Here We Go [DOT 9/11/22]

9/11/22 MegMegMcGee 33

Thanks for hanging out with us last night. I went to bed at 9:30 so I can’t wait to wake up and see what is going on…

Midterm elections 2022: first US polls close as Republicans eye gains in Senate and House – live
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2022/nov/08/midterm-elections-2022-polls-results-senate-house-us-midterm-voting-republicans-democrats-live-updates-latest-news

Tots and Pears

It’s Election Night in America
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/midterm-election-results-livestream-voting-11-08-2022/index.html

Well that makes me feel secure!

Stonks!

FTX’s token plunges 80% on liquidity concerns, wiping out over $2 billion in value
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/ftxs-ftt-token-plunges-80percent-wiping-out-over-2-billion-in-value.html

Sprots!

As Top Scientists Say Concussions Can Cause C.T.E., These Sports Doctors Dig In
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/sports/football/cte-brain-trauma-concussions.html

Neat!
‘Exceptional’ trove of 24 ancient statues found immersed in Tuscan spa
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/08/exceptional-trove-of-24-ancient-statues-found-immersed-in-tuscan-spa

Today in Turtles:

Do what you can to have a good day!

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

33 Comments

      • It’s close. At this point worst case I think is that it goes to a runoff, and I suspect Warnock will take that. But this has been a nail-biter for sure.

        Once again, I’m dumbfounded by the Republican capacity to vote for anything labelled “R.”

          • That’s exactly what happened – there were a lot of older white men at my polling place at 7 am. Also, Zombie Vince Dooley endorsed him right before he died.

      • I was wrong and I am sorry if I jinx it. I tried my *best this morning to find the results myself but apparently I am not qualified. My apologies.

  2. Not a bad night! (So far.) For a country roiled once again by “economic anxiety” (that was one of the Democrats’ excuses for Hillary losing in 2016) the best thing to be was not a Democrat or a Republican but an incumbent. No one seemed to be in much of a mood to throw the bums out. Chuck Grassley, 89, wins reelection. He and Dianne Feinstein, also 89 and reelected two years ago, should form their own Senate sub-caucus, the “We will fight them [anyone who dares challenge them in an election] on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender” bipartisan working group.

    Speaking of longevity, Chuck Schumer is now the longest serving New York Senator, having been reelected to a fifth term. He won against Al “Senator Pothole” D’Amato (who is still alive somehow, and punditing, but he’s only 85, so if things were different he could have joined Chuck and Di’s caucus). I remember that election (1998), because I made up a little ditty about it.

    Tomayto, tomahto

    Let’s dump D’Amato

    Let’s call the whole thing off

    You hang around enough gay piano bars you eventually become Cole Porter.

    Lauren Boebert probably gone, that’s good. Margarine Taylor Greene overwhelmingly reelected, well, I’m about as likely to traverse that part of Georgia as I am to visit Elon Musk’s Mars colony, so whatevs. Florida is Florida.

    A little concerning is New York. Sean Patrick Maloney, whose side gig is to ensure that Democratic incumbents retain their House seats, and to quash any hopes any primary candidates might have, may lose his seat. Similarly, Cuomo leftover Jay Jacobs, who notionally performs the same function at the New York State level (especially the “no primaries on my watch” Diktat, but in reality exists to make sure Cuomo and now neo-Cuomo Kathy Hochul keep their positions), won, but his home base, Long Island, is now redder than it’s been for years. I secretly suspect he’s pulling a J. Edgar Hoover and has enough on both of them to ensure a long-lasting and satisfying career in this deep-blue state.

    Fetterman, Huzzah! It might come as a relief to “Dr.” Oz, to finally be able to go home to his manse in Cliffside Park, NJ (full disclosure: I’ve been driven by his house. It’s…large, I’ll be charitable) but Ohio! Everyman JD Vance, best-selling author (the New York Times loved Hillbilly Elegy), Yale Law JD, stint at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm…not exactly like having a GED and picking up part-time work at one of Dayton’s Wal-Marts…sorry, Meg. You were smart to get out. Tots and pears to your family and friends back in the Buckeye State.

    • I think you would agree that NY state’s lack of pop for Dems is a sign that Cuomo was just bad at politics.

      All he could do was get PR from friendly institutions about how he was a savvy fighter, but he couldn’t build a machine worth two bits.

      I’m sure he’ll be working overtime to say the lukewarm results prove how much he’s needed, but the reality is he would be in a much stronger position if he had built a machine that delivered up and down the ballot for candidates who now owed him.

      If he had done that, he wouldn’t have needed to keep teasing about a return. But he’s stuck playing dumb PR games and whining behind the scenes because he’s always been weak and useless.

      The best thing would be for him to move on to a completely different field, but he’d fail at almost anything else too. And what’s going to be left is running around screwing things up for Democrats with useless “advice” like other old Clinton hacks who miss the press.

      • Cuomo’s ego miscalculated — not for the first time — how much support he really had. He and his people were trying to make the party choose sides and generally speaking, he got the short end of that stick. He certainly did damage but not nearly as much as I assume he was hoping for.

        An incumbent, elected Hocul four years down the line is gonna be a much harder challenge to take down for the GOP and for an insurgent Dem.

      • Should the Republicans take the House (I think they will, but not +15 or +20) I think we’ll be hearing more from Andrew Cuomo, reluctantly, and under oath. His Ghislaine Maxwell, Melissa DeRosa (sexual abuse cover-ups) also provided an invaluable function to his downfall by saying that New York State lied about how many Covid deaths there were in New York State, and eventually we learned where they occurred.

        Good luck with the podcast, Handsy.

         

  3. I have to say that I felt confident that the vaunted “red wave” was going to more like a “red oops I poured a little too much in this glass and spilled a few drops.”

    At this point, I think I even overstated that. By all logic and fundamentals, the GOP should be +3 in the Senate and +20ish in the house easy and they are decidedly neither. They may still win the House and we’ll see on Warnock but … the Dems in Disarray chest-thumping of the past few weeks looks kinda stupid while the “Gee, are Trump crazies a problem?” is suddenly coming up on the outside in the media narrative race.

    • I think one of the problems, as it has been for years now, is media puffing excitement into ho-hum races and polling “over-correcting” in the wrong ways. I really didn’t believe that Zeldin could have won, but the relentless drumbeat of insurgency and CRIME and we did have 12 years of Pataki. Who, by the way, I barely remember, so I think he was the last gasp of “he who governs least governs best,” except for stripping the MTA of appropriated capital funds, but otherwise he was certainly no Emperor Andreus Maximus.

      I even started reading some stories (a few put out by her campaign itself) that Tish James might be endangered. 54:46 is not exactly a Stalinesque mandate, like the local races in my neck of the woods, but that seemed a stretch.

      • Propaganda is effective … even on the people making it. (Especially on the people making it?)

        I’m not saying it’s impossible that we’ll see another R win the guv race in NY, but it would take someone who can do more than just scream “CRIIIIIIME!!!!!” for six straight months. Even against Hochul, who was as soft an opponent as you could wish for and, worse, is an upstater.

        As for the media, yes, they want/need races to be close, and they’re easily spun. But that’s always been true; it’s just louder and more easily accessible now.

        • I have a feeling (not that I really knew Emperor Andreus Marcus Maximus’s real thoughts about anything, thankfully) that Kathy Hochul served the function of George H. W. Bush’s Dan Quayle, in a way. Maximus’s first Lieutenant Governor, Robert Duffy, somewhere upstate, something, Rochester, was thrown overboard in favor of someone no one had ever heard of, Kathy Hochul, but a centrist Democrat for the time (meaning she was to the right of Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller) and a woman and from potentially vote-rich Erie County, but white and suburban Buffalo, not, you know…And if worse came to worst, she was his insurance card. In his hubris, he must have thought, “You don’t like me? You know who’s behind me is someone you’ve never heard of and whose last name you can’t pronounce.”

          Just a guess.

  5. I’m still amazed at the sheer levels of straight up stupidity in my home state.  While the ballot question to tax the ultra rich in order to fund infrastructure and schools is leading, it’s incredibly close and not yet called.  News flash, assholes:  none of you are temporarily embarrassed millionaires and you never will be.  Tax those rich fucks.

    • The DNC didn’t support Booker. He had a strong message but his fundraising was grass roots. The sunk a bunch of $ into Amy McGrath’s run against McConnell even though she had previously lost to Andy Barr when she ran for the house. Hmmm, I wonder what the difference could be? 🤔🤎

  7. One thing I admire about Kathy Hochul is her embrace of Joan Crawford’s Pepsi-Cola-era (a New York company) esthetic. The penciled-in eyebrows, the “buckling” (removal of back teeth) to create a more dramatic three-quarter view, take a look.

    Ironically, or maybe this is meta, Pepsi is now HQ’d in Purchase, New York, which is where former Governor Emperor Andreus Marcus Maximus, and Kat’s consigliere, couch surfs at Sis Maria’s (Mrs. Kenneth Cole) “estate” (complete with at least one barn) when he’s not bunking with Chris (Fredo) out in the Hamptons or Mom’s empty-nest roost near the UN.

  9. If I can divert our attention to the fictional abroad, for a moment:

    I am bingeing Season 5 of The Crown. Its writer/creator, Peter Morgan, has a CBE. I wonder if it can be revoked.

  10. Holy shit!!!😳😲😃

     

    Minnesota went BLUE!!! We are no longer the only state with a divided legislature–somehow the DFL took both the State House *and* State Senate!!!

    I am honestly SHOCKED, y’all!!!

    I NEVER expected that we’d manage to keep the House *and* flip the Senate, and re-elect Walz/Flanagan, Steve Simon–it looks like Ellison & Blaha might’ve kept their seats, too!

    https://elections.mpr.org/2022-11-08

    I *voted* DFL-endorsed all up & down my ballot, obviously–except for school board election, where I voted for  Beachy & Emerick–Beachy was DFL-endorsed, but Emerick is an Autistic parent of a child who’s severely disabled & attending Minneapolis Public schools (the choice to me was obvious, when I went to the candidates’ “About me” pages–Sonya Emerick has exactly the skill-set, aptitude, and attitude, that we NEED on the MPS Board going into the Superintendent search and the decision-making of the next few years!😉😁🤗💖)

    But y’all?

    I am honestly SHOCKED this morning!!! Pleasantly shocked, but mind.fucking.BLOWN, that my fellow Minnesotans actually saw THROUGH the fear-mongering, bullshit, and lies!😳🤯😃

    Ho.lee.daaaaayyyum!

    I SWORE Walz was gonna be a 1-term governor, back in 2020, when he had the courage to do the right thing, and shut the WHOLE state down for so long, at the start of the pandemic!  It was a career-killer of a move! The right thing to DO, of course, but it took the sort of courage you KNOW means you’re likely to only serve that ONE four-year term…

    And YES, there’s the fact that, after Jensen announced his candidacy for Governor, and said the R’s in the state Senate ought to stop negotiating on the Budget Surplus, a LOT of folks across the state were frustrated!

    But I NEVER expected that meant voters would hand the DFL the keys to the ENTIRETY of the state legislature–in an off-year, under a 2-year D president, when the state of MN hasn’t had a SINGLE R in a statewide seat, since T’Paw!!!

    I am honest-to-god, HAPPILY, shocked, y’all!😃😃😃💖💞💫

    • …I have the same question & thus far nothing resembling an answer…though I think there’s a sort of parallel with a grand jury in that I think the committee part is due to wind up along with the current term

      …so (I think?) it’s a question of whether the GOP tries to follow it up benghazi-style with more bullshit à la durham’s “investigation”…or if they can’t get their ducks in an orderly enough row…hopefully because the DoJ keeps indicting members of their caucus?

    • I assume they’ll wrap up their investigation and make their recommendations, which will then get ignored by incoming Republicans. I don’t think they have any actual ability to take action, other than to refer things to the DOJ if they feel they are criminal activities. Then it’s Garland’s problem.

      • Right, the January 6 Committee was always a House creation and they were wrapping up next month regardless. They can recommend prosecutions but that’s purely advisory.

        Any evidence they haven’t already handed over to DOJ will get packaged up for them — there is a lot that is off the public record so we can’t know what went over, but assume most has.

        DOJ will keep going full steam. I think the number of low level prosecutions has hit 900, they appear to be moving on mid level conspirators, and there are signs they’re honing in on Trump at least for the documents and possibly 1/6, and may also go criminal on the NY state civil suit.

        A fair warning is Trump will be a hard target of a criminal case. He’s far more cunning than people give him credit for, he can raise huge amounts for his defense, and as the documents case shows, he is good at judge shopping. One lucky draw of a judge and he could be off the hook.

        But that doesn’t mean he’s home free. He was unusually sloppy in late 2020, and just an indictment might be enough to set off a landslide of GOP challengers — the way fundraising and endorsements work, they need to jump in the next 6-8 months, and there will be a big FOMO. If big GOP backers move on from Trump, their judges may too. He could be thrown under the bus.

Leave a Reply