372 Comments

I apologize on behalf of my fellow Pennsylvanians. I promise we’re not all bad. But, yes, definitely avoid the scrapple.

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no offense to anne sexton but WHY do all poets captured on tape read poetry in EXACTLY the same way? i mean shakespeare himself would probably do that weird sing-song-y cadence and have that flat middle stanza reading with a faint uplift at the end. is there a poet trade school that poets have to attend to speak their poetry outloud?

on another note: my biggest claim to fame as an actor was a short with scott thompson in like 2009.

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Loving the Anne Sexton poetry! thanks. she's amazing.

Blaming the election on

1. Media

2. Bros

3. Dumb people who pay not attention and/or get their "news" from their stupid social media

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Precisely. Elon putting not just his thumb but his whole butt on the Xitter ("Shitter") scale for Trump, Bezos being a complete wuss about WaPo endorsement, Youngs who didn't even know about things like the Access Hollywood tape or the gross stuff Trump 1.0 did during his reign (uh, administration), and people who bought into the whole persecution/grievance/economy thing. Glad I started out relatively poor in my youth so if something is too expensive for me at the grocery store, I've learned not to buy it. Glad that gas is about $4 a gallon where I live and not over $5. I mean, how dumb or unaware do you have to be to vote for someone who can't even frame a coherent sentence and wanders off into fantasies about sharks and batteries and Hannibal Lector? What actions does a voter think that person can take to keep his followers safe or prosperous?

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I feel awful about the election, especially the voting gap. Too many people have no idea what the issues are or where candidates stand on them. I saw a Muslim group talking about how they couldn't support Harris because of Gaza. Do they honestly think that trumpy will be nicer to Arabs? He adores Netanyahu.

I do think the Dems made one huge error in the election. The economy is doing really well, but it isn't doing really well for everyone. The pandemic, inflation, and incomes that don't even keep up with inflations are shrinking the middle class. This country has gotten immensely richer in the last 30 years and almost all of that gain has gone to people at the top, in large part because of our corrupt tax laws. Dems need to court the middle class before there isn't one.

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Yes. The Democrats get blamed quite a lot for larger, systemic failings of the entire capitalist order. It generates a lot of wealth (no questions there), but the distribution of that wealth is still not broad enough to help everyone live a good life. Most people seem to be very insecure economically, and that doesn't put them in the best mood about social issues. They're probably looking for groups and individuals to blame for their insecurity and anxiety.

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Do you realize that "simple dinosaur" is a reasonable description of the current GOP. Or, as I've come to call them, the "Know-Nothing Party."

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For deeply personal reasons (see avatar-selfie), I don't use "dinosaur" to connote bad things.

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"The economy is doing really well, but it isn't doing really well for everyone. The pandemic, inflation, and incomes that don't even keep up with inflations are shrinking the middle class. This country has gotten immensely richer in the last 30 years and almost all of that gain has gone to people at the top, in large part because of our corrupt tax laws. Dems need to court the middle class before there isn't one."

THANK YOU! That's what I've been trying to say.

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You're welcome. I wish the Dems would learn to say it. I'm not in favor of class warfare per se, but in this case it seems necessary. Let's use the sleazy rich as scapegoats instead of using immigrants, women, etc. Especially when the rich and their corrupt effect on our government is a guilty goat. A bad, bad goat.

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It's the place where the very narrow individual view, as in "I was in better shape five or ten years ago" (or even the feeling or unverified belief that that was the case), meets the larger systemic issues. You're right that the rich really have become richer, and the poor and middle class haven't done very well. So they look elsewhere, and make a stunningly bad decision to back a candidate who does not have their best interests in mind at all.

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Huh! I thought that’s what Harris was doing.

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Not quite so bluntly. She talked about needing to support programs that would help ordinary people and she talked of opportunity, but she never really stressed the fact that the rich and our corrupt Congress are responsible for the increasing income gap.

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I've seen idiots posting about how grocery prices are already coming down, with photos of prices for like - organic shit at Stop and Shop, I think it is? No photos of what the prices were before, and also if you're pissy about the price of your $8 organic hummus? Let me find the world's tiniest fucking violin.

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If prices are coming down and it is the President's doing, that would still be Biden.

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There's a list going around twitter of all the things that have happened since the election - the number of things vary, but they are not because of Trump or just not true. Wars ending, economy booming, manufacturing returning to the US. Biden should get credit for some of them. The Trumpers are going to believe it no matter what anyone says. How do you win an election with such profoundly stupid people voting?

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Or, these morons could read actual factual news, such as a WaPo (fuck the wapo) article from BEFORE THE ELECTION headlined "Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump's global tariff plans" (10 30 24).

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Facts do not influence their feelings.

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Of course they do. These guys hate facts and it leads to a great deal of whining, gnashing of teeth, and outright lies.

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I don't understand what you're saying. They do not acknowledge objective facts; only their feelings, generally as dictated to them by tfg et al., count.

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This is ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

100 upvotes for you because that is literally the truth behind ALL of this

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Thank you. I wish it weren't true, but that's where intense tribalism has gotten us.

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As far as I can see, intense tribalism is what keeps people from seeing what's in front of their face because it differs from the mythology of the tribe. Misogyny and racism can certainly be values that shape that mythology, but they're hardly the only ones that do.

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I'd like to say "Thank you, everyone for your replies.

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Chaos? I tell you chaos. $ 1billion in campaign spending by the Dems and they miss 10 million voters from 2020? That's chaos. 10 million is like misplacing the entire voting population of California and New York. That's how fucked up these results are. Makes no fucking sense.

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" 1billion in campaign spending by the Dems and they miss 10 million voters from 2020? That's chaos. "

THAT's Citizens United.

Crafted for and by Republicans.

Look it up.

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But, but, what about Hunter Biden & the laptop from hell ?

Living in a van camper, You people are just stupid.

You deserve what you get.

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And my 93 year old mother can tell you about Pearl Harbor, and actual Hitler.

Life is a reality show, till it ain't.

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Great picks today!!

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Thank you for these

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Wife and I went to visit my 93 year old mother-in-law, whom I adore. She's sharp as a tack, loves our trans son, and hates The Orange One with the fury of 10,000 supernovas. She gets it!

On the way, passed some chucklefuck selling all the Trumpy shit. Flags and shitty t-shirts galore! I wanted to stop and browse the array of all things gross and gag-inducing, but my wife said "fuck that noise" so I didn't.

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If you're in the SF Bay Area and Taize is your vibe, I'm the cantor for a monthly one at Stanford MemChu: 7PM this coming Tuesday. You don't have to sing.

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oh cool - wish I were closer

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me too

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I'm on call and so have to go in to do the probable cause hearings for folks this weekend (and Monday, being a holiday).

We had a TON of snow, so not a lot of the usual out and about crimes--more of the domestic violence stuff and damage to property.

Lots of people drinking and then having a fit and destroying their moms' homes.

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The Mixed Emotions of November 9th - emptywheel

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/09/the-mixed-emotions-of-november-9th/

> From the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch to Kristallnacht in 1938 to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to today, Nov. 9 carries mixed emotions.

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“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. I was disappoint that that wasn’t Hooper, our bartender.

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Nowadays, everyone knows you are a 2-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever that likes laying on the couch when left alone, favorite chew toy is hard rubber bone, that you prefer to have your left ear scratched rather than your right one . . .

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Dogs that smile. They like us, they really LIKE us!!!

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Or momentarily peckish . . .

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Or drunk.

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Thanks for this Robyn. I had no idea that Today was National Scrapple Day. I grew up hating it because it’s disgusting. My mom loves this stuff. So imagine my delight to learn that my mom’s birthday is also National Scrapple Day. She’s 89. We’ve got our differences, mostly of the personality sort, but she just keeps ticking along.

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