We’re a Week Out From the Thing

Brazil did it. Can we?

For all that I wish to move the capitol by having my region secede from the larger country, the fact is that we’re here in the world as it is. Stinky Don is the president. He is surrounded by goons and sycophants, including some that have a (D) after their name on certain ballots. In general though, it seems that if you’re voting for anyone with an (R) after their name on any ballot, you’re voting for someone who supports Stinky Don. And if you’re voting for a supporter of that guy, you’re voting against a democratic society.

It’s just that simple. You’re voting for cruelty without consequences. You’re voting for someone who supports the idea of no accountability for certain Stinky people. We know this because we’ve been living through this particular Stinky chunk of history.

Stinky Don is offering all sorts of cash prizes, all conditional on a win for the (R)s in this coming election. No changes in policy, no promises to do better. Just spread the corruption to the average voter, for the one act of importance we each have the opportunity to commit every couple of years. It’s all bribes, it’s all corruption. He’s saying, “If you let me continue robbing the country blind, I’ll give you a stinking Werther’s® for your trouble.”

google screenshot page showing various electoral maps of the US
A screenshot I took from Google.

Please remember that his operating budget is your money anyway, and that if you let him have his way, he’s only going to pick up the pace of putting your tax dollars in his own pocket and those of his friends and allies, killing kids, putting the youth of America in harm’s way, and further destroying whatever good will and political capital this country has in the world community. It’s not a good deal. I’d go so far as to say that no deal with Stinky Don is a good deal for anybody but Stinky Don. And not even that, necessarily. Gerrymandering Texas seems not to have done him any actual favors. The five new “safe” districts he had the state legislature create there are not so safe after all.

In fact, for those who have a numbers fetish, here’s a link to Nate Silver’s FLIPR forecast for the midterms. It’s narrowing a little bit, it seems, but it’s still looking pretty good for the Democrats. Polling in the modern era is a bit less than perfect, but it’s still info.

To that end, Brazil had their elections this past Sunday, and against conventional wisdom and the best polling available, Lula da Silva won a fourth term as President of Brazil. That election day was wild. Municipalities closed down their public trans portation to keep people from being able to get to the polls. People came by boat out of the remostest areas to make their way to the polls, against everybody’s expectation. Bolsonaro tried unsuccessfully to get the polls closed early with tons of people still on line to vote. In the end, instead of the predicted loss, Lula won by about 3,000,000 votes.

And of course Flavio Bolsonaro is refusing to concede, and is asking Trump to intervene and hand him the presidency. Time will tell if Trump has the will and resources to do so. It’s worth remembering that Stinky Don has his own troubles, a host of them, all of his own making.

Tulsi Gabbard is a Fighter: She Could Be Just What This Country Needs Right Now

Tulsi Gabbard found out yesterday that she will not be included in the third Democratic Presidential Debate, having met the fundraising requirement to be included — at least 130,000 unique donors to her campaign — but failed to meed the polling requirement of at least 2% support in four qualifying polls, only one poll from each polling entity can count: the polls must either be national polls, or they must be from one of the first four “early” states — Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, or South Carolina.

On Five Thirty Eight blog, where they aggregate polls, I counted 8 national polls and 7 polls in early states where Tulsi scored 2% or higher. The question is, why don’t more of these polls count? What criteria did the DNC use to select which polls they would use to qualify candidates? Looking at the list there are certainly some polls that are more reputable than others, certainly, but why didn’t the Emerson College poll count, for example? No one outside of the DNC inner circle knows.

Where other candidates may have used not meeting the criteria established by the DNC as a reason to drop out of the race, Gabbard seems to have only gotten more determined. She went on Fox News and spoke to Tucker Carlson about the need for transparency the same day that the debate participants were announced (yesterday, as of this writing). While some may look sideways at her choice of venue, it is clear to those of us who are watching her campaign at all closely that she would not have been able to get on MSNBC to discuss this issue. If she’d been brought on at all, the topic of conversation would likely have been “Assad apologist” beginning to end. MSNBC is not known to be particularly supportive of progressives.

Below is a clip from her appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show.