"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

another video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWn0qcRYFA

oh that one worked so does this now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3-oKccq_8U

Not to get too far from politics, but those numbers about cats are accurate, and it's not "good." It's actually Terrible for biodiversity.

Also in the US: "An estimated 600 million birds are killed every year from collisions with some of the country's largest skyscrapers, according to research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology."

I think I was at a webinar talking about alternatives that allowed birds to recognise glass fronted buildings were there or were collision risks over teh summer.

Instant polls gave the debate to Biden by the same margins showing in the polls in general. CNN had Biden at 53% and Trump at 39%; Data Progress had Biden at 52% and Trump at 41%; US Politics had Biden at 52% and Trump at 39%.

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 23, 2020 3:48 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is likely true of almost every debate in history. People are not rational actors earnestly paying attention to the issues and keeping close score. They are irrational morons who make instinctual decisions that they then support with "facts" they pluck from the ether. Iow, viewers see what they want to see.

I heard some post debate talk talking about how you needed a playboo0k for teh trump conspiracy stuff if you weren't a major fox/4chan/whatver consumer

It seems this Mr Bob Dobalinksi is here to say that Biden does in fact know that his son has a business.

PBKR it's also the case that snap polls taken after debates can get quickly washed away by whatever media narrative springs up afterwards i.e. Gore sighing 'condescendingly' at Bush Jr during his answers. Viewers said Gore 'won', but within a week it was conventional wisdom that Gore had just imperilled his candidacy

"He used to be my moneygrip," Hunter Biden said of Mr. Dobalinski, "but then he stole my honeydip."

Imagine the damage a cat at the top of a wind turbine could do.

Honestly, who would have noticed if Bobalinski was in the audience? They could have all been Bobalinskis. Maybe "bobalinski" is just a dismissive nickname, like "jabroni."

rejected name for a McGuffin

Or the placeholder for a forgotten word. "Pass me that ... that ... that bobalisnki over there."

Bobulinski alleged that code names were used to disguise the identities of some individuals named in the emails. References to the "Big Guy" were actually about Joe Biden. Jim Biden, Joe Biden's brother, was referred to as "JB."

JBB= Jimmy Bob Biden
JJB= Jerry Jeff Biden
JJB= Jo Jo Biden
JBB= Juggalo Bro Biden

Say it loud
Say it proud
Bobulinski is in the crowd

A couple of Biden's better moments: 1) his response to the (quite good, I thought) question about "the talk." He addressed it directly, and showed he at least understood what that meant. Trump changed the subject within two seconds. (I wish he'd been asked first, something like "Explain what's meant by 'the talk.'" I think he would have been stuck for an answer. 2) I don't remember when or the context, but when Biden, using the split-screen, said something like "You know who I am, and you know who he is." Who's down with old Joe B? Yeah, you know me.

The two news reports I heard this morning (Canadian radio) both focused on their COVID responses, favorably contrasting Biden.

https://i.imgur.com/MMWf50s.jpg

the fact that the President promised a military-delivered vaccine within the few weeks and nobody takes him seriously is pretty damning

Early vote total now 50 million — 1/3 of the current projected overall vote, 1/4 of the general electorate.

wish Biden had refuted the "you built the cages" line which I thought was a particularly evil thing for Trump to say, even if there is some truth to it

I did think he was in a tricky spot with all the "why didn't you do this in the 8 years you had" stuff, obviously you don't wanna throw Obama under the bus (and he kinda did at one point) but also I don't know how effective the "oh we had a Republican Congress" stuff was. I mean it's true but idk if that's what you want to say to convince whoever the hell is still undecided since those are the rare creatures who think bipartisanship is actually a thing. When Trump said "well you gotta sell them on it", he was actually kinda right?

Pretty sure Obama is savvy enough to have reassured Biden before the debate, "Say what you need to say about me."

I know this point was made repeatedly last night including by me, but after sleeping on it, I wonder if people aren't still underrating the importance of the debate having been Trump's best remaining opportunity to climb back into the race and it seemingly having been squandered.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 23, 2020

Trump can win. It's mathematically possible that polls could be waayyy off or something could come from totally out of the blue. But there are also a lot of things working against him in the final 11 days. COVID cases are rising. He's way behind in $. And 50m have already voted.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 23, 2020

sounds like Nate doesn't have much faith in Tony Bobulinski

Tara Lipinski... Monica Lewinsky... Tony Bobulinski.

Coincidence? I say nay.

Not only was that his last high profile shot to turn things around (60 Minutes might have been had he not muffed it), but if the past five long years have been any indication, there is a very good chance he will do or say something terrible in the next week to make things worse.

xp: Saul Alinsky

Squirrel on a jet ski
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L9Wk-85b-vA/hqdefault.jpg

Still think there's a non-zero chance that he takes his thing out and waggles it at the camera before this horrorshow is over and done with.

everyone's doing it

squirrel on a jet ski, i know, i know, it’s really serious

can you imagine if cats and the wind didn't kill all the birds? you'd barely be able to walk outside, the air would be so thick with birds. Awful. So thick they block out the sun. So many birds, you can barely breathe for the feathers

Not only was that his last high profile shot to turn things around (60 Minutes might have been had he not muffed it), but if the past five long years have been any indication, there is a very good chance he will do or say something terrible in the next week to make things worse.

I think all Trump has to do is get the word out that the media is biased against him. Why hasn't he tried this yet?

why IS it that every single media outlet is biased against him???

So biased that they shove a camera in his face every time he eats a hamberder. The bias!

it's especially weird how the women who interview him are always so so nasty.

can you imagine if cats and the wind didn't kill all the birds?

it's easy if you fly

still can't get over the 60 Minutes footage, that was so goddamn pathetic, even by his standards

and he wanted people to see the whole thing!

I'm certain 60 minutes would have made him look better than that too

exactly a lot of the whinier bits would've had to have been edited out

Thinking back on the early vote numbers, did a quick calculation based on what I've generally been seeing via Elections Project and the guess by some that we could hit or approach 100 million early votes by Election Day is looking more plausible. The vote total has generally (not always but more or less) been 5 million every 24 hours during the week. Numbers slow over the weekend as updates by states aren't provided as often; last weekend was around another 5 million total. So if you had it at two further weekends of 10 million total plus seven weekdays, counting today, at 5 million each, that's 45 million total, making it 95 million by Election Day. Additional factors might be increased vote totals over these last two weekends in particular (especially as more options for voting continue to emerge -- in San Francisco, for instance, the drop-off spot for ballots near City Hall will be open this weekend for the first time this season) plus the fact that one big state has yet to report any numbers: New York. With their early voting about to start, that'll likely juice the total to 100 million at least. We'll just have to see, of course; a general estimate by Elections Project itself last week had it at 88 million, but the numbers sure seem to be telling.

More people have now early voted in Florida (4,771,956) than the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in Florida in 2016 (4,617,886).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 23, 2020

the star tribune has an absentee ballot tracker (this is just absentee mail in or drop off ballots: https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-early-ballots-absentee-mail-in-voting-tracker-up-more-than-600-percent-with-month-to-election-day/572588741/

Total absentee ballots requested: 1,765,327
Total absentee ballots accepted so far: 1,186,522 (67.2% of all requested)
So far absentee ballots accepted this year are up about 370% from 2016 and 2018.

that alone is way more than the github tracker say (911,000)

ALSO the way I read it this is just absentee ballots not early voting at voting centers, so I'm sure that number has gotta be close or getting there to the absentee ballots

I voted yesterday, on my 40th birthday no less. Felt good to get it out of the way. My county has a neat website that gives you waiting time info at the various early voting locations, so we didn't have to wait at all. It was kinda goddamn weird voting in a mask and getting a ballot from folks in masks and/or plastic shields, seems like that ought to be enough to clue people in on who they ought to be voting for.

that's a lot of ballots to throw away

Elections Project in ways is always playing catchup, adding numbers as it gets them. I think it's just handy to think of it as a lower end amount, and if it's even higher, great.

Basic summary on early voting as various types see it, with a concentration on key states. This part stood out:

“The concerning thing for Republicans is that once a Democrat vote is cast, or once a vote is cast in general, it can't be taken back,” said Chris Wilson, a top Republican data analyst who independently reviewed the Hawkfish numbers for POLITICO. “That to me is the bigger issue here: Our window to message and convert any of these voters away from voting Democrat is shorter than the number of days left in the campaign.”

Wilson compared the situation to an analysis for a battleground congressional district he has consulted for in which the Republican leads by a point, but Democrats have poured it on so heavily in early voting that his candidate needs to win Election Day by huge proportions.

“Great news. We lead [in the polls]. But if you look at the early vote, we have to win 2-to-1 on Election Day,” Wilson said. “And that's probably just about every contested race in America.”

I hadn't quite thought of it so starkly on the window for persuasion but that does make sense. And again, saying whatever you will about good ol' Lincoln Project, it seems their efforts are increasingly aimed at the reverse situation: identifying GOP voters to persuade them to vote Biden. As the story notes, it seems Trump's finally woken up a bit on this point with his planned Sunday bit about early voting, but.

another interesting/promising stat:

More than 67,000 early votes have been cast by Minnesotans between the ages 18 and 29, enough to make a difference in a close election. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory over Donald Trump in Minnesota was less than 45,000 votes.

At this point in time in 2016, fewer than 5,000 votes had been cast by young people in the state, according to the CIRCLE data.

Not unrelated:

Texas is currently leading the nation in youth voter turnout.

About half a million Texans under 30 have voted so far, according to new data from Tufts University. | @AshLopezRadio https://t.co/yE4OcIsIUU

— KUT Austin (@KUT) October 23, 2020

AT LAST my ballot is in and will be counted, 22 days after posting.

I delivered my mail-in ballot to a drop box at an early voting site on Saturday but haven't yet received any indication that it's been accepted. I would assume that drop boxes are emptied at night and processed on the next business day, so it makes me a little anxious.