BootmanLA

As Nate Silver (who I don't hold in high esteem, but there's no doubting he's at least aware of what's going on) said last night, he's never seen an election where it appears both major parties are trying to throw the election.

He's also dined at Mar-a-Lago as Trump's invited guest. So I would not rule him out as irrelevant just yet. He is probably incapable of being elected to anything, but Trump's fond of appointing people like this to high-level administrative jobs. I could easily see him being named to some "just-below-Senate-confirmation-needed" position somewhere in Homeland Security, within one of the ICE/CBP/CIS agencies.

Actually, I think quite a few of the people trying these stunts are pretty sharp, and it's the people who fall for them whose IQ is, shall we say, closer to room temperature than a heat wave. Not defending the scammers in the slightest, but dismissing them as underdeveloped brains - when there are people who DO fall for it - seems a little odd.

I'm not necessarily opposed to group gay debauchery. I absolutely refuse to be around meth-ed out Xers, which is pretty much all of what I see at circuit parties.

My (limited) experience selling things on various sites (both local and global) has been similar - especially for those looking to haggle. I think that's partly because people view these listings as virtual garage sales where people are more trying to get rid of junk they don't need instead of actually selling something with intrinsic value. They go in with the notion of bargaining you down no matter how cheap the item is. I've decided that if I sell things that way again, either it's going to be "price firm; bargainers will be blocked", or else I'm going to advertise hours where the merchandise and I will be outside from X to Y on Z date, first come, first sold, and bring a book out with me or whatever.

I think there are probably a lot of the white supremacist/proud boys/whomever groups are straight but incel; no woman with a lick of sense will touch them or even come close except to mace them.

Also, regarding separating feelings from fact: one party is so divorced from fact that ALL they have is feelings - none of them positive. The GOP is rage-filled clickbait come to life.

I think at this point, Biden sees this election as his legacy (to the extent he worries about one). I think he honestly believes, rightly or wrongly, that no one else at this juncture has the stature, the name recognition, etc. that will be needed to defeat Trump. Once he's past the election, assuming he wins, I think it depends on how the Congressional races (on both sides) go. If he's got a working majority in both chambers, as opposed to having to placate the Sinema and Manchin weasels, I think he'll make one final push for some major policy achievements before he steps down. If we don't retake the House, I think he'll focus on replacing as many judges as he can get confirmed before resigning well before the 2026 congressional races. If we don't keep the Senate, I think he'd step down sooner. Unless he decides to make one final push to flip Congress before stepping down to give Harris the chance to run as an incumbent in 2028. It's what I would do in his place.

I'll agree that there may well be some/many traits shared between Trump's shooter and the list you provided. That said: none of these were aiming for "suicide by cop". Booth shot Lincoln and fled; he wasn't caught until 12 days later. Oswald was captured alive and was subsequently killed by Jack Ruby two days later. Sirhan Sirhan and John Hinkley Jr. are still alive.

FWIW I have no problem with regulating the industry just like, for example, some places regulate the porn industry.

I'm glad you had a good time. But a "very very long circuit party" sounds like torture to me.

If such a ticket were announced, of course I'd support it. As I've said, I will vote for the Democratic ticket over the Republican one regardless of who the candidates are at this point. Biden has publicly acknowledged how poorly he did in the debate. He also then gave a rousing speech a few days later that reminded me of his best days in the 2020 race. One reason I don't think he will withdraw is that most of the proposals being floated to replace him do not involve Harris, and he's smart enough to know that dumping the first black Vice President (and the first woman vice president) will go over like a lead balloon. Every serious proposal I've seen has called for two white men, presumably to try to convince the white working class male vote to switch from Trump. That's a fool's errand.

Anyone who thinks the two parties are "equally bad" is just not paying attention. Or has limited comprehension of what the two parties want.

There are lots of ways to promote higher birthrates among groups where whites predominate. School vouchers, for one: there are a fair number of parents who have fewer children than they might have otherwise, because the cost of raising them can be astronomical. Given the uneven distribution of incomes and wealth in this country, giving every child a voucher for what amounts to, say, 60-70% of a private school's tuition may mean the parents can afford to have another child and send him to the same schools as her siblings. Meanwhile, the poorest parents will find their voucher will only get them a seat in a severely underfunded public school system. Same for child tax credits: there's always a move afoot to give tax credits to parents. Right now, some of those credits are refundable, meaning if you don't have enough income to be taxed as much as the credit, they give you the balance of the credit back. The GOP wants non-refundable credits that just "evaporate" if you can't afford to take them. Again, given the income/wealth disparity in this country, most of those able to take the full credit will be white (or Asian). Remember, too, that prior to 1965, the US set immigration levels for each country, rather than focusing on skills or family unification. The GOP has been trying to get away from our current immigration system for a long time, wanting to give preference to white Europeans over people from Central/South America, Africa, and (most of) Asia. Anyone remember Trump's rant about not wanting immigrants from "shithole countries"? Abortion, too, enters into this: the more poor white people who live in red states that can't get an abortion, the more white babies there are for adoption. As it stands now, the vast majority of white babies are readily adopted (and there's a waiting list for them); it's minority kids who sit in foster care and age out. Stir in adoption tax credits for those additional white babies and suddenly, the white population ticks up. Black and brown women, meanwhile, are much more likely to miscarry during pregnancy due to lack of health care resources for poor pregnant women. Horrific as it sounds, there are eugenicists on the right who have no problem letting those women die from (choose one: botched abortions, complications of pregnancy, complications of childbirth). I could go on and on, but I think you get the point: there are all sorts of ways to change population trends.

"I'll grudgingly tolerate discussion of politics in a political forum, but I'm so offended because people have political opinions that bother me that I'm going to bail on the entire forum."

Note that the Mpox vaccine is not fully effective until two weeks after the second dose. I doubt you could schedule the second dose any sooner, but bear that in mind. It should provide at least SOME protection even if it's not fully "active".

Unless President Biden does a complete 180 degree turn and withdraws from the race - something I do not want and something I do not believe he will do - the "top line" of the presidential ballot has been set: Biden and Harris vs. Trump and Vance. I do not think the selection of J.D. Vance will move many wavering Biden votes into the Trump column. Vance has been - and will be broadly painted as - an opportunist, someone who was loudly opposed to Trump until he decided to seek electoral office himself, at which time he reversed himself, declared he was a True Believer, and defended Trump at every turn. One might question as to whether Putin et al. have something on him, given how hard he's been pushing to let Russia just take Ukraine, and that, of course, makes one question the degree to which Trump is being manipulated by Russia. Anyone who doubts that Viktor Orban's visit to Mar-a-Lago had everything to do with delivering a message from Putin should probably not make complex decisions, like where to eat lunch or whether tying one's shoes is a good idea. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the message included an endorsement of Vance as Putin-approved. That's the good news. The better news is that Vance is unlikely to move many wavering Republican votes more solidly into Trump's column, either. In fact, Trump was to some degree in a bind in choosing a vice-president: anyone who could expand his base into people who would otherwise go for Biden would be viewed as suspect by the MAGA faithful. He had to pick someone they approved of, wholeheartedly, and while that's great for placating the white male base of the party, it doesn't go very far to expand the appeal of the ticket. And I think that's a win, if not a huge one, for Biden's camp. For all intents and purposes, now, this race is largely a re-run of the 2020 race, with a somewhat louder and more enthusiastic GOP VP candidate than Pence was. The people involved aren't going to shift voters from one side to the other. What remains, then, is turnout. Oh, and the electorate. In four years' time, a lot of new voters became eligible (and youth vote skews Democratic) while a lot of older people died, perhaps more than would normally be the case thanks to Covid-19. Given that older voters tend to skew Republican, that may well have eaten into their numbers in some places. The flip side of change is the shift in the electoral college after the 2020 census. Texas gained 2 votes, and Florida and Montana each gained one. The only red states to lose a vote were Ohio and West Virginia, meaning the GOP is up 2 EV's before the first vote is cast, assuming that no state flips. Biden got 306 votes last time, meaning he'd be at 304 if nothing changed. That gives him 34 votes he could lose and still retain the presidency. These are the ones that (at present) seem closest to flipping to Trump, with the number of EV's in each: Georgia -16 Michigan -15 Pennsylvania -19 Wisconsin -10 Arizona -11 Nevada -6 Another wrinkle is that North Carolina, which Trump won last time, is still a battleground state, and it has 16 EV's. So if it were to flip Blue, while Georgia went Red, that would be no net change in votes. Or if Biden carried it, he could lose both Wisconsin and Nevada and still have no net change in votes. But assuming nothing new flips to Biden, that means losing any two of the "larger" states (GA/MI/PA) and any ONE of the smaller ones (WI/AZ/NV) would flip the election to Trump. Conversely, as long as he holds two of the three largest (or one plus picking up NC) and any one of the three smaller ones, Biden gets re-elected. So it's not as dire as some pundits would have us believe - and they want us to, of course, because the more of a horse race it appears to be, the more people pay attention to their dire predictions. It's still possible Trump wins - but he's got some heavy lifting to do.

It can be both. In fact, the whole point and message of efforts to decriminalize prostitution is to legalize sex work, recognizing that it is, in fact, work. There are many kinds of "work" that are, in fact, illegal. Doesn't mean it's not work.

So here's the picture, as it's coming into clearer focus. A REPUBLICAN, exploiting REPUBLICAN-supported gun laws and court decisions, fired a gun beloved by REPUBLICANS, at another REPUBLICAN, who traffics in violent rhetoric, incitement and threats, at a REPUBLICAN rally - and somehow it's the Democrats' fault.

I'd very slightly amend that to say that "With no government we don't PEACEFULLY own anything." With no government, or an impotent one, might makes right, and the one with the most firepower controls things - kind of a hybrid between feudal manors and Mafia protection rackets.

You'd think, but Republicans also want to be much, much more rigid about "signature verification" - that is, making sure that how the person signed her voter registration is EXACTLY like how she signed her ballot envelope, even if the signatures are 30 or 40 years apart. Most people's signatures change over the years; even my late mother's, whose carefully scribed name looked the same in 2000 as it had when she married my father in 1959, looked remarkably different in 2022 with the effects of age. As it happens, she lived in a very solidly Republican part of our city, so the chances of it being challenged were slim; but if she'd lived where I do, and had voted by mail, she'd almost certainly have been challenged.

That pretty much mirrors the straights' equivalent of this. Palm Beach has a "season" - late autumn and winter - when wealthy people closed their northeast homes in New York, Philadelphia, etc. to go south, and yes, just after Thanksgiving (because you'd stay "home" until then for the family dinner). The Palm Beach season lasted until just before Easter - they'd want to be home by then, to be seen at Sunday Easter services, and to enjoy the spring weather. The fact that it was edging up towards 90 and humid by April certainly helped speed them on their way. (The upper middle class types had lesser places in Fort Lauderdale but did the same thing, although sometimes on a more abbreviated schedule.)

I'd be curious to know what kind of kinks would be unwelcome in a place like PS. My gut feeling is that it was probably more a case of particular individuals being icked out (or otherwise bothered) by those kinks and being verbal about it, rather than a general dislike for those things among the general populace. I honestly don't think such a place exists. The problem is that cost of living (and taxes) tends to rise with each of the other factors, and so if a place has four or five of those features, it's probably already on the expensive side. Suburbs of such places can be cheaper, and are sometimes at an earlier stage of "gayification", but the trade off there is that you may well end up with a lot of MAGA neighbors.

I wouldn't classify it as "woke" or revisionism. Words develop context, and over time, that context can change. Societies recognize that language changes, and what we find acceptable or even recommended today may well be seen as problematic tomorrow and embarrassing at some point after that. For instance, before homosexual became widely used, most of the terms used for us were pejoratives - deviants, perverts - and "homosexual" was seen as an improvement because it didn't convey a value judgment the way "deviant" or "pervert" did. But it's also clinical and it focuses on the sex act. Which is why a lot of people who are essentially straight - like male prisoners who have no other sexual outlet but each other - will sometimes engage in same-sex acts. It's why a lot of guys who are curious during puberty will experiment with same-sex play, even as most of them develop into completely straight individuals. And if you focus on the sex, it leaves no place for someone who's attracted to others of his own sex but who's never actually HAD a sexual experience. It also doesn't have a good place for those individuals who have sex (that they do not particularly enjoy) with opposite-sex partners for years, but finally cope with their desires and have sex with someone of the same sex. Under a strict, sex-based definition these people would have to be classified as bisexual even if they have no actual interest in opposite-sex partners (much like the straight prisoners who have same-sex encounters because that's the only option). Moreover, as I think most of us would agree, even if there is no single "gay culture" to which we all belong, there are "gay cultures" (shared experiences and emotions and preferences and other commonalities) that may be much more commonly found among gays or lesbians but which have zero to do with having sex. "Homosexual" doesn't really capture any of that. So for that reason, GLAAD is urging journalists, especially, to stop using the clinical (and limiting) term "homosexual" because it doesn't really effectively describe people any more.

According to the FBI, the shooter was one Thomas Matthew Crooks, age 20, of Bethel, Pennsylvania. He is also, according voter registration records, a Republican.