I'm pretty sure that Handel will win. There's prolly a fair amount of "embarrassment bias" in the polling. People who don't want to be associated with the abominable gop will still vote for them in the secrecy of the voting booth.
Me too. I'm genuinely pessimistic, not just strategically pessimistic.
How about something positive and fun?
A faraway friend (and occasional sexting buddy) and I were texting today and it came out that she has all of seventy bucks to make it the next three weeks. I offered to send money from my emergency fund but she was more than a bit hesitant to accept an outright gift. A few rounds of back and forth and a plan was hatched. I will pay her for naughty pictures. This gets her the money without feeling like she has to pay it back, entertains us both, and ups us both a couple of points on the impurity test. She's going to send me a menu of suggestively named foods and prices and I'll pick. She has to figure out WTF the suggestive name implies in reality and send a picture. So Mineshaft: Can you name suggestively named foods I should ask her to add to the menu?
That's why they should ask a lead-in question about goat fucking. You can compare the GOP vote among those who admit goat fucking with those who don't and see how many are just unwilling to admit the truth.
So, I guess I should have hit "refresh" there.
Can you name suggestively named foods I should ask her to add to the menu?
Can you give us an example of what you're thinking of? How dirty, and/or how silly do you want?
Something with cumin and dill(do)? Perhaps a cucumber? Rather summery and light.
6: Anything at all really. So far Rump roast, split buns and hot sausage are well spoken for, so we don't need any more of them. Various sauces have made an appearance. To be honest I don't think it's really possible to out-filthy her mind. It's one of the things I love about her.
7 is good.
Like an idiot I posted this minutes before I have to spend three hours in an electromagnetically shielded box, so I can't really keep up on the fly. I'll check in as soon as I can.
I've got your suggestively named food, right here.
The whining part of the post was my request because I have strep AGAIN and am being a huge baby about it, plus will probably have to get my tonsils out, as will Selah for the same reason. And SHE is so healthy otherwise I hadn't even updated her hospital file to her adoptive name because we hadn't even gone to urgent care in two years. This is some nonsense! (I have other complaints too, but it's almost time to pick Mara up for physical therapy. I've already done my own OT and therapy this morning. Why yes, I am enjoying unemployment!)
Canard pressé. Mascarpone. Pork cracklings. Oysters Rockefeller. Cruller.
I'm helping!
Bucket of lard could/should play a role.
If you get your tonsils out, you get to eat lots of ice cream. I'm assuming that facts learned from Brady Bunch episodes are still up to date medical knowledge.
14: Pork chops and applesauce?
The suit fit. I just read that Sean Spicer is being forced out of his job appearing before the press because he's gaining too much weight to fit in his suits. Stress will do that.
Maybe Spicer and Orange Caligula together will convince America to get more exercise.
The simple average of Ossoff's vote share in all 13 polls leading up to the primary was 39%, his highest in any poll was 45%, but he got 48% on the day. So shy authoritarians not in evidence there so far.
But they wouldn't be, right? They would have just been unenthusiastic Republicans who sat it out or voted for some other R.
What, shy authoritarians can't also be unenthusiastic Republicans? (I was mostly replying to 1.)
I escaped from my box for a minute.
I lost the over/under for when Spicey would be forced out (though technically it was fired that I was trying to predict). I had after August. Maybe I will be technically correct (the best kind of correct!) if he's fired from wherever he ends up.
12,13: I'm going to ask that one of the items be steamed broccoli (one of my favorite foods). Let her figure out what kind of picture that corresponds to.
Also she's not British so I bet she'd respond poorly to requests for toad in the hole. A quick google of that name also brings up bubble and squeak, which is promising, and of course the inevitable spotted dick.
(Finally spotted dick came up)
Welsh rarebit/rabbit. English trifle. Beef Wellington. Hot cross buns (of course). Butter tarts (ditto).
Y'know, Eggplant hasn't been around in awhile.
Let me be the first to suggest Rye Cooter.
Also, Toggie, this whole arrangement is adorable.
Would "Tang" cross the line between suggestive and definitive?
28: It's what Astronauts drink! Though once you open the door to suggestively named drinks civilization collapsesthe challenge is much easier. Maybe no alcohol would make it harder again. All of a sudden my taste for Shirley Temples makes me feel dirty.
Half of a blood orange. Flank steak. Octopus.
How about alcohol but no suggestive drink names. Negroni, but not Wallbanger.
I mean, you don't even have to go with a specific dish, you can just say that instead of cooking at home you'd rather eat out tonight.
FiveThirtyEight is liveblogging the election returns from Georgia (and South Carolina) tonight.
Something with dumplings. Pork dumplings, maybe? Pork buns? Tacos would be almost too easy. Curious what she'd come up with for layer cake.
I had soup dumpling for dinner. Those are so great. Also, pot stickers.
Flank Steak and octopus are good. Subtler than most of what she's come up with.
On the subject - I just started doing a little financial tidy up before firing off the funds to her. I remembered that I bought a couple hundred dollars of bitcoin a while back out of my fun fund just to see what it's all about. Jesus Christ has bitcoin exploded! There's no way this is not a bubble. I can cover my friend without touching emergency funds and still have a generous fun fund. Given that this is unexpected money I think I'm going to give some of it to Doctors Without Borders. Gotta act quickly or I'll mentally spend all of it and MSF will get nothing.
The moral of the story is: buy random shit for no good reason and then forget you bought it.
That's the leading cause of moldy fruit in the crisper.
"Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong."
Anyway, the election came out the same way as the last one.
Republicans gonna Republican, I guess.
From FB:
Spotted in Kerrville Home Depot parking lot:
DID YOU KNOW
1 out of 3 Trump supporters
are just as dumb as the other 2
42: Love this. So tired of being asked to treat Trump supporters as the hapless victims of world-historical forces beyond their control, when really, weren't they just bog-standard GOP voters out for the tax breaks?
It is indeed.
Especially with the asymmetrical stakes in each of these races: a nice win for us, a harbinger of catastrophe for them.
I think there's a loyalty factor that Democrats don't share. Or at least the marginal democrat isn't as loyal to party as the marginal Republican.
35: Pork buns is good. I'll ask about layer cake when the time comes.
Personally, I think somebody needs to run doing all the stuff Clinton (Bill) did to convince people he wasn't too liberal. Execute a mentally disabled guy, yell at rappers, call for the death penalty for playing basketball at midnight, etc. The issue isn't policies. It's that you must be a certain degree of shithead to get elected in certain places and that there are enough of those places that if the Democrats don't win a big chunk of them, we'll be unable to win often enough to keep America from being ruined.
Picture a sign with a cutout of a voter (I picture him with two teeth and a Confederate Flag tattoo) holding his hand flat and reading "You must be this horrible to successful stand for office." The level of that hand is high enough that you, you being us, would hate anybody qualified. The problem isn't finding a candidate willing to demonstrate understanding of white assholes. It's that that anybody acceptable to you becomes unelectable to him by virtue of being acceptable to you.
Technically, I suppose it should be possible to persuade that marginal voter that we're not so horrible. But I don't think that is very likely because I just called him a toothless, open racist when he is, in all probability, a comfortable, khaki-clad, insurance adjuster or something.
Who's got two thumbs and is flying this afternoon to a state that Trump won by 25%?
Tune in next week for the answer. Same Bat channel, same Bat time.
I had this great insight into my level of understanding of American politics. If you had asked me in 2006, I would have confidently explained that there was no way the U.S. would elect for President, an African-American with the middle name Hussein. If you had asked me in 2014, I would have laughed at anyway who suggested a game-show host/free-lance con artist with a well-earned reputation as a philanderer would even have a chance to be elected President. It's not just that I was utterly wrong, I was wrong in opposite directions.
In conclusion, I'm turning in my pundit's license.
|| Have any of the lawyers here read about the challenge to the Trump University settlement? Is it normal for a class-action settlement not to have any opt-out provisions?
||
On the plus side, the coming war with Russia will pull all Americans together and global warming will be solved by the whole nuclear winter thing.
Anyway, now that those elections are over, I think our week of not really egregious tweets is over. Plus, Obamacare can be killed to provide a tax-cut for the wealthy in time for Congress to have its summer recess.
The tax cut is a burning issue for Paul Ryan. He's willing to force pretty much anything through the house that can be pointed to as ACA repeal, regardless of how awful. The tax cut is driving him up the wall. I heard a bit of a speech by him to some trade association, and it was almost painful how much he wants that cut. He called this moment a "once in a lifetime opportunity" which hopefully it is.
Yes. Between now and when people pay attention for elections in November 2018.
and global warming will be solved by the whole nuclear winter thing
Right, through the magic of the free market.
If you had asked me in 2006, I would have confidently explained that there was no way the U.S. would elect for President, an African-American with the middle name Hussein. If you had asked me in 2014, I would have laughed at anyway who suggested a game-show host/free-lance con artist with a well-earned reputation as a philanderer would even have a chance to be elected President. It's not just that I was utterly wrong, I was wrong in opposite directions.
Uninformed voters are just voting on who they'd like to be the next American Idol reality TV star. Republicans are just falling in line because they're greedy, racist white flight suburban morally-bankrupt assholes. The rest of us are more or less trying to minimize the rate that the damage occurs.
Honestly, the whole "heighten the contradictions" thing is starting to sound more appealing the trying to minimize damage.
Has there every been a time when heightening the contradictions worked? I thought that was just a consolation phrase.
No. It doesn't work. I just figure the average Republican voter will suffer more than I will.
Of course, the average Democratic voter will suffer more than the average Republican voter.
Of course, somebody should think of the children. Not somebody at Penn State.
I was confused by the map at TPM about which states will be hit hardest by ACA repeal. I had assumed that purple states that had expanded Medicaid would be hit hardest, partly as punishment, and that states that had sabotaged the implementation of the ACA to the maximal extent would see minimal change. But in fact, it's the standard map of everything in the US, showing that life is shittiest in the south and Texas for yet another reason. And Montana and Idaho, IIRC.
Yes. America was destroyed by the invention of the air conditioner.
I'm beginning to think that maybe the Democrats should stop making big deals over these special elections in heavily Republican districts that they're very likely to lose.
I mean, go ahead and run someone, sure. But making a big "This could be the first sign that the GOP is starting to crack!" production out of it seems to backfire. It just reenforces their pathetic image: "The Democrats: Still Losing!".
There's actually a new thread on the front page dedicated to exactly how big of losers we are and how bleak everything is.
I think it was a big deal regardless and thus an important loss regardless of how much effort the Democrats made. A victory in either would have significantly constrained a few Congressional Republicans in similar seats.
Anyway, I've changed my position on class war and would like somebody to start one please.
"The Democrats: Still Losing!"
A whole lot of people are pretty deeply invested in that message.
I mean, go ahead and run someone
I hate to kick the dead horse on this, but once again, this formulation is (a) fundamentally at odds with how the system works and (b) deeply misleading about the role of parties. By and large, candidates pick themselves. They spend a bunch of time going around trying to convince people who basically agree with them that they can win, so backing them is a sound use of money. If they get a good enough response in that, they spend a bunch of time (and the money they've raised) trying to convince primary voters that they're likely to win, and then to make a positive difference. And that the other fellow isn't.
Parties don't run candidates. Candidates try (and one succeeds) to win parties.
Early Money Is Like Yeast. I comes from the grocery store in little foil packages.
And Montana and Idaho, IIRC.
And, importantly, Alaska I thought (though I haven't looked at that particular map).
Cheese Nips
Or that Scottish classic, nips and titties.