…so if I remember rightly part of the deal with halloween…or all hallow’s eve if you’re feeling fancy…is that the eldritch forces of darkness take the night off…so I was kind of hoping I’d manage to have this not be a litany of awful the way they normally end up…but
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/europe-trump-biden-election/2020/10/30/story.html
…well
…I’m sorry?
…but that might be easier said than done
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/walmart-reverses-decision-remove-guns-ammo-store-shelves
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/30/voter-intimidation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/election-police-officers-bias/2020/10/31/story.html
…& it’s not like it gets better, to be honest
…although they’ve made it pretty clear it could get worse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/29/covid-vaccine-states-need-money
…or have been worse
…or just flat out is worse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-executive-orders/2020/10/29/story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/31/trump-hydroxychloroquine-stockpile-pharmacies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/30/conservative-judges-absurd-voting-theory
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/31/trump-judges-voting-rights
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-meadows-cnn-flip-flop-obamacare/2020/10/29/story.html
…I mean, this might make some people feel better about a couple of things
…or this
…but in the context of the rest of 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/30/kyle-rittenhouse-extradited
…it doesn’t feel like it really moves the needle
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/30/trump-just-made-bidens-closing-argument-for-him
…& even though this might
…or even this
…or (as earendil pointed to yesterday after most of us were distracted by things like reminiscing about The Wire)
…the suspense is liable to kill me all the same
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/five-ways-russians-could-wreak-havoc-2020-election
…I mean
…if tuesday doesn’t turn that orange monster into a lame duck I don’t rightly know what I’m gonna do
…& I’m pretty sure I’m not alone
…& ordinarily I’d say that if they were making both sides unhappy they might be doing something right…but one of these things just isn’t like the other…so treating them the same seems like you have to be doing something wrong…& let’s face it…facebook has form that way
…& misinformation is apparently the name of the game
Instagram on Thursday took aim at the spread of misinformation on its platform, announcing that it would temporarily eliminate users’ ability to view some recent posts ahead of Election Day.
In two tweets, Instagram said it would remove the “recent” tab from hashtag pages. Previously, users could view the most recent posts tagged with a particular hashtag. Now, only “top” posts under a specific hashtag that have been reviewed by the platform will be viewable.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, said the change was made to “reduce the real-time spread of potentially harmful content that could pop up around the election.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#how-three-election-related-falsehoods-spread
QAnon followers were speculating on Tuesday night that Facebook’s new ban on all QAnon groups and pages was part of a complex plan by the Trump administration to root out the “deep state” and arrest their enemies. Or the social media company was trying to squelch the impending news that President Trump was about to crack down on his foes.
QAnon believers were making both arguments. Neither was true.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#qanon-says-being-banned-from-facebook-is-proof-of-the-conspiracy
…but thankfully there are definitely some people who know exactly what they’re going to do given the opportunity
…the rest of us just need to try our best to understand the picture in front of us without losing our minds
Election maps are everywhere. Don’t let them fool you
…& some of us maybe could stand to remember that the picture can look different depending on who it is that’s looking at it
In the week before the country potentially elects its first female vice president, I’ve been trying to write a sweeping essay about progress and trailblazers and glass-breakers and what it all means. But what I keep thinking about is this: At some point in Kamala Harris’s life, someone has instructed her to carry her keys like a weapon when she walks to her car. Someone has said, Get them out of your purse even before you leave the grocery store. Arrange them between your fingers, and if someone attacks you, aim for the face.
How do I know this? Because this is Woman 101. It’s the first page of the instruction manual teaching us how we’ll need to navigate the world. I have never met a woman who hasn’t heard this piece of advice. And I doubt that in 232 years of male leadership there’s ever been a sitting president or vice president who has.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/kamala-harris-knows-things-no-vp-ever-has/2020/10/29/story.html
…so it sure would help a lot if we could change the backdrop
ill just butt in with some local news
https://nltimes.nl/2020/10/31/dutch-govt-pulls-eu34-billion-klm-state-aid-package-unions-reject-deal
good job union! lets all go be unemployed instead of accepting a paycut in exchange for a bailout
seems ill advised is all im saying..
…it does indeed…hoping that “let’s all go be unemployed” is rhetorical & the implied “us” doesn’t actually include you…which I think I know it doesn’t but wouldn’t want to be wrong about?
oh im not directly affected by the airlines…tho my employment is less certain than i like it to be… but it is what it is…if the company folds im probably going back to school…ive got about 2 years unemployment benefits owed to me…i figure thats a primo chance to be reschooled into a different trade
im thinking plumbing…i dont see that going away ever…or maybe electrician as im halfway there already
…of the two I guess plumbing is the more certain to be a career immune to events short of an apocalypse
…but in the meantime I’d be inclined to think electricians are less prone to getting the shitty jobs?
…fingers crossed the current paycheck keeps rolling in but I think you’ve got some sound logic there if it goes the other way?
We have an electrical guy, an hvac guy, and a plumbing guy. All are younger, in their 20s and 30s. We had to get new providers as our prior folks all retired. They each earn a more than fair dollar for their services, and are well worth it. There appears to be demand for and security in either career you are considering.
tbh..i was expecting a lifetime of automotive repairs
but i didnt figure in replacement parts being cheaper than repairs one day
sucky
but im good with my hands and actually not completely dense so im pretty sure i can pick up anything
hell…i could be fucking management if i didnt hate fucking paperwork and brown nosing
well…i guess i couldnt be fucking management actually
its one of those jobs where you need to be educated instead of capable
…what happened to promoting from within?
…the whole work your way up thing gets talked about enough…but I guess I hear you on that all the same
over here promoting from within still lives
which is to say i think legally they have to open the job to people inside the company first before turning them down and hiring another office wonk from elsewhere
tho… to be more precise about it…theres ceilings…i can work my way up…but im floor staff… best i can hope for is make my way up to team lead…(wich is a shit job…get shit from below and above..whoopwhoop)
you need to start in the office to make it higher up the food chain over there….. crossing from floor to office does not happen
tbh….its a flawed system… somewhere along the line it was decided you need higher education to be an office wonk
and so now ive got a bunch of dickheads who dont actually know the job telling me how to do mine more efficiently….and generally making life more difficult…
shit would be so much easier if old hands got promoted into the office and took a course in brown nosing
…it sounds like a bad case of “consultant” syndrome…hope it clears up without causing any lasting damage
i think the lasting damage has already been done
i wasnt just talking about my current job
to me this is same shit different day…
at some point having a piece of paper and the ability to sweet talk people became more important than actually being able to do the job
and i guess if i had the chops to be management i could find a way to make that sound like its not pants on head retarded…
but i dont…. its pants on fucking head retarded
and why are these office bums getting paid more than me?
its not like they work for a living
I’ll say this based on 30 years of observing Donald Trump and almost two years up close and personal living with a horrible narcissist, he’s about as ready as he was for CoVID19.
In my personal war with Narcissism, I heard all the threats that she had the lawyers ready, the neighbors on her side, the cops, her friends in the Russian mob, basically the entire universe ready to unleash hell on my dumb ass if I kicked her out of my house. One thing that I realized about my own personal narcissist was she couldn’t plan or execute anything because she never thought she was wrong, nor did her asskissing weak spineless minions. Her plans were vague, stupid and meaningless. When I executed my ambush on her, I steamrolled her. She didn’t know what hit her and I got my house/life back.
The same applies for Donald Trump. When the fuck has anything he’s planned and “executed” been successful? He just screams “DO THIS!” and his idiot minions scramble. It hasn’t worked out. This is a man who thinks Jared Kushner is a capable leader/thinker when he’s beyond hopelessly out of his depth. Same thing applies to the election. Don’t get me wrong, Trump has ‘plans’, but vague and stupid ones. It gets worse for the GOPers because Trump’s cronies are running the “RNC.”
That being said, it is the craven competent shitheads like Mitch, various GOPer governors, Erik Prince, Chuckie Koch and the Pyramid DeVos (for example) that worry me.
If McConnell winds up Minority Leader after all this, he’s going to invoke some obscure 19th Century procedural rules or some shit to make sure this country remains at a standstill for the next four years.
And the batshit crazy has begun:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/31/1991393/-Caravan-of-pro-Trump-vehicles-harasses-Biden-Harris-campaign-bus-in-Texas-freeway-ambush
At least it wasn’t Florida. Yet.
…I try not to give in to posting twitter/reddit links from who-the-hell-knows-who but that story gets crazier & crazier…I read somewhere that when a journalist asked for a comment about footage of them trying to ram cars the response was full of unhinged crap about anti-fa being the real threat & how they’d threatened that gun-toting couple (that threatened peaceful protesters with firearms & caught charges) with murder & why wasn’t the media doing anything about these “facts”
…it’s crazy for sure…& I’d be lying if I claimed it isn’t causing me a bunch of concern?
The only people I thought were smart that support Trump always talk about the stock market & how much he has helped their 401K and such. This is good ammunition for that argument:
https://www.axios.com/trump-stock-market-performance-eclipsed-obama-c41ce790-13a1-400a-afd2-84f903e56745.html
but, I’m sure those same people will either not accept that info or it is really just to hide racism or some batshit crazy religious bullshit.
…I know a number of people who are fond of reminding anyone who’ll listen that the stock market=|=the economy but I’m sympathetic to the argument that both Obama & Dolt45 had to deal with “unprecedented” economic upheavals one way or another so it seems overly simplistic to just note that while the former managed to dig the markets out of a hole & hand things over at a point when most stuff was looking up & point out that his successor managed to crater a bunch of shit because he doesn’t seem to understand how things like tariff wars shake out
…but where the crash under Obama’s tenure hit big institutions hard & the repercussions fucked up a lot of things for a lot of people the current problems have favored the big online folks like amazon to an extent that the market gains seem like a fig leaf in terms of the underlying damage the pandemic has done in economic terms…& if you take that out of the equation it sure seems like the current administration has basically just made things worse in a slew of ways it didn’t have to
…mostly for reasons that are either ideologically driven or straightforwardly promote the interests of the very wealthy (& folks like trump who are all about pretending to be) at more or less the direct expense of the vast majority of americans?
I may have told this story before, so forgive me if I have. Back when I used to write investment newsletters, many of my clients (mutual funds, 401k plans, investment firms) would ask for articles about how well the stock market performed under Republicans. Particularly as we approached elections.
Problem is, it doesn’t. Since we began tracking returns, it’s always performed better under Democrats. Always. Doesn’t matter which index you use as a proxy. And I actually had software that could looks at returns since 1929 pretty much any way you wanted to slice it.
So I always had to have these awkward conversations: Umm, do you think stocks do better under Republicans? Uhh, that’s not actually the case. Yes, I’m very sure. No, it doesn’t matter which indexes I use or even if I use a broad sampling. No, there’s not really any way to juggle the number. Yes, perhaps we should come up with another topic.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-election-democratic-republican-presidents-better-performance-economy-gdp-2020-8-1029528932#
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/investing/stock-market-election-trump-biden/index.html
Yeah, my financial guy would send out that before each election to help his clients make more informed choicess. Although, if you watch Fox business, I’m sure you would get a totally different set of numbers!
Well, sure. Alternative facts, baby! There’s no such thing as an inconvenient truth any more!
Observations:
The foxtrots are from years past, yet more relevant than ever; re: BlockChain, HBO.
On Friday, I was discussing with my coworker, at what point in 2016 did the GOP relinquish the reins to drumpf? And were they under the same assumption as we were that Clinton would win hands down, so why not let Trump fall flat on his face? And did they not see the consequences of a Trump presidency?
Because now, after the flea-flicker hail Mary pass was converted, the GOP got their judges, but have lost the party to Trump. Reports and polls say that Trump has 93% approval among GOPers. That’s not a following, it’s a cult. Republicans are no longer; they’re trumpists now. And they’re not going away.
The logic of getting judges in exchange for handing over authority to Trump never made sense to me.
Trump needed those judges as much as the GOP, if not more. Holding him accountable for ethics would have made him more likely to deliver nominations they liked, not less.
Jeff Flake is now endorsing Biden in Arizona, but the obvious question is where was he in 2017? A couple of GOP defections — like his Arizona colleague McCain — could have swung the balance in the Senate. They could have gone behind the scenes to McConnell and given him a list of demands in exchange for letting his precious judges go through, and McConnell would have had zero leverage.
Instead, they were just too cowardly or else just pretending to have any problem with Trump. I suppose it’s also possible they were just too stupid and thought they could play some kind of 9 dimensional chess match where surrendering was actually conquering. But they should never be considered serious people ever again.
A High School newspaper broke the Kentucky State Police trading story? Can I go back to bed?
…by all means go back to bed…I’ve been wondering why I got up pretty much all day?
I heard those aren’t really Covid cases, the doctors are just trying to charge more money. Damn those greedy doctors.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-covid-death-money-jesus-christ_n_5f9c94d4c5b65662bcc6f565
LOL!