US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

one of the drudgeries of being a late capitalism political figure is wondering why you didn't get a package bomb

trump is supposed to talk about this shit in 10 minutes. will be very tough for him to resist both sides-ing it

not quite sure why a righty loon would target BillHil and Debbie *now* -- they did their part in getting us here.

voting Green against Cuomo for governor, hope he wins with 49%

yeah i mean the thing i try to keep in mind at times like this is that perps of this kind generally have no coherent worldview to express mail, as it were

true, the guy is probably like Trump w/out money

not quite sure why a righty loon would target BillHil and Debbie *now* -- they did their part in getting us here.

... dude, come on, the right's fixation on the evils of the clintons is inflexible, thanks for owning the libs again tho

but Bannon + Fox want her to run again.

not quite sure why a righty loon would target BillHil and Debbie *now*

Maybe they mailed the packages months ago, but the failing post office only just now got around to them.

Maxine Waters also got a package

yes. Chris Riotta's twitter feed has been good for hearing updates. From his reporting a "suspicious package sent to Maxine Waters has been intercepted by Capitol Hill police - this may be the package discovered at the congressional mail facility in Maryland". Also, the suspicious package at the DWS office may have been one returned from Eric Holder's office

HRC is their Prometheus, they want her liver pecked out every day and regenerated so she can run again.

Maybe they mailed the packages months ago, but the failing post office only just now got around to them.

― Josh in Chicago

real lol

Someone ask Pete King when he was last at the post office.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 24, 2018

the package sent to "John Brenan" at CNN was delivered by courier, according to Shimon Prokupecz

I can’t believe the official white house statement was a screenshot of something written on the iphone notes app

trump just gave a statement of sorts, at the beginning of a regularly scheduled speech on opioids. he gave a pretty generic boilerplate denouncement of "threats and acts of political violence", to which he received a standing ovation, said "thank you", and then said "that was a very bipartisan statement"

i can xp

I live in Trump-y country and can affirm that 80% of the comments on the local paper's article about the attempted bombings are along the lines of "FALSE FLAG FROM DEMORATS!" with like 40 likes apiece.

1/4 of the commenters in question are burly 50something guys with salt-and-pepper beards who ride Harleys fwiw.

(don't see Nate Silver factoring my demographic analysis into his forecasts smdh)

rush limbaugh has already made that his position, a couple hours ago.

it's amazing to me that so many people not only entertain the possibility of false flags in situations like this, but that they are so absolutely CERTAIN about it, even as the event itself is still unfolding! and even more amazing than that is that they are ever taken seriously again, in any walk of life, by anyone who knows them.

https://ptpimg.me/ixl649.png

on the other hand, some of my mom's 70something leftist friends have convinced themselves that the migrant caravan was instigated by the right wing. both sides!

very bad people on both sides

these are people influenced by those who argue the earth is flat and Obama is literally an emissary sent directly from hell

he received a standing ovation, said "thank you", and then said "that was a very bipartisan statement"

"I pooped today! ......... General Kelly helped me flush."

very good boy

my mom's friends are strangely receptive to my snopes-esque attempts to correct their conspiracy theorizing. they're like, "oh, thanks. hmm, I guess I was wrong." you'd think after 20x posting weird unsubstantiated things from websites like bluewave4real.biz and realizing it was dubious, you'd develop a stronger bullshit detector.

btw why is rush limbaugh so seldom mentioned these days? did he lose his audience to Fox News? was he just outpaced by even crazier, more craven right-wing people? back in the early 2000s he was the face of the right-wing media.

he's still incredibly popular, he's just not the most outrageous right winger anymore

he must be held together with string and chewing gum at this point, how has he not had a fatal coronary by now?

you'd think after 20x posting weird unsubstantiated things from websites

I still see Trump's bogus "I'd run as a Repub, they're stupid" quote regularly. Some folks never learn.

i've seen "kavanaugh's first vote was to disenfranchise native americans in North Dakota" regularly over the past two weeks and had to correct people

uncharted territory

Average dollars raised by House candidates as of quarter 3 2018:

Democrats: 1.4 MILLION
Republicans: 200 thousand

Dems raising 7x as much cash as Republicans this year. Was 1.7x in 2006. https://t.co/hW3q1oVwc5 pic.twitter.com/BoJGKo2x9k

— G. Elliott Morris📈🤷‍♂️ (@gelliottmorris) October 24, 2018

xp a plausible lie is the best kind of lie

It's nice that Dem are raising more money, but also what a complete waste of money campaigning is.

almost makes you wish you actually could just buy elections

a little silly to look at means when certain races are getting the lion's share of that sum -- gimme that sweet average individual contribution figure

but idk obv morris is smarter than me?? w/e

if there was campaign finance reform, voter rights reform, ballot reform, district reform, electoral structure reform and the dismantling of the two-party system, you could get a pretty nice democracy going

This essay is worth a read.

That chart only looks at money donated to individual candidates, when the Rs have more than matched that $ if RNC, RCCC, and PAC money is brought into the picture

yeah there's no way dems will ever beat GOP in pure cash flow, not by much, anyway. the question is whether the flood of individual donations is a reliable barometer of turnout.
i suspect not... a lot of the money coming into the race in my district (where the dem is running a very uphill campaign in a R+20 district) is from elsewhere... people in blue districts with money to burn. there are plenty of locals donating, too, sure. but a good % of people donating are out of district and while that "helps" (in terms of campaign hiring staff, printing up signs, etc.) it probably doesn't translate in any strong way to votes.

i;ve been doing as much volunteering as i can, but i've noticed that the campaign is emphasizing turnout rather than persuasion... going over and over the same neighborhoods w/ more reliably dem voters to make sure they've talked to everyone. but in a district where GOP has a +30% or +40% registration advantage that isn't going to cut it. we'll see.

a fair chunk of that out-of-district money should be going to GOTV and canvassing, which def increases turnout. at any rate, we'll know in a couple weeks.

lol xp

"persuasion" is generally not a reliable investment of campaign cash, not nearly as reliable as registration drives + GOTV operations

right, it increases turnout, but in a red district you need turnout + lots of republicans not voting + a fair number of republicans switching sides.
of course, that's just my district.

when you're on the ground canvassing it's hard to imagine, sometimes, that it has any affect. i talk to lots of folks and have good conversations but maybe one person every day or two seems to have been genuinely persuaded to vote when they wouldn't otherwise.

er, effect.

the best day i had was going around a puerto rican neighborhood where we talked to probably a half-dozen people who were like "honestly i wasn't going to vote because nobody is reaching out to us but i'm glad you came by and talked to me and i'm going to vote now" but i can't take any credit for that b/c my canvassing partner was a spanish speaker and she did 95% of the talking and i just stood back and smiled and nodded occasionally.

this is why old-school union operations were so effective - they would physically take you to the poll and make you sure you voted the way they wanted. Or (in the more corrupt cases) they just voted for you and stuffed ballot boxes.

xp