US Politics, March 2024: The house of illuminati will NOT be holding any other event in the foreseeable future.

which somehow never results in being fans of any female professional athletes

Lol yeah I used that line on a relative who was complaining about trans swimmers - “if this is such a big deal, name one other female swimmer”

yeah I never realized people cared so much about Ivy League women's swimming

The same motherfuckers have been bitching about Title IX for decades.

It was nice of Jonathan Martin at Politico to wait until the 29th to publish the stupidest thing I've read all month.

Why Hasn't Biden Called Chris Christie?

Gee, I don't know, why wouldn't the incumbent Democratic president call a Republican whose own run for his party's nomination topped out at 3%, whom every Democratic voter loathes, to "help" with his campaign? And then Martin tries to drag other losers in, too, like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.

good morning!

These people are still living in 2004 or something, when Kerry asking McCain to be his running mate was thought of as a genius move

Why? How about...because everyone who's had their tongue up Trump's ass at any point in the past eight years should be drummed out of polite society for the remainder of their natural lives? And that their half-hearted efforts to distance themselves from him now should be met with derisive laughter?

I don't think Romney ever bent the knee did he? I mean he's still garbage but I'll give him a little credit for that.

He wanted to be secretary of state, remember?

https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/WEZYRWFXHUI6NDF2ZSQ4PAVP6E.jpg

I've never forgotten the gleeful malice of Trump's grin in that photo. The only time he looks delighted is when he's humiliating a foe or eating a KFC thigh.

I do remember, idk if that's really kissing up to him the way everyone else did, more like "there's gotta be one responsible person in there"

https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/02/26/Trump-Fort-Worth.jpg

NJ institutions vanquished by Andy Kim: Bob Menendez, Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, and now, the county line https://t.co/jONjLUx78U

— David Nir (@DavidNir) March 29, 2024

A federal judge has struck down the 'county line' in NJ elections.

Andy Kim is cutting a fucking swath through the state. It's pretty incredible.

damn, that seems like a huge deal

i don't really understand what that is; is it some kind of gerrymandered NJ criminal nonsense?

It's basically a thumb on the scale that each county party machine could exercise for their preferred candidate.

I was annoyed that none of the major news articles had an example of the ballot design. Here's an article with some pictures, and an image embed if it works:
https://www.njpp.org/publications/report/does-the-county-line-matter-an-analysis-of-new-jerseys-2020-primary-election-results/

https://www.njpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Monmouth-4th-District-Dem-Primary-Ballot.png

Lmao

The @jmart-to-Biden campaign press release pipeline https://t.co/OQYoju8GFV pic.twitter.com/OoKZKVjHn0

— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) March 29, 2024

i guess that ballot is confusing but it's not that confusing to me. I wouldn't lay stuff out that way but I would assume people are not so dumb that they will just vote down a single line, but I also often assume people are smarter than they prove themselves to be.

do the columns have headings? Like, who supports the candidates? I get that the first column is the one people will gravitate toward, but that ballot design as shown is incomprehensible

the rows have headings. it's basically a normal ballot tilted on it's side

the row headings are just for the offices. But the multiple different columns are confusing, where it appears that some candidates are outliers, with no explanation in the graphic

"The seven county line candidates are in column one. The remaining six candidates are scattered across the other four, mostly empty, columns. There is no obvious logic as to why each of the non-endorsed candidates is in a particular column."

xp c’mon man they wouldn’t have made the ballot look like that (totally different from any other ballot I’ve ever seen) if it didn’t work to push the machine’s preferred candidates.

I would assume people are not so dumb that they will just vote down a single line

I bet people do this like 75% of the time if not more. Even if they do it 55% of the time, that is huge.

The 2020 primary also had a large number of contested races. In a few of those races, the county party organizations endorsed and awarded the county line to different candidates. This created an additional opportunity to examine the impact of the county line on electoral outcomes.

Democratic Party Primary Results
In the Democratic primary, four congressional districts and the U.S. Senate race were contested and included some counties that did not structure their primary ballots around a county line or county parties within the congressional district endorsing different candidates.

2nd Congressional District
Amy Kennedy won all eight counties in the 2nd Congressional district. However, Kennedy received a higher percentage of the vote in the three counties where she had the county line or no one had the county line than in the five counties where her opponent Brigid Harrison had the county line (see Figure 2).

Kennedy received 75% of the vote in Atlantic County, where she had the county line, and 50% of the total vote in the five counties where Brigid Harrison had the county line, a difference of 25 percentage points. Kennedy received 67% of the vote in Ocean County, where no candidates were endorsed or awarded the county line, and 63% of the vote in Salem County, where Brigid Harrison had the county party’s endorsement, but the primary ballot is not structured around the county line.

The County Line is a middling BBQ joint down the road from my house

Well now it’s illegal

lol

NBC News discovers that life in Florida...kinda sucks, actually.

Over to you, Alfred.

“ My little part-time job making $600, $700 a month went to paying either car insurance or homeowners insurance, and forget about groceries,” said Blaski, who was working in retail. “There are all these hidden things that people don’t know about. Make sure you have extra money saved somewhere because you will need it.””

Y’know hoss you can do some back of the envelope math and discover what it costs to live somewhere in like 30 minutes.

Happily, the House of Illuminati shall be consigned to the memory hole in just a few hours.

It live in our hearts forever though

The only part of the story on which I call bullshit is this bit, which can happen anywhere:

But she said the final straw was when she couldn’t find a surgeon to remove a 6-inch tumor from her liver that doctors warned could burst at any moment and lead to life-threatening sepsis. After being passed among doctors, she finally found one willing to remove the tumor. But when she called to schedule the surgery, her calls went unanswered and her messages weren’t returned. After months of trying and fearing for her life, she returned to Kansas to have the procedure done.

Y’know hoss you can do some back of the envelope math and discover what it costs to live somewhere in like 30 minutes.

They can deny global warming all they like at the FLA state house, the insurance actuaries really don’t care.

"Confederate flags at the gate and swastikas on the fish tank" for April Thread Title.

Could be shortened to "Swastikas on the fish tank"

#RejectedRambleTambleLyrics

Having grown up in Oklahoma, Smith considered herself a Republican, but as Florida’s politics shifted to the right, she said she began to consider herself a Democrat. It wasn’t until the past several years, though, that politics started to encroach on her daily life — from feuds between neighbors and friends to neo-Nazis showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally in her small town.

“When I first moved to Florida, it was a live-and-let-live sort of beach feel. You met people from all over, everybody was relaxed. That’s just gone now, and it’s shocking. It’s just gone,” said Smith, 61, who works as a graphic designer and illustrator. “Instead, it’s just a constant stressful atmosphere. I feel as though it could ignite at any point, and I’m not a fearmonger. It’s just the atmosphere, the feeling there.”

Huh - that's pretty interesting and a possible bellwether.

“For this pro-business, free state, I’m feeling it in the wallet, bad.”

Yup. More inclusive societies will always have the better economy. How's that "freedom" tasting?

The only part of the story on which I call bullshit is this bit, which can happen anywhere

Maybe it can, but does it? I don’t know of very many stories about people being unable to schedule lifesaving surgeries in Taxachusettes.

was promised cheezburgers in paradise maaaan. sold my remaining flip flop and got the fuck out of two songs at once.

New Thread: US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"