tassojunior

THIS could be a disaster if it comes down to MI and PA.....Judge says Michigan ballots received up to two weeks after election day must be counted. https://reut.rs/2EehXZZ A Pennsylvania judge had already ruled that PA must accept ballots received up until 3 days after election day. Let's hope there's no Gore v Bush over PA or MI.

I don't have the stats right before me but I've heard for a while that Approval/Disapproval and poll numbers almost always conflate and it's unusual for a cycle like this where Trump's approval rating is high (higher than many recent presidents) and his election poll numbers are low. I've even heard it described as a "canary in a coalmine" for pollsters to be careful of their numbers if the poll % and approval % is too far off. Pollsters all claim they have "adjusted" their methods and pools after 2016, but I really wonder. You're right to stick mostly with the RCP averages which are much more accurate. I'd also suggest the Battleground pool over specific states. If there's one major flaw in polling it's that individual states can be terribly wrong and it's the individual states that matter in the EC, not the national average. That's why I just mostly follow trends in the Battleground Pool compared to Hillary. (I doubt anyone who disliked Hillary likes Kamala). And that tells me Biden is doing 1.8 pts better than Hillary was at this point on 9/18. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states-2020-vs-2016/ I've been skeptical of the FL, NC, and AZ %'s for weeks now and sure enough, the pollsters are drastically correcting FL and NC downward to what I could believe. I knew from a couple months in Florida's bellwether dodging Trumpsters on every sidewalk and seeing nothing but a sea of Trump flags everywhere while not daring say anything negative about him, that Florida was no +6 Biden. That was a surreal experience of what your eyes see and what polls say. Anyway the national RCP averages are probably very accurate. But state polls are much further off and some are very wrong and state results are all that matter. It's inconceivable to most of us who have lived through a party-oriented government but intelligent , educated adults can in fact , and normally do, have consensus on broad issues that really matter and you may be surprised how many of those issues have 70% and upwards support. It's really inconceivable with a system as rigged as the American system with a docile Congress and a strongman corporate presidency that much gets done to ever better the lives of the common people. What is abnormal is to being forced to choose a party where neither agrees with the 70+% on most important issues. That's because you are dealing with the same product being marketed under two different brand labels. As Biden said "We will change nothing". Chelsea and Ivanka are best friends. The Pelosi's go to New Years with the Trumps. Kamala let Mnuchin off for illegally foreclosing on a million homeowners and Obama helped the banks take away most Black homes. And the list of corporate owners of both political parties goes right down the list from Goldman-Sachs to Facebook to McDonnel-Douglas. Remember how important it was to get LBJ in because that crazy Goldwater would expand VietNam into a major war? The illusion of a choice keeps people from realizing that issues on which there is broad consensus are ignored. I think the fatal mistake was allowing people to become educated to such a high level that they realize our government is very unresponsive to the will of the people but instead tries to propagandize people into accepting it's will. Whether authoritarianism is by one person, one party or a corporate cabal makes little difference. It's still government by the few trying to dictate to the masses and preserve the power of the owner class. Now that people are educated that's not working so well. The @50% who reject participating thinking it's a meaningless charade are probably right. Not even going to the vitriol Hillary spewed all over Bernie after he did much more campaigning for her than she ever did for Obama, or in fact any losing candidate not nominated for VP has ever done for any winning nominee, the Dem convention this year was a huge "FU" to Bernie, Tulsi, Yang, Latinos, progressives, reformers, young people, and oddly for Clintonistas to the "Me-Too" movement. I know this may be an earth-shaking revelation to many, but reformers trying to reform an institution do not get appreciation normally from those that control an institution. That is unless they are smart enough to understand that you must be gracious and make a union with the losing side (usually as VP) to win in November. Either the right-wing Democrats are incredibly stupid (and they are very dumb), or more likely, keeping reformers out of government is more important than beating the "other side". (Being the big fish in the big pond is nice but being the big fish in a smaller pond is still a hell of a lot better than being a dead fish on the dock). Maybe you don't follow the Twitter world of the progressive bloggers but it's been a horrible tirade of threats, including many death threats, by Emhoff-supported KHivers against Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Krystal Ball, Susan Sarandon, Bernie and Jane Sanders, Tulsi, Andy Yang, Marianne Williamson, Brihana Joy Gray, and many others not even in the ballpark of the "Clintonista" or "Bernie Bro" perceived insults. Obscene threats and even death threats Twitter has had to patrol and take down. There's general agreement that it's a orchestrated harassment campaign against progressives and reformers by KHive sanctioned by the party to purge them from participating in the party or being listened to by party followers. It costs a lot of votes but it insures ownership of one of the two parties.

@stevenkesslar It's a good quality to keep up with polls, and to filter the noise ones out and to see trends. The article with polls from Gallup you cite is a fine one for my contention. Averaged out by years a majority of people disapprove of both the Democratic and the Republican parties and that is a trend that has exploded within the past twenty years. There are plenty of other polls on party approval that get onto RCP daily and the disapproval rate of both parties, and both houses of Congress is consistently horrible. The people are fed up with political parties. But largely because of the Electoral College the 2 parties (which are private corporations) own our government. And as someone who works to overrule the Electoral College I can tell you the people who stand in our way are the power brokers from both parties who would lose influence under a less party-oriented system. Even the ones who smile and publicly say they "agree". People are vastly more educated than they used to be and take offense that they need a party to tell them what to believe or support or that the parties think they don't see through the misleading postering and defense of corruption, inefficiency and incompetence people are very aware of. And the corporate media owned 90% by 6 corporations of billionaires has become a laughing stock of a "4th estate" it's so transparent and condescending. Republicans Independents Democrats % % % 2020 Jul 30-Aug 12 26 41 31 And the most meaningful statistic of all is that in 2016 with the choice of Clinton or Trump, more Americans. most of whom are independents, chose not to participate in this ridiculous farce than chose to vote for both of them combined. Trump won by getting many independents to vote for him even though it lost some Republicans. The Dems were, and are, too stupid to bring independents into the party. The DNC purges them ruthlessly and intentionally makes enemies of them. Trump should be back 20 points minimum.

a very good article by Nate Silver on Pennsylvania: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvania-could-decide-the-2020-election/ In 2016 PA was 3% more (R) than the US vote.

@stevenkesslar You do realize Black leaders will be the 1st to oppose abolishing the "Slavery" Electoral College because it gives extra power to blocks in large cities in swing states. When push comes to shove in politics it's usually about power. Fuck what's right. Millennials detest the Democratic Party and Republican Party equally. The 2020 primaries have been a real lesson to young people and independents of the corruption of the right-wing Democratic leadership and the hopelessness of working with those obnoxious fascists. Actually if you check polling all Americans detest both the parties. US corporatist political parties = oligarchy, not democracy. Just like Russia. We put on a tiny bit better show. Hillary didnt poison Bernie. (I'm she would). But it's still transparently not democracy but a sad charade.

More good news, even if estimates are a little later than before. Hopefully by November this will open up a lot of travel restrictions. Certainly by year's end: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-testing/u-s-plans-for-hundreds-of-millions-of-cheap-fast-covid-19-tests-idUSKBN2681ME U.S. plans for hundreds of millions of cheap, fast COVID-19 tests

@stevenkesslar Kornacki actually has that PA(R)/AZ(D) map as a remote possibility. It would be 270 to 268 (D) and either the Omaha district or the ME2 district going (R) would make a 269-269 tie. THAT would a hot mess testing faithless elector laws. I'm not buying AZ is more (D) than PA yet. Kyrsten Sinema won the Senate but she's very much a Manchin-style (D/R). https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/29/kyrsten-sinema-arizona-democrats-060187 AZ libertarians haven't made the switch yet like CO, Latinos are being expelled from the party under Kamala, and Phoenix is no Philadelphia. Since I was 25 I've been hearing how Florida, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina were going to become Dem states and assure permanent (D) presidential victories. Funny thing is in the meantime Virginia and Colorado snuck in and became (D) (while Ohio became (R)) with no prediction from the "experts". VA became Metro DC and CO libertarians became (D). Obama's NAFTA gutted the Midwest. So the 538 article I cited above averages about a 90% chance in a close election Pennsylvania will be the tipping-point state, and I agree with that. I think maybe the Latino realignment is skewing the AZ polls like it did the FL polls last month. I'd even say Wisconsin is almost as likely to go (R) as Arizona is to go (D) in a close election, 10 and 11 EC vote states. ......and Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing Democratic Party leaders to fuck up a sure win. IF it is close and it does come down to PA after a day or two, I really think we could be looking at a vote-counting disaster in PA that could stretch out weeks. And I doubt Trump will jump to concede like Gore did (the Dems probably will).

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/politics/2020-election-pennsylvania-ba Start of Pennsylvania's election is on hold because of ballot delay

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pennsylvania-general-election-fears-primary-results-delay-mail-in-votes/ Pennsylvania's mail-in votes still weren't all tallied after one week — officials fear election "nightmare" in November

Wondering what you think about the fact the apparent deciding states in a close election, Pennsylvania and Michigan, are also two of the worst and slowest for counting ballots. Pennsylvania's primary took weeks to be counted and Philadelphia makes Broward County look good. Other swing states are slow counting too. We could have a nasty November that might make Bush vs Gore look fast and clearcut. The bitterness may get out of hand if it stretches out and looks fishy. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/15/swing-states-election-vote-count-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin-414465 Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided the 2016 election. We’ll have to wait on them in 2020 Huge surges in mail voting will change how and when votes are counted in 2020.

Yup. Black American soldiers aren't too keen on killing Blacks for the US anymore and they don't enlist as much since they figured out that was our military's mission in the world.

What I meant was we kill Blacks in N.Africa/MidEast.

LOL. First you call me a Tulsi bot then you claim I'm against women. Make up your mind. I'm against killing thousands, or millions, of people because of the color of their skin. Extermination. Genocide. Normal US foreign policy. Which rebounds on us when those troops come home and become police and keep killing Black people as they've been trained.

It's entirely possible to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils without becoming a pollyanna for someone who crusades to put people in prison for discussing escorts on a website. Of course Germany chose Hitler as the lesser of two evils over the Socialist/Communists thinking he would never follow through on his more controversial ideas. We may think Harris will never follow through on her goals to imprison people on sites like this but since it would be extremely politically popular to keep doing, it's worth keeping an eye out for and keeping pressure on to head off. Pograms are hard to stop once started.

When Adolf Hitler or Mad Dog Mattis, the Butcher of Fallujah starts talking about people not having "moral compasses" , shit's getting thick. Mattis supervised the Marines who went through Iraq dragging 4 - year old children out into streets and putting bullets in their heads. Trump pardoned the last of these butchers. Mattis had already pardoned all the others . Don't use major war criminals for character references for or against. 1,000,000 Iraqis were butchered by the US. under Mattis.

Has "Edit" disappeared or just been shortened again? Not having a permanent "Edit" or at least "Delete" is unacceptable on a board like this for legal reasons.

I think it's safe to say there will be a Nevada surge in two or three weeks from Trump's rallies there today/tonight. About the only thing you can give Trumptists credit for is enthusiasm.

update: Cases in France, Czech, Austria at least are going through the roof today as the 2nd wave is striking, but Germany still is oddly very low even though open: https://www.google.com/search?q=czech+new+cases&oq=czech+new+cases&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.4903j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=new+cases+france&oq=new+cases+france&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.4255j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=new+cases+germany&oq=new+cases+germany&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.5215j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Companion Berghain, the world's top nightclub, has been turned into an sound art gallery. I wonder if lab.oratory is too. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/08/berlin-berghain-club-gallery-tacita-dean-olafur-eliasson-wolfgang-tillmans https://www.travelandleisure.com/food-drink/bars-clubs/berghain-nightclub-berlin-reopening-sound-art-installation

Still no edit after 1 hour. Crucial. A couple of us have had comment drafts after the first sentence disappear in very short time today. Some of the headlines etc are easier to read now. Good in case you ever get any old people in here.

Very sorry, I didn't realize an emoticon would wipe out most of your saved draft. As a matter of fact when I just reopened this comment draft all but the first sentence had disappeared so it may have something to do with new software. I appreciate your insight. So what do you make of New York and Germany? New York had the surge of all surges but has now re-opened with no surge while Germany has never had a surge and just re-opened over a month ago, including all schools, bars, etc with no new surge. (Lombardy could be substituted for NY for an all-Europe comparison). In the US the "hotspots" of a month ago are having rapidly declining cases while the new surge areas are rural areas previously clear of Covid. When Covid first started many people , including Merkle, said it was so contagious that eventually 70% of us would be infected whatever we did, and it was a matter of locking down to maintain steady hospital space and give time for better treatments (and eventually vaccines). It does seem as if both from mortality and infection rates, the places with previous surges are more immune while previously unaffected areas eventually get their surge. But Germany seems to disprove this. I 'm concerned because Czech, especially southern areas, has never really been hit by Covid much and had a severe lockdown but is now wide-open suddenly. Similarly, here's a NY v. CA comparison: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/16/new-york-corralled-coronavirus-whats-californias-excuse-for-case-surge/

Good news for Dems.