Stories that make me want to throw things

In films and TV shows, you sometimes see people who are really angry or upset smash things by throwing them across the room or sweeping them off tables. I have never done such a thing or know people who have done so and felt that it may be artistic license taken by directors to show extreme anger. But the most recent story from ProPublica about yet another woman who dies because of the abortion bans was so infuriating that it made me better understand why someone might do something like that.

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.
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Idaho region is precursor to RFK Jr.

The health department in a region of the state of Idaho has been ordered to stop providing covid-19 vaccines to the public.

A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.

Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department.

While policymakers in Texas banned health departments from promoting COVID vaccines and Florida’s surgeon general bucked medical consensus to recommend against the vaccine, governmental bodies across the country haven’t blocked the vaccines outright.

This is just one region in one state. But creepy Donald Trump seems to have promised nutcase RFK Jr. a free hand in deciding policies over all food and health-related issues and that would be a disaster.
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Even demons hate Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson is a very strange man, espousing all manner of hateful ideas and conspiracies. But his latest admission really takes his absurdity to a whole new level. He said that about a year and a half ago, while asleep one night he was attacked by a demon that left claw marks on his body.

No, really.

When I first read this news item yesterday, I thought that this was some kind of childish prank because the previous day was Halloween and that he would later admit that it was his idea of a joke. But no, this is something he said in a documentary about to be released.

Watch the clip where he talks about this.


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GOP freakout over ads of women secretly voting for Harris

Yesterday I posted a link to an ad produced by the Lincoln Project that showed two women friends secretly voting for Kamala Harris while their husbands feel confident that they will follow their guidance and vote for creepy Donald Trump. Here’s the ad again.

Here’s another one produced by Vote Common Good that is narrated by Julia Roberts.


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What creepy Trump has wrought

In South Carolina, a supporter of creepy Donald Trump threatened a group of female poll workers but they were not having it.

A man wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” hat grew incensed when told he could not vote while wearing political paraphernalia of any kind. So he did what any other self-respecting MAGA idiot would do: he started a fight with poll workers.

Another man in Texas punched an elderly poll worker who told him to remove his MAGA hat.
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Has creepy Trump’s campaign given up on women?

One thing that is sure about this election is that the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket has a big advantage when it comes to women. Creepy Donald Trump, weird JD Vance, and their campaign surrogates have attacked women’s reproductive rights and freedoms and in addition made all manner of sexist and misogynistic remarks. We now see women from prominent Republican families announcing that they plan to support Harris.

Barbara Bush, the daughter of former Republican President George W. Bush, campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania over the weekend, marking her official endorsement of the vice president.

“It was inspiring to join friends and meet voters with the Harris-Walz campaign in Pennsylvania this weekend,” Bush said in a statement to People Magazine. “I’m hopeful they’ll move our country forward and protect women’s rights.”
…

While her father has not weighed in on the race, Bush joins a growing list of daughters of former Republican politicians announcing their support for Harris, including former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, Susan Ford Bales, daughter of former Republican President Gerald Ford, and Caroline Giuliani.

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A nice analysis of poll uncertainties

As we enter the final week of the election, a slew of last minute polls that will emerge. This is a good time to remind ourselves that we should not put too much stock in what they say. As I said in an earlier post, pollsters have to make adjustments to the raw data and this introduces systematic uncertainties so that the actual margin of error could be about double the statistical one.

Josh Clinton has done an interesting analysis to try and get a better idea of how much these adjustments can affect the results.

He says that pollsters have to address four questions.
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The fallout from the insult to Puerto Rico and Latinos

An obscure comedian has managed to hijack the campaign of creepy Donald Trump in the final week of the election by giving a disgusting speech at the Nazi-style rally in Madison Square Garden. In his speech, he managed to insult Latinos in general and Puerto Ricans in particular.

Latinos “love making babies. There’s no pulling out. They come inside, just like they do to our country,” Hinchcliffe said to laughter inside the arena. He added: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

This was a bridge too far for even some Republicans, who generally have no problems with insulting people of color and minorities, because they realized that this could have serious blowback by undercutting their courting of the Hispanic vote and because of the large numbers of Puerto Ricans who live in the swing states.
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The different ground game strategies

I have written before about how important the so-called ‘ground game’ is in US elections. This is the name given to the efforts by candidates to get voters to actually vote for them. By themselves, such ‘get out the vote’ (GOTV) efforts may only contribute marginally to the final vote tallies but in close races, as the current one between Kamala Harris and creepy Donald Trump is, they can prove to be the decisive factor by boosting turnout.

Traditionally these efforts operate under the umbrella of the national parties that coordinate with state and local branches, since that provides an ongoing organizational structure and institutional memory that can be called upon in each election cycle. The national party organization provides funding to supplement whatever is raised by the candidates, and this money goes to hire staff members at all levels, down to the precincts. But the bulk of the actual work, consisting of making phone calls to voters, sending out mailers and postcards, distributing yard signs and flyers, and most importantly, going door-to-door and talking to people, is done by volunteers and these volunteers play a crucial role.
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