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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.


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1 hour ago, 'stache said:

I assume Harris may still appear on Rogan? No way he takes Trump but says no to Harris. That would go against his faux "both sides" persona. He embodies all things maga so it wouldn't surprise me if he did that, or if trump told him he'd only appear if Harris was not invited and Rogan gave in, but my impression of him is that he would not do that if for no other reason that appearances. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-will-not-appear-joe-rogan-podcast-her-campaign-says-2024-10-25/

 

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5 hours ago, HenryJames said:

The Alec Baldwin And Adam Sandler SNL Sketch That Had Viewers Turning Off  The TV In Discomfort

LOL. 

My late father-in-law was a longtime Scoutmaster, and more than 20 years ago gave me this book written by another Scoutmaster.   I recently read it and started laughing at one Paragraph.   Yeah, I’m going to hell.

IMG_3616.thumb.jpeg.a045c641e285f3630373a70d78297eba.jpegIMG_3617.thumb.jpeg.29415ed69cbd7f1da37a2f74ab9e4898.jpeg

Yeah….. you might call that a punishment. 

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36 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

Well, yeah. 80 million Americans are going to vote for a convicted felon whose closing argument is "I like Hitler, I hate brown people, and if I don't like you I will either put you in jail or sick the military on you." It's a bit of a problem.

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2 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

Have friends already waiting in line for the Harris Rally, it is already a madhouse.   They really should have picked a bigger venue, but maybe none were available on such short notice.   Either way, I expect it to be rocking tonight.  

I doubt Crane, Fertita, and McNair would give the green light to use Minute maid, UH or NRG. 

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2 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Well, yeah. 80 million Americans are going to vote for a convicted felon whose closing argument is "I like Hitler, I hate brown people, and if I don't like you I will either put you in jail or sick the military on you." It's a bit of a problem.

Reconstruction kind of got butchered the first time through....maybe we get it right this time?????

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is awesome, but should have started in 2016

yeah, seems like cnn waited until the last possible moment to grow a fucking pair.

don't be surprised if you see some firings/resigning from producers/talent there, fucking billionaires.

though at this point, not sure anyone involved with the disco bros disaster has any money left, so maybe just millionaires.

Edited by henrygandorf
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1 minute ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Definitely feel like something shifted with Tapper in the last few days.  Hopefully more follow suit.

And what great timing to grow a spine!

Fuuuuuuuuck. Where's Js1? I'm flat-lining over here.

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38 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

My daughter is trying to catch a 6 PM flight to the Bay Area for a couple of gigs tomorrow.  She's currently trying to make her way from ~ McKinney Falls to the airport.  Good luck, kid.

She should take a Lime scooter.

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19 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Well, yeah. 80 million Americans are going to vote for a convicted felon whose closing argument is "I like Hitler, I hate brown people, and if I don't like you I will either put you in jail or sick the military on you." It's a bit of a problem.

Anyone doubt the Democrats will see this as a sign that they need to move right?

 

Edited by David Dennison
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2 hours ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

 


I only put up with huge crowds very sparingly so think I made the right call not going to this, but it does look like its gonna be hopping at Shell Energy tonight

Pffft, seen longer lines at Franklin bbq. 

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3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Gabrielle Anwar.

 

2 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Gabriel anwar in a gif from burn notice I think. 

been on my list of older shows to go back and watch - might bump it up the list if she plays a prominent role.

Edited by Longhorn_Fan68
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37 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Joe Walsh

@WalshFreedom

I’m going to keep beating this drum: For two months, I’ve been in the battleground states almost nonstop encouraging Republicans & Independents to vote for

@KamalaHarris

. And at every stop in every battleground state I hear from Republicans who tell me they’re voting for her, but they’re keeping quiet about it. I hear this everywhere I go. I just believe there’s a quiet groundswell of support for Kamala among Republicans that the polls just aren’t picking up.

KermitShootingUP.gif.63279248e62f792d7efac350a77f0186.gif

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57 minutes ago, TxEx84 said:

For those waiting in long voting lines in Travis County, don't you check https://votetravis.gov/current-election-information/current-election/ before going to the polls? Shows wait times. I saw the long line at Bee Caves Randalls so went to the South Austin Rec Center.  In and out in 10 minutes.

the harris county version of this lies.

went to the west gray amateur hour site. parked around back, walked in, line was short. a minute or two later a poll worker came and asked me if i'd come in through the back, then directed me out front to the line which was more like 135 instead of the 35 then shown on the website. there were a shitton of machines inside, most of which were not in use. the bottleneck is processing drivers licenses.

should have gone to SPJST, then maybe i could have gotten a cheap beer to drink while voting.

Edited by elfenix
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46 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Joe Walsh

@WalshFreedom

I’m going to keep beating this drum: For two months, I’ve been in the battleground states almost nonstop encouraging Republicans & Independents to vote for

@KamalaHarris

. And at every stop in every battleground state I hear from Republicans who tell me they’re voting for her, but they’re keeping quiet about it. I hear this everywhere I go. I just believe there’s a quiet groundswell of support for Kamala among Republicans that the polls just aren’t picking up.

dumb-and-dumber-uh.gif

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5 hours ago, trythisathome said:

Just cast my vote for the non-fascists. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, I was the only person under the age of 30 there. 

Your posting on a message board. Pretty boomer behavior.

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4 hours ago, South Austin said:

And, of course, it goes without saying that if Kamala Harris wins, the thought of retribution against any newspaper or other media outlet would be ridiculous, but here is where we are.

Not retribución. I just won’t read their shit, won’t ever pay for a subscription, and remind everyone I know from here until I die that they bend the knee to fascists and not to read those cowards. Fuck the editorial staff. Honor your profession and quit en masse or shut the fuck up about being silenced. Pussy ass cowards. 

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5 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

You’re familiar with Amazon’s business model, right?

Amazon loses money on some products to make more on others.

WaPo don't make money never. Bezos didn't care. Now he does. As someone else said, he may be concerned about retribution from Trump admin

(fwiw, FTC going after them for monopolistic behavior would be okay with me)

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19 minutes ago, elfenix said:

the harris county version of this lies.

went to the west gray amateur hour site. parked around back, walked in, line was short. a minute or two later a poll worker came and asked me if i'd come in through the back, then directed me out front to the line which was more like 135 instead of the 35 then shown on the website. there were a shitton of machines inside, most of which were not in use. the bottleneck is processing drivers licenses.

should have gone to SPJST, then maybe i could have gotten a cheap beer to drink while voting.

Why in the fuck did u not go to the Hampton inn on Washington/I10?

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Well here's (at least part of) their plan:

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On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit handed down a shock decision declaring that states may not count ballots that are mailed by Election Day but received shortly thereafter. By its own terms, the ruling applies only to Mississippi, throwing the legality of its voting procedures into question just 11 days before the election. Nationwide, however, 18 states and Washington D.C. accept late-arriving ballots; the 5th Circuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots. The court’s obvious goal, aside from destabilizing a close election, is to tee up a Supreme Court decision that could wipe out all these laws in one fell swoop.

The Republican National Committee manufactured this dispute as a test case to end the widespread practice of accepting ballots that come in after Election Day, but are postmarked by Election Day. (Republicans believe that these ballots are disproportionately likely to support Democrats.) The RNC filed its lawsuit in Mississippi because that’s the one state within the 5th Circuit that counts late-arriving ballots, and conservative lawyers knew they could get a favorable ruling from the far-right court. RNC lawyers argued that federal law requires all votes to be received by Election Day, not just cast by Election Day. And they claimed that this federal rule overrides, or “preempts,” state laws to the contrary, including Mississippi’s.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sharply rejected this argument. He pointed out that, under the Constitution, “the times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed” by the states, though Congress may “make or alter” the state’s laws. Congress has not prescribed specific rules for mail ballots, instead leaving those decisions up to the states. The fact that Congress created one “Election Day” does not mean that it intended to void ballots that are cast by that date but, for whatever reason, arrive shortly thereafter.

Now the 5th Circuit has disagreed. The three-judge panel that decided this case is made up of extremely far-right, ultra-partisan appointees of Donald Trump: Andrew Oldham, Kyle Duncan, and James Ho. In his majority opinion joined by Duncan and Ho, Oldham latched onto federal law setting out “the day for the election.” He then declared that this is “the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.” Oldham asserted that a ballot is not actually “cast” until “the state takes custody of it”—a contested question on which federal law is silent. By fabricating this atextual rule, he was able to insist that late-arriving ballots are actually “cast” after Election Day.

Oldham’s definition of the word “cast” is, to reiterate, not rooted in the text of the law. It also defies common sense: In regular English usage, a person has “cast” their ballot when they’ve returned it—by, for instance, dropping it in the mailbox. By relying on an idiosyncratic definition of the word that does not appear in federal law, Oldham was able to decree that late-arriving ballots are not “cast” on time. He therefore held that Mississippi’s law counting these ballots is preempted by federal statute.


On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit handed down a shock decision declaring that states may not count ballots that are mailed by Election Day but received shortly thereafter. By its own terms, the ruling applies only to Mississippi, throwing the legality of its voting procedures into question just 11 days before the election. Nationwide, however, 18 states and Washington D.C. accept late-arriving ballots; the 5th Circuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots. The court’s obvious goal, aside from destabilizing a close election, is to tee up a Supreme Court decision that could wipe out all these laws in one fell swoop.

The Republican National Committee manufactured this dispute as a test case to end the widespread practice of accepting ballots that come in after Election Day, but are postmarked by Election Day. (Republicans believe that these ballots are disproportionately likely to support Democrats.) The RNC filed its lawsuit in Mississippi because that’s the one state within the 5th Circuit that counts late-arriving ballots, and conservative lawyers knew they could get a favorable ruling from the far-right court. RNC lawyers argued that federal law requires all votes to be received by Election Day, not just cast by Election Day. And they claimed that this federal rule overrides, or “preempts,” state laws to the contrary, including Mississippi’s.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sharply rejected this argument. He pointed out that, under the Constitution, “the times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed” by the states, though Congress may “make or alter” the state’s laws. Congress has not prescribed specific rules for mail ballots, instead leaving those decisions up to the states. The fact that Congress created one “Election Day” does not mean that it intended to void ballots that are cast by that date but, for whatever reason, arrive shortly thereafter.

Now the 5th Circuit has disagreed. The three-judge panel that decided this case is made up of extremely far-right, ultra-partisan appointees of Donald Trump: Andrew Oldham, Kyle Duncan, and James Ho. In his majority opinion joined by Duncan and Ho, Oldham latched onto federal law setting out “the day for the election.” He then declared that this is “the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.” Oldham asserted that a ballot is not actually “cast” until “the state takes custody of it”—a contested question on which federal law is silent. By fabricating this atextual rule, he was able to insist that late-arriving ballots are actually “cast” after Election Day.

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Oldham’s definition of the word “cast” is, to reiterate, not rooted in the text of the law. It also defies common sense: In regular English usage, a person has “cast” their ballot when they’ve returned it—by, for instance, dropping it in the mailbox. By relying on an idiosyncratic definition of the word that does not appear in federal law, Oldham was able to decree that late-arriving ballots are not “cast” on time. He therefore held that Mississippi’s law counting these ballots is preempted by federal statute.

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There are massive practical, legal, and historical problems with this theory. The legal reasons are, again, obvious: Congress has never said that late-arriving ballots cannot count; some Republicans have proposed such a rule, but it has not passed. Indeed, federal law is largely silent on how, precisely, states should conduct early voting or mail voting. And in this silence, as Judge Guirola explained, courts must defer to the states, which hold primary authority under the Constitution to prescribe election procedures.

The alternative is chaos. States have spent decades developing their own rules around early and mail voting, many of which would be imperiled by the 5th Circuit’s logic. For instance, if Congress required voting exclusively on “the day for the election,” is all early, in-person voting also unlawful? Oldham said no, but his effort to draw a distinction is incoherent. He claimed that early votes are still “consummated” on Election Day, so they may count. The concept of an election’s “consummation,” though, appears nowhere in federal statute, and therefore cannot distinguish early voting from late-arriving ballots. It is painfully evident that Oldham is just making it up as he goes along.

The historical reasons why Friday’s decision is dead wrong are just as apparent. States have counted late-arriving absentee ballots for more than a century, and federal courts have never stopped them from doing so (until now). Oldham dismissed these historical examples as “outliers,” but he is wrong: The reality is that most states did not allow for broad mail voting until quite recently. Those states that did allow absentee voting frequently counted ballots cast by Election Day that came in shortly thereafter. Oldham simply sought to downplay this clear historical record to make a misleading, cherrypicked case against the practice.

Finally, the practical: Because 18 states and D.C.—including large states like California—already accept late-arriving ballots, the RNC sought a revolution in election law. Most states don’t report exactly how many of these ballots are tabulated each year. But there are a lot: In the 2022 midterms, for example, Clark County, Nevada alone received and counted about 40,000 valid mail ballots after Election Day. Around the country, the number may well reach the millions, especially since California counts ballots received up to a week after Election Day. If the Supreme Court embraced the 5th Circuit’s reasoning, it would nullify all these ballots.

And that, to be clear, is the game plan. In contrast with recent practice, the 5th Circuit did not issue a preliminary nationwide injunction, but directed the district court to “fashion appropriate relief.” It is surely too close to the election to change the rules of the game under the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle. If these lower courts try to do so, it seems likely that SCOTUS will stop them. But the 5th Circuit has now created a vehicle for the justices to visit this issue after the election and potentially strike down nearly 20 states’ laws, making voting exponentially harder in the future.

It’s worth pausing to consider how cynical and political Friday’s decision was. The 5th Circuit could, and should, have held this case until after the election, in recognition that a sweeping decision would cast a pall of confusion and uncertainty over the imminent election. Now Mississippians do not know if their ballots will count should they happen to be slightly delayed by the postal service. Voters in many other states are on notice that the 5th Circuit has announced that, as a matter of federal law, their ballots should be tossed out if they come back slightly late. And people who reject the outcome of the election will seize upon the ruling to claim that the results are illegitimate. The 5th Circuit has given the RNC exactly what it wanted: an excuse to undermine voting rights and reject the legitimacy of the election. It is an appallingly partisan and anti-democratic stunt with potentially catastrophic consequences.

 

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6 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Dying industries do irrational things to hold on as long as possible.  They’re usually too late to pivot to whatever is replacing them to gain market share, so they suppress it as long as possible.

Just like buttplug makers who refuse to hop on the Bluetooth vibratory bandwagon.

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10 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm not sure Bezos is even worried about Trump going after him if he wins and WaPo had endorsed Harris. I think Bezos wants Trump to win.

Bezos does want Trump to win, I suspect. A Trump administration won’t go after Amazon for anti-trust, and he needs government contracts for Blue Penis. 

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