ewsieg

Note that I'm not going to just say you have some good points, but your thoughts on Russia above are my prevailing thoughts as well. What I don't like that I've seen on this forum since this started is that if you don't give Ukraine everything they want/need, you're a Russia asset. Btw, here are pics of a bunch of dead Ukrainians to 1) rile up the side that agrees with me and make them more steadfast and entrenched in their positions and 2) point out to anyone that opposes my thoughts, this is what we will have if we listen to you. Well, this is what we have doing it with unprecedented support to Ukraine right now. Biden has done a good job of helping support Ukraine without escalating anything directly with Russia. But we are playing with fire. You can correctly point out the Russia started the fire, but we're still playing with it. Maybe continuing this course is the best plan. Heck, maybe declaring Ukraine air space closed and marching troops to secure the western/central part of the country is a 'drop the gloves' moment that we just need to get done and hope for the best. What I don't think is good though is simply saying that for humanity we need to help them fight (while ignoring other atrocities elsewhere) and ignoring anything that doesn't paint this war in a good light.

So you do support a policy where the US ensures genocide within China stops that goes up all the way to military involvement?

My comment was towards the fact that you can't even have reservations about our role in Ukraine without being labeled a Russian asset. I don't agree with Screwball on his stance with Ukraine, but he does state some legitimate facts. And as far as posting dead bodies of Ukrainians as a response, where does it stop then? We've determined what China is doing with the Uyghurs is genocide. If GDP shouldn't be an issue, than why aren't we at least supplying Uyghurs with weapons. I'm confident they will fight if they have weapons. Yemen, a lot of atrocities going on there, often by Saudi's. Let's send Yemen 70 billion to defend themselves. I understand the pro's in supporting Ukraine as well. But let's not play this "Ukraine is the only one that should have any say" crap. War is hell. I'm not saying we have to tell Ukraine to concede their territory and hope Russia will agree to it, but at least allow some reservations be said about it. By propagandizing the war, it doesn't help your cause.

I didn't realize we had so many Russian assets on this forum. Meanwhile, friendly fire raised legitimate talk about article 5 from NATO, so please tell me again how WWIII talk is so far out of left field.

As the resident MAGA poster (not because i've ever voted for him, but because i've questioned dem policies), he's done. It's over. The only thing that was ever going to stop him was losing. The GOP was going to swallow their pride as long as they were winning. There was evidence already that while you had to have Trump in your corner to win a primary, it wasn't going to help in the general election. This past week proved that's absolutely the case. Why are there no successful third parties in US politics? Because once a party realizes they are on the losing end of an issue, they change course. Either the GOP cuts ties with Trump or they lose. For the MCS prediction above, if Kelly can get close to 50% of the vote, he wins by 20% over DeSantis, Trump comes in third.

So I heard about this "Slavery amendment" in Tennessee so I reached out to a buddy of mine who often claims he's the only democrat in Tennessee. Turns out he voted to keep slavery in place. He found out what he did a few hours after he voted as he didn't know much about the amendment but paraphrasing "Nothing gets on the ballot proposed by a democrat, so I have to assume they are all garbage". He read it wrong and was confused by it and voted no as in 'we don't want slavery', no was actually that they wouldn't amend the constitution to remove it. So now my buddy is still the only liberal I know in Tennessee, as well as the only person I know that has voted to keep slavery in place.

It's like he's the best hitter on the Tigers.

Inflation gets blamed on the party that has the presidency. As far as who is really to blame for it, you're right that it's a worldwide issue, but both parties were fine with quantitative easing, both parties were fine with stimulus, and 1 party was more aggressive on shutting down and staying down longer. All of these things, regardless of other benefits they may have provided, directly led to a bigger inflation issue. I personally am livid with the Dems over how late they got into the game of trying to deal with inflation and how they initially tried to dupe folks that it was just some redneck idiot that was just upset with paying such a small fraction more for some milk. I mean, even the "Inflation Reduction Act" will (minutely) lead to more inflation in the short term. In pre Trump times, inflation would have been my #1 issue to determine how I would have voted yesterday. Instead I had no choice to vote for Democracy for all first, and then restore rights for my wife and daughter before I could even think about voting for who is handling our economy better. It appears that quite a few folks had some similar thoughts and voted accordingly. I'm pleasantly surprised this morning, yet still not terribly comfortable with the direction we're heading.

Just got back from voting. I overheard an election worker stating it had finally slowed down enough for them to sneak in some time to eat snacks. It still was busier than any time I've voted at this precinct. High voter turnout is usually good for dems, I'm not sure they want high voter turnout in northern Macomb county though. The vast majority of the folks in line/voting were roughly 40 years old and younger. That could just be a fluke, but leans better for dems. I should have voted straight ticket dem. It hurt to vote for Nessel and I ended up going Dem the whole way down. Guess not the whole way as I didn't vote for school Trustee's, I never know about those races.

In the last week, several polls have been within the margin of error. Two months ago you couldn't find a poll that wasn't a double digit lead for Whitmer even counting the margin of error. I'm not sure how that is wishcasting.

That Slotkin one has had a national following which is why I included it. A few months ago I would have said the same about Whitmer. I don't know if it's by design, but Dixon has separated herself from the other GOP candidates.

My money would be on the big races in Michigan all going dem (all 4 girls). That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Whitmer and Slotkin lost. For Dixon to be this close with so much less funding is why I think nationally it will be a bad day for Dems.

I've been hearing how the young vote will sway an election for my entire adult life. It's possible RvW/Trumpism is enough to actually make it happen, but I guess I won't believe it until I see it. I suspect a very depressing day for Democrats tomorrow which is not what I would have suspected a few months ago.

Looks like I'm on the same page with everyone here on Prop 1. It's annoying though as based on the overall support of this bill (all the money is coming in for support), I'd think the financial portion of this bill could get passed by a republican legislature and a democratic governor without adding even more restrictions on term limits. That would require our government working as it should though...sigh.

Does the model take trends into account as well? If so, that could account for it. I'm surprised just how much the GOP has been trending up these last few weeks. I expected it to tighten a bit, but didn't think this much.

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/04/trump-presidential-run-2024-announcement Wonder if this leaking with help democrats. Republicans have focused the mid-terms on the economy but that means less attention on Trump and by gosh, can't let that happen!

If the Dems have a good showing, I think the inner workings of the GOP that would love to find a way to boot the Trump like folks out of the party would push for Hogan. If the GOP wins, like they should in a off year election with a troubling economy, you'll see GOP folks be afraid to push against Trump still and we'll have more of a DeSantis/Lake/Noem push. The problem for both is that even if Trump doesn't run, he's going to constantly pull the rug out from them and tease an entry towards a nomination. Lake appears to be better on camera, but has she ever debated in a local race, let alone a national one? Seems way to early to put her as a front runner. Add in the fact that she's gone full MAGA, I just don't think that works on a national stage anymore and we do have 81 million votes as evidence towards that. In regards to the talk above, Mastriano is the worst case scenario. I personally think Lake is going full MAGA based on a political calculation. I think there is less chance of her having an effect on the national stage from where she's at. Plus we're talking 11 votes which tend to go towards GOP anyway. Likely the reason she's fine going full MAGA right now. Mastriano, he was there on 1/6. He's not pretending. Add in the fact that I think PA has a better chance to go blue than AZ, than add in state law which gives him power of PA - SoS. Most depressing - Walker, without a doubt. I have no doubt he'll just be a puppet, but no different than 95 of the other senators on any given day. He's an embarrassment to the GOP and the Senate though.

I like those Winter Wonderland plates and wanted to grab them next time I got a new plate. I want one a little bit more now.

You can directly associate Trump with the off year elections in 2018 and again with the Georgia runoff. Quite possible that democrats have been able to continue that association with their voters and independents turned off by Trump, but i'm just not sure yet. I'm hopeful, but not sure.

The scary part is I'm not convinced that Democrats are going to show up without Trump on the ballot. You are right though, it all comes down to Dobbs.

An anecdote, so take it for what it's worth. My aunt was never terribly political, but add in Facebook and Trump and she was all on board. She's a devout Catholic as well. She's going to be out of town so she sent in her Absentee ballot. Did not vote for Whitmer, but couldn't vote for Dixon either, citing how she would love to hear Dixon explain what makes a raped teenager a 'perfect' example of why there should not be abortion. (You dems should give some props to Charlie for that). Voted for Nessel and Benson because she didn't want the GOP alternative in case it was close. Voted for Prop 3, despite what the Catholic church stated and her own personal views on abortion. She's not happy with the wording but says this brings us closer to what she truly wants for abortion, something between a women and whoever else that women wants involved in it. Not a government issue. Whitmer, Benson, and Nessel will probably win and within a few days i'll see meme's about how they stole the election on her Facebook feed.

The GOP and/or Trump will find a way to screw it up still. I learned just this week that analysis indicates Trump would have likely won Georgia, if he hadn't dissuaded so many of his own voters from mailing in their ballots.

He won't release any medical info though, so I do think it's somewhat concerning. But we were ok with Strom Thurmond, we're ok with Diane Feinstein, so even if Fetterman truly isn't with it, you're still voting for a staff that will vote the way you want.

I was listening to NPR this morning speak about the debate and were mentioning Fetterman struggled, which to me meant he was horrible. But then they cut to the clip above from Oz and damn. Sounds like he had a layup, but he not only missed, he tripped and lost the ball out of bounds.

Now we know we have 30 Russian assets within the Democratic party too.