New Year's 2024 Weekend Open Thread

17 thoughts on “New Year’s 2024 Weekend Open Thread”

1. Since I'm on the record here saying I think Hurd in the 3rd is not inevitable, I feel I need to say Ragin' Ron Hanks carpetbagging is not what I had in mind!

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   1. So Loren with an "O" will be replacing Lauren with an "AU" as the crackpot candidate in CD 3?

      The more things change, the more they stay the same.

      At least Loren with an "O" wasn't caught in flagrante delicto during a performance of Beetlejuice.

       

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      1. This is proof there is a God(dess).

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2. Are we getting some live coverage on this, Alva?

   

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   1. I'm admittedly old-school, but "Pro-Trump Journalist?" Is that how it works now? "After a thorough investigation, all facts point to Trump being not only the best candidate but also worthy of suspending the Constitution to make him our fearless leader for life!"

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      1. Pro-Trump journalists do much the same as those who followed the original Jesus Christ, wrote down all that he said, and authored that which became the New Testament. 

         Of course, these folk follow Orange Jesus and write the Prosperity New Testament which has more in common with the Ferenghi Rules of Acquisition than the original New Testament. 

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         1. Wow, thanks for turning me on to the Rules of Acquisition! Some great advice there for those who don't care so much about karma or the soul.

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            1. "Greed is eternal." – Rule # 10

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   2. I'm impressed by the irony …. DCF Guns West has an address on Peace Palace Point.

      I know the Transcendental Meditation movement had peace palaces in a variety of places … was this supposed to be another one?  Did it get built and become operational?  Is it still there?

       

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   3. A very small part of me wanted to show up to this in my best Galaxy Quest cosplay, throw a tantrum that it's not what I expect, and leave.

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3. You'd think Tina would be home making a list of all the people she's going to throw under the bus. 

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4. Happy New Year, Polsters!

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5. I'll just put this out there ….

   Trump leads Biden among Hispanic, young voters: poll | The Hill

   I know, I know, a poll a year 11 months 10 months out is meaningless, yadda, yadda, yadda.

   Perhaps, but then when should we start to be concerned about Biden's numbers?

   The GOP at least has some understudies back stage. For better or worse (and mostly for worse), they have Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and a gaggle of right wing crazies in the Senate (Hawley, Cotton, Vance).

   The Dems got nothing. It's Biden or broke. 

    

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   1. I don't follow polling on most subgroups, ESPECIALLY this early in the cycle.  But I do try to pay attention to the "youth vote" efforts. 

      Earlier in December, EJ Dionne Jr. had a column on youth voters for Brookings.  I liked a key quote —

      Commenting on this year’s off-year elections, Semafor’s Jordan Weissman offered a pithy take on X underscoring the same point: “At the moment, young people hate the Democratic party, except on election day.”

      On specific polling numbers —

      The difficulty of gauging exactly where young voters stand was underscored in the fall 2023 Harvard Youth Poll conducted by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. It is one of the best ongoing surveys of young voters. Conducted between late October and early November, it found that Biden enjoyed a 10-point lead among all adults under 30, a 15-point lead among young people who said they were registered to vote, and a 24-point lead among the most likely voters. This advantage matched Biden’s lead over Trump in the 2020 exit polls. Your view of where Biden stands might depend on which of these numbers you focus on.

       

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6. The state GOP filed its SCOTUS petition on December 27th (link below).  It's interesting that the 3 questions presented for review does not include the argument that the issue is a nonjusticiable political question.  The first question is whether the president is an official covered by section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  The second is whether section 3 is self-executing, i.e., whether states may remove him from the ballot in the absence of congressional action.  The third is whether the denial of a political party's candidate of choice on the ballot violates the political party's First Amendment right to association.  Trump has yet to file his petition, at least so far.  Important consitutional issues, and incredibly sad that a party would nominate someone who was found to have engaged in insurrection.  But here we are.       http://media.aclj.org/pdf/Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition-PDFA_Redacted.pdf

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7. In a setback for Netanyahu and a victory for small-d democracy, Israel’s Supreme Court  decided not to weaken the judicial branch relative to the rest of government.

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8. Hard for me to believe, but we now have A decade of legal cannabis in Colorado

   The reliable news media was there for the first sale:

   On Jan. 1, 2014, dozens of reporters crowded into a dispensary in the RINO neighborhood in Denver to witness the first legal sale of marijuana for recreational use in the United States.

   There were so many people in the small space that the “first sale” was done twice to accommodate all the cameras.

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