have templates you can download and print onto cardstock. Cut into quarters and voilà — postcards. My earliest postcards to voters were homemade.
Amazon also sells postcards appropriate for postcard campaigns. I buy the Postcards To Voters designs for my current efforts.
So far I’ve written 43 cards for Espy under the current Postcards To Voters campaign. I will write more.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Golden Bear:
I think Bill was trying to make a deadpan joke, but he hadn’t been keeping up with the news and didn’t realize how bad it had gotten for you all up north.
If you have a neti pot or bottle and some distilled water, that may help some of your sinus misery. I was reading yesterday that rinsing out your nose and mouth/throat a few times a day should help because it will rinse out some of the particles before you inhale them.
J R in WV
@Damned at Random:
Here’s the problem with vote by mail: It depends upon the Post Office to be 100% accurate with handling of ballots and to never “misplace” or delay ballots from areas that can be counted upon to vote solidly for one party or the other. It depends upon local offices preparing ballots to properly address all ballots, as opposed to putting a cross-threaded address on ballots for black neighborhoods.
For just a couple of examples