Peaking and Peeking at too early Polls and Bad Santa Schemes

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David Horsey’s op ed and toon A GOP wish list | The Seattle Times

excerpt:

If polls are right, then most Americans do not support any of those things. Nevertheless, a great many of those same people will be voting for the party that seeks to make that agenda a reality and, as a result, it is very likely Republicans will win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in next month’s midterm election. Quite possibly, the GOP could take the Senate, as well.

How can this be? How can a party with minority views win a majority of seats in Congress?

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52 thoughts on “Peaking and Peeking at too early Polls and Bad Santa Schemes”

  1. YouTube thumbnail

    Oct 21, 2022 Researchers find COVID-19 causes human organs to age faster, Russia’s drones attack Ukraine’s electricity grid, and U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after a chaotic 44 days in office.

  2. speaking of downing street news

    Twitter is bowing down to Larry the Cat, Downing Street’s Chief Mouser, for outlasting 4 prime ministers | Businessinsider

    […]
    The Twitter account for Larry the Cat on Thursday proposed him as a candidate for the UK’s next leader, instead of the Conservative Party’s possible slate of successors.
    “The King has asked me to become Prime Minister because this nonsense has gone on long enough,” read a tweet from the account on Thursday.
    Many Twitter users seemed to approve of this suggestion. One Twitter user posted a photoshopped image of Larry in front of a crowd holding signs that reads: “Larry for Leader.”

    my favorite worthy of repost from yesterday’s thread:

    Image

  4. The polls are not a good guage. Just are not anymore. 
    Wait and see.  Republicans are going down hard. 
     

  5. Random twitterator who agrees with me:

    If you’re doom and gloom about the midterms, one thing that doesn’t show up in polling is turnout. In states with early voting, we’re getting data on how many people voted and from which party. There’s record breaking turnout from Dems and the GOP may not be able to match it.

  6. my hunch why putie is emptying kherson removing people, troops and material:  he’s about to blow up the dam.

    BBC:

    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of preparing to blow up a dam at a hydroelectric plant in southern Ukraine, which would lead to a “large-scale disaster”.
    In his overnight address he said the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper river had been mined by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian information.
    The dam is under Russian occupation, but Ukrainian forces are closing in.
    […]
    The Institute for the Study of War, an independent US-based think tank, has suggested Russia is “likely continuing to prepare for a false flag attack” on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, by creating “information conditions” for Russian forces to blow up the dam after they pull out of western Kherson and then accuse Ukraine of flooding the river and surrounding settlements.
    President Zelensky told EU leaders by video on Thursday that Russia had already destroyed more than a third of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with the aim of creating as many problems with electricity and heating as possible over the winter months. For the first time since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians have been asked to use less electricity, with nationwide limits on usage between 07:00 and 23:00.
    If the Kakhovka dam were destroyed, Mr Zelensky warned it could devastate the water supply to much of the south and leave Europe’s biggest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia without cooling water.
    “The dam of this hydroelectric power plant holds a volume of about 18m cubic meters of water,” he said. “If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding. Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.”
    The Ukrainian leader also said if the dam were destroyed then the North Crimean Canal would “simply disappear”.
    The canal, built in 1975, provides Russian-annexed Crimea with a reported 85% of its water supply. An early act in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February was blowing up a dam that Ukraine had built in the canal after the peninsula was seized in 2014, accusing Russia of not paying for the water.
    […]
    Pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said a dam explosion would prompt a 5m-high wave that would wash away all villages beside the Dnieper river at a rate of 25km/h. Within two hours it said the water would hit Kherson city and flood vast areas over three days.
    However, presidential office adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said that mining the dam was all part of a “Surovikin plan” that involved flooding territory to stop Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
    President Zelensky said that if the Russians were seriously considering blowing up the Kakhovka dam, it meant they realised they would not merely lose control of Kherson but the entire south including Crimea.

  7. If women show up, blue wave.  There are more of us.
     
    If boomers who care about their Social Security show up, blue wave.  It’s probably too far off for X, millennials, and z to care about yet…but they tend to be less racist and homophobic, I hope.
     

    Greg Abutt has been holding private fundraisers, while BETO has been going to colleges, VAs, city parks, etc.,
    And making his case, asking folks for their vote.

  8. PatD, “How can this be?” In the House for decades Democrats have lost the gerrymandering battles by not paying nearly as much attention to state legislative races as Republicans. In the senate there are more red states than blue, and each get two senators. Minority rule is baked in.

  10. Hope the polls are really wrong.  One has Greg ahead by 11.   How is that possible? I’ve seen BETO signs on Republican lawns.   On others, I’ve seen Mothers Against Greg Abbott signs. It takes guts to put up a non-Republican sign in this neck of the woods.

    Greg Abbott widens lead over Beto O’Rourke with likely voters in latest UT poll

    “Thirty-two percent of likely voters said immigration and border security were the top issues factoring into their vote, while 14% said the state economy and 13% said abortion. No other issue was in double digits.”

    The State Department should’ve been working with other countries to make conditions less dire, so folks wouldn’t flee their countries for the US. Without Dem control, this country won’t be fit for anyone to live in, because Republicans will turn this into a fully-fascist country. Those folks won’t have anyplace too go now. Where do we go?

  11. wonkette has a sorta take on that why/how question:

    The Federalist: What If We Used The Government To Stop Liberals From Existing? – Wonkette

    […]
    Last week, Bill Maher devoted a segment on his show to this premise, explaining that Republicans feel that they have to elect “monsters” like Donald Trump and Herschel Walker out of a desperation to show us how much they dislike us as people.
    “So let me try to translate, not endorse but translate, for liberal America. Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Donald Trump or any number of the egregious assholes Republicans have backed is, in their mind, the worst a candidate is, the more it says to Democrats, ‘Do see how much we don’t like what you’re selling?'”Maher said, adding “All that socialism, and identity politics, and victimhood, and oversensitivity, and cancel culture, and white self-loathing, and forcing complicated ideas about race and sex on kids too young to understand it, literally anything would be better than that. That’s their view. That’s why you can be a really bad dude in Republican politics and it’s not a dealbreaker.”
    If one comes from the perspective, as I do, that it is not the job of politicians to force people to be more likeable or socially acceptable to one another, this is objectively insane. It’s also fascism. And that, it seems, is exactly where the Right is headed.
    On Thursday, The Federalist published an article by political editor John Daniel Davidson, a favorite on Fox News and other conservative programming, in which he argued that conservatives must stop calling themselves conservative, stop believing in small government (which they only ever did when it came to using the government to help people, anyway) and declare themselves “radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries.”
    More specifically, and without using the term, Davidson said if the world was going to insist upon changing without their express permission, conservatives will need to become outright fascists in order to force it to go back to the way they like it. And of course, this will be justified by the fact that the Left “has gone too far.”
    […]
    It’s the Right that seeks actual, legal control, that seeks and indeed demands fealty and obedience — and, as Davidson points out, they can’t meaningfully exist without it.

  13. It may be wishful thinking, but I still believe there is a “women’s vote” that the pollsters are not capturing.  Gong against this is the GOP spending the past 50 years infiltrating local government.  They started with school boards in the 1980s and have been taking over ever since.

  14. One solution: every state constitution amendment to stop gerrymandering put on a ballot, as in Florida and Michigan, has passed 

    Same goes for abortion rights amendments.

    A benefit of these ballot initiatives is they drive out Dem-leaning voters.

  15. One thing about immigration that I rarely see, usually associated with industries such as farming, is the lack of people to do the work.  The flip “pay more” response does not mean much in a full employment economy such as what the U.S. has today.  “Pay more” only means competing for a resource that does not exist, so it really means raising prices for labor, take from A leaving B to pay more to take back from A due to the only labor available is already working.

  20. BB – Which is why BETO is promoting work visas in response to those who are coming unglued about folks at our border. 

    Jamie – I think (hope) so, too. I hope there really is an Alito effect at the polls, and I hope it’s a blue tsunami.

  21. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/china/china-party-congress-close-hu-jintao-intl-hnk/index.html

    “China’s former top leader, Hu Jintao, was unexpectedly led out of Saturday’s closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress, in a moment of drama during what is typically a highly choreographed event.”

    “The newly announced 205-member Central Committee did not include Li Keqiang and fellow Standing Committee member Wang Yang, who are both considered Hu’s proteges. This means neither will retain their seats in the Standing Committee, the party’s top-decision making body, though both are 67, one year short of the unofficial retirement age. Xi, who is 69, is included in the list of new Central Committee members.”

    “Xi, who is widely seen to have cemented power by eliminating rivals and dampening the lingering influence of party elders, is expected to be re-confirmed as party chief in a norm-breaking move and surround himself with allies.”

  22. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/20/arizona-early-voters-harassment-drop-box-monitors

    “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot drop box filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the drop box and accusing us of being a mule. They took a photographs [sic] of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film,” the voter wrote in the complaint.

    CNN has the video from the parking garage, but the “8-10” intimidators are not shown. However, since they filmed themselves harassing the couple, the authorities should have plenty to use against them when it shows up on social media.

    The fascist, MAGAt party is already at it; voter intimidation.  ~How American of them~  Effing nazis

  23. SC also leaves some offices with no democrat running.   I can dig it actually cause who wants to lose to a dip like Lindsay Graham or his unctuous odious ilk.  It’s SC…..any even half-way decent person will lose hands down. SC dont like no decent people in office.  

  24. SAVANNAH — A Hilton Head engineer will spend nearly seven years in prison for leading a conspiracy to steal trade secrets from aircraft manufacturers.
    Gilbert Basaldua was sentenced Oct. 18 to 80 months in prison, or more than 6½ years, after pleading guilty last year in federal court.

  25. Beto’s  canvasser  just came by , a Tech  student with an Iphone using the voter rolls .
    Told him I’d be voting Monday morning straight Democratic ticket , he was a bit shocked . Sent him off with a big grin when I told him I hate them wing nut  bastards.  

  28. Apparently  God has been talking to the Mormons …. 
    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Just weeks before the Nov. 8 vote, Utah’s senior senator, Republican Mike Lee, is now acknowledging a real reelection threat from Evan McMullin, an anti-Donald Trump independent and former Republican challenging him in the state’s most competitive Senate race in decades.
    Lee’s campaign insists it is confident heading into Election Day, but there are unmistakable signs of anxiety in a race shaping up as a referendum on the direction that Trump has taken the Republican Party.

    Lee recently sent out fundraising emails with the subject line: “I’m losing.” In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Lee begged the state’s other Republican senator, Mitt Romney, to “get on board” and endorse him. And speaking to reporters after a debate, the two-term senator said what his campaign had previously avoided saying: “It’s close.”
    https://apnews.com/article/abortion-2022-midterm-elections-evan-mcmullin-salt-lake-city-mike-lee-97549a4012ca12b71d23b8288e17ea6a
     

  29. Before and after: See how the Mississippi River and its tributaries have dropped to record lows

    By Angela Fritz and Brandon Miller, CNN

    Published 5:02 AM EDT, Sat October 22, 2022

     

    CNN — 
    Photos and satellite imagery from the central United States show how the region’s worst drought in at least a decade has pushed the Mississippi River and its tributaries to drop to record lows this month.
    Across the river basin, dozens of gauges have fallen below their low-water threshold. The Mississippi River was at historically low levels from Illinois to Louisiana this week, and many of these gauges will continue to see decreasing water levels as the forecast remains stubbornly dry.
    Drone video of the Mississippi River near Memphis shows how far the mighty river has contracted away from its banks.
    The river dropped to minus-10.75 feet there earlier this week, according to data from the National Weather Service, which was the lowest level ever recorded in Memphis.

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/weather/mississippi-river-low-level-drought-climate/index.html

  30. OM, now if only it were as simple to vote straight Dem as it was in the past.   They did away with the straight ticket ballots in 2020.  

    They (Texas Republicans) knew folks would show up to vote for Biden/Harris, so this was their way of protecting down ticket offices on the ballot.  Otherwise, Republicans would’ve lost a lot more races. 

    Monday is going to be rainy/stormy, but I intend to vote.  I don’t expect the lines that I saw in 2020 on the first day of early voting.   Oh, the early voting window is shorter this time around, too.  

    Nobody had better knock on my door. I always pretend I’m not at home, even when the TV and lights are on. I used to hide in the bedroom when the Jehovah’s Witnesses visited my grandmother. I am who I am.

  31. Climate Change is very very  inflationary . 
    One barge load of grain is  something like 18 rail cars, and like 40 tractor trailers. 
    The Po, Rhine, Yangtze , Colorado, Rio Grande, Mississippi , and many others all  are seeing record low flows . And all that goes into the price of corn. 
    I can think of just 2 rivers on the other side of the scale. The Murry Darling, and the Indus , both of them are drowning people. 

  34. Emails have been sent.  I was civil.  I wanted to add that this isn’t Russia yet, but I thought better. 

  36. OM – The agriculture industry is killing our planet.  Growing feed corn with water we don’t have to spare; using fossil fuel to ship it overseas; much of it is used as feed for livestock who create a lot of methane.   

  38. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/04/wax-worm-saliva-rapidly-breaks-down-plastic-bags-scientists-discover

    “Enzymes that rapidly break down plastic bags have been discovered in the saliva of wax worms, which are moth larvae that infest beehives.”

    “The enzymes are the first reported to break down polyethylene within hours at room temperature and could lead to cost-effective ways of recycling the plastic.”

    Everything has a purpose, even worm spit.

  39. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/coral-reefs-solar-powered-electrical-growth/

    “In nature, coral grows at a creeping half-centimeter per year through the accretion of minerals dissolved in seawater, which form a thick layer of substrate. But on electrically charged reefs, the electric current takes on some of the heavy lifting needed to deposit essential calcium carbonate on the reef. “This allows coral to grow seven to twelve times faster than in nature,” explains Nayantara Jain, director of ReefWatch.”

  41. Blue –
     
    It’s a lot more complex ,  changing the we move around , and stay warm is a lot more easy than what we eat. 
     
    We all love bacon , and making it out of crickets ain’t gonna be easy. 
     
    Farmers are not the problem  it’s the system we built around them. 
     
     
    Oddly I saw a headline today , a new Ag robot that kills weeds with lasers .  I’ll see if I can find it. 

  42. An observation without any analysis.  Pre-Covid, our new timeline of life marker, there were many service dogs around.  Not numerous but enough to notice them.  The last two plus years has been without service dogs, save mine.  Gale gets a lot of attention as people are no longer used to seeing service dogs, actually real service dogs, in public.  Wherever we go people just go “ahh”.  Young children have no clue what a service dog is or how to react.  They have not seen one before. 
     
      Gale does enjoy the attention, but people wanting to greet her have to ask and I have to tell her it is okay to greet people, in other words to allow them to pet her head otherwise she will not leave my side.  A few of the admiring crowd are surprised that she blocks them from getting close to me, that is what she is trained to do, guard me. 
     Te other day we were shopping at a BX, Exchange, on a military base and Gale was doing her job, someone came up behind me, almost too close, Gale pushed and I turned around to apologize that she was covering my six.  Not needed, we were with active duty troops.  Yup.
     
      But, back to the original thought, somehow, somewhere, service dogs and the people who rely on them for life are not around right now.,

  43. All that old Spirit  music …………. There is this one line .
    “We have the world at our fingertips” 
    Wake Up !
    This is the question of our time. 

  44. Meat, and the grain grown to produce it, is a problem. Processed food is a problem. Hopefully, the high prices will get folks to shift their diets a bit. 
     
    I’ve saved so much money over the last twelve years just by not eating meat.  I’ve saved even more by cutting out highly processed foods. However, even a the price of a canister of oatmeal has doubled this year.   Produce prices, fresh, canned or frozen, are high, as well.  So far, peanut butter is holding steady. 

  45. Bronc –
    Going back to the founding in 05′ , the one thing about this campfire are the deep insights  people share here. 
    Opening windows into other lives . 
    That’s why  this place  stands alone .
    That last post was perfect . 
    Here’s yer ” Atta Boy ” ,and ” Atta Girl “.

  50. There isn’t going to be a Senator Oz and it’s like everything else with him  he thinks money can buy him an office in a state he has never lived in..

  51. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/texas-school-district-motel-rooms-affordable-housing/

    “Historically speaking, teacher shortages are nothing new to rural districts,” said district superintendent Gabriel Zamora. “But we’re not struggling for teachers now.”

    “The cozy motel room is home these days and it’s one reason Ely took the job with the Fort Stockton Independent School District. That and the $80,000 salary.”

    “She rents her room for $250 a month from the Fort Stockton school district, which purchased the motel in December 2021 for $705,000 out of its budget, part of a multi-faceted plan to recruit teachers amid a chronic shortage.”

    “It’s not uncommon for rural districts to provide housing for teachers and administrators, Zamora said, but the hotel and its rock-bottom rent was something new.”

    “Starting salaries are too low to appeal to many college graduates, especially those carrying any college debt. From there, most districts follow a set pay schedule based on years of experience. If a district follows the minimum pay scale, as many small, rural schools do, it takes a teacher 20 years to get to $54,000.”

    “The average salary for Fort Stockton teachers in 2021-22 was $53,000 — the state average is around $56,000””…”

    “The district built 12 brick duplexes, similar to what one might see in a suburban development, complete with a playground in the shared, fenced yard behind them. Teachers can rent those for $750-800 a month.”

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