The area of the country I live in has so far been mostly spared from coronavirus cases. That is until school started back up on Monday. We already have one high school that has been shut down due to 14 staff members testing positive and now one of the local universities has cases that are spiraling out of control after a large move in weekend party on Saturday.

On my way back to work from lunch today, I drove past the local middle school, which was getting out for the day. There were massive groups of students and adults all milling about, almost none of them wearing masks.

What an absolute clusterfuck this is turning into

It's not always easy to do but I like to check out Republican discussion boards a few times a week to see what the other side is thinking and feeling. It is also good to see what Democratic "scandals" and attacks the right wing media is cooking up at any given time so I am not caught off guard by sudden crazy claims cropping up. Anyway, last night the impression I got while the DNC was going on was that they are terrified about how well it is going for the Dems. Of course they won't admit that Biden and the Democrats are doing well or that anything about the convention is going to be effective. Instead you need to look at how angry, frustrated, and rambling their posts are. Obviously the more they know they are losing the more hostile and violent they start to sound. Last night the right wing chatter heavily implied panic and that whatever disaster they were predicting for the Dem convention isn't coming to pass.

Most of their rage is coming out as racist attacks against Harris, along with implying that she is "a slut" who slept her way to the top, including speculation that she is sleeping with Biden. But there is talk about how Michelle Obama is fat and lost her looks. There are also claims that the Democrats seem to be in disarray, that no one in the country likes Biden, that less than 1000 people watched the convention last night, that the music at the convention is going to turn off voters (?). And lots and lots of talk about 2016 and Hillary Clinton.

I could give exact quotes but none of that matters and you don't really want to read that garbage anyway. What is important is that the attacks on the Democrats and the convention are all over the place. They are attacking the way people look, the quality of the sound and video, conspriacy theories and middle school level attacks on random people they don't even know. As someone who reguarly monitors the Republican online cesspool I can tell you they are freaked the fuck out right now. Whatever the Democrats are doing is whipping them up into a total panic. We should all feel good that the Democrats seem to be on top of their game right now.

Due to this whole plague that Trump let wash over the country, I, like many of you, am stuck hanging around the house a lot. I've been watching a lot of older movies, from around the 1950's and 1960's to kill time. One thing that I am shocked by is how aged many actors and actresses look. There will be a character in a movie that I assume is like 55 years old but when I look up the age of the actor, they are always like 32 years old. It is so depressing and shocking to see. Of course when you look up their bio on wikipedia, most were very heavy smokers and died at like 52 years old.

Here is Rod Serling at 35 years old.

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Here is Guy Madison in his early 30's

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Here is Frank Sinatra in his late 30's

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They all look horrible for their ages. Good god, why would anyone smoke?!

The Republicans last week told Trump flat out no on the payroll tax cut . It had no support among Republicans in congress. That's because it defunds social security and medicare. Did they not tell him this is political suicide because I guess he is about to find out the hard way.

I spend a few minutes per day checking the betting markets on the presidential race. They aren't all that great but they can be useful as a warning that some kind of massive news just happened. Biden has been slipping in a few markets over the last few days, not because of polls, which haven't moved or any kind of good news, but according to the Republicans at these places, it is because Biden is about to lose a massive amount of support from black voters. There are discussion sections at these sites and people can talk about what they are thinking and why they are betting the way that they are. And right now the Republicans are hanging all of their hopes (and money) on Black voters abandoning Biden for Trump and Kayne. Over at Predict It, Bidens odds in places where Kanye will be on the ballot have collapsed (remember this is based on Republicans betting money on their gut assumptions, not actual polls). Here is some insight into the minds of Republicans 85ish days before the election. They are in a sorry state:

Trump calls Black Lives Matters a terrorist group and tweets out "white power" but black voters won't care. In fact they will vote for him because the economy is so good for black Americans right now (?)

Kanye West is clearly a mentally ill hard core Republican working for Trump who says Rosa Parks was a fraud but black voters will also flock to him because you know....skin color

Biden says that politically Latino voters tend to have different views depending on the part of the country they live in but black voters tend to be a bit more uniform in their support. According to Republicans, Biden just lost every single black voter to Trump and Kayne after that comment. Bidens poll numbers are on the verge of collapse and the Democrats are probably going to replace him as the nominee. According to Republicans online, Bidens comments about latino and black voters is one of the most offensive and racist things any American politican has ever said.


This is the current state if the Republican Party. Less than 3 months before the election is over and they are banking on this like this. It really does give a lot of insight to just how panicked and truly out of hope Republicans are at this point. They are living in an entirely different universe from the rest of us. Pathetic but also could prove quite dangerous when Trump tells them all that he didn't lose the election but that they need to rise up to fight for him. We might be in for a dangerous and deadly Republican temper tantrum...

Here is what it told me about the election

https://www.270towin.com/maps/3X62n


Biden picks Harris as VP, they win by 7.6 points, and Biden gets 368 electoral votes. The Senate ends up tied.


Or I might just be super high

The Republican party, as it is known today under Trump isn't long for this world and it's currently philosophy will likely die a swift death after this year. So when the current old guard in the Republican party disappears over the next decade and the hardcore conservatives among the boomers begin really getting up there in age, I think the moderate blue dog democrats who are getting booted in primaries by "democratic socialists" and people far to the left will move to take over the GOP.

In 5-10 years, current Republicans will be gone, the moderate and conservative Dems will become Republicans, and the democrats will have a Bernie Sanders style philosophy.

Ted Cruz a few hours ago

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Ted Cruz a few months ago

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April 24, 2020:

Joe Biden: “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said on Thursday night in remarks at an online fundraiser.

Trump campaign: “Those are the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/joe-biden-donald-trump-delay-election

Following up from my post yesterday on the Buzzfeed quiz on people's "morality alignment", I decided to try to make a chart for 2020 American politics. Thoughts?

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