If Abrams has turned a red state into a purple state, which getting a Democrat into the secretary of state office might accomplish, she's done America a solid without winning herself. I assume she's running again in 2022.
Ocasio-Cortez makes me nervous. Maybe I don't trust anyone under 30.
Abrams has to be shocked by the amount of cheating by her opponent. It's the most egregious case in decades.
Young people are great, but I don't think winning a seat in a liberal area counts as a solid for America.
Is GA secretary of state directly elected or what?
Yes. And there's a run off because a libertarian took enough of the vote to keep the Republican from getting 50%.
I read somewhere that the 50% threshold has a racist history, because the real action was in the primary in southern Democrat states, and that's why it only still exists in a very few places.
It does seem to mostly happen in the south.
Someone pointed out that the last person before AOC who drove the right so totally own-goal insane was Obama.
I think one thing about AOC is that it's really the first time I've been impressed in this particular way by someone who is decidedly younger than me. So it marks my aging process, but also with a tinge of relief in a kids-are-alright kind of way, but also a kids-are-better-than-alright-and-thank-god-for-them kind of relief.
The kids are alright. The Boomers are going to kill us all on their way out.
The only problem with these run offs is it means four more weeks of fifteen emails a day asking for campaign contributions. Give Democrats your support, but never ever your primary email address. They're worse than Harry and David after you buy some pears.
Can anyone recommend a summary analysis of the state office midterm results. Since that's where most elections are stolen, ultimately.
"Pretty good, especially when compared to usual."
More detail? Since that's where the devil lives, ultimately.
We only had one statewide partisan state office on the ballot. It was an open seat, and the Rs took it, after a D having it for decades. Clerk of the Supreme Court. I think you can credit Trump for that.
Mossy, I'm sure someone somewhere keeps stats on this sort of thing, but it's really not of general interest. I don't care who is the attorney general of New Mexico, or the head of public instruction in Illinois, or whatever. It's really hard for candidates for what we call Tier B races to break through to public consciousness even in our state -- it's not like Fox is covering our state races, even -- so a bunch of them, like our clerk's race, most people are just picking R or D. The D running for Clerk was way more qualified, and the choice would really have been a no-brainer if it had bubbled up to general awareness. The senate race, and the President's visits, sucked up a lot of oxygen.
I'm glad we don't have runoffs, because it would have put Republicans into office a whole lot of the time than they are already winning. As IRV would have done.
my dream next move is for Abrams to be elected to the house and inherit the speakership from Pelosi. she is so goddamn smart, love her.
oh and i can't seem to find your e-mail address, lizardbreath, if you are reading! i will be in NYC the end of next week (Th, Fri, Sat), any chance of a meet up? sam and other NYer commenters, any interest?
Here's one tracker of various up- and down-ballot results.
Legislative chambers flipped R to D: CO Senate, ME Senate, MN House, NH both chambers, NY Senate. None flipped the other way.
In NC, the GOP supermajority was broken in both houses. Dem supermajorities were attained in CA Senate (previously won but lost again), IL House, and VT House. Unfortunately OH still has GOP supermajorities in both chambers.
There was another tracker going around that tracked how the partisan composition of each chamber changed (going from 60% R to 55% R would also be significant) but I can't relocate it.
Hey, sure, meetup! I'm insane now and will be until after Thurs, but then I'll coordinate.
I'm being let off work early tomorrow. I might try to cook something. Or take a three hour walk.
Not to be confused with a three-hour tour.
In the tv series version of Unfogged, Moby is Gilligan.
I really should have finished my Ph.D.
26: Yeah, you could have been the Professor.
Does everyone know Gilligan's Island? Is it part of global culture like the Exodus story and Pikachu?
Ginger and Mary Ann should have made it explicit.
Everybody's read Gilligan's Wake, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilligan%27s_Wake
32: Will I enjoy it if I haven't read the original?
34: Which other Gilligan's Island novelizations are there?
while The New York Times considered it "not as good as Finnegans Wake, but (...) better than Gilligan's Island.
This is such a paradox. Like saying someone is shorter than Spud Webb and taller than Manute Bol.
As one sees from the wiki summary, there's a lot of violence in the book; more than I remembered, 15 years on.
Back to the OP, I think AOC is doing an excellent job using the spotlight. Hope she can keep it up.
I'm probably never going to read it, but I feel better knowing it exists.
https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1064977742117171200
I did read Gilligan's Wake but have almost no memories of it.
As I "live-blogged" here I spent at least one of the Obama-Romney debates playing this on repeat, The Honey Bees (Mary Ann, Ginger and Lovey) dancing to "Liar, Liar." Such innocent times.
I like that Joe Lieberman is the other failed VP.
In retrospect his selection was a harbinger of how massively this millennium was going to suck.
the other failed GOP VP!!
Actually, he was totally in the Dem mainstream in 2000, which shows how far things have moved.
I'm also liking the way donor cash is getting played just now. It's not so much she took corporate money, burn the witch as it is hey mister corporate rep, that candidate you're supporting is saying all kinds of racist shit -- is that a message you support?
We'd prefer the dogwhistling. Thanks.
Holy shit is the Republican Mississippi Senate candidate an empty racist idiot racist empty shit. (See what I did there?)
They weren't supposed to have prepared notes but her campaign insisted on being allowed to access their notepad an hour early she clearly proceeded to read several answers from her enormous stack of supposedly blank pages. It was like an SNL skit.
OMG just read back in that twitter account.
- Told people the wrong election date (said 22nd instead of 27th)
- Used the term "pre-existence conditions"
- Claimed her opponent hasn't been in Congress in a century (presumably she means since last century?)
- Re gun control said "I am the candidate that cares. I'm the candidate that's been there six months." (She was appointed to fill the vacant seat six months ago)
- Sent out the state's other R senator to take press questions after the debate when the candidates were supposed to come out, claiming that she had to brief her husband who had been in a prayer meeting so hadn't been able to watch the debate.
||
I'm looking up do-it-yourself water heater repair on YouTube. The recommended videos after it include Jordan Peterson "OWN"ing a transgender professor and 7 reasons Ben Shapiro wins debates. The subtext of threatened masculinity is getting pretty close to text.
|>
Home repair plus google had worked great for me, like several thousand dollars and no house fire yet, but I've never tried YouTube for it. I like written instructions with pictures.
Obviously, one house fire and I'm back well below zero.
56: Looking for instructional videos on how to remove and take apart my specific kitchen faucet led me pretty quickly to videos that were just that, but the plumber is a sexy lady and there's a lot of gratuitous ass and cleavage shots. This seems to be a genre. Needless to say, my masculinity wasn't threatened, and while they weren't particularly arousing, I think at least one helped me out.
I think it would be really hard to replace a faucet without pointing your ass back at the camera.
People make jokes about plumber's butt crack for a reason.
one house fire and I'm back well below zero
With an attitude like that, you'd never be successful as an insurance-fraud arsonist.
I prefer written instructions with pictures in general, but a video makes it a lot easier to see if we're talking about the same model of water heater, or if we aren't, whether the differences matter.
Or so it seems. Can't report success yet. I've found two videos that look relevant, and they both cut out the part where the person disconnects certain supply lines presumably for time and relevance, and that's exactly where I get stuck. I've almost been pulling hard enough to strip the screws and they aren't budging. About to try one different approach right now. Wish me luck. I've been very close to doing something I'd regret. The past 3 days have been crazy, mostly but not entirely due to plumbing-related issues.
Update: no explosions, literally or otherwise, but also no success. The next step is to call the plumber and explain that they should come to see us for free because they saw us last night and we didn't have any problems at all before then.
61: The cleavage shots required some fancy camera work, and the choice of tight low-cut tank top and booty shorts seemed intentional.
I also prefer written instructions with pictures, but for anything you're doing precision work with your hands on complex physical systems--musical instruments, home repair, car stuff--videos can be a godsend.
64: Why did they come the first time?
66: The carbon monoxide alarm went off. Tuesday they charged $180 to determine that we had 0ppm CO, the alarm was probably just too old. After that we spent a few minutes talking about how old our boiler and water heater are and when we should think about replacing them. The water heater hasn't heated since then.
We're on the road right now to visit family, so the lack of hot water isn't really a problem right now, but it's still annoying.
63: I need to bite the bullet and figure out how to fully drain and flush our water heater. It's only 13 or so, but lots of sediment has built up.
67
Nice water heater ya got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
67: Are you sure you didn't somehow knock out the pilot light?
If you believe this guy on NPR, there are microbes living inside your hot water heater:
And so you look in a hot water heater, and there are microbes that are - they've evolved to be able to deal with really, really high temperatures. If you look in your salt shaker, there are bacteria like bacteria you find in salt flats in the desert. If you look in your attic, there are interesting bugs in your attic that we don't see elsewhere. In your basement, you see cave animals.
Maybe you can organize the microbes and teach them to perform routine maintenance.
I'm watching the scene where Michael Corleone shots the guys in the restaurant. Almost the same as Arlosgiving.
So, which is the better movie: Godfather or Goodfellas? I don't think it's a straightforward question.
71: We're sure the pilot light is out. We aren't sure why. We also aren't sure how to get it back on. Neither the manufacturer's instructions, nor the plumber on the phone, nor what I could find online, have helped.
78: thanks for the tip. I'll try that when I get home. All my efforts so far have revolved around trying to identify airline pilots on the street, Shanghai them into my basement, and stuff them bodily into a 4x8 inch opening. I nearly had one but he got away while I was getting the hacksaw out of storage.
If you were really helpful you'd show up at my front door with a pilot's license.
Update if anyone is curious: this morning, carbon monoxide alarms went off again. We got someone from the gas company to come. They decided that the problem was that the chimney was blocked. They recommended (i.e. did it for me) turning off both the boiler and the water heater. Incidentally he lit the pilot light in about 30 seconds before turning everything off; I have no idea what we were doing wrong. The house should be fine with those sources of CO turned off, they said, except that it's in the 30s outside and we have no other source of heat besides those. Also, I was getting a headache, dizzy, and nauseous, probably because of spending all that time in the basement around the CO sources trying to figure this out. So now we're expecting a handyman at 9 tomorrow morning and we're in a hotel until then. Funny story, this hotel is in the college at the end of our block, we've walked by the hotel dozens of times but we never knew about it until we looked up something for this, but it'll probably be where we send guests in the future if we don't feel like hosting them at home.
Still no idea why the plumbers' CO meter didn't find anything Tuesday. Or what we were doing wrong trying to light the pilot light. Or whether our house will be habitable by tomorrow night. The good news is, I'm no longer feeling like I need to go to the hospital.
83: That's a distressing story! Glad you are all OK.
I feel like CO could manage its image so much better if it didn't give you a headache as well the gift of sleep that never ends.
Congratulations on avoiding death like a boss.
Yikes Cyrus! Glad you and yours are ok.