[PassedOut]

We voted already, but I was pleased to see how organized the Democrats are in pushing the turnout. I got emails encouraging me to get my ballot early and then emails after I got my ballot reminding me to return it right away. (I expect that the emails asking for more money will soon stop coming.)

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2024-October-30, 08:52, said:

It is hardly news to say that this is a very unusual election but still I will comment.

It appears that a fair sized proportion of the folks who plan to vote for Trump agree that he is an awful person, they just feel that he will have good policies. "Yes, he is a rat but he is my rat". Usually, voters claim that the person they support is not a rat. It took a while, but eventually after the Watergate hearings Nixon supporters actually stopped supporting him.

It is a bad idea to elect a rat to be our president. Rats are rats, and they do not help anyone. Al Capone did more harm than good, even if he did provide whiskey to his supporters. In the long run, a rat hurts just about everyone.

I am hoping that enough people rethink rat support before they cast their ballot. We shall see.

I had an enlightening email discussion with my cousin in Arkansas the other day. She said that although she didn't support Trump her views were consistent with the Republican ideas and so she should vote the party line.

This, then, IS the problem, that Republicans think that their party is still the party of Reagan and Bush. They don't realize that the Republican party did not produce a platform at their convention, that their only platform is retribution and power seeking. I don't know how to overcome this ignorance (note, I said ignorance, not stupidity. ignornoace is a lack of knowing, not a criticism of intelligence.)

PS: I voted early today for what that's worth here in ruby red Oklahoma. Still, it felt good to see Harris-Walz on the ballot.

[kenberg]

What Trump says on Thursday has little if anything to do with what he will say on Friday, and neither has anything at all to do with what actions he will take if elected. Yes, some of that is true of all politicinans, perhaps of all people, but Trump is a truly extreme case. I am not one who asks for miracles, but we are in serious need of one.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2024-October-31, 09:48, said:

This, then, IS the problem, that Republicans think that their party is still the party of Reagan and Bush. They don't realize that the Republican party did not produce a platform at their convention, that their only platform is retribution and power seeking. I don't know how to overcome this ignorance (note, I said ignorance, not stupidity. ignornoace is a lack of knowing, not a criticism of intelligence.)

Is it ignorance, or just wishful thinking?

[kenberg]

Ok, the campaign is still in progress. WaPo cites the latest remarks from DT.

Quote

"His daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb," Trump said. "She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

I suppose he said it. With anyone else , we could think he is being misquoted. With Trump, no, he said it.

I am more conservative, or maybe just more traditional, than some posters here. But Trump? Really? He is not a conservative. He is not a friend of the working man. He is going to protect women even if they do not want to be protected in the manner that he envisions protecting them? Such as pointng guns at Liz Cheney's face?

Please, please, please. Can we please not elect this guy? We will all regret it. Yeah, yeah, time is about up. But please. I just say please.

[andrei]

 kenberg, on 2024-November-01, 10:25, said:

I suppose he said it. With anyone else , we could think he is being misquoted. With Trump, no, he said it.

LOL

WaPo / NYT and the like consider y’all too lazy and dumb to figure out what he actually said.

And guess what: they are right.

[PassedOut]

andrei, on 2024-November-01, 20:17, said:

LOL

WaPo / NYT and the like consider y’all too lazy and dumb to figure out what he actually said.

And guess what: they are right.

Ken gave an exact quote. As you are smart, what did you figure out that Trump actually said? Can you post that, or don't you really know?

[shyams]

PassedOut, on 2024-November-01, 20:35, said:

Ken gave an exact quote. As you are smart, what did you figure out that Trump actually said? Can you post that, or don't you really know?

The relevant section (with all his ramblings) of his interview/discussion with Tucker Carlson.

----

Look, she's a deranged person. The reason she doesn't like me is that she wanted to stay in her rack. She wanted to stay. She wants to... She's a tough, tough person. People get killed all over. She's real tough, right? They're not the tough people.

Don't forget, I went against her, and in her state, which is a great, beautiful state. She lost for Congress with the highest number in history. There has never been a congressperson that lost by almost 40 points. And the reason is because if they were ever in that situation, they'd quit. And she lost. She was beaten by a tremendous person, actually tremendous that I backed fully. But the reason she couldn't stand me is that she always She wanted to go to war with people. I don't want to go to war. She wanted to stay in Syria. I took them out. She wanted to stay in Iraq. I took them out. I mean, if it were up to her, we'd be in 50 different countries. And you know, Number one, it's very dangerous. Number two, a lot of people get killed. Number three, I mean, it's very, very expensive.That's why we owe $36 trillion. It used to be you go to war to the victor, belong to spoils, right? In other words, if you beat a country, you own that country, you take the oil, we go to war, we bomb the crap out of it, then we leave. It's almost like, what are we doing? What's going on? We bombed the whole Middle East. And then we left. What did we get? We got nothing. We destroyed. I mean, we bombed the hell out of everything. When they took out Iraq for a thousand years with different names, you had Iran and Iraq, similar powers. They were the two big ones. And for a thousand years, they would fight each other this way, this way, this way, then they'd rest, this way, then they'd rest. They were a self check. Then one day we go in and bomb the hell out of one, we destroy one. And then all of a sudden, Iran has the whole Middle East to itself. And by the way, right now, Iran has Iraq. Iraq is like a subsidiary of Iran, all right? We did so many bad moves, and her father was it.


I was very critical of her father for years. I'd never met him, but I'd say anybody that went into the Middle East, I thought was stupid. And they say, convinced Convince Bush. Bush. Oh, he was another beauty. But he supposedly convinced Bush to go in. Him, Bolton, and some other lightweights, convinced them to go in. Let's go into the Middle East and destroy the whole place and kill millions of people. So they went in. But I was never a fan of Cheney. I was always very critical. And when I announced that I was very critical, actually, not personally, but I said, he made a horrible mistake. What are these people doing? They're spending... We spent nine trillion trillion with a T, not even with a B. Normally, I say not million, billion, but now I say not billion, trillion. We spent nine trillion dollars bombing the hell out of the Middle East. And what the hell did we get other than lots of dead people, including our people? We got nothing. So I was very critical of him. And then I announced I was running, and I was shocked that he was one of the first people.

He endorsed me immediately. I said, That's amazing. But he had something that was very interesting. He had Scooter Liberty. I mean, these are little stories that are interesting. Scooter Liberty was a a man that could have done great destruction to Bush, and they left him behind. He was given to the prosecutors. They prosecuted him rather violently, and he was almost like a sacrificial lamb. And as somebody that knows a lot about what's happening, I said, if I were ever President, I'd do something with that guy. That guy got treated very badly, Scooter Libby. And when I became President, I actually called Dick Cheney. I said, Let me ask you about But Scooter Libby. He was best friends. He was begging Bush to give Scooter Libby a pardon, but Bush didn't have the courage to do it. It takes courage to give a pardon. It does take a certain courage because the press comes after, et cetera, et cetera. And he didn't have the courage to give him. He should have given him a pardon, but he didn't have the guts to do it. And what happened is Dick Cheney, for for years, for a long time, hated Bush.

And don't let anyone tell you he hated. He said, You don't leave your wounded behind. And I understand that. And Scooter Libby really saved Bush because he could have said things that would have been very dangerous for Bush in terms of getting impeached, in terms of going to jail, in terms of bad things happening. But Scooter Libby didn't do that. And in all fairness to Cheney, I give him credit for this. He was very loyal to him, but he couldn't get Bush to do what he should have done. I came into government and I did what they should have done. They didn't have the guts to do it. I did it. And Scooter Libby was pardoned. I gave him a pardon. I never met Scooter Libby, by the way. Never talked to him before that. And I got a call from Scooter Libby after I did that, and he broke down in tears thanking me so much. And then Cheney called me and he said, That was so incredible what you did for Scooter Libby, because he was really on Scooter Libby. Scooter Libby took a lot of heat and took all of it and didn't say Anything bad about Bush or Cheney or anything else could have done it.

I know because you have guys that do that and you have guys that lie, which is worse, right? But you have guys that do that. But he was very loyal to them, and he suffered greatly. I released him. Cheney called me. He said, It's one of the nicest things I've ever seen done in politics. I said, Look, I've heard for years he was treated unfairly. I've heard for years that Bush should have given him a pardon, or All I did is do something that somebody else should have done. And Cheney was so... He said, I really want to thank you. He said, Now I'm so glad that I actually endorsed you. It's amazing, but that you would do this. And I didn't I'll speak to him about it.

But then go a couple of years forward or go now, and I don't blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay, let's see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face. They're all warhawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.

But she's a stupid person. And I used to have meetings with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people. So whether it's her, whether it's Dick, I was surprised a little bit with Dick Cheney. I didn't know him at all. I only had essentially the one or two phone calls, and it was only a call saying, Thank you very much for doing that for Scooter Libby. That was nice. And Scooter Libby, by the way, was beyond... He couldn't believe that it happened. Nobody would do it. They should have done that for him years before. But I was a little surprised because I actually thought that Dick Cheney would go with me over his daughter, and he didn't. And you know what? I understand it. It's your daughter and you go, but she's a bad person.

[pilowsky]

Well that's Trump all right - his weave is all warp and no weft.

[kenberg]

andrei, on 2024-November-01, 20:17, said:

LOL

WaPo / NYT and the like consider y'all too lazy and dumb to figure out what he actually said.

And guess what: they are right.

I am ready to admit that I can be careless, I can be dumb, I can be lazy. I did not look up the full quote. I gather that what Shyams has posted is the full quote. As I read it,Trump seems to be saying just what WaPo and I say he was saying. "nine barrels shooting at her" and so on. Even if it is metaphorical it is bizarre. And, honestly, it's dangerous. A lot of election worker are frightened, as well they would be, from what has been said and what Trump has encouraged.

Way back, when he was speaking about how he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, exact quote: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" it sounded crazy. Well, he has not shot anyone on Fifth Avenue but he is able to continue to say crazy things without being held responsible for it. Jan 6? Not his fault, so he says. Anyway it was a tourist event that he watched on television.


Trump is not the first guy, not the first president, to have sex with a woman who is not his wife. And women sommetimes have sex with a man who is not their husband. But it is unusual for presidential candidates to talk about how much fun it is to grab women by the *****. Long long ago, when I was 12 or so, my parents invited the parents of one of my friends to a party they were giving. My friend's father talked in much the manner that Trump talks. He was not invited to a second party.


Trump disgusts me. Having someone as president that my parents would be embarrassed to have invited into their house troubles me. And the trouble that he would cause as president would be more than just embarrassment.

[hrothgar]

I don't waste much time trying to parse Trump's latest bouts of verbal diarrhea searching for ways to justify his latest idiocy.

I'll be interested to see how folks try to spin his decision to demonstrate fellatio on a microphone at yesterday's rally...

At least it seems to have distracted from the fact that Trump can barely walk without assistance.

[johnu]

andrei, on 2024-November-01, 20:17, said:

LOL

WaPo / NYT and the like consider y’all too lazy and dumb to figure out what he actually said.

And guess what: they are right.

Only Convicted Felon Trump cult members are willing to subject themselves to 2 or 3 hours of Trump demonstrating to the public that he is a psychopath suffering from advanced dementia.

In fact, there are websites out there where anybody can watch every minute of Trump raving out of control at a rally or interview. For everybody else out there who have lives to live, various news sites summarize Trump's rantings down to a manageable (ie tolerable) amount on insane racist, fascist, white supremacist, or just crazy utterings.

The problem is that 8+ years of Trump setting world records for lying and saying ridiculous things has desensitized the country to his utter lunacy. There is a new term, "sane-washing" that has been created to describe the media covering up Trump's cognitive flaws and crazy sayings. If Kamala Harris or Biden said 1% of the crazy things Trump says, even the so-called mainstream media would be calling for them to drop out of the race and/or resign from office for being mentally unfit to serve.

[thepossum]

I don't want to appear at all disrespectful but how is the election even close?
I have an answer but am being careful what I say
I can actually see why many people would not want to vote for the Democrats, but Trump?
I will say what I think, probably inapprorpoate and out of place, but they come across as privilege on steroids - easy for anyone to campaign against that - including multi billionaires
I just hope for everyone in USA and surrounds and their allies elsewhere that nothing too bad happens
Very different kind of Democracy. We can only hope
I apologise if what I say seems out of turn. I mean no disrespect. Similar trends are everywhere. And privilge/class whatever are flipped. And pop culture is what it is

[hrothgar]

thepossum, on 2024-November-03, 00:50, said:

I don't want to appear at all disrespectful but how is the election even close?

Lot's of American's are ignorant racist pieces of ***** and, unfortunately, they are arrayed in an electorally efficient manner.

There is very little chance that Trump will win the popular vote.
There is much to much of chance that he will win Pennsylvania...

A interesting poll got released yesterday showing that Harris is running +3 in Iowa

The poll is interesting for a couple reasons

1. The pollster has an incredibly good track record
2. If the poll results are accurate and they generalize, then Harris is going to win in a landslide

Personally, I think that the results are a little too good and I suspect that there is some polling error, but even if Trump was +3 rather than -3, this would still suggest that Harris is going to cruise to a comfortable victory

[Lovera]

Let me say what I think: I hope Harris wins for a variety of reasons. For me, Trump, having escaped an attack (it has been said that the attacker wanted to hit anyone, even if Biden had been there he would have hit him too, therefore without political preference but only as a demonstration) has already won the battle for life (he could have been seriously compromised with what this could have meant perhaps even the postponement of the political race) and who knows how many prayers he would have to say. Subsequently, the arrival of Harris was something unusual, having to replace Biden and this difficulty should not weigh entirely in her favor in the polls, about which, in my opinion, if focused on the debates (few in fact) they would reveal little difference and, furthermore, the recorded answers may not be entirely truthful. Combining all these things, we would arrive at a "head to head". However, I do not believe this is the case: at the time of voting, things can change if those who vote give it the right weight. To this day, many still cannot understand how, after the assault on Capitol Hill, we are still chasing Trump, who was certainly a "very" unconventional President when he was elected.

[kenberg]

24 hours from now I will be voting.

An oped piece today at https://www.washingt...ction-strategy/

Quote

First came GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson's pledge last Monday to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if Donald Trump wins the presidential election. Then Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump's transition team, on Wednesday endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine skepticism and suggested that a future Trump administration would empower Kennedy to help oversee vaccine data. Three days later, Kennedy announced that Trump would seek to remove fluoride from Americans' drinking water as a Day 1 priority.

Fluoride!!! I was born in 1939 so I recall that this was an issue in 1950 or so. The John Birch society warned us about the dangers. Somehow I thought that sometime back, 50+ years back, we had actually decided fluoridated water was ok. But JFK Jr is right there watching out for us.

I think that there are some Martians that landed in Arizona. And there are these witches in Massachusetts. RFK Jr to the rescue.

[markmce]

Here's Sara Dorn's summary at Forbes of the Iowa Poll that Hrothgar mentioned:

Quote

Former President Donald Trump has lost his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in solidly red Iowa, according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll conducted by revered pollster J. Ann Selzer—an outlier compared to other surveys in the state but one that should be taken as a serious warning sign for Trump given Selzer’s pristine polling record.

Key Facts

The Iowa Poll of 808 likely voters conducted Oct. 28-31 and released late Saturday (margin of error 3.4 points) shows Harris ahead 47%-44% in the state, after Trump led by four points in Iowa in Selzer’s September poll for the paper and by 18 points in June against President Joe Biden.

The poll found politically independent voters, women and older voters are the driving force behind Harris’ rise in the state, which could be a bellwether for the rest of the country.

Harris has overtaken Trump’s support among independents as a whole in Iowa, and now leads 46%-39%, and she leads by 28 points among independent women, a sharp swing since September’s five-point lead, though independent men still favor Trump by a much smaller 47%-37% margin.

Harris leads women over the age of 65, 63%-28%, and men in that age bracket 47%-45%, the poll found.

Selzer, revered among politicos, got her start in polling as a staffer at the Des Moines Register, and has overseen its Iowa poll since 1987, branching off to found her own firm, Selzer & Co., in the 1990s.

Statistician Nate Silver ranks Selzer among the top two highest rated pollsters in the U.S., second only to the New York Times/Siena, according to his grading scale, which factors in historical accuracy and transparency/disclosure standards, along with the pollster’s statistical bias toward Democratic or Republican candidates.

Selzer’s best-known poll is perhaps her 2008 poll that accurately predicted an influx of first-time caucusgoers would deliver former President Barack Obama a victory.

And here's Selzer herself explaining what's going on in a story by Billy House at Bloomberg.

[hrothgar]

markmce, on 2024-November-04, 11:56, said:

Here's Sara Dorn's summary at Forbes of the Iowa Poll that Hrothgar mentioned:



And here's Selzer herself explaining what's going on in a story by Billy House at Bloomberg.

The Bulwark had a good interview with Seltzer on Sunday

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2024-November-04, 09:28, said:

24 hours from now I will be voting.

An oped piece today at https://www.washingt...ction-strategy/


[/font][/color][/size]


Fluoride!!! I was born in 1939 so I recall that this was an issue in 1950 or so. The John Birch society warned us about the dangers. Somehow I thought that sometime back, 50+ years back, we had actually decided fluoridated water was ok. But JFK Jr is right there watching out for us.

I think that there are some Martians that landed in Arizona. And there are these witches in Massachusetts. RFK Jr to the rescue.

I remember that too. Fluorides occur naturally in water, but in concentrations that vary considerably from place to place.

As I recall, researchers found that old folks who'd lived in areas with high concentrations still had good teeth while many of those who'd lived with low concentrations had poor teeth or wore dentures (false teeth, we called them then). The overall life spans weren't affected, so it was a no-brainer to fluoridate the water.

Sadly, left-wingers also saw the logic of this, so Birchers had to fuss about it. Seems now we've come full circle: Let kids' teeth rot until they die of polio. Put RFK in charge!

[pilowsky]

Community water fluoridation (CWF), fluoride treatment by dentists, and fluoride in toothpaste is now as popular as coffee in the morning.
The evidence, unfortunately was never that strong.

Here's the latest systematic review from the Cochrane Database.

The Authors reviewed 157 studies - none of them randomised - and were unimpressed.
They concluded that:

Water fluoridation for the prevention of dental caries said:

Contemporary studies indicate that initiation of CWF may lead to a slightly greater reduction in dmft and may lead to a slightly greater increase in the proportion of caries‐free children, but with smaller effect sizes than pre‐1975 studies. There is insufficient evidence to determine the effect of cessation of CWF on caries and whether water fluoridation results in a change in disparities in caries according to socioeconomic status. We found no eligible studies that report caries outcomes in adults.

The implementation or cessation of CWF requires careful consideration of this current evidence, in the broader context of a population's oral health, diet and consumption of tap water, movement or migration, and the availability and uptake of other caries‐prevention strategies. Acceptability, cost‐effectiveness and feasibility of the implementation and monitoring of a CWF programme should also be taken into account.

One unintended side effect of CWF may be that there will always be some people that think they can eat any amount of chocolate fudge brownies because there's fluoride in the water.

I suspect that in the USA anyway, the amount of harm done to teeth - and well being in general - by an absence of adequate fluoride in the water is likely to be vanishingly small compared to the amount of fat, sugar and guns swirling around the community.