I'll dola and say that Rick Santelli hasn't exactly been having his daily meltdoowns like he did under Obama, when we're arguably in a much worse situation now than we were in then.

So I saw where Neil deGrasse Tyson is warning an asteroid could hit the earth the day before election day. Yep, 2020.

I saw his FB post; it was more a "this is going to give us a drive-by, but things are fine. If things are going to blow up before Election Day, it's gonna be something else."

Read about it a while ago. Isn't it only the size of a truck or something, so it'll burn up anyway?

Yep. It won't actually hit Earth, at worst it'll distintegrate in the atmosphere - and it has less than half a percent chance of even doing that, but it's not big enough to actually get through the atmosphere and impact the planet itself.

Unless it's The Little Meteor That Could.

In 2020, I wouldn't bet against it.

Well, sure, maybe in some other horrible year. But in the land of rainbows and unicorns that is 2020, there's no way it could destroy the earth.

They probably didn't forget to carry the "1" when measuring how big it is.

Or it's definitely not some freakish meteor that is shaped like, I dunno, a pencil and all we can see is the tip.

And it's certainly not an interstellar weapon with a stealth mode deployed by a space-faring race that wants to eliminate humanity after we failed the "how to come together during a pandemic" test.

SI

I've seen some indication in recent days that it might be more like the "anything for attention" part.

I can't go so far as to run with "didn't believe what they were saying" cause I think some of them do believe some/all of it ... but whether they believe it or not seems less relevant to them than the attention part.

FWIW, I know a few people I would classify as QAnon; one might be more along the line of other conspiracy theorists. They definitely appear to fully believe what they're saying and they are of at least average if not higher intelligence. I think it's often overblown how different conspiracy theorists are from the rest of the population. They're really not - they just think differently and/or latched on to something for emotional reasons. Your basic ideological partisanship is different from this only in degree, and there are a lot of people who fall victim to it. It's happened to me before.

Why in the world would Pelosi set a deadline for a stimulus bill this close to election. She is giving Republicans ammo to use in campaign ads.

"Look, if you chucklefucks actually want to get aid delivered before the election, it takes time to write the bills and get the language right."

This isn't hostage-taking. This is "you have literally two weeks before election day. Do you want to do this? Then this is the deadline to actually GET IT DONE. There isn't time to get stimulus of that scope done properly otherwise."

And I'd think people who are persuadable one way or the other are going to recognize that. It's not like this is Sept 1 or Aug 1 and she's saying this.

Right, like it would literally take 2 weeks to get the bill through the House and Senate. If it doesn't get decided now, it won't get done before the election - which, btw, is the reason Trump wants the bill done. So Pelosi is trying to get this passed.

Just listened to Fox News a bit. The talking heads were complaining about the debate commission changing the rules. Then one started complaining about the moderators, saying they need people not in the main stream media, and 93% of media are dems and have biases. She said they should do 2 debates where one moderator is a lib journalist and the other a conservative. FFS the first moderator was from her own network. I can't even with these people.

Here's a fun election map from 538 to play around with:

Explore The Ways Trump Or Biden Could Win The Election | FiveThirtyEight

Ohio and Georgia are back in the red column at 538, with Biden holding at 87%.

Interesting that if you turn Alabama blue, Arkansas only turns grey.

Listening to the pod, it is interesting that all they say you really need to look at is Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. If Biden wins Florida or North Carolina, then he has won. If he wins Arizona, then he has most likely won. Of course if does pull off Georgia or Ohio he has also definitely won, but the other three states are the most likely.

The post debate bump appears to be wearing off. Assuming nothing crazy happens, I think this tightens to about 7-8 points for Biden.

Trump could completely change that if he bombs the next debate though. His best path to making this competitive is just to lay low and not be Trump for the final 12 days.

*narrator says* "That didn't happen."

It's interesting how much the states are connected. If you do nothing on the map but give Pennsylvania to Trump, he's now at 74% likely to win the whole thing, because winning there indicates he's most likely to win Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, ect. as well, and you've eliminated all of the many Biden-win scenarios that include PA.

On the other hand, if you only given Biden Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii, New England (aside from the 1 district in Maine), New York, D.C., New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico - he goes from 87% to 96%. When you take away even that slight possibility of Trump winning one of those, then it just becomes more likely that Biden wins everywhere else - and it also improves his odds of flipping someplace wacky like Texas. Throw in Minnesota and Michigan too, then he's 98%.

Some idiot in Maryland arrested for making a threat to kidnap and kill Biden and Harris:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/u...e=articleShare

Whoa, crazy letter-writing doorbell cam guy went national??

?

The guy is from Frederick; I saw it pop up as a local story a few days ago and it seemed like it was just some guy who got his shorts in a twist over a neighbor's Biden/Harris sign. Didn't think much of it/underestimated how loco he might be.

You have a link to the story? My neighbors Biden sign got stolen, police got involved, etc...

Here's a non-paywalled version:

Man Arrested for Threats to Biden, Harris Left at Maryland Home With Yard Signs – NBC4 Washington

I didn't read the original story a couple of weeks ago in-depth enough to quite understand the level of crazy.

Yeah this is why Nate Silver had Hillary at only like 79% to win instead of 99% like everyone else. He knew that certain states were correlated and a polling error in one likely meant a similar polling error in another.

Crazy. Why is it we never see threats like this from the left?

It's so crazy that we will end up somewhere between "the election will be close and plunge us into months of the biggest crisis since the Civil War" or "They will call Florida or NC for Biden on election night, and that will be it."

Maybe I will vote for Biden

I like the BYEDON, haven't see that before.

Things like this give me a bit of hope:

Before the Plague Came, I Had It Made Trump Strikes a Doubtful Note in Pennsylvania | The New Yorker

If he's starting to make excuses, then maybe he will accept the results.

I mean, he will never admit he lost. But going away while claiming that he really won but it was so crooked and he's doing something so great by not fighting it and anyone else would fight it, but he love America so much he won't fight it and stay tuned for OANN/Trump TV straight from Moscow coming up in a few months and no one is giving him credit and that's OK and maybe he'll run again in 2024 and we'll make sure that they can't cheat that time

that would be fine by me. Just leave.

how is it only 5 fucking years for this type of shit.

February polling with Biden/Trump wasn't that different than current polling.

Obama spitting fire in his speech in Philadelphia.

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This is amazing. No holds barred stuff. You know he has had 4 years to chew on all this and is loving the fact he knows he is crushing Trump right now and Trump is losing his mind. You can hear the joy in Obamas voice.

Haven't seen the speech yet, but the timing is of course not lost on Obama. Little over 24 hours before the last debate. Just enough time for Trump to stew on it and perhaps get asked about it and go nutso on camera tomorrow night.

Rough day for Rudy.

So basically this then.

One of his handlers needs to take his phone from him because he’s going to be unhinged.

I have not watched a second of any of the debates but I'm tempted to tune in at the beginning just to see how Trump reacts the first couple of times his mic is cut off.

Got Christian/Evangelical family who are going to hold their nose and vote Republican because of the abortion issue? Tell them Phil Vischer says they don't have to.

What About Abortion? Should this one issue determine how Christians vote? - YouTube

(If you're out of the loop, Vischer is the guy behind Veggie Tales, which makes him practically an evangelical icon. At least until people start watching his YouTube channel, then he'll probably get excommunicated.)

Obama blistered Trump earlier today, and so far we have a reference to his inauguration crowd size and two "Barack Hussein Obama" call-outs during his NC rally.

Solid evidence Obama’s barbs hit their mark.

Late last night I was taking a leisurely stroll through the 2016 election thread. (Someone else was browsing it too - always a little creepy when that happens).

A couple of things stood out. We all recognized in the last week then that race was getting closer and closer. You could feel the tension reading the posts. Also, while the national polling ended up being correct and within the margin of error, the state polling for Michigan and Pennsylvania (and maybe other states) was way, way off. Double-digit levels of off. Based on that state polling, there was so many posts sharing some sentiment like, "Trump has to win 2 of these 6 states, and that's just not happening" (Trump ended up winning 4 or 5 of those states). A lot of times Pennsylvania wasn't even included in those breakdowns because it was locked in for Clinton.

Also, I think we tended to misunderstand the concept of 538's simulation model. We tracked the % likelihood of outcomes like we do now, but we were more likely to look at it as a basketball score rather than odds of something happening. When 538 had Clinton at 75% to win a state, and the then the last week it was down to 65%, it was still seen as a safe state for her as long as it didn't drop to 50% or below. She was still "winning" - 65% - 35%. But of course, that's not how probabilities work. Trump had a very strong 35% chance to win a state like that, and he did.

Even now, I'm not sure we appreciate the substance of those probabilities. 538's 87% overall for Biden to win seems strong, but, 13% is a significant and real number. That's just someone missing a short field goal in the NFL, it happens all the time. I believe 538 had it at around 83% right before election day in 2016. We talk about whether they're "right" or "wrong", but they just compile the polls and thought that Trump had a 17% or so chance to win, which was a substantial chance even before you accounted for the polling errors in Michigan and Pennsylvania. 13% is also a very substantial chance, and the chance is much higher than that if there are polling errors in one or more key states.

I agree with you molson, I don't think there's anyone that doesn't remember the surprise, whether you're a Trumper or not, of the Trump win. Certainly makes me and a bunch of people a whole lot more skeptical of calling things done this time around.

I've been reading about how pollsters started picking up on Trump's chances through district level polling in the last two weeks before the election. Now, the district polling is, if anything, more favorable for Biden than national polling.

I'm going to predict that swing state margins will end up being pretty closely correlated to COVID hospitalizations from Oct 1 to the election. I'm very bullish on WI for this reason.

Personally, I think the most likely outcome is that Trump loses the popular vote by a LOT more than he did last time, but the electoral vote still is very very close. People are turning out to vote against him in large numbers in places that are normally pretty red, and where they might not normally bother. Kentucky. Iowa. States that are maybe a little purple, but are safe Trump.

I think Pennsylvania and Michigan are going to be razor thin, recent polling notwithstanding, and the election is basically coming down to those 2 states.

where do you get this thought