tassojunior

Sure enough, the morning after the Grumpy Old Men III shit show, both sides are revising how their candidate really won. lol, No one won that mess. The two seemed like twins separated at birth. I can't imagine 2 people not twins more alike than Biden and Trump. Neither said one thing about any policy (we expect that in "good" politicians) and both spoke at the same time as the other for a majority of the debate (that was weird). The fact that this is the BEST OF THE BEST that these 2 shitty parties could come up w/ is an insult to anyone with a speck of intelligence.

Isn't BER open yet?

I still say the "debate" was a loss for democracy and the 2-party system that again the parties have presented us with an awful choice. In a run-off or ranked system there's no way these two would be the final choice. Anyway, I'm getting more concerned the losing party is not going to accept the results because of balloting problems (and probably counting errors too eventually). Our neighborhood blog in DC had where every mail-in ballot for a big building was left in a bunch at a neighboring building. And then the NYT said 100,000 mail-in ballots in Brooklyn yesterday had their outer envelope name and inner envelope names mismatched, which would invalidate the votes. For both places mail-in balloting is new so there are bound to be issues but this is an issue both because the losing side is less likely to accept the results and these numbers really can change the result if so many mail-ins are invalidated. These are supposed to be mostly Democratic party votes. An oddity is also that states can choose Electoral College delegates however they want, it doesn't have to be an election result. In an electoral mess a state could quickly declare one party or the other the winner if one party has both houses of the legislature and the governorship. 3 possible tipping-states that have a GOP "trifecta" are Arizona, Florida and Ohio. (In 2000 FL was a split-party state). So there are two ways massive new mail-in mistakes could cost the Dems a win on top of just being an excuse for the GOP not accepting a loss. https://www.popville.com/2020/09/definitely-not-a-normal-delivery/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/nyregion/absentee-ballot-nyc-brooklyn.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=New York

The debate is living down to my worst expectation. Why am I watching this? I saw Grumpy Old Men I and refused to watch II. Unfortunately these are two of a kind.

That's true (and everyone has heard it 1000 times) and it shows he's an elitist hypocrite but if you're unaware that Biden did the same thing at the exact same time then it shows you're living in a propagandized society where 99% only know what the establishment wants them to know and most think and repeat what the establishment wants them to think. That's even more scary than Trump's pigishness.

I think the importance is that people still have this impression that the "middle class" is most of Americans and that their incomes are getting better or staying the same. In fact it's only 40% and shrinking while the majority of Americans are dirt poor and getting poorer. We see the 10% constantly in media, restaurants, hotels etc and they seem to be much bigger a share. Our society is built around them and the upper middle class and it's only when that Mother Theresa urge strikes us that we think of the bottom 50% (not mingle with them, p-l-e-e-z-e!) and sometimes that lasts until dinner. We see the white ones doing drugs and getting out of pickups with Trump bumper stickers, the Black ones on the corner hustling, and the Latino ones working like slaves. If we venture into a WalMart, a Dollar Tree, or an Aldi we might come within 10 feet of one but we mostly social-distanced them way before any pandemic. (Ironically, many criticisms of Trumpists are that they are poor uneducated trash). Classism is strong and growing in the US (largely because it's pushed by the elitist corporate media) while our trademark egalitarianism is the victim. That leads to a decline in support for democracy. If Trumpists were to always win elections we'd be against elections and democracy. Anyway, the elitist corporate media (Democrat and Republican) is always going to subliminally persuade the masses that they live in the 10% because that's all they see or hear about. (and NBC is owned by GE which mostly makes weapons and bombs to kill people in the wars NBC promotes). Maybe that's why Tiger King was such a successful novelty but The Crown and Succession is what we mostly get; mostly stuff about the 1% in entertainment and news, with some 9% and a little upper middle class stuff. From our media you would never know the majority of Americans are poor. Of course there are inconvenient truths that we must face to change. One is that "childhood poverty" has a lot to do with who is having children. For a long time we have given extra money (as we should) for extra children to the poorest Americans on welfare while having children has become too expensive for the middle class (or even the 9%) which has to work. We need to take care of all children equally and philosophically that should be funded by inheritance taxes on the rich to more level the playing field. And by take-care-of I mean medical (which CHIPS does) , free daycare, free good education through college, and the security of knowing equal UBI payments are ahead to take otherwise financially-risky self-improvement or entrepreneurial ventures that eventually come back to improve society. Another inconvenient truth is that indeed, the richest few, the Musks and Bezos even, do improve our lives with invention and innovation while much of the middle class work is being done best by AI and robots. Who wants a car made by humans anymore instead of robots? Who would want to wait 4 years for a corvid vaccine developed without AI which shortens it to under 1 year? In industry after industry human (middle-class) workers are becoming a luxury, if not usually unnecessary. But the knowledge and invention the richest make their huge fortunes off are usually government-sponsored and very often government inventions. Insulin was invented by the government but costs $1000/month from the company sold the patent for $1. Creation of wealth and a better life does usually come from the top of society but it's usually made possible by the government. So it's fair that society says that a certain portion, maybe 50%, be divided equally among all members of the society......UBI. We can continue committing our overseas genocide with low-cost robots and drones now and we can divert that huge military make-work economy into just giving that money directly to the people instead of trickling-down through those obsolete and expensive weapons. Which brings up another inconvenient truth. America is changing ethnically, racially and religiously faster than ever and the near future is clear. We hear about the millions of illegal immigrants from Central America and that's true. But immigration to America now has changed to Asian and most-especially South-Asian (Indian) dramatically. As the world's biggest country (almost 1.5 billion) India along with Bangladesh (1/2 billion), the Philippines, etc are the source of the new immigration. (African immigration chiefly from Ethiopia and Somalia is also huge now and Nigeria-soon to be the world's 3rd largest country-is exploding). Most detainees in California immigration prisons are Indian and rapidly the largest immigration source, legal and illegal both, is India. In the past couple decades Indians have grown from under .5% of the US population to approaching 2% and the trend with H1 visas and family connections is that number is going to explode. Republicans generally favor massive Asian immigration over Latino and African refugee immigration and the income level of Indians, and most other Asians, in the US is well above average. Without African immigration the US Black population is static at best at 10-13%, while the Hispanic population is now well over 15% (and this is the first election that more Hispanics are eligible to vote than Blacks). Whites are just barely reproducing at all and the % is in freefall. There are almost as many Muslims (1.5%), Buddhists (1.5%) (and Mormons 1.5%) as Jews (1.8%) already and that tribe is headed way down (except for Orthodox). So America is becoming an equally Hispanic/Indian/Other Asian/White/Black (including African) country just as our place as #1 power in the world is slipping rapidly to China (just as the UK did to the US in the early 20th century). It's telling that our future president is probably going to be either 1/2 Indian or full Indian just as the future leader of the UK, if Boris steps down or is deposed, will probably be one of 2 or 3 Tory east-Africa Indians. We talk about multi-racial/multi-cultural society but the US is about to experience it and I'm not sure the commitment to egalitarianism, or even democracy, will hold as ethnic and racial rivalries multiply. And unfortunately, without a homogeneous population (like China's), the commitment to egalitarianism and equality loses out. That's the downside of globalization and multiculturalism and why populist nationalists come to power.

These are Democrats but I don't know if it's Pennsylvania again. I'm really concerned there are going to be hundreds of reports like this in new mail-in ballot states and it's going to undermine any Democratic "victory" (or maybe the other way round even). We need to get the voting system overhauled with a federal mandate; paper ballot trail, same-day registration, vote by mail or online, no ballot harvesting, etc. etc, or we're going to have a loss of confidence in the election process. 3rd world countries do better.

Yes. It was critical to stop Goldwater or he would enlarge Vietnam into a full war. So the "sane" people won and immediately burned alive 7 million yellow people because they were yellow. It seems standard in America for the winner to do a 180 and implement exactly what the voters thought they were voting against.

I can't believe you seem to have missed today's most talked-about poll put out by the Fed, of all people. Not sure what augmented means but the bottom 50% of Americans are dirt poor. The next 40%, the "great middle class" has seen their wealth drop by 1/4 since 1992, while the next 9% and the top 1% are doing outstanding under globalization. There's a reason people in the top 10% love our economy while the rest want change.

We agree on this I guess. Battleground state polls are all that matter and in 2016 they were off by 2-8 points. In 2020 the margin in these states is 2-8 points so, in effect, they're all in the margin of error. Whatever the precision in national polls, state polls aren't anywhere as reliable. I still have serious doubts how pollsters can adjust their polls to account for all the new mail-in and absentee ballots too this year. "Turnout" always matters immensely.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/28/rehoming-pigeon-kereru-returns-to-hatchery-24-years-after-flying-the-coop https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/15/new-zealand-bird-of-the-year-drunk-gluttonous-kereru-pigeon-wins

If you believe in sudden about-faces in politics this new poll Kornacki just published would be believable. For me, not so much. 21% more whites in MI were for Trump in 2016 but only 2% more whites are now? I keep asking people and still have not found one person anywhere someone knows who has changed their vote preference from 2016 on either side. Hundreds of anti-Trump Republicans are paraded through the media every day as supporting the Dems this year to create this appearance. I get that campaign strategy. But in real life these seismic shifts don't happen. And this makes me suspicious of battleground state polling this year. (I've always felt Macomb County is the epicenter of the election this year).

Do you know that even with almost 700,000 dead in the US from the 1918 flu, President Wilson never said one word about it?

NY seems to have a 33% immunity factor according to reputable Lancet.(DC is 21%). That's not herd immunity but getting there. At any rate it seems areas like NY and Lombardy that saw the worst in the 1st wave are spared in the 2nd wave more and areas that were pretty untouched by a 1st deadly wave, will get one sooner or later. As Merkel said, eventually 70% of us will be infected. and the political issue that everyone dodges is that many deaths were the result of certain areas forcing corvid patients to be housed in nursing homes that were full of elderly patients. In both Europe and the US that was a horrible mistake.

I think picking the state you win in is a little premature. It smacks of 2016ish overconfidence lol. Bloomberg's 24/7 incessant advertising spending didn't help him in the primaries; it just caused a backlash to his arrogance of money. I doubt it's going to do better for Biden/Harris in Florida. If they do the same with their half-billion they'll also get backlash. Florida was what alerted me that polling might be fucked up this year for president. For half the year in Florida's 50/50 county I dared not say anything resembling Democratic support and saw nothing but Trumpists everywhere. Then I look online and the polls tell me Florida and Pinellas county are +7% Biden?? No way, no how. At least the polls have evened out now (although nothing changed) but at first they were very wrong in Florida. South Florida is not as controlling as it used to be. (and Cubans in Miami love Trump). When the pandemic first struck the primaries were ridiculous. Expecting people to risk covid to vote. Turnout and motivation usually matters most and it's still to be seen how our first almost-national mail-in election affects motivation and turnout . I don't see how the pollsters can know that yet. Some of them are saying 2-3% have already mailed ballots in many states, and I expect that to go up after the debate tuesday. But I don't see how they'll know if 50% or 80% are going to return their ballots (if automatically sent out) in new mail states or how many absentee ballots will be requested, much less returned in other states. It's a whole new ballgame in 2020 that pollsters can't possibly know yet. I'm not buying that they've figured the mail-in effect yet. (it should help the Dems a lot if it means more voters). The worst thing about polling in 2016 was not the national polls, they were within 1%; it was the battleground state polls. Many of them were way off like in Ohio (that was 7% off), Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. State polls are too unreliable in spite of how much pollsters defend them. I think this year there may be even more "shy" Trump voters in the midwest. When you're told 100 times a day that Trump is a racist and then asked if you're for Trump you may not be give the answer a voter will make in secret. We went through this for years with George Wallace who would poll barely double digits in states but then on election day would win states across the country by landslides. If there's social stigma to being for a candidate, people polled will often not answer truthfully. And the media has put more social stigma on being for Trump than any candidate I can remember back to Wallace. Sometimes it's better to be more impartial and seem fair than to create a backlash by browbeating people. And it really affects polling. Anyway, I still don't trust the state polls much (for prez or Senate) and I really doubt the pollsters have any idea what turnout and motivation is going to be with the pandemic mail balloting. It's a whole new ballgame. Booker was pretty unknown in Kentucky until the primary when he surged in popularity and the DNC had to step in to stop him from getting the nomination. McGrath was a known (loser) candidate. The DNC always thinks money=votes. McConnel is no more popular in KY than Graham is in SC and the races should have been similarly close, especially after Breonna Taylor.

Today's 538 has McGrath with a 4% chance of winning and McConnel with a 96% chance. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/kentucky/ This in spite of the DNC still pouring money like water on the Kentucky race and every other time I open a window there's yet another McGrath ad (and I live no where near KY). Booker did 9 points better than McGrath against McConnell even as a little-known and that made the DNC make an open-ended commitment to McGrath if she could get rid of Booker. Campaign money wasted in a hopeless race that could switch seats in several other states. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charles-booker-mcgrath-mcconnell/ Yes, I'm certain right-wing Democrats are more concerned with defeating reformer Democrats than in defeating Republicans.

I hope the polls are right but I have a feeling that in a sudden pandemic with suddenly mostly mail-in ballots and anyone saying they're for Trump being called a racist, polls could be really messed up this year. If ever there was a year they could be wrong this is it and I don't buy they "fixed" the 2016 problems either. I really hope I'm wrong and they're right.

Also from WaPo today: Cases per 100,000 population in Spain (293.76) and France (213.8) have both surpassed the United States (176.62). Israel is also struggling to cope with a second wave (797.19 per 100,000); https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/europe-is-facing-its-second-covid-19-wave-countries-must-act-together-to-contain-it/2020/09/27/15785896-fdbc-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html

Also, from the comments, I would not assume the guys are even there in the saunas. They seem fairly empty. Being a sauna boy entails having intimacy with many different people and is almost a certain infection if susceptible to infection. Having covid in Brazil is much more deadly, even if just for friends and relatives of the young, than in the US. As poor as many of these guys are, it seems most are curtailing dangerous activity like saunas as much as possible.

Schumer and the DNC pushed hard to get a right-wing Democrat nominated to oppose McConnell and have given Amy McGrath tens of millions in funding. Last I saw she had dropped to 21 points behind McConnell. Charles Booker who the DNC fought against was a left-reformer Bernie supporter and Black who polls showed would have trounched McConnell. The DNC hates reformers more than Republicans.

It's not just France and Spain tat have a huge new surge. Belgium has the worst situation and just today: The reproduction R rate of Covid-19 infections in the UK has risen to 1.2-1.5 as cases jumped by 60 per cent in a week. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-news-latest-roundup-r-rate-london-leeds-lockdown-b601113.html As I copied above the UK has a table of when "hammers" fall that should mean a new lockdown. But there are riots in London over re-closing bars and restaurants, as there have been this week in other European capitals. Meanwhile New York, as I cited, now somehow incredibly has a immunity rate of over 33% because it had that terrible burst of hellish proportions. It's bars and restaurants etc are open with no big uptick. Similarly the Lombardy region of Italy which had the world's worst surge to begin this pandemic, is now extremely quiet while regions of Europe that had never had many cases, like Czech Republic, are soaring just as the new wave in the US is hitting hardest in previously almost virus-free states of North and South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc. Of course the 2nd wave starting this week is new and anything could happen but it seems like, as in Europe, in already-surged areas from the 1st wave, the new cases are mostly young people in schools and bars and there is not as much contagion to older people yet at least. As Merkel famously said when this all started in March, covid is so contagious that 70% of us at least are eventually going to be infected and lockdowns are needed to slow the numbers, the R Rate, to what will allow our hospitals and medical staff to cope with the epidemic. I'm not sure anyone ever thought of having a real lockdown until a vaccine was easily accessible. Sweden's experiment in no lockdown at all leading to herd immunity was a failure but nevertheless, it seems areas that have already been ravaged hardest are fairly immune from the worst of the 2nd wave. But we have control over some things, like slowing the epidemic, but not over ending it until there's a widely-used vaccine. China with it's harsh total lockdown and culling into dorms of the infected was effective and Europe with it's harsh lockdown was more effective than the US at slowing the virus expansion into previously mostly unaffected areas. But overall the US and Europe experience has been somewhat similar (with Germany and California doing better than others) . It's more that the European wave started and subsided first when the American 1st wave was peaking. Now they're more similar in this 2nd wave so far. There is an ability to slow infection rates somewhat by government action but that doesn't seem to stop contagion from eventually happening unless you're a totalitarian government like China and can take inhumane drastic measures very quickly. Yes but New York has a density much greater than any place in California outside downtown San Francisco, the population is much older, the virus hit there first (except for a couple odd cases direct from China in CA and OR), and New York now has an immunity rate way up at 33% while CA's is 1%. We'll see how the 2nd wave affects NY v CA, especially rural inland areas and northern CA, whether the harsh Bay Area lockdown holds, and if the no-lockdown in NY( and FL) results in more cases and deaths. So far 2nd wave seems confined to younger people but that can change (or not). And much of CA has not had a 1st wave yet. If the Bay Area were suddenly to drop all lockdowns a huge 1st wave would probably come through. Politically Trump is an obnoxious moron pandering to the basest instincts of people and any president during such a national disaster should be defeated by a huge margin. Jimmy Carter was hardly responsible for either the world recession/Iran crisis but was swept out in a landslide (even though he was personally very-well-liked) after 4 years just as Hoover was for the Great (World) Depression. The fact this election seems more tight is a condemnation of the Dems who many, if not most, people see as little better than Trump. That's a low bar. But I'm certain making a political football out of an epidemic is very bad policy today for either Trump or the Democrats. It was stupid politically when the right-wing Dems in unison on Jan 31 denounced Trump's China travel ban as racist and xenophobic. That dog comes back to bite with younger voters who wade the muck of America's corporate yellow press and see both political parties as immoral opportunists for solely their own gain. A president in such a time is normally going to lose big anyway. The opportunism just backfires and helps him by lessening motivation of the young to be rid of him for the "alternative". Trump is stupid. The right-wing "centrist" Dems are even stupider. Dumb vs Dumber may not get a lot of motivation kindled for anyone. Reagan had a favorable landslide mandate when he tossed out Carter (which he used), as did Obama when he defeated Bush I (which Obama did not use, he became a Republican clone). Biden-Harris is aiming for a "we don't stink as much as the other guy" and generating zero enthusiasm for them among the young and (majority) independent. IMO I think clearly their goal is to be the "new" Republican party and let the Trumpists keep the "old" Republican party. Since we're a government-sanctioned 2-party system that leaves reformer democrats out in the cold. But i'd be careful with making a political football out of the pandemic by either party. The Democrats should let Trump play that game alone to his own detriment to thinking people. Backlash to opportunism that kills motivation to be rid of him is the only card he has.

That was June. You can't just read every 4 months. Here's the current edition of that same graph from Hopkins. Since June the R-rate for the US has been much lower than Europe's up until the last week when the 2nd wave seems to have started in the US. This past week the rate in Europe has soared to above US levels and the 2nd wave seems to be hitting equally so far.