To distract myself from the election I turned on the B1G network showing Washington and UC Davis. It was a couple point game back and forth when I finally fell asleep. Huskies apparently have an almost completely new roster.
The GOP Governor candidate went down in flames due to scandal and perhaps not being white (-15%)
Lt. Gov (-2) & Attorney General (-2)
But anything to do with farms, labor, money was around +3-5%
Interestingly enough the GOP candidate who ran for State School Superintendent whose stated goal was to destroy public schools and give the money to Christian charter schools to teach the teachings of Jesus Christ to everyone and home schooled her own kids and never been involved in schools in any way only lost by 2 points. Oh, and she stormed the Capitol on Jan6 too. My point being that being a cartoonish villain to be the extreme opposite of what the job entails to the point of ridulousless was not much of a deterrent from people voting for her.
PR politics is crazy. I first went down there for work in the late 80s. They were having a vote between statehood, independence, or continued commonwealth status. As far as I know they have never come to a consensus.
I'm trying to switch into analysis mode to avoid complete despair.
I'll be curious to see more exit poll analysis to determine exactly where Harris fell short. My two instinctive thoughts were progressives dismayed over the continuing support for Israel or unions feeling alienated from the Democratic Party (because Republicans are toootally pro-labor and pro-union).
Votes are still being counted but it's quite obvious that Harris had a vastly lower total vote total than Biden in 2020. Whether that's a lack of turnout specifically on the left or a combined effect of depressed turnout and Biden to Trump voters remains to be seen, but it'll definitely determine what course Democrats take in the future. There was obviously a huge gap in the media coverage and scrutiny each candidate received but it does feel like Harris didn't communicate enough of a simplified future for people to grasp. Considering that her ground game was way more dedicated in Blue Wall states than Hillary's, I feel like it has to be an overall messaging thing.
Here's one hypothesis: Harris, as a woman, didn't get that many votes from men of all races, and as a black person, didn't get as many white votes as she might have.
Corollary: Polls won't pick this up since they don't ask, and people don't tell, and frequently are not even aware of their racism/sexism.
I agree with that - I think in particular men dont like women telling them what to do.
But dudes, the main thing here was Biden staying in the race until July 24. There wasnt much the Dems could do as a result - no time to have a primary, not even enough time to really get word out about Kamala. I know there will be all sorts of handwringing about D’s not understanding regular people and blah blah blah, but IMO Biden staying in until July 24 was just a massive strategic blunder that was basically impossible to overcome
I'm not going to deny that there is truth to what you say. I'm only going to say that it's not THE reason Kamala wasn't elected.
America won't have that election until the Democrats can meet the Republicans on the issues that Americans want addressed. Then we can deal with the misogyny, the racism, and the bigotry.
And that will require stopping the mis-information media networks from overly simplifying the problems (which are real, and which require nuanced solutions to actually fix).
I wouldn't be certain that the exit polls will pick up on the reasons for the defeat. My own personal feeling is that Democrats have done a poor job of responding to the issues of economics and immigration.
Let's start with economics - Wall Street's apparent good health is not relevant. The response to inflation has been lacking: groceries are much more expensive, and so are utilities. New cars and trucks are outrageously expensive. Should a Ford F150 really cost $80,000+? It wasn't so very long ago that a new Ford F150 was somewhere around $45K-$50K. And there's no apparent response to the insurance crisis (automobile, home insurance), cost of gas, to say nothing of the cost of housing.
Immigration - there's more than a racist element to this. There's also the (un)reasonable fear that this hurts Americans trying to get jobs, and people will point to anecdotal evidence that they can't get jobs. Never mind that Americans won't do jobs that immigrants will gladly take. That isn't necessarily racist; it plays into a visceral fear about the ability to get jobs and hold them.
I won't even get into the culture wars. That's just something that's way too messy, regardless of how much we will probably agree on the core issues.
The fact that the country shifted right in pretty much every location and with every demographic tells me that this was less about identity politics and more a broad discontent in the electorate that punished the "in power" party.
And if I'm to put down a likely #1 reason for that, it's inflation. Same thing that has punished incumbents all over the globe. I think the increased anti-immigrant sentiment comes as kind of a companion to that.
I think that was a big reason. In 2020 a lot of low-info casual voters were mad at Trump for the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, etc and voted for Biden. This year, those voters forgot about all that because they rarely think about politics, and either stayed home or voted for Trump because they were mad about inflation. (Never mind that Trump's proposals to raise tariffs to the sky, deport millions of immigrant workers, and pass massive tax cuts would be the most inflationary policy combination imaginable, because these people don't think any of the issues through.)
Right, in 2016 there was all this hand wringing about Dems being out of touch, in a bubble, and so on and so left themselves open to a Trump protest vote. But a vote for T in 24 is not at all the same. People have seen him for 4 years; it is not a protest vote. I think the voter perspective narrative this time is more about people just being idiots, to put it kindly.
You can do something about a lot of things if you can afford to, and can't do much about things, no matter how important they might be, if you can't afford it.
Good point on economics. I will add taxes (both rates and complexity) as a related area. High end stuff does have some impact on the ground floor people live in, but it is both blunted and delayed.
The Democratic machine has leaned into several issues that are not the primary issues most people are dealing with on a day in day out basis, and at their expense.
I'm remarkably pessimistic about the Democratic Party. I think they've strayed from the bread and butter issues that built the New Deal coalition. This is where American politics will live and breathe for the next generation and the Democrats had better take notice and act on it lest they find themselves becoming irrelevant.
America can't have that. There are too many other issues that will fall by the wayside if the Democrats don't get their house in order and right the ship. Civil rights, women's rights, a conservative activist judiciary, foreign policy, climate change, and Gawd knows what else can all take a back seat *permanently* if Democrats don't get their priorities in order. And they better do it fast.
Biden being the nominee until this July was such a major fuck up that I have a hard time figuring out how deep the rot goes. Yes, we can and need to get better. But I think Biden hanging on too long is the main reason we are here. Plus once people see T in office, the pendulum is going to shift leftward again
I agree with everything you said. I would only point out that there is far too much deference paid to a sitting president in either party when it comes to the nomination. The fact that Pelosi needed to push Biden out in a gentle way in July (!) is evidence of that fact. That was a herculean task that only Pelosi could accomplish because no one else (1) had the gravitas needed and (2) was willing to be the cold-blooded doomsayer required for the job.
EDIT: what really needed to happen should have happened in February to April of last year. Biden failed to live up to his promise to be a transitional president, but party leaders also failed to hold him to that promise which goes back to my comment above. It never should have gotten that far.
...this morning I was reading through comments and posts about how things will be alright. And all I can think about was Big Game 2017, when the man behind me had his face buried in his hands as Stanford took the ball back, crying it's over. His little girl kept asking him, "Daddy, what's wrong?" The man next to him said "there is still a chance. It could still be ok." I sat there next to fellow Cal fans, stoney faced with no words.
Stanford proceeded to pull off a drive that took something like 7+ minutes off the clock, effectively ending the game.
I don't know if Cal Football is really the escape from this...
I have spent many years attempting to mitigate the insalubrious impacts to my well being. Employed a variety of modalities.
From complete abstinence - not viewing games but reading about it a day or days later. Still irritating but in a lighter head shaking sense with some relief for not viewing.
To forms of “mind training” for viewing with or without tv audio or Cal radio. Limited success yet usually not as effective as abstaining. Waves of frustration and expletives inevitably surface for up to a week.
Of the counties with nearly complete results, more than 90 percent shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election
Morality and shame as guardrails in political discourse is dead. Majority of the voters in this election decided decency is no longer a deal breaker for them. That is the worst sign in all of this.
Yeah I have two brothers. My mom said if any one of us had turned out like DJT, she would have been extremely ashamed and disappointed. But now not only is it ok - he as POTUS is a role model! And one that gets all the votes from the “family values” types like evangelicals, Mormons, etc
Not so much a red shift as a blue fade. Granted, the ballot count hasn't finished - but at this point Trump has 3m fewer voters than 2020. Harris has 15m fewer voters than Biden. That's one in 5.4 Biden voters staying home.
.
I argued with many people this year to try to change their mind about voting third-party or not voting. These were left leaning people (LGBTQ community), my kid's college friends, and others that their protest vote against Biden & Harris was tantamount to voting for Trump. They disagreed. They deserve what they are about to get.
I have an LGBTQ offspring whose partner is trans. Moving from the northwest to the northeast felt safe. The partner is a single issue voter and adamantly stated they would sit this one out. Wondering now how they feel about their future and that of their community.
There are still a lot of uncounted votes, including about 9m in CA of which 5-6m should be for Harris. It's still a big dropoff from 2020 especially when you consider that there are more eligible voters now.
And one of those people is me. I have a trans daughter. I spoke to her this morning and she didn't quite understand what had happened. She was like "oh, I'll just hide in New York" and I was like "no, he now has unfettered power and MAGA can do anything nationally and it may not be legal for you to be trans.". It was like she got slapped across the face as she didn't quite think it out that she might become a medical refugee. And if she moves, I might have to move out of the country in support.
Yep. There is a realism to politics that young people don't quite grasp. This is not a parliamentarian system, so sorry, your third party vote is a waste. Also, gaining ground is always ideal, but not at the expense of losing the ground that took decades to establish.
same same w/ trans no-binary child. they were already restricting themselves to the northeast for college choices. now the floodgates are open for more open discrimination
RIP American democracy, July 4, 1776 to January 20, 2025. This one is on the American people. They wanted it. None of this Biden should have done this or Harris' campaign should have done that. America looked at the steaming pile of sh*t in the shop window and said, "I'll have that."
People continue to underestimate Trump. And some people continue to not believe there are a significant number of people who want things they think are abhorrent. Leading to making and repeating tactical errors relative to their desired objectives.
This is what the American people want - a dictator to control the House, Senate, Judiciary, Executive branch to mold into his view and whims. I am of the view that if Kamala had been elected, we would have continued as is - an indefinite 50/50 split with MAGA and its successor evolutions. There was no mistaking what both sides stood for. Now there is nothing stopping every last thing that passes his mind to be enacted as actual policy. This is what America wants and I want it to happen everywhere. I want to be wrong and that it'll some how work. But I know it won't. I want Trump and MAGA to burn America to the ground. I want Americans to sit in the ashes of what they had and realize what they lost. It's the only way to actually get people to wake up.
I certainly don't hope that to happen, but it does seem that some unspeakable calamity may need to bring this country to its knees before we can ever become functioning republic again. Although 9/11 certainly didn't unify us for long. And that's really the moment when the disinformation started to creep into more mainstream conversation. Being a parent, these types of thoughts are painful. I have no longer have a way of expressing hope, which is what you lean on as a parent in these tough moments. I can no longer fake it.
I am also enacting a new practice for the DBD. I am going to continue to post the POLITICS section as a dedicated space to chat about politics. However, I think it will be healthy for me to not seed it with topics. Y'all are welcome to post in it. If nothing else, it's a way for me to distance myself from the dumpster fire and preserve my mental health.
One of California’s more memorable comebacks came on what was surely the coldest night the Bears have ever played a game at Memorial Stadium, November 28, 2015. The Bears rallied from a 27-10 half time deficit to defeat Arizona State, 48-46 behind Jared Goff who was playing his last home game. Goff was 30-51 for a school record 542 yards and five touchdowns. Those TD passes went to five different receivers: Bryce Treggs (52 yards), Chad Hansen (16 yards) Maurice Harris (9 yards), Khalfani Muhammad (58 yards) and Darius Powell (49 yards). Goff also ran for a two-point conversation. Tre Watson contributed 92 yards rushing and a TD to the Bear attack. The winning points came on Matt Anderson’s second field goal of the night, a 26-yarder as time expired. Many fans left at halftime due to the combination of frigid weather and the ASU lead. (I didn’t.) "To be down by that much and then to come back and win it on a last-second field goal like that, it doesn't really get much better than that," Goff said. "This will be the one I remember for the rest of my life, for sure."
Oski Disciple’s Bear Facts appears Tuesday through Thursday on the DBD throughout the 2024 college football season.
I remember that game pretty well. It was a glorious comeback.
Temps in Berkeley at kickoff were 44 deg. F as per Weather Underground's history for Berkeley weather. It was 42 deg. F when the game ended. Not much warmer than a refrigerator (which is often between 35 and 40 deg. F.).
Those that live further north and further inland and consider that balmy from Nov. 1 until at least some time in March are numb to your pain. (In more ways than one!)
Exactly. Oski Disciple said he wore long johns for that game. I remember adding polypropylene underwear and wool socks to what I wore because I knew the aluminum benches would be frigid and I probably wouldn't move around very much during the game. I think I also wore mittens.
Luckily it's his non-throwing shoulder and the back shoulder for his swing so it shouldn't be as bad. Bellinger did the same thing on his right shoulder during the NLCS game 7, front side shoulder for his swing, and it probably took him 2-3 years to be better.
I watched the Bowling Green Falcons vs. Central Michigan Chippewas. BGSU won its third straight. Thank goodness for the MAC and Tuesday night football. 🏈
I watched about half of the election on Fox News and the other half on CNN. CNN reported the news with some objective editorials, but filled the time with meaningless updates that were not different from the previous news. Fox was about 40% news, half was tangents that went into editorials that were broad attacks and culture war stuff, and then ended the last 10% with a conclusion that made sense in the context - but I couldn't believe because... well... it was Fox News. Fox News tells you how to feel/think. CNN laid it out and asked you how you felt about it.
I didn't watch anything at all. Going to bed I peeked at a map and was discouraged. No 1 in Paris woke up at about midnight west coast time and sent out the doom.
Sauron the Deceiver .. interesting watching Rings of Power last night, instead of election coverage, as Sauron continues a masterful job of manipulating everyone and everything, good guys and bad guys alike.
even the people who know he is bad are somewhat powerless to stop him.
At noon on the first Wednesday of each month, Oakland tests its air raid siren. It just went off. What a metaphor for yesterday.
Thought the same here in Berkeley.
ELSEWHERE IN COLLEGE
Miami (OH) beat Balls Tate 27-21 in hot Tuesday MACtion
https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401644688/miami-oh-ball-state
Tuesday night football is a wild concept.
there was no other sports to watch last night. i briefly considered watching
To distract myself from the election I turned on the B1G network showing Washington and UC Davis. It was a couple point game back and forth when I finally fell asleep. Huskies apparently have an almost completely new roster.
Bowling Green defeats C Michigan 23-13. The Chippewas only had 52 offensive plays in defeat.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/matchup/_/gameId/401644760
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
My state (NC) is known for split ticket voting.
President (+3% GOP)
The GOP Governor candidate went down in flames due to scandal and perhaps not being white (-15%)
Lt. Gov (-2) & Attorney General (-2)
But anything to do with farms, labor, money was around +3-5%
Interestingly enough the GOP candidate who ran for State School Superintendent whose stated goal was to destroy public schools and give the money to Christian charter schools to teach the teachings of Jesus Christ to everyone and home schooled her own kids and never been involved in schools in any way only lost by 2 points. Oh, and she stormed the Capitol on Jan6 too. My point being that being a cartoonish villain to be the extreme opposite of what the job entails to the point of ridulousless was not much of a deterrent from people voting for her.
You want to know perhaps the craziest thing of the night? The governorship of Puerto Rico was won by a Republican.
PR politics is crazy. I first went down there for work in the late 80s. They were having a vote between statehood, independence, or continued commonwealth status. As far as I know they have never come to a consensus.
I'm trying to switch into analysis mode to avoid complete despair.
I'll be curious to see more exit poll analysis to determine exactly where Harris fell short. My two instinctive thoughts were progressives dismayed over the continuing support for Israel or unions feeling alienated from the Democratic Party (because Republicans are toootally pro-labor and pro-union).
Votes are still being counted but it's quite obvious that Harris had a vastly lower total vote total than Biden in 2020. Whether that's a lack of turnout specifically on the left or a combined effect of depressed turnout and Biden to Trump voters remains to be seen, but it'll definitely determine what course Democrats take in the future. There was obviously a huge gap in the media coverage and scrutiny each candidate received but it does feel like Harris didn't communicate enough of a simplified future for people to grasp. Considering that her ground game was way more dedicated in Blue Wall states than Hillary's, I feel like it has to be an overall messaging thing.
Here's one hypothesis: Harris, as a woman, didn't get that many votes from men of all races, and as a black person, didn't get as many white votes as she might have.
Corollary: Polls won't pick this up since they don't ask, and people don't tell, and frequently are not even aware of their racism/sexism.
This. The Bradley effect.
I agree with that - I think in particular men dont like women telling them what to do.
But dudes, the main thing here was Biden staying in the race until July 24. There wasnt much the Dems could do as a result - no time to have a primary, not even enough time to really get word out about Kamala. I know there will be all sorts of handwringing about D’s not understanding regular people and blah blah blah, but IMO Biden staying in until July 24 was just a massive strategic blunder that was basically impossible to overcome
I think this is a larger issue with people staying home than has been talked about, or will be talked about.
Except it held up in my state, which is an all-mail in ballot state, and has been for decades. No one has to leave home to vote.
"Staying home" can also be a euphemism for simply choosing to sit this one out with or without mail-in ballots.
I'm not going to deny that there is truth to what you say. I'm only going to say that it's not THE reason Kamala wasn't elected.
America won't have that election until the Democrats can meet the Republicans on the issues that Americans want addressed. Then we can deal with the misogyny, the racism, and the bigotry.
And that will require stopping the mis-information media networks from overly simplifying the problems (which are real, and which require nuanced solutions to actually fix).
I wouldn't be certain that the exit polls will pick up on the reasons for the defeat. My own personal feeling is that Democrats have done a poor job of responding to the issues of economics and immigration.
Let's start with economics - Wall Street's apparent good health is not relevant. The response to inflation has been lacking: groceries are much more expensive, and so are utilities. New cars and trucks are outrageously expensive. Should a Ford F150 really cost $80,000+? It wasn't so very long ago that a new Ford F150 was somewhere around $45K-$50K. And there's no apparent response to the insurance crisis (automobile, home insurance), cost of gas, to say nothing of the cost of housing.
Immigration - there's more than a racist element to this. There's also the (un)reasonable fear that this hurts Americans trying to get jobs, and people will point to anecdotal evidence that they can't get jobs. Never mind that Americans won't do jobs that immigrants will gladly take. That isn't necessarily racist; it plays into a visceral fear about the ability to get jobs and hold them.
I won't even get into the culture wars. That's just something that's way too messy, regardless of how much we will probably agree on the core issues.
The fact that the country shifted right in pretty much every location and with every demographic tells me that this was less about identity politics and more a broad discontent in the electorate that punished the "in power" party.
And if I'm to put down a likely #1 reason for that, it's inflation. Same thing that has punished incumbents all over the globe. I think the increased anti-immigrant sentiment comes as kind of a companion to that.
I think that was a big reason. In 2020 a lot of low-info casual voters were mad at Trump for the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, etc and voted for Biden. This year, those voters forgot about all that because they rarely think about politics, and either stayed home or voted for Trump because they were mad about inflation. (Never mind that Trump's proposals to raise tariffs to the sky, deport millions of immigrant workers, and pass massive tax cuts would be the most inflationary policy combination imaginable, because these people don't think any of the issues through.)
Right, in 2016 there was all this hand wringing about Dems being out of touch, in a bubble, and so on and so left themselves open to a Trump protest vote. But a vote for T in 24 is not at all the same. People have seen him for 4 years; it is not a protest vote. I think the voter perspective narrative this time is more about people just being idiots, to put it kindly.
Agreed. Everything else gets pushed to the side when the economics are perceived as bad.
You can do something about a lot of things if you can afford to, and can't do much about things, no matter how important they might be, if you can't afford it.
Good point on economics. I will add taxes (both rates and complexity) as a related area. High end stuff does have some impact on the ground floor people live in, but it is both blunted and delayed.
The Democratic machine has leaned into several issues that are not the primary issues most people are dealing with on a day in day out basis, and at their expense.
I'm remarkably pessimistic about the Democratic Party. I think they've strayed from the bread and butter issues that built the New Deal coalition. This is where American politics will live and breathe for the next generation and the Democrats had better take notice and act on it lest they find themselves becoming irrelevant.
America can't have that. There are too many other issues that will fall by the wayside if the Democrats don't get their house in order and right the ship. Civil rights, women's rights, a conservative activist judiciary, foreign policy, climate change, and Gawd knows what else can all take a back seat *permanently* if Democrats don't get their priorities in order. And they better do it fast.
Biden being the nominee until this July was such a major fuck up that I have a hard time figuring out how deep the rot goes. Yes, we can and need to get better. But I think Biden hanging on too long is the main reason we are here. Plus once people see T in office, the pendulum is going to shift leftward again
I agree with everything you said. I would only point out that there is far too much deference paid to a sitting president in either party when it comes to the nomination. The fact that Pelosi needed to push Biden out in a gentle way in July (!) is evidence of that fact. That was a herculean task that only Pelosi could accomplish because no one else (1) had the gravitas needed and (2) was willing to be the cold-blooded doomsayer required for the job.
EDIT: what really needed to happen should have happened in February to April of last year. Biden failed to live up to his promise to be a transitional president, but party leaders also failed to hold him to that promise which goes back to my comment above. It never should have gotten that far.
I am going to be spending a lot of time focusing on Cal sports.
...this morning I was reading through comments and posts about how things will be alright. And all I can think about was Big Game 2017, when the man behind me had his face buried in his hands as Stanford took the ball back, crying it's over. His little girl kept asking him, "Daddy, what's wrong?" The man next to him said "there is still a chance. It could still be ok." I sat there next to fellow Cal fans, stoney faced with no words.
Stanford proceeded to pull off a drive that took something like 7+ minutes off the clock, effectively ending the game.
I don't know if Cal Football is really the escape from this...
Maybe Cal Football is a microcosm of life.
Are we sure that's advisable..... ;-)
Better for our collective mental health, too.
[gestures broadly at FSU, Miami, NC State, and Pitt games] Is it?
All choices are relative. Also, I am not convinced being an Old Blue Oski Disciple can ever be good for one's overall health.
I have spent many years attempting to mitigate the insalubrious impacts to my well being. Employed a variety of modalities.
From complete abstinence - not viewing games but reading about it a day or days later. Still irritating but in a lighter head shaking sense with some relief for not viewing.
To forms of “mind training” for viewing with or without tv audio or Cal radio. Limited success yet usually not as effective as abstaining. Waves of frustration and expletives inevitably surface for up to a week.
much less frustrating because the outcomes are less uncertain ..
red shift EVERYWHERE
Of the counties with nearly complete results, more than 90 percent shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html?unlocked_article_code=1.X04.hAdG.xPvw46B5XIbN&smid=url-share
Morality and shame as guardrails in political discourse is dead. Majority of the voters in this election decided decency is no longer a deal breaker for them. That is the worst sign in all of this.
Yeah I have two brothers. My mom said if any one of us had turned out like DJT, she would have been extremely ashamed and disappointed. But now not only is it ok - he as POTUS is a role model! And one that gets all the votes from the “family values” types like evangelicals, Mormons, etc
Not so much a red shift as a blue fade. Granted, the ballot count hasn't finished - but at this point Trump has 3m fewer voters than 2020. Harris has 15m fewer voters than Biden. That's one in 5.4 Biden voters staying home.
.
I argued with many people this year to try to change their mind about voting third-party or not voting. These were left leaning people (LGBTQ community), my kid's college friends, and others that their protest vote against Biden & Harris was tantamount to voting for Trump. They disagreed. They deserve what they are about to get.
I have an LGBTQ offspring whose partner is trans. Moving from the northwest to the northeast felt safe. The partner is a single issue voter and adamantly stated they would sit this one out. Wondering now how they feel about their future and that of their community.
There are still a lot of uncounted votes, including about 9m in CA of which 5-6m should be for Harris. It's still a big dropoff from 2020 especially when you consider that there are more eligible voters now.
And one of those people is me. I have a trans daughter. I spoke to her this morning and she didn't quite understand what had happened. She was like "oh, I'll just hide in New York" and I was like "no, he now has unfettered power and MAGA can do anything nationally and it may not be legal for you to be trans.". It was like she got slapped across the face as she didn't quite think it out that she might become a medical refugee. And if she moves, I might have to move out of the country in support.
Yep. There is a realism to politics that young people don't quite grasp. This is not a parliamentarian system, so sorry, your third party vote is a waste. Also, gaining ground is always ideal, but not at the expense of losing the ground that took decades to establish.
same same w/ trans no-binary child. they were already restricting themselves to the northeast for college choices. now the floodgates are open for more open discrimination
RIP American democracy, July 4, 1776 to January 20, 2025. This one is on the American people. They wanted it. None of this Biden should have done this or Harris' campaign should have done that. America looked at the steaming pile of sh*t in the shop window and said, "I'll have that."
Pretty much. At this point I'm kind of in the mood of, "If this is what they want, let them have it."
Frankly, regardless how I feel, I doubt we are in any position to keep this all from derailing anyway.
People continue to underestimate Trump. And some people continue to not believe there are a significant number of people who want things they think are abhorrent. Leading to making and repeating tactical errors relative to their desired objectives.
I am taking a troll mentality to this.
This is what the American people want - a dictator to control the House, Senate, Judiciary, Executive branch to mold into his view and whims. I am of the view that if Kamala had been elected, we would have continued as is - an indefinite 50/50 split with MAGA and its successor evolutions. There was no mistaking what both sides stood for. Now there is nothing stopping every last thing that passes his mind to be enacted as actual policy. This is what America wants and I want it to happen everywhere. I want to be wrong and that it'll some how work. But I know it won't. I want Trump and MAGA to burn America to the ground. I want Americans to sit in the ashes of what they had and realize what they lost. It's the only way to actually get people to wake up.
I certainly don't hope that to happen, but it does seem that some unspeakable calamity may need to bring this country to its knees before we can ever become functioning republic again. Although 9/11 certainly didn't unify us for long. And that's really the moment when the disinformation started to creep into more mainstream conversation. Being a parent, these types of thoughts are painful. I have no longer have a way of expressing hope, which is what you lean on as a parent in these tough moments. I can no longer fake it.
I am also enacting a new practice for the DBD. I am going to continue to post the POLITICS section as a dedicated space to chat about politics. However, I think it will be healthy for me to not seed it with topics. Y'all are welcome to post in it. If nothing else, it's a way for me to distance myself from the dumpster fire and preserve my mental health.
By all means do what you need to do for your overall health! But I do want you to know that I enjoyed your posts. Undoubtedly many of us did.
from a friend this morning... Well F***
Doom.
CAL
The essay about UC Berkeley's steam tunnels that you've been hoping for years someone would write
https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/campus-steam-tunnels-history-theories-and-function/article_6cbc1a7e-980a-11ef-a34e-a39f7e2e6c31.html
It’s time again for Oski Disciple’s Bear Facts.
One of California’s more memorable comebacks came on what was surely the coldest night the Bears have ever played a game at Memorial Stadium, November 28, 2015. The Bears rallied from a 27-10 half time deficit to defeat Arizona State, 48-46 behind Jared Goff who was playing his last home game. Goff was 30-51 for a school record 542 yards and five touchdowns. Those TD passes went to five different receivers: Bryce Treggs (52 yards), Chad Hansen (16 yards) Maurice Harris (9 yards), Khalfani Muhammad (58 yards) and Darius Powell (49 yards). Goff also ran for a two-point conversation. Tre Watson contributed 92 yards rushing and a TD to the Bear attack. The winning points came on Matt Anderson’s second field goal of the night, a 26-yarder as time expired. Many fans left at halftime due to the combination of frigid weather and the ASU lead. (I didn’t.) "To be down by that much and then to come back and win it on a last-second field goal like that, it doesn't really get much better than that," Goff said. "This will be the one I remember for the rest of my life, for sure."
Oski Disciple’s Bear Facts appears Tuesday through Thursday on the DBD throughout the 2024 college football season.
I remember that game pretty well. It was a glorious comeback.
Temps in Berkeley at kickoff were 44 deg. F as per Weather Underground's history for Berkeley weather. It was 42 deg. F when the game ended. Not much warmer than a refrigerator (which is often between 35 and 40 deg. F.).
oh wow that was cold. More like late Dec weather not late Nov.
Those that live further north and further inland and consider that balmy from Nov. 1 until at least some time in March are numb to your pain. (In more ways than one!)
Exactly. Oski Disciple said he wore long johns for that game. I remember adding polypropylene underwear and wool socks to what I wore because I knew the aluminum benches would be frigid and I probably wouldn't move around very much during the game. I think I also wore mittens.
how cold was it?
It was the only time I've worn long johns in Berkeley.
Go BEARS!!
we still have the axe
Looking promising to retain it (without having it imbedded in some Oski Disciple!) as well.
PRO
Warriors play @ Boston tonight. will be a good early season measuring stick ..
Waiting to see the Boston fans when Kerr is announced.
Ohtani had surgery on his labrum that he tore during his base steal slide in the WS. He is expected to be ready by spring training
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/42217797/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-shoulder-surgery-dislocation
Luckily it's his non-throwing shoulder and the back shoulder for his swing so it shouldn't be as bad. Bellinger did the same thing on his right shoulder during the NLCS game 7, front side shoulder for his swing, and it probably took him 2-3 years to be better.
DBD AV CLUB
I watched the Bowling Green Falcons vs. Central Michigan Chippewas. BGSU won its third straight. Thank goodness for the MAC and Tuesday night football. 🏈
Jeopardy .. watched an episode last night w/ younger child.
surprisingly i got every single answer in "her first #1 single" - to be fair, they were not that hard
Bette Midler, Paula Abdul, Shakira, Whitney, Katy Perry
I watched about half of the election on Fox News and the other half on CNN. CNN reported the news with some objective editorials, but filled the time with meaningless updates that were not different from the previous news. Fox was about 40% news, half was tangents that went into editorials that were broad attacks and culture war stuff, and then ended the last 10% with a conclusion that made sense in the context - but I couldn't believe because... well... it was Fox News. Fox News tells you how to feel/think. CNN laid it out and asked you how you felt about it.
I didn't watch anything at all. Going to bed I peeked at a map and was discouraged. No 1 in Paris woke up at about midnight west coast time and sent out the doom.
Sauron the Deceiver .. interesting watching Rings of Power last night, instead of election coverage, as Sauron continues a masterful job of manipulating everyone and everything, good guys and bad guys alike.
even the people who know he is bad are somewhat powerless to stop him.