Pre-Election Week:
Election Notes, Malignant Square Garden, Going on the Offending Offensive, Purging Voters, Religion that Repels

It wasn’t as if there was no warning before that Madness Square rallyesque event:

Well…
…combining coarse racism with bin Laden 9/11 attack Twin Tower playfulness might have been less than side‑splitting.

• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has a few bullet points of election news, and some worthy advice on how to know your ballot is counted.

• Master of Rant, Max’s Dad, beholds the Madison Square Garden get‑together‑of‑love (My lame reference, not his) and puts into print the basic question that comes to us all:
  What the hell was that?

• By now, we all know what a hatefest mr Trump’s Madison Square dance‑off turned out to be. Dave Dubya digs into the horrific particulars.

• From The Borowitz Report, the election looms and mr Trump is now in a desperate race against time to alienate all remaining minority groups.

• Hackwhackers goes meme hunting with insights about racial slurs and the Madison Shock Garden.

  Key favorite:
  

• Republican leaders are now yikesing, running away from the pre‑scripted and teleprompted Republican hilarity:

  “Those jokes don’t represent our Republican values.”

  Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson makes an obvious point:
  

  But he fit in so well with the rest of the speakers. https://t.co/D1J2P3dwTq

  — James Wigderson (@jwigderson) October 28, 2024

• At The Moderate Voice, retired U.S. Air Force Major Dorian de Wind has an objection to Trump sponsored hilarity:
  That ‘Floating Island of Garbage’ is the Home of American Heroes

  Key Point of Order:
  Every Memorial Day since 1978, a group of military gather at the Medal of Honor Grove in Valley Forge, Pa., to remember and pay homage to nine brave men native to that Island who are recipients of the United States’ highest award for military valor in action, the Medal of Honor.

• At News Corpse, a weak and weary mr Trump tries to staunch the racist‑jokes‑in‑rally damage by holding what appears to be a press conference, except without any allowed questions.
  He then gets fact‑checked by (WOAH!!) Fox??.

• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged watches the Trump event and discerns a non‑obvious motivation. It wasn’t to win votes.

• The Propaganda Professor considers the real context, and some common excuses, for racial putdowns.

• CalicoJack in The Psy of Life goes to mr Trump’s playground rants, porno obsessions with male genitalia (Hello, Mr. Palmer), and crude view of young women in an attempt to explain the warm embrace by many young men: it’s all juvie.

  Key appeal:
  It is no wonder that a generation of young male first‑time‑but‑unlikely‑voters favors Trump; he sounds just like them.

• @whiskeywhistle98, as she discovers how MAGA guys know what’s attractive:

• Dave Columbo listens to Republican hopefuls twist and turn to keep from saying Trump is truly horrible:

• YellowDog Granny reminds us that she’ll be (mostly) leaving us soon, but still knows what’s good for the soul, and what she doesn’t much like about Trump.

  My favorite:

  

• Frances Langum has photographic evidence to back up mr Trump’s naked Arnold Palmer story.

• Tommy Christopher has former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman’s reaction to mr Trump’s vow that he will protect women regardless: Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.. Governor Whitman says it makes her wanna smack him across the face!
  That’s a quote.

• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil shows us mr Trump sharing his gleeful anticipation, in detail – right down to the number of rifles, of the public execution of Liz Cheney.

• In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson watches as Elon Musk, basking in Trump promises of a cabinet position, says he will impose the prospective new president’s financial plan. He anticipates it will completely trash the economy and devastate most people.

  Sad, says Musk, but the destruction will be necessary for the plan to work.
  He promises it will be only a temporary hardship.
  You’ll get over it.

  The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

• Scotties Playtime has examples of Trump supporter harassment and attacks against poll workers on the job.

• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger gets past conspiracy theories and finds that poll workers are popular.

• Courtesy of The Onion, JD Vance is under fire again, this time for criticizing childless Children (Okay so it’s satire. Gimme a break!):

• Imani Gandy looks on the bright side of life:
  

  Mel Gibson said that Kamala Harris has the IQ of a fence post but he didn’t call her a ni-[CLANG] nor did he call her sugar tits, so baby steps.

  [image or embed]

  — Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady.bsky.social) October 25, 2024 at 11:47 AM

  
  
• A couple of major newspapers declined to endorse candidates this year. So noted author John Scalzi takes note and offers his own substitute.

• Juliet at Decoding Fox News has the video, as Fox personality Brian Kilmeade explains that Democrats had prepared and were ready to riot on Jan 6, 2021. The only one reason they didn’t: Joe Biden somehow got enough votes.
  Yeah, that’s what he said.

• driftglass goes to the latest polls this week in 2012 and, to our dismay, things are looking pretty grim for Obama.

• Julian Sanchez, on Threads, has an insight on why media coverage of Trump has become steadily more unbalanced with each day:

  Post by @normative

  View on Threads

  
  
• Tamra Brown explains the logic of third party voting:

• Our favorite Earth‑Bound Misfit explains the US Constitution’s remaining vestige of slavery.

  I have had thoughts – One rescued from Fair and Unbalanced.

• PZ Myers writes about the cute and adorable things our grandchildren are up to.

  Like, for example, fun and exciting rewards at school for great participation during lockdown drills in case of deadly gunfire.

  Key wistful memory of long ago youth:
  We didn’t have games like that when I was a kid.

• My long time conservative friend, Darrell Michaels isn’t posting this week. But don’t despair. he offers criticism of …well… me:

  It is amazing the lengths we go to in order to worship at the altar of “choice” these days..

  I’ll mention just a couple of the many reasons for the sincerity behind my description of our friendship.

  Darrell, a war veteran himself, offered aid and comfort to my loved one and me when we suddenly lost communication with our young Marine just as we got word of an attack at his base in Afghanistan.

  And he prayed for my family as a member came very near death from an exotic illness .

  So, yeah.
  He is a dear and valued friend. Interesting that we have never met.

• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara defends abortion rights:

  “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote”.

  He then goes on to blast the embrace by the Democratic Party of democracy, which is antithetical to to freedom.
  The idea is that, if you favor majority rule, you have to favor the majority when they want to remove someone’s freedom.

  This binary approach seems to permeate libertarian thought.
  The proposition that basic rights, in order to be rights, pretty much have to be the exception to democratic rule seems to be regarded as a mysterious contradiction.

  For myself:
  I can be a proponent of democracy without putting up for a community vote my neighbor’s free speech.
  I have no corollary obligation to call for a town meeting on whether the interracial couple down the street will be allowed to poison our blood by having children.

• It was the poster child of government ineptitude. Thousands of Missouri voters, legitimate voters, had been mistakenly purged from the voting rolls in 2000.

  But there were provisions. If you showed up to vote in Missouri that year, and you found you had been purged, you could make a last minute trip to the voting board a few miles away and got it fixed right away. They’d be open late just for that.

  No harm, no foul, right?

  Problem was turnout was really heavy that year. And the Election Board, wouldn’t you know it, hadn’t bothered to plan in case too many voters showed up.

  So some voters waited in line for hours.
  Then they found out were no longer listed as voters.
  Then had to drive over to the Voting Board office and wait in line there.
  Then come back and wait in line again to vote.

  Often, when they got back, the polls had closed.
  Now THAT was plain wrong.

  Not just that.
  The heavy turnout meant building codes were sometimes violated because of too many people inside at once, so polls closed and alternates opened down the road, then the originals opened up again.
  Voters shuffled back and forth for hours out of line and into new lines.
  Often, when they eventually got back, the polls had closed.
  Now THAT was plain wrong as well.

  So a judge ordered some polling places to stay open a couple hours late for those brave souls who had stuck it out for so long.
  Fair is fair.

  That year, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate had died in a plane crash too late to be taken off the ballot, and he won anyway.

  Our other Missouri Senator, Kit Bond, was not up for election that year, but boy‑howdy he was red faced furious about those few polls being kept open.
  He actually cut his hand pounding on a podium screaming about how fraudulent it was to let voters sneak in to cast their ballots.

  Turned out there were no fraudulent votes cast, none.
  But rules are rules, right?
  Like a football game. Follow the rules no matter. Right?
  (By the way, didja see those Washington Commanders and their last second Hail Mary on Sunday?)

  Senator Bond’s point was simple:
  You had to be fair to all candidates and to both political parties.

  And that’s one of the main problems with today’s ongoing voter purges.
  The only issue is seen as a contest of party rights.
  Got to be fair and balanced between the parties.

  The rights of voters who actually follow what they are told are not given a second thought.
  In fact, the rights of actual voters are seldom given a first thought.
  The debate is about whether one political party is cheating the other.

  Which leads us to Disaffected and it Feels So Good.

  It seems, in a lot of states, mail delivery is a little unstable. (Postmaster Louis DeJoy, you know.)
  Mississippi says don’t worry about it. They’ll give you a five day grace period just in case.
  (Because DeJoy, you know.)
  As long as your mail‑in ballot is mailed on time by election day, and they’ll check the postmark so they know, they’ll count it.

  So some Republican partisan judges went into overrule mode.
  Postmarks don’t matter. Rights of voters don’t matter.
  Ballots not received by election time for any reason at all (DeJoy, you know) will be tossed.

  What seems the guiding principle is headlined:
  If Voting ever changed anything, they’d make it Illegal.
  In Mississippi, seems it does, seems they do.

• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz sees today’s religious twist and shout:
  

  That’s the greatest irony of it all: that the very Evangelicals who’ve spent that last 50 years in this country demonizing those who reject Jesus—are now the single most compelling reason for them to do so.https://t.co/zfty3pTdzG

  — John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) October 30, 2024

  
  
• Juanita Jean‘s Nick Carraway experiences what it’s like to be a Christian whose faith has been hijacked.

• Infidel753 gets into the holiday spirit, so to speak, diving into the historical (which is to say pagan) origins of Halloween.

  Key religious note:
  Modern Christian fundamentalists remain profoundly suspicious of Halloween, and with good reason.

• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a true believer points to religious converts who say Jesus made a change in their lives, and asks atheists: are these people just making it up?

  Atheist Bruce says no, but he suggests a third alternative.

• Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes attaches a device to his cellphone, discovers he is about to die, and is now safely in the hospital.

  KeyHeadline:
  a smartphone saved my life

• In Happiness Between Tails da‑AL hosts novelist Kirsten Bett, who advises fledgling writers to consider reader magnets for those joining their mailing lists: writing something special as a reward.

• Nan’s Notebook asks for comments on which is more effective in changing behavior: criticism or praise.

• Clickbait satirist Reductress discovers a case study in male loneliness: Everyone is too busy cleaning up after dinner to hang out with the lonely man in the living room.

• The Journal of Improbable Research celebrates World Earthworm Day with a study by the University of Leeds on whether earthworms can adapt to rapidly changing climate.

• SilverAppleQueen has cute cats.