US Politics: Veni, Vidi, Virus

[Xray the Enforcer]

7 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

The language here is designed to incite a kneejerk anti-science reaction from the religious which I kinda hate and really don't think should be propagated.

Fully agreed here. We've seen time and again that Trump, Pence, McConnell, etc. just do not give a fucking shit about being hypocrites. So indulging in that kind of anti-science rhetoric is both pointless (since the intended target does not care) and harmful in unintended ways--we already have enough anti-science dipshits out there who buy organic Cheetos because they "don't want to eat chemicals."

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

You could almost say it's what a fool believes.

A fool who's been developing and tracking the data on voter turnout that almost everything you read about the subject relies upon for the past twenty years, sure.

13 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

We've seen time and again that most people who support Trump, Pence, McConnell, etc. just do not give a fucking shit about being hypocrites.

This misses the point.  Emphasizing the hypocrisy of the religious right in their support of Trump/Pence/the GOP on abortion related issues - including something so related to stem cells - is certainly worthwhile and hardly futile.  Public support, or at least moral acceptability, of stem cell research has been gradually increasing for twenty years.  Such broad level support does impact a legislator's reelection self-interest, particularly for a GOP member/challenger on whether or not they can use the issue as a cudgel among their constituency.  This does have substantive consequences on federal funding, or at least preventing it from being completely gutted like the Dubya era.  So, no, I don't think it's a bad idea to do so.  And while I understand @IheartIheartTesla's original comment was perhaps technically misleading, it's not "anti-science" rhetoric to highlight the hypocrisy of those that virulently oppose such things until it benefits their side.

[Sharpes]

Trump denied Nobel Peace Prize for the third time. Gave it to some failing has-been group called the UN World Food Programme.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

A fool who's been developing and tracking the data on voter turnout that almost everything you read about the subject relies upon for the past twenty years, sure.

 

You don't know me but I'm your brother.

I'm gonna be taking it to the streets for Mr. Mcdonald.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

You don't know me but I'm your brother.

Well, other than cooking and videogames you're probably a lot better than my actual brother.  What I gather is what you're saying is:

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

You (descending bass riff)

Tell me the things you're gonna do for

Me (riff repeats) 

I ain't blind and I don like what I think I see

 

Just trolling with some Michael.  MacDonald lyrics.

 

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

9 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Gonna get pedantic here, but this is not really true. The language here is designed to incite a kneejerk anti-science reaction from the religious which I kinda hate and really don't think should be propagated.

I was going off the guardian article here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/08/trump-covid-drug-developed-using-cells-derived-from-abortion

If I were to go back and edit I would have used "derived from" or "developed from" rather than made from. 

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Just trolling with some Michael.  MacDonald lyrics.

Fair.  Don't expect me to catch Doobie Brothers references at this hour!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 hours ago, ants said:

Interesting article on Bennett and her view that the 14th amendment is illegitimate.  I was not aware of this.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/why-trumps-supreme-court-nominee-believes-all-civil-rights-legislation-is-illegitimate/

 

I'll say it again, and again, for as long as I live, textualists/originalists are complete idiots, and they actively know it because they disregard their own judicial philosophy when it suits their needs.

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/voter-registration-republicans-swing-states-narrow-gap/

Hmm, I think this will be decisive in keeping the  Democrats from the presidency and the senate. 

The Gop given their stance on covid were able to send people out to knock on doors and get them registered. 

Along with the obvious attempts at voter suppression.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texastribune.org/2020/10/01/greg-abbott-texas-vote-mail/amp/

Also, I know it's a tasty apple, but it just seems easier for Democrats to try recapture what they lost--and needed--in 2016 rather than try for Texas. It just seems like dumping a ton of money in a place that could be used elsewhere.

Like Pennsylvania or even Florida(which would still be a tosd up), or more heavily Arizona at this juncture.

[Maithanet]

So Pew has overall Biden leading by 10.  Let's do a quick exercise in vote counting.  Biden is currently up 8 in Michigan, let's say that hold up through election day.  So we take one from Biden and give it to Trump in all three categories to get Biden +8.  Michigan will allow processing of absentee ballots on Monday Nov 2, but we don't know what percentage of absentee ballots will be counted on Monday and Tuesday before election night. 

25% of absentees counted:  Trump +3.5

40% of absentees counted:  Trump +1.1

50% of absentees counted:  Biden +0.4

100% of absentees counted:  Biden +8.3

Michigan election officials have sounded the most confident of the MI/WI/PA trifecta that they'll count votes quickly, and hope to be done by Friday night.  If that means they're at 50-60% counted in the first two days, then maybe Biden is slightly in the lead.  But overall it looks very possible that even in Michigan, Trump will be ahead of election night.  And that's assuming Biden wins Michigan by 8 points.  If it's more like Biden +3, then we definitely won't know for at least a couple of days.

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Michigan election officials have sounded the most confident of the MI/WI/PA trifecta that they'll count votes quickly, and hope to be done by Friday night.  If that means they're at 50-60% counted in the first two days, then maybe Biden is slightly in the lead.  But overall it looks very possible that even in Michigan, Trump will be ahead of election night.  And that's assuming Biden wins Michigan by 8 points.  If it's more like Biden +3, then we definitely won't know for at least a couple of days.

I think you're badly under-estimating how efficient the vote counting in Michigan will be. I'm sure there will be some straggling precincts, which might need until Friday. But in the August primary this year, there were 1.6 million absentee ballots cast, which works out to about 35% of turnout from the 2016 general election. Almost all of them were counted by election night, with Wayne County (Detroit) being the straggler who didn't report anything at all until after midnight when they dumped everything. A few precincts took until the following morning to finish up, but the number of votes outstanding was tiny compared to the number counted.

[Gorn]

24 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/voter-registration-republicans-swing-states-narrow-gap/

Hmm, I think this will be decisive in keeping the  Democrats from the presidency and the senate. 

The Gop given their stance on covid were able to send people out to knock on doors and get them registered. 

Along with the obvious attempts at voter suppression.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texastribune.org/2020/10/01/greg-abbott-texas-vote-mail/amp/

Also, I know it's a tasty apple, but it just seems easier for Democrats to try recapture what they lost--and needed--in 2016 rather than try for Texas. It just seems like dumping a ton of money in a place that could be used elsewhere.

Like Pennsylvania or even Florida(which would still be a tosd up), or more heavily Arizona at this juncture.

Except that Biden is sitting on a huge pile of unspent cash, and focusing funds exclusively on certain states quickly hits the point of diminishing returns. Why not spend some of that warchest on Texas? If if Biden doesn't win it, it may end up pushing some downballot candidates over the line.

The only winning strategy is a 50-state strategy.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think you're badly under-estimating how efficient the vote counting in Michigan will be. I'm sure there will be some straggling precincts, which might need until Friday. But in the August primary this year, there were 1.6 million absentee ballots cast, which works out to about 35% of turnout from the 2016 general election. Almost all of them were counted by election night, with Wayne County (Detroit) being the straggler who didn't report anything at all until after midnight when they dumped everything. A few precincts took until the following morning to finish up, but the number of votes outstanding was tiny compared to the number counted.

Do you know if they were processing those absentee ballots in advance?  Or was that all on election day?  It seems kinda hard to believe they could process 1.6 million absentee ballots in a single day, but if so, then great. 

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Do you know if they were processing those absentee ballots in advance?  Or was that all on election day?  It seems kinda hard to believe they could process 1.6 million absentee ballots in a single day, but if so, then great. 

According to the photo caption in this Detroit Free Press article (which I can't copy because it's an image) https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/24/more-time-process-absentee-ballots-michigan/3518646001/

no processing was allowed until election day itself for the primary. So they were in worse shape than they are now, since now they can start the day before.

I think a big thing that helps Michigan is that it isn't one of the states with a witness signature requirement, so that's one less thing to slow down the processing.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

According to the photo caption in this Detroit Free Press article (which I can't copy because it's an image) https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/24/more-time-process-absentee-ballots-michigan/3518646001/

no processing was allowed until election day itself for the primary. So they were in worse shape than they are now, since now they can start the day before.

I think a big thing that helps Michigan is that it isn't one of the states with a witness signature requirement, so that's one less thing to slow down the processing.

Interesting.  Yeah, the witness signature requirement is bullshit.  So hopefully we can hear from Michigan on election night (or at least, Biden will be ahead and it's obvious he'll win).  That opens up a lot more possibilities for Biden to get to 270, the most likely being FL+MI.

[Ormond]

11 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

My brother made the comment to me that the militia in Michigan has been around for a long time. Militia groups from around the US have spent time with them.

He also told me many of the founders and leaders of these groups are southerners. Not only black people left the south looking for work in the north. My brother went to college at Lincoln Memorial in Tennessee and when he made friends with his classmates he’d asked them where they were from, and so many were from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and yet they sounded like they came from the South, not the North. That’s because their parents headed north for work and stayed there..

There were many people who moved to the Detroit area to work in auto factories from further South. Most of the White Southerners were specifically from Appalachia, primarily Kentucky and West Virginia. When I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, people there used to call the town of Ypsilanti, just to the east of Ann Arbor, "Ypsitucky" because of all the Appalachian people who had settled there. The Detroit suburb of Hazel Park used to also be primarily Appalachian, though I think that has changed over the last 30 years. 

However, I think it's a bit prejudicial to try to blame Michigan militias or this incident in particular on people of Appalachian descent. Two of the men arrested in the Whitmer case have Italian surnames, which makes it unlikely most of their ancestry is "Southern." And Joe McCarthy in Wisconsin certainly shows that people in Great Lakes states can develop into right-wing crazies without any connection to the South. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, Fez said:

According to the photo caption in this Detroit Free Press article (which I can't copy because it's an image) https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/24/more-time-process-absentee-ballots-michigan/3518646001/

no processing was allowed until election day itself for the primary. So they were in worse shape than they are now, since now they can start the day before.

I think a big thing that helps Michigan is that it isn't one of the states with a witness signature requirement, so that's one less thing to slow down the processing.

I must have missed this. That’s great news. MI had the worst counting rules of the three “blue wall states.” Now they have the best.

[Fragile Bird]

30 minutes ago, Ormond said:

However, I think it's a bit prejudicial to try to blame Michigan militias or this incident in particular on people of Appalachian descent. Two of the men arrested in the Whitmer case have Italian surnames, which makes it unlikely most of their ancestry is "Southern." And Joe McCarthy in Wisconsin certainly shows that people in Great Lakes states can develop into right-wing crazies without any connection to the South. 

Fair enough regarding the two men, but I think my brother was talking about the long history of these militia groups in Michigan. He went to Lincoln Memorial in the late 60s/early 70s. I’m sure that in the 50 years since they added local support.

Interesting about Ypsilanti. I was in law school across the border in the mid-70s and none of my locals friends ever mentioned that. People cross the border all the time, it’s the busiest border crossing between our countries, iirc.

[S John]

36 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Two of the men arrested in the Whitmer case have Italian surnames, which makes it unlikely most of their ancestry is "Southern." 

Not necessarily. Lots of Italians went to West Virginia in the early 20th century to work in mines and railroads. To the point that the Pepperoni roll is basically the WV state snack and northern and central West Virginia has (somewhat unexpectedly) great Italian restaurants. They wouldn’t be ‘southern‘ in a traditional Civil War era sense but there are certainly significant enclaves of Italians in parts of Appalachia who could be reasonably expected to have assimilated into the broader culture over the course of 100 years.