Every Wednesday morning (Au/NZ)/Tuesday evening (other places), Straw Puppy presents a post for people to provide their startling insights, general commentary and pleas of ‘please let this horror show be over soon’ about the United States Presidential Election.
Also, you don’t HAVE to talk about the election. There are no rules here only the arbitrary whims of a cat’s dream of a dog.
(Profile: Gen X, straight cis white male, center-left Dem, weird)
Well, the big news is that the Supreme Court is ready to start intervening on behalf of the Republicans. Kavanaugh is ready to do whatever he can to get the Repubs the victory, as seen in a current decision on Wisconsin mail-in voting. The decision goes for the Republicans but “violates a century of voting law” as Vox.com put it. But this was not unexpected, especially after Ginsburg died and was replaced by someone from the Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s still the case that Democrats really need an overwhelming victory to nullify any stunts that the Republicans have pulled and are pulling to suppress the vote. Fortunately, the turnout has been overwhelming so far, which seems like a good sign for Dems. Well, next Tuesday is IT. We’ll see.
Packing the court is looking better and better. That Barrett refused to say during her confirmation hearings that yes, Trump has to leave office if he loses does not speak well of her, or the next Supreme Court term.
The Republicans packed the court. That’s five justices installed by Presidents who lost the popular vote, two terribly underqualified justices, two likely sexual harrassers, and now Ofjesse.
I am so damned aggravated at all of the “Are the Democrats going to pack the courts?” propaganda. The Republicans have spent the last 4 years fucking packing the courts, including blocking the rightful appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Why isn’t that the first thing that gets pointed out whenever the “packing the courts” rhetoric gets trotted out?
With Coronavirus rate skyrocketing as we approach the election, I wonder if it’s actually going to hurt Trump that he’s been urging his people to wait until election day to vote? Granted, they’d have to actually believe in the virus for that to make a difference, but . . .
I’m sorry American friends, but the USA is looking more and more like a failed democracy. There might be a glimmer of hope if Biden wins (and I hope he does), but the work to make America into a democracy will take years.
New Zealand is no Utopia, but here an independent neutral body runs elections. It took me all of 5 minutes to vote, even with social distancing measures in place polling stations were so numerous. Electoral boundaries are re-drawn by a non-partisan body, the Electoral Commission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electorates#Distribution
Joe Biden is better than Trump, if only because he is not actively incompetent and malicious, unlike Trump. However, most of the problems in the US are systemic and not something that one president alone can fix.
Agreed, but getting people elected creates an environment where the work can start (“It is not the beginning of the end, it is the end of the beginning.”). We don’t know it can be done before the next authoritarian gets into the Oval Office, but we have to try.
That Biden is building a war chest to fight whatever legal shit Trump might pull is a good sign.
Yes. Among the systemic fixes that could be done via legislation (and therefore not requiring a Constitutional Amendment) would be expanding the court (I would argue for expanding the court to 13 members, to have one justice for each of the 13 Circuit Courts), having the Supreme Court sit in panels of five or seven instead of always en banc, and expanding the size of the House of Representatives to reflect the increase in population that has taken place since it was set at 435 in the early 1900s – this would have the side effect of making the Electoral College better reflect the popular vote, since the number of electors is determined by the number of Representatives and Senators each state has.
We gotta add justices. And there’s a lot more precedent for enlarging the court than there was for cramming in a new justice so late in an election cycle.
I like Aaron’s justification for 13 — one for each Circuit. The hardest part will be to somehow arrange for 13 to be the maximum — to prevent Republicans from adding even more once they are eventually back in power.
Also, we gotta have statehood for Puerto Rico. They deserve it, for heaven’s sake — and side benefit, they will add likely Democratic votes. I’m not as sold on statehood for DC — despite the fact that they have more people than some states, the geographic area is so small and the fed government involvement so large that I can’t decide on that one. But Puerto Rico for sure.
Which leads us to the pie-in-the-sky idea of splitting up California. So many ramifications both pro and con, I have no idea whether that would be a net good or a net bad. But it’s an intriguing idea!
Since the number of districts works so well, why not tie them together? And be sure to define districts in a way that won’t let the Gops multiply them on demand.
DC and PR statehood sound good to me too. And 52 is doable for stars.
I’d go ahead and add Puerto Rico as a state, provided that the citizens in Puerto Rico are in favor of it. I’d add DC – it may be small geographically, but it has a higher population than some existing states, so it should have actual representation in Congress.
If you want to add three states to bring the total to 53, we could always add Guam.
We also need to make the residents of the various territories like American Samoa full citizens.
As the blogger Paul Campos said today, a system in which Trump can get into power and has a non-trivial chance of staying in power is a failed system. But giving up is not an option.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through drafting a letter to my local Representative (a Democrat) and the Democratic senator from my state. Basically, it says that presuming that Biden wins and the House and Senate fall under Democratic control (a large presumption, I know), they need to immediately enact a variety of measures, regardless of whether Biden wants them or not. the problem is that my list is up to 10 items and still hasn’t stopped growing. Between COVID, the economy, the EPA, the WHO, climate change, systemic racism, Trump’s personal and familial corruption and the Supreme Court, to name but a few, Biden is looking at a Augean stable level task. But otherwise I’m worried that Biden will pull an Obama-esque “We must only look forward” attitude and let Trump and all his cronies escape, and allow the Republicans to get away with their massive minoritarian power grab.
One of the many strange things about this election is that national pundits are taking an interest in Nebraska. My state only has five electoral votes but they are not winner-take-all and it currently looks like Biden may get the vote from Nebraska Congressional District 2. There are various scenarios in which this is vitally important to the outcome of the election, all of which I leave to the interested reader to look up. (Obligatory 538 link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/nebraska-2/)
But for me the most interesting thing about it is that there is a chance of it going blue at all. Obama took CD 2 in his first presidential election, after which state Republicans managed to redraw the district to make it more secure for them. So Trump is running behind in a gerrymandered district in Nebraska, which is giving me some slight embers of hope for the election as a whole.
As a Brit who’s still technically a resident there I would honestly love it if you guys can kick out mango Mussolini and give me some small hope that we can oust the bumbling fool squatting in No. 10, and all his incompetent cronies, too.
LIVE coverage? Wow! I am really excited. Does that mean we’ll get to see Timothy and Straw Puppy hold mics in their paws and speaking directly to the camera?
I plan to miss all live coverage and support my local small businesses by drinking a whole lot of wine from local wineries. Going dark on everything and waking up hungover to check the results-so-far. Either I’ll already be miserable, so more misery won’t matter, or I’ll have my misery alleviated.
Speaking of the election — I don’t often read Sarah Hoyt’s blog, but I took a look this morning, and… Just… Wow.
Has she always been this nuts and I just didn’t fully appreciate the extent of her insanity, or has the election managed to drive her completely around the bend?
“The American people are furious, and as such will lash out. Unfortunately in our times of central federalized power, most of them don’t realize our highly unusual, freedom-loving president …”
It’s always projection.
Equally both. She has been convinced for a long time that there is a huge amounts of electoral fraud – remember she also thinks population figures are exaggerated everywhere. She can’t explain why Republicans or Trump haven’t prosecuted everybody for all this massive amounts of fraud, she just knows through her Hoyt-sense.
The election is making it worse though.
I wasn’t even all that startled by the fraud part. But the reeducation camps! The mass depopulation! Telling her fans to print out her blogs on paper to hide them for future generations!
Ye Gods, the end is truly nigh. I never realized that Hoyt wrote apocalyptic fiction!
In any case, I am definitely saving this one as a sort of time capsule to look back upon in four years: first, to see how her predictions turn out; and second, to see what becomes of her in those four years.
remember she also thinks population figures are exaggerated everywhere
I vaguely recall an old Heinlein essay in Expanded Universe where he insisted that Moscow couldn’t have as high a population as the Soviet Union claimed it had. He at least had personally been there and had multiple lines of reasoning, so he was at least attempting to make a case rather than going by fiat.
Telling her fans to print out her blogs on paper to hide them for future generations!
Well, they say part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they make the person involved with them feel worthy and in control, because they know something that the general public doesn’t know.
Certainly it sounds like she’s going full martyr complex here.
(I’m not sure that ‘worthy’ is the right word above, but ‘special’ has way too much baggage to be used casually in this sort of situation.)
She’s always been out there and upcoming elections usually make her rants worse, at least as far back as Obama’s first term.
Is this rant worse than previous ones? I’m not sure. She has been worried about people who supposedly want to reduce the human population for as long as I’ve been aware of her. I also have vague memories that she was terrified Obama would lock up people in camps, but I might also be mixing her up with someone else.
And the double whammy of election plus pandemic is likely causing her extra anxiety, as it does for a lot of people. Also, she apparently has issues wearing a mask (which is possible due to her health issues) and this is not a happy time for people who have issues wearing masks, because they are essentially locked out from what little public life remains.
A troll on FB kept insisting Obama had made the IRS personally target her because she was an outspoken conservative! She was in a “financial concentration camp” which proved those predictions about FEMA concentration camps were true!
When I told her I didn’t believe her, she kept providing links to IRS controversies, none of which proved her point. So I blocked her.
I know a number of people who have serious chronic health conditions. None of them are unable to wear masks for long enough to run errands. I see people in the store who are so obese they can hardly walk, old folks with oxygen supplies, people with incredibly bad asthma, people with panic attacks, everything. They all wear masks. Healthy people are doing 5 mile runs in masks.
The only people I know about who aren’t masked are infants and toddlers (older kids wear them just fine), older senile people, the severely mentally ill (the last 2 don’t get out much anyway) and the severely developmentally disabled. Right-wingers like to CLAIM they have a medical condition… of course, they look down on actual disabled people.
So: is she a toddler, senile, mentally ill, or developmentally disabled?
“Right-wingers like to CLAIM they have a medical condition… of course, they look down on actual disabled people.”
Probably half the fun — we want to give special privileges to disabled people? Well, they’ll take those privileges and use that against us! ROFL, liberals!
I know several people who can only wear a mask for a very short time. Medical exemptions are almost impossible to get here, so those who have issues wearing masks stay at home as much as possible and either rely on online shopping or ask others to shop for them.
Which doesn’t mean that rightwingers aren’t hypocrites and only care about accessibility, when they’re the ones affected.
A serious question: does anyone, aside from the denizens of this illustrious blog, actually comment on her evident issues? Any expressions of concern at all? Like, “Wow, Sarah, have you considered treatment? Or medication?” Any intervention of any kind? Honestly, if a friend of mine was publishing stuff like this, I’d say *something*. Even if it was only “Hey, you might want to take a break for a while.”
my dog is named hannah: Doesn’t she have any friends?
Apparently none that actually care about her, including her husband. A year or two after the Sad Puppies 5 campaign on which she completely dropped the ball (and a long spate of blog posts which were just as crazed and irrational as this most recent one), Hoyt posted a lengthy piece about how close to death she apparently was during that time. And it struck me then how sad it was that no one, not even her husband, cared enough about her to do an intervention.
Either that, or her “illness near death” was all histrionics, and 1) she’s just crazed and irrational, or 2) this is some sort of 3-dimensional chess performance art where she’s trying to demonstrate just how crazed and irrational she can pretend to be.
My personal belief is that it was all histrionics, she’s just crazed and irrational, and no one cares enough about her to see that she gets professional help.
I know Hoyt has mentioned various medical complaints on her blog in the past, though I forget exactly what and I’m not going to go look them up. But IIRC, at least one was possibly autoimmune related?
As it happens, on another board over the past couple of days I’ve been discussing a relative (by marriage) of mine who suffered from steroid psychosis while she was being treated for lupus. That was decades ago, but naturally I read up on the symptoms — which IMHO could pretty easily be fitted to Sarah’s blogging behavior.
OTOH, it could also easily be something like unmedicated bipolar disorder.
In any case, I do sincerely hope that she gets help for it. Either one can be very very serious — in fact, my aforementioned relative ended up shooting several people and then herself. Not something to be ignored or messed around with!
Normally I’d write off her irrational babble as par for the right-wing course (I see equally strange stuff elsewhere online). However from what everyone is saying it does sound like she’s got some heavy loads to bear as well.
As Willa Cather says, even the wicked suffer more than they deserve.
Apparently, she does have genuine chronic health issues and also suffered some kind of accute issue during Sad Puppies 5. And I do recall someone famous – Kevin J. Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, not a puppy, but someone they like – tell her to take a break and focus on her health at the time.
But it is troubling that her family and her supposed friends didn’t try to help her during that health crisis. Three people supposedly ran Sad Puppies 5. And the other two didn’t have serious, potentially life-threatening health issues at the time.
Johan P: If her family and close friends are trying to help her, they’re probably doing it through other channels than comments on her blog.
Well, if they were actually helping her, we wouldn’t be seeing all of these crazed, irrational, psycho posts on her blog… so whatever they may be doing, it’s not working.
Contrarius: Too bad about your in-law, and particularly the other people she shot. Hope they’re keeping the Hoyt family gunsafe locked with a combo or key she doesn’t have.
Bipolar is certainly a possibility and fits the symptoms well (IANAD but know people with bipolar), but she seems a little old for that — of course, this may not be her first attack thereof. Of course, it’s exacerbated by stress, so it’s even more possible. But there are good meds for it!
I wonder if the next DSM will have “2020” as a syndrome. Although since everyone’s had it, it wouldn’t narrow things down much. Everyone’s a little crazy this year.
For all her fear of communism and/or socialism taking over the US, she said *nothing* when a commentator blithely stated that a particular journalist needed to be killed.
Maybe her family and friends don’t read her blog and don’t know what she’s spouting. Or maybe they’re just so tired of it all that compassion fatigue has set in. Or maybe they’re terrible people too, and think she should pull herself up by her own bootstraps. Asking for help is what lib’ruls do; rugged individualists like herself are supposed to tough it out.
Love. Joy. Feminism wrote a blog post a while back pointing out how much the US in 2020 looks exactly like the End Times tyranny she was taught as a kid, except evangelical Christians were the ones who’d be on the receiving end of oppression, not supporting the government that dishes it out.
In a completely different but still depressing topic, I had to call the local Democratic party here today to tell them I couldn’t be a poll observer on Tuesday. I feel awful about it, but I’m over 60 and I’ve been a Type I diabetic for 57 years now. The only way I could be more high risk was if I smoked. My county, like a lot of the Midwest, is seeing a sharp increase in cases and it’s cold enough now that if I were to observe, I’d be spending about 13 to 14 hours in a library watching people (who aren’t required to mask, because reasons) vote. This is the first time in over 20 years I haven’t been a poll observer and I feel rather guilty about it. Good sense tells me I can’t/won’t, but DAMN, I feel like I’m letting down the side, particularly with all the quasi-intimidation going on from the Trumpistas.
I have the same feeling about not having given blood since January. I’ve been giving religious since college, except for several years there were medical reasons not to.
I haven’t been able to donate blood either, for a couple of decades in my case, but that’s because I’m on sulfa drugs and there are people allergic to that. I’d hit the gallon donation mark before that became an issue.
Yeah, I used to donate platelets every month — I make lots, so I can donate two units per visit — but then I moved away from the convenient donation center, and now I’m on high doses of NSAIDs, which I’d have to give up for two days before donating again. And that ain’t gonna happen!
I was a little surprised at how little change there was to donating blood due to the pandemic – but on second thought I realized it makes sense, and that the usual questions about being healthy covers Covid as well.
When I donated in May there was an extra checkpoint at the entrance to the hospital, where I explained why I was there and said “no, I don’t have symptoms”, and there where some extra hand sanitizer dispensers in the hallways. On my next visit on August, the checkpoint at the entrance was scaled down to being unstaffed, just some big posters telling people to stay out unless they where symptom-free and had relevant business there. The donation process itself had nothing that was corona-specific, only the usual questions about not having been sick the last weeks (and not having lived in the UK in the 80s, not doing drugs by injections, etc.)
(I’ve donated fairly regularly for about 25 years, with some pauses due to travelling to places with exotic tropical diseases and things like that.)
Virtual (therefore safe) hugs for my dog is named Hannah.
Mr. LT got up to almost a gallon before he had to stop due to a medication. He’s O- so they really liked him. And he hadn’t been in the UK early enough or long enough to trigger the mad cow exemption. The Red Cross kept calling for months asking if he was off the meds, but nope, they’re lifelong. He got some pretty cool t-shirts out of the gig too, one Buffy-related.
Cam, where does the UK get their blood? Their donations must not count mad cow or they’d have hardly any donors. moooooooo.
I think the UK doesn’t care, since the recipient of the blood have a theoretical risk of BSE/mad cow disease anyway due to living in the country for years. Unless they’re vegetarian or hindus who avoid beef for religious reasons.
my dog is named hannah, keeping yourself safe is more important in this case than being a poll observer. I know poll observers are never easy to find, but I’m sure there will be someone who is less at risk of a bad outcome who can do it. I’m also sure the Democratic party wouldn’t want you to risk your health, even for a good cause.
I can’t give blood either due to studying a semester in the UK in the 1990s. BSE/Mad cow disease was already thing back then, so I didn’t even eat beef, while there, but policy is policy.
My Mom used to regularly give blood, but she has naturally bad veins, so they told her to stop, before it became a problem. When she had to go to hospital last year, the nurses always had problems finding a vein. It’s such a well known issue with her by now that I always tell healthcare professionals beforehand that my Mom has got bad veins.
Relevant To Your Interests: Abbie Richards’ Conspiracy Chart
Shaming people who believe illogical things just pushes them further into their radicalization networks. Disinformation is everywhere. We need to teach people how to spot it early.
Camestros Felapton 
79 responses to “Straw Puppy’s POTUS Polls: OCT27-28”
I am quite pleased the WSJ had the sense not to bite on the Hunter Biden laptop story. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/business/media/hunter-biden-wall-street-journal-trump.html?fbclid=IwAR3UBK8SORt_rTSv3b-mw6GgFWPsTgDf_6PxqyAVcIRYTOPqwfRK7AZWhzM
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(Profile: Gen X, straight cis white male, center-left Dem, weird)
Well, the big news is that the Supreme Court is ready to start intervening on behalf of the Republicans. Kavanaugh is ready to do whatever he can to get the Repubs the victory, as seen in a current decision on Wisconsin mail-in voting. The decision goes for the Republicans but “violates a century of voting law” as Vox.com put it. But this was not unexpected, especially after Ginsburg died and was replaced by someone from the Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s still the case that Democrats really need an overwhelming victory to nullify any stunts that the Republicans have pulled and are pulling to suppress the vote. Fortunately, the turnout has been overwhelming so far, which seems like a good sign for Dems. Well, next Tuesday is IT. We’ll see.
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Packing the court is looking better and better. That Barrett refused to say during her confirmation hearings that yes, Trump has to leave office if he loses does not speak well of her, or the next Supreme Court term.
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The Republicans packed the court. That’s five justices installed by Presidents who lost the popular vote, two terribly underqualified justices, two likely sexual harrassers, and now Ofjesse.
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I am so damned aggravated at all of the “Are the Democrats going to pack the courts?” propaganda. The Republicans have spent the last 4 years fucking packing the courts, including blocking the rightful appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Why isn’t that the first thing that gets pointed out whenever the “packing the courts” rhetoric gets trotted out?
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@JJ: 100% agreed, although it’s been much longer than four years. This is the culmination of a project that began in the Reagan administration.
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-dsr-: “and now Ofjesse.”
Aunt Amy fits better. Or Serena Amy, or something similar. While Ofjesse may be a more obvious reference, she’s no victim.
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Coathanger Amy.
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With Coronavirus rate skyrocketing as we approach the election, I wonder if it’s actually going to hurt Trump that he’s been urging his people to wait until election day to vote? Granted, they’d have to actually believe in the virus for that to make a difference, but . . .
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I’m sorry American friends, but the USA is looking more and more like a failed democracy. There might be a glimmer of hope if Biden wins (and I hope he does), but the work to make America into a democracy will take years.
New Zealand is no Utopia, but here an independent neutral body runs elections. It took me all of 5 minutes to vote, even with social distancing measures in place polling stations were so numerous. Electoral boundaries are re-drawn by a non-partisan body, the Electoral Commission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electorates#Distribution
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Joe Biden is better than Trump, if only because he is not actively incompetent and malicious, unlike Trump. However, most of the problems in the US are systemic and not something that one president alone can fix.
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Agreed, but getting people elected creates an environment where the work can start (“It is not the beginning of the end, it is the end of the beginning.”). We don’t know it can be done before the next authoritarian gets into the Oval Office, but we have to try.
That Biden is building a war chest to fight whatever legal shit Trump might pull is a good sign.
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Yes. Among the systemic fixes that could be done via legislation (and therefore not requiring a Constitutional Amendment) would be expanding the court (I would argue for expanding the court to 13 members, to have one justice for each of the 13 Circuit Courts), having the Supreme Court sit in panels of five or seven instead of always en banc, and expanding the size of the House of Representatives to reflect the increase in population that has taken place since it was set at 435 in the early 1900s – this would have the side effect of making the Electoral College better reflect the popular vote, since the number of electors is determined by the number of Representatives and Senators each state has.
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We gotta add justices. And there’s a lot more precedent for enlarging the court than there was for cramming in a new justice so late in an election cycle.
I like Aaron’s justification for 13 — one for each Circuit. The hardest part will be to somehow arrange for 13 to be the maximum — to prevent Republicans from adding even more once they are eventually back in power.
Also, we gotta have statehood for Puerto Rico. They deserve it, for heaven’s sake — and side benefit, they will add likely Democratic votes. I’m not as sold on statehood for DC — despite the fact that they have more people than some states, the geographic area is so small and the fed government involvement so large that I can’t decide on that one. But Puerto Rico for sure.
Which leads us to the pie-in-the-sky idea of splitting up California. So many ramifications both pro and con, I have no idea whether that would be a net good or a net bad. But it’s an intriguing idea!
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Since the number of districts works so well, why not tie them together? And be sure to define districts in a way that won’t let the Gops multiply them on demand.
DC and PR statehood sound good to me too. And 52 is doable for stars.
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@kiptw
We need 53 states: One Nation, Indivisible.
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I’d go ahead and add Puerto Rico as a state, provided that the citizens in Puerto Rico are in favor of it. I’d add DC – it may be small geographically, but it has a higher population than some existing states, so it should have actual representation in Congress.
If you want to add three states to bring the total to 53, we could always add Guam.
We also need to make the residents of the various territories like American Samoa full citizens.
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As the blogger Paul Campos said today, a system in which Trump can get into power and has a non-trivial chance of staying in power is a failed system. But giving up is not an option.
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I’m about 3/4 of the way through drafting a letter to my local Representative (a Democrat) and the Democratic senator from my state. Basically, it says that presuming that Biden wins and the House and Senate fall under Democratic control (a large presumption, I know), they need to immediately enact a variety of measures, regardless of whether Biden wants them or not. the problem is that my list is up to 10 items and still hasn’t stopped growing. Between COVID, the economy, the EPA, the WHO, climate change, systemic racism, Trump’s personal and familial corruption and the Supreme Court, to name but a few, Biden is looking at a Augean stable level task. But otherwise I’m worried that Biden will pull an Obama-esque “We must only look forward” attitude and let Trump and all his cronies escape, and allow the Republicans to get away with their massive minoritarian power grab.
Arggh.
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One of the many strange things about this election is that national pundits are taking an interest in Nebraska. My state only has five electoral votes but they are not winner-take-all and it currently looks like Biden may get the vote from Nebraska Congressional District 2. There are various scenarios in which this is vitally important to the outcome of the election, all of which I leave to the interested reader to look up. (Obligatory 538 link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/nebraska-2/)
But for me the most interesting thing about it is that there is a chance of it going blue at all. Obama took CD 2 in his first presidential election, after which state Republicans managed to redraw the district to make it more secure for them. So Trump is running behind in a gerrymandered district in Nebraska, which is giving me some slight embers of hope for the election as a whole.
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As a Brit who’s still technically a resident there I would honestly love it if you guys can kick out mango Mussolini and give me some small hope that we can oust the bumbling fool squatting in No. 10, and all his incompetent cronies, too.
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Well next week’s episodes de of Straw Puppy’s POTUS Polls will have live coverage!
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LIVE coverage? Wow! I am really excited. Does that mean we’ll get to see Timothy and Straw Puppy hold mics in their paws and speaking directly to the camera?
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Oh yes
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Straw Puppy: “Can I butt in at this point and say this is in fact the very first time I’ve appeared on television.”
Tim: “No, no, we haven’t time, because we’re just going straight over to Luton.”
(Mind you, the bit about Luton was the only part I had to look up!)
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I plan to miss all live coverage and support my local small businesses by drinking a whole lot of wine from local wineries. Going dark on everything and waking up hungover to check the results-so-far. Either I’ll already be miserable, so more misery won’t matter, or I’ll have my misery alleviated.
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Um, wow.
Speaking of the election — I don’t often read Sarah Hoyt’s blog, but I took a look this morning, and… Just… Wow.
Has she always been this nuts and I just didn’t fully appreciate the extent of her insanity, or has the election managed to drive her completely around the bend?
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Wow!
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I know, right?
I tell ya, January 20 can not come soon enough!
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“The American people are furious, and as such will lash out. Unfortunately in our times of central federalized power, most of them don’t realize our highly unusual, freedom-loving president …”
It’s always projection.
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Equally both. She has been convinced for a long time that there is a huge amounts of electoral fraud – remember she also thinks population figures are exaggerated everywhere. She can’t explain why Republicans or Trump haven’t prosecuted everybody for all this massive amounts of fraud, she just knows through her Hoyt-sense.
The election is making it worse though.
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This seems really extreme, even for her though. How can she be crazy enough to believe even 10% of what she’s written here?
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I wasn’t even all that startled by the fraud part. But the reeducation camps! The mass depopulation! Telling her fans to print out her blogs on paper to hide them for future generations!
Ye Gods, the end is truly nigh. I never realized that Hoyt wrote apocalyptic fiction!
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Imagine somebody trying to rebuild civilisation using old Hoyt blog posts…
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“Telling her fans to print out her blogs on paper to hide them for future generations!”
Yeah, it sounds like she needs professional help.
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In any case, I am definitely saving this one as a sort of time capsule to look back upon in four years: first, to see how her predictions turn out; and second, to see what becomes of her in those four years.
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“Believers, when you come to the compound, bring jars! Good glass jars with screw-on lids. Don’t ask why, just do as I say!”
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I’ve seen posts from her that were worse in that regard…
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I vaguely recall an old Heinlein essay in Expanded Universe where he insisted that Moscow couldn’t have as high a population as the Soviet Union claimed it had. He at least had personally been there and had multiple lines of reasoning, so he was at least attempting to make a case rather than going by fiat.
Yes, I think it was that which inspired her to now claim all population figures are lies.
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She’s always been out there and upcoming elections usually make her rants worse, at least as far back as Obama’s first term.
Is this rant worse than previous ones? I’m not sure. She has been worried about people who supposedly want to reduce the human population for as long as I’ve been aware of her. I also have vague memories that she was terrified Obama would lock up people in camps, but I might also be mixing her up with someone else.
And the double whammy of election plus pandemic is likely causing her extra anxiety, as it does for a lot of people. Also, she apparently has issues wearing a mask (which is possible due to her health issues) and this is not a happy time for people who have issues wearing masks, because they are essentially locked out from what little public life remains.
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“Imagine somebody trying to rebuild civilisation using old Hoyt blog posts…”
A Canticle for Hoyt.
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Mhm. And her insistence that she’s “on several lists.”
She writes barely readable fiction. She’s not important enough to be “on several lists.”
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A troll on FB kept insisting Obama had made the IRS personally target her because she was an outspoken conservative! She was in a “financial concentration camp” which proved those predictions about FEMA concentration camps were true!
When I told her I didn’t believe her, she kept providing links to IRS controversies, none of which proved her point. So I blocked her.
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I know a number of people who have serious chronic health conditions. None of them are unable to wear masks for long enough to run errands. I see people in the store who are so obese they can hardly walk, old folks with oxygen supplies, people with incredibly bad asthma, people with panic attacks, everything. They all wear masks. Healthy people are doing 5 mile runs in masks.
The only people I know about who aren’t masked are infants and toddlers (older kids wear them just fine), older senile people, the severely mentally ill (the last 2 don’t get out much anyway) and the severely developmentally disabled. Right-wingers like to CLAIM they have a medical condition… of course, they look down on actual disabled people.
So: is she a toddler, senile, mentally ill, or developmentally disabled?
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“Right-wingers like to CLAIM they have a medical condition… of course, they look down on actual disabled people.”
Probably half the fun — we want to give special privileges to disabled people? Well, they’ll take those privileges and use that against us! ROFL, liberals!
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I know several people who can only wear a mask for a very short time. Medical exemptions are almost impossible to get here, so those who have issues wearing masks stay at home as much as possible and either rely on online shopping or ask others to shop for them.
Which doesn’t mean that rightwingers aren’t hypocrites and only care about accessibility, when they’re the ones affected.
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A serious question: does anyone, aside from the denizens of this illustrious blog, actually comment on her evident issues? Any expressions of concern at all? Like, “Wow, Sarah, have you considered treatment? Or medication?” Any intervention of any kind? Honestly, if a friend of mine was publishing stuff like this, I’d say *something*. Even if it was only “Hey, you might want to take a break for a while.”
Doesn’t she have any friends?
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my dog is named hannah: Doesn’t she have any friends?
Apparently none that actually care about her, including her husband. A year or two after the Sad Puppies 5 campaign on which she completely dropped the ball (and a long spate of blog posts which were just as crazed and irrational as this most recent one), Hoyt posted a lengthy piece about how close to death she apparently was during that time. And it struck me then how sad it was that no one, not even her husband, cared enough about her to do an intervention.
Either that, or her “illness near death” was all histrionics, and 1) she’s just crazed and irrational, or 2) this is some sort of 3-dimensional chess performance art where she’s trying to demonstrate just how crazed and irrational she can pretend to be.
My personal belief is that it was all histrionics, she’s just crazed and irrational, and no one cares enough about her to see that she gets professional help.
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I think she suffers from severe and chronic anxiety which exacerbated genuine health issues and which she projects into political opinion
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Disclaimer: IANA medical health professional.
I know Hoyt has mentioned various medical complaints on her blog in the past, though I forget exactly what and I’m not going to go look them up. But IIRC, at least one was possibly autoimmune related?
As it happens, on another board over the past couple of days I’ve been discussing a relative (by marriage) of mine who suffered from steroid psychosis while she was being treated for lupus. That was decades ago, but naturally I read up on the symptoms — which IMHO could pretty easily be fitted to Sarah’s blogging behavior.
OTOH, it could also easily be something like unmedicated bipolar disorder.
In any case, I do sincerely hope that she gets help for it. Either one can be very very serious — in fact, my aforementioned relative ended up shooting several people and then herself. Not something to be ignored or messed around with!
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Normally I’d write off her irrational babble as par for the right-wing course (I see equally strange stuff elsewhere online). However from what everyone is saying it does sound like she’s got some heavy loads to bear as well.
As Willa Cather says, even the wicked suffer more than they deserve.
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Apparently, she does have genuine chronic health issues and also suffered some kind of accute issue during Sad Puppies 5. And I do recall someone famous – Kevin J. Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, not a puppy, but someone they like – tell her to take a break and focus on her health at the time.
But it is troubling that her family and her supposed friends didn’t try to help her during that health crisis. Three people supposedly ran Sad Puppies 5. And the other two didn’t have serious, potentially life-threatening health issues at the time.
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If her family and close friends are trying to help her, they’re probably doing it through other channels than comments on her blog.
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Johan P: If her family and close friends are trying to help her, they’re probably doing it through other channels than comments on her blog.
Well, if they were actually helping her, we wouldn’t be seeing all of these crazed, irrational, psycho posts on her blog… so whatever they may be doing, it’s not working.
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Contrarius: Too bad about your in-law, and particularly the other people she shot. Hope they’re keeping the Hoyt family gunsafe locked with a combo or key she doesn’t have.
Bipolar is certainly a possibility and fits the symptoms well (IANAD but know people with bipolar), but she seems a little old for that — of course, this may not be her first attack thereof. Of course, it’s exacerbated by stress, so it’s even more possible. But there are good meds for it!
I wonder if the next DSM will have “2020” as a syndrome. Although since everyone’s had it, it wouldn’t narrow things down much. Everyone’s a little crazy this year.
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Yes, the people she killed were my relatives. But that was decades ago.
As for Hoyt, I don’t think this is the first attack of whatever-it-is. So I don’t think it matters that she is old for a first onset.
Speaking of which — does anyone know how many states Kanye ended up getting on the ballot for? I’m too lazy to look it up.
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Kanye got on in 12 states, mostly red. 10 banned him for announcing too late.
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Holy shit. 😲
I have no words for that one.
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For all her fear of communism and/or socialism taking over the US, she said *nothing* when a commentator blithely stated that a particular journalist needed to be killed.
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She said nothing when her commentators call for genocide — except to lie about it afterwards
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I think you wanted an “and” instead of an “or” in your question.
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Maybe her family and friends don’t read her blog and don’t know what she’s spouting. Or maybe they’re just so tired of it all that compassion fatigue has set in. Or maybe they’re terrible people too, and think she should pull herself up by her own bootstraps. Asking for help is what lib’ruls do; rugged individualists like herself are supposed to tough it out.
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And there’s always the possibility of folie a deux.
(the mental condition, not the very excellent winery, which someday I might get to visit again)
Funny how it’s only Trump who’s put people in actual camps, and then managed to lose track of the parents of 545 children. Projection, much?
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Love. Joy. Feminism wrote a blog post a while back pointing out how much the US in 2020 looks exactly like the End Times tyranny she was taught as a kid, except evangelical Christians were the ones who’d be on the receiving end of oppression, not supporting the government that dishes it out.
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In a completely different but still depressing topic, I had to call the local Democratic party here today to tell them I couldn’t be a poll observer on Tuesday. I feel awful about it, but I’m over 60 and I’ve been a Type I diabetic for 57 years now. The only way I could be more high risk was if I smoked. My county, like a lot of the Midwest, is seeing a sharp increase in cases and it’s cold enough now that if I were to observe, I’d be spending about 13 to 14 hours in a library watching people (who aren’t required to mask, because reasons) vote. This is the first time in over 20 years I haven’t been a poll observer and I feel rather guilty about it. Good sense tells me I can’t/won’t, but DAMN, I feel like I’m letting down the side, particularly with all the quasi-intimidation going on from the Trumpistas.
Oh, well.
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I have the same feeling about not having given blood since January. I’ve been giving religious since college, except for several years there were medical reasons not to.
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Still irks me that I can’t give blood (a blanket ban here on anyone who lived in the UK through the mad cow times)
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We have that too but as I haven’t been in England since 1974 it’s not a problem.
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I told you to go easy on the dura mater!
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I haven’t been able to donate blood either, for a couple of decades in my case, but that’s because I’m on sulfa drugs and there are people allergic to that. I’d hit the gallon donation mark before that became an issue.
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Yeah, I used to donate platelets every month — I make lots, so I can donate two units per visit — but then I moved away from the convenient donation center, and now I’m on high doses of NSAIDs, which I’d have to give up for two days before donating again. And that ain’t gonna happen!
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I was a little surprised at how little change there was to donating blood due to the pandemic – but on second thought I realized it makes sense, and that the usual questions about being healthy covers Covid as well.
When I donated in May there was an extra checkpoint at the entrance to the hospital, where I explained why I was there and said “no, I don’t have symptoms”, and there where some extra hand sanitizer dispensers in the hallways. On my next visit on August, the checkpoint at the entrance was scaled down to being unstaffed, just some big posters telling people to stay out unless they where symptom-free and had relevant business there. The donation process itself had nothing that was corona-specific, only the usual questions about not having been sick the last weeks (and not having lived in the UK in the 80s, not doing drugs by injections, etc.)
(I’ve donated fairly regularly for about 25 years, with some pauses due to travelling to places with exotic tropical diseases and things like that.)
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Virtual (therefore safe) hugs for my dog is named Hannah.
Mr. LT got up to almost a gallon before he had to stop due to a medication. He’s O- so they really liked him. And he hadn’t been in the UK early enough or long enough to trigger the mad cow exemption. The Red Cross kept calling for months asking if he was off the meds, but nope, they’re lifelong. He got some pretty cool t-shirts out of the gig too, one Buffy-related.
Cam, where does the UK get their blood? Their donations must not count mad cow or they’d have hardly any donors. moooooooo.
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I think the UK doesn’t care, since the recipient of the blood have a theoretical risk of BSE/mad cow disease anyway due to living in the country for years. Unless they’re vegetarian or hindus who avoid beef for religious reasons.
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my dog is named hannah, keeping yourself safe is more important in this case than being a poll observer. I know poll observers are never easy to find, but I’m sure there will be someone who is less at risk of a bad outcome who can do it. I’m also sure the Democratic party wouldn’t want you to risk your health, even for a good cause.
I can’t give blood either due to studying a semester in the UK in the 1990s. BSE/Mad cow disease was already thing back then, so I didn’t even eat beef, while there, but policy is policy.
My Mom used to regularly give blood, but she has naturally bad veins, so they told her to stop, before it became a problem. When she had to go to hospital last year, the nurses always had problems finding a vein. It’s such a well known issue with her by now that I always tell healthcare professionals beforehand that my Mom has got bad veins.
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I used to give clotting factor which can be done a lot more frequently, but my veins decided no thank you after a few months.
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Relevant To Your Interests: Abbie Richards’ Conspiracy Chart
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Yes – I was looking at the other day. She’s doing some good stuff
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