by Hannah Hartig and John Lapinski and Stephanie Psyllos
Among Republican and Republican-leaning likely voters, 45 percent said they might not accept the election as legitimate if their candidate doesn't win, according to a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll. Eighteen percent said they would definitely not accept the outcome. A majority of Republicans -- 53 percent -- said they would accept the results of the election if their candidate loses. An overwhelming majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters -- 82 percent -- said they would definitely or probably accept the election.
“I took a break from my rigorous nap schedule to be here. And as you’ve already heard, it’s a treat for all of you too, because usually, I charge a lot for speeches like this.”
“Getting through these three debates with Donald has to count as a miracle, so I guess I’m up against the highest, hardest, stained glass ceiling.”
“I just wanna put you all in a basket of adorables.”
“You look so good in your tuxes, or as I refer to them, ‘formal pantsuits.’”
“Donald, if at any time you don’t like what I’m saying, feel free to stand up and shout ‘WRONG’ while I’m talking.”
“It’s amazing I’m up here after Donald. I didn’t think he’d be okay with a peaceful transition of power.”
“Donald, after listening to your speech, I will also enjoy listening to Mike Pence deny that you ever gave it.”
“Remember, if you don’t like how it turned out, it must be rigged.”
“People look at the Statue of Liberty and see a proud symbol […] Donald looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4, maybe a 5 if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.”
“I understand I am not known for my sense of humor. That’s why it did take a village to write these jokes.”
“I’m not boring at all. In fact, I’m the life of every party I attend, and I’ve been to three.”
“When the parties get out of hand, as occasionally they do, it’s important to have a responsible chaperone who can get everyone home safely, and that is why I picked Tim Kaine to be my vice president.”
“You notice there is no teleprompter here tonight, which is probably smart because maybe you saw Donald dismantle his prompter the other day. And I get that. They’re hard to keep up with, and I’m sure it’s even harder when you’re translating from the original Russian.”
“Donald wanted me drug-tested before last night’s debate, and look, I gotta tell you, I am so flattered that Donald thought I used some sort of performance enhancer. Now actually, I did. It’s called preparation.”
“I’ve had to listen to Donald for three full debates, and he says I don’t have any stamina. That is four and a half hours. I have now stood next to Donald longer than any of his campaign managers.”
“Whoever wins this election, the outcome will be historic. We will either have the first female president or the first president who started a Twitter war with Cher.”
“If Donald does win, it’ll be awkward at the annual President’s Day photo, when all the former presidents gather at the White House. And not just with Bill – how is Barack gonna get past the Muslim ban?”
“Donald has issues. Serious issues. Really, really serious issues.”
“[Donald] actually sent me a car to bring me here tonight. Actually, it was a hearse.”
“Donald really is as healthy as a horse, you know, the one Vladimir Putin rides around on.”
“I will be the healthiest and youngest woman ever to serve as president.”
“I’ve tried to inspire young people […] and [Donald] is doing the same. A third-grade teacher told me that one of her students refused to turn in his homework because it was under audit.”
“Here’s another similarity. The Republican National Committee isn’t spending a dime to help either one of us.”
“Let’s embrace the spirit of the evening, let’s come together, remember what unites us, and just rip on Ted Cruz.”
“I hope you enjoyed my remarks tonight. I said ‘no’ to some jokes that I thought were over the line, but I suppose you can judge for yourself on Wikileaks in the next few days.”
If it weren't for reason and common sense, do you have any idea how many weird pets I would have, mostly on the theory that "Super ButtButt needs a new friend."?
Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this stall we’re in has the look of something nastier. Social Security and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along: Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things “going forward,” to borrow the business-speak. Economists are warning that even when the economy recuperates, full employment will be lower and growth will be slower—a sad little rhyme that adds up to something decidedly unpoetic. A majority of Americans say, for the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than its parents.
The first generation to do worse than its parents? Please. Been there. Generation X was told that so many times that it can’t even read those words without hearing Winona Ryder’s voice in its heads. Or maybe it’s Ethan Hawke’s. Possibly Bridget Fonda’s. Generation X is getting older, and can’t remember those movies so well anymore. In retrospect, maybe they weren’t very good to begin with.
But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.
Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.
Generation X is a journeyman. It didn’t invent hip hop, or punk rock, or even electronica (it’s pretty sure those dudes in Kraftwerk are boomers) but it perfected all of them, and made them its own. It didn’t invent the Web, but it largely built the damn thing. Generation X gave you Google and Twitter and blogging; Run DMC and Radiohead and Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. Not that it gets any credit.
But that’s okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies–which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories, not participation.
In fairness, Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn’t had a real voice since Kurt Cobain blew his brains out, Tupac was murdered, Jeff Mangum went crazy, David Foster Wallace hung himself, Jeff Buckley drowned, River Phoenix overdosed, Elliott Smith stabbed himself (twice) in the heart, Axl got fat.
Generation X is beyond all that bullshit now. It quit smoking and doing coke a long time ago. It has blood pressure issues and is heavier than it would like to be. It might still take some ecstasy, if it knew where to get some. But probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.
Generation X is tired.
It’s a parent now, and there’s always so damn much to do. Generation X wishes it had better health insurance and a deeper savings account. It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up.
Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?
Whatever. It’s cool.
Generation X is used to disappointments. Generation X knows you didn’t even read the whole thing. It doesn’t want or expect your reblogs; it picked the wrong platform.
Generation X should have posted this to LiveJournal.
I like Bernie but If Hillary wins the primary I’ll vote Hillary. I love y'all but if you let Christie or Trump become president because you wanted to throw a tantrum over Hillary winning primaries I will personally punch every other registered voter in the face. I had to suffer through eight years of a republican president I didn’t elect and I won’t do it again.
I’ll have at least four years to work my way through a punching list don’t think I won’t try it.
But Obama isn’t republican..unless you’re talking about a different president?
yes dear child, I was alive during the years 2000-2008, when President George W. Bush was president-elect. I don’t say this to be rude because you’re 16, and you don’t know, because you couldn’t have known, but now it is my faithful duty to tell you so you are informed as to why we (I) hate Republicans. You may not know him very well, but here’s a picture:
It’s an understatement to say that the Mission, was in fact, not accomplished.
He’s the guy that Obama replaced in large part because everyone hated George W. Bush. Why?:
Despite extensive warnings of incoming threats, Bush took no action to prevent 9/11 from happening, leading several respectable political science scholars to indicate that Bush was at least partially responsible for the attacks actually occurring (if not wholly responsible for not preventing them)
actually let’s remember that when he was immediately alerted to the attack, he continued to read a children’s story to elementary schoolers and then Air Force one and himself were gone for several hours after the attack.
he turned an inherited budget surplus into a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit.
a small deficit is one thing! 1.2 trillion dollars is NOT SMALL. Bill Clinton did have some part in the lead-up to a failing economy but Bush….Bush destroyed it.
The entire 2008 collapse began while he was still in office and basically did nothing about it. This wasn’t just an American collapse. This was a world-wide financial collapse that happened because American banks were failing (in large part due to massive amounts of tax-cuts and de-regulation put forth by Bush!). It triggered a world-wide collapse. He was partially responsible for our country’s second great depression.
He is 100% responsible for the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and the guy Kanye West was referring to when he said “George Bush hates black people.”
the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the “war on Terror”
LAUNCHING WARS WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL
the entire existence of Guantanamo Bay
the Patriot Act
his own party wanted nothing to do with him in 2008
heckuva job, brownie
waterboarding
….he literally stole the election in 2000
pulled us out of the kyoto protocal to deal with global warming problems
US troops given faulty, or unsafe gear
Abu Gharib prison and all other crimes of war already mentioned here or not mentioned
War profiteering! The list of top Bush administration officials whose former corporate employers made billions in Pentagon contracts starts with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, which made $39.5 billion, and included his daughter, Liz Cheney, who ran a $300 million Middle East partnership program.
cutting veteran’s health care benefits
pardoning Scooter Libby
cut and froze pell grants for poor students
no child left behind act is the reason why you probably have to take those god forsaken dumb standardized tests for no real GOOD reason
Reporters analyzing Bush’s record found that he took off 1,020 days in two four-year terms—more than one out of every three days. No other modern president comes close. Bush also set the record for the longest vacation among modern presidents—five weeks, the Washington Post noted.
i could keep listing shit for days honestly but i won’t
suffice to say: George W. Bush is the worst president I lived through, he is the worst president in the last 50 years, and his blatant incompetence and failures are why the Republican party is rapidly devouring itself like a crazed ouroboros and might try to elect Trump. He is the reason why Stephen Colbert parodied the right as satire – why The Daily Show gained huge amounts of relevance, why the rest of the world hated us for a good eight years solid, why huge amounts of various civil and constitutional rights were literally eroded and denied to us, why we’re so in the debt hole even now, and why i registered Democrat when I turned 18, because honestly fuck the entire Republican party. Burn it to the ground and salt the earth.
I don’t usually push this but for the youngens who really don’t have a way to know these things a lot of the time, please understand that half this shit up there, it was like, unthinkable and because that paved the way, we have this.
We have 2016.
This is how this shit became possible. This is how this shit became normalized.
And please understand I’m old enough to remember REAGAN.
About 2,000 educators across the Seattle area wore T-shirts to school on Oct. 19 proclaiming that “Black Lives Matter.” The action, which occurred throughout Seattle’s school districts, were in conjunction with rallies that were held before school began. Seattle’s KING5 news station covered the event:
The purpose of the day was to affirm that “black lives matter in the public schools,” according to organizers, who are members of Social Equality Educators, a group of educators within the Seattle teachers union. Teachers also wanted to show their support for John Muir Elementary, which had its “Black Men Uniting to Change the Narrative” event canceled last month after receiving a threat over teachers’ plans to wear Black Lives Matter shirts.
[ … ]
Teacher Diana Romero said she decided to wear a shirt “to support our black brothers and sisters in support for justice.” As a Latina, she said she has seen firsthand the unfair treatment of people of color by police officers.
“Black Lives Matter At School” wasn’t sponsored by the school district, but it coincides with Seattle Public Schools’ “day of unity,” aimed at bringing more attention to racial equity in education. The district said in a statement that it has asked students, family, staff and community members to “engage and join the conversation in our united efforts to eliminate opportunity gaps.” As a public institution, the district doesn’t take official positions on social or political movements, district spokesman Luke Duecy said in a statement earlier this week.
The action was endorsed by the Seattle Education Association, the Seattle council PTSA board, the Social Equality Educators, and the Seattle NAACP. Support from outside of the Washington area was also received, with more than 200 scholars and numerous racial/social justice activists who expressed their unity as well.
Today one of my students threw a stuffed animal across the room and it landed directly in a plate filled with paint
And I had it narrowed down to a few kids but no one would confess so I made them all put their toys away and have five minutes of quiet time to Reflect on Their Behavior
During that five minutes of relative silence, this group of three year olds INVENTED A NEW CLASSMATE, named him, and unanimously blamed him for throwing the toy across the room
There was not a single weak link, they were all ride or die
Concept: Some jackass shows Bucky how to make a blog and it becomes really popular. Not because it’s the blog of James Buchanan Barnes, American Legend, War Hero, Infamous Assassin, Alleged Terrorist. Nobody even knows it’s his blog. It gets really popular because people think it’s a really great shitpost generator or something. Because Bucky is just a Weird Fucking Person and everything he posts on his fucking personal blog comes off as somewhere between dril and Jaden Smith and people are like “this is some quality garbage right here” and thus Accidental Memelord Bucky is born.
Bucky posts things like
“What is wrong with bananas. I ate a banana today and it was Wrong. America why”
“Every time I put on my eye makeup it gets bigger. My whole face is eyeliner now.”
“Why does friendship feel so much like punching”
“When I wake up in the middle of the night I am either thinking ‘who am I? does my life have meaning?’ or “did I already eat all of the plums?’”
“Why are you so grumpy” they ask me. they do not realize this is just my Face.”
“I know i said i would give my left arm for a cup of coffee but i am more awake now and i would like my arm back please”
“I guess I must have done something horrible in a past life. I mean. I definitely did something horrible in this life, so. “
HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT THATS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS PICTURING
since when the fuck do they play baseball in los angeles its absurd i tell you
is anyone else afraid of the russian language in general or is it just me
people asking me what i did yesterday and im like pal i don’t even know what ive been doing for the last few decades for all i know i might have killed kennedy
why is the high five not enough for you people why must we also be punching each other in the knuckles and calling it a fist bump
theres too many countries in europe these days everything was simpler when it was just the motherland and capitalist pigs
tbh i’m not sure if i’ve had a haircut since the late 90′s
i’ve had it with these motherfucking spiders i fucking swear they’re so goddamn chatty just shut up and let my punch you child insect
no one told me when the berlin wall fell this is vital knowledge people
the two questions i always find myself asking are who the hell am i and what the hell is that and the only common element is hell which honestly makes sense
i don’t get along well with mass transportation
some days you’re just going along like normal and all of a sudden you’re punching your best friend in the face thinking since when do i have friends
i was chased by a man dressed as a cat today and i can honestly say its not the strangest thing thats ever happened to me
i hate roadtrips with people you’ve tried to kill in the past because i’m not sure if we can be friends or not
why is my pocketphone trying to sell me drugs
every time i think i’m overreacting i think ‘well at least i didn’t purposefully crash an airplane into the ocean’ and then i feel better
Who needs Fridays when you’ve got Tumblr Thursdays? reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it Tumblr Gets Deep: Next Page–>
It’s so gross and hypocritical to frame food waste as a personal failing. Like, people are dying of hunger because someone forgot some leftovers at the back of their fridge and ended up throwing them away. Major chain grocery stores throw away millions of pounds of food because it’s “too much work” to donate it, and then poison it and destroy it when they throw it away to punish dumpster diving.
Waste is not a personal failing. It’s engineered by corporations, and they profit off of obscuring that.
Much like water waste - shaming a dripping bathroom faucet for wasting water, while hundreds of gallons get wasted in industrial settings.
Always be suspicious of micro-focused framing of environmental issues, when there’s the possibility of macro-level issues hiding behind them.
"Conclusion: There are a lot of confused people in the world and they are all ending up here. Which makes sense in a way. Welcome. I think."
Every so often I go look at the search terms that brought people to my blog and then I think STOP DOING THAT. But then I decide that it would make a funny post and share some of them even though … Continue reading →
Honestly, if there is one good thing that comes from this election (aside from the first female president), it's got to be the press getting used to the idea of verifying the words that come out of an elected officials mouth. I wanna see this continue. I wanna see this become standard. Politician says X, I wanna see that snoped.
Moderator Chris Wallace has indicated he has no plans to fact-check the candidates, but journalists are aren’t afraid to call Trump’s lies out in real time: http://mm4a.org/2ek5kfE
Young homeless people have fucking cellphones!
Like its a really weird thing to assume otherwise. First off, homeless doesn’t fucking imply that you have zero resources. Consumer goods are cheap! Even luxury consumer goods aren’t unattainable. The bar for entry on an rental is high. Its a monthly amount that’s significantly larger than the initial purchase of a cellphone let alone one on a contract. Also, there is housing discrimination. Even if you have access to the money you still will have trouble finding a place if you’re in a marginalised group.
I had a cellphone while homeless, I had a laptop while homeless, I had a tablet while homeless. I bought the phone before I was homeless. The other two were old before I got them and were given as gifts.
Could I have pawned them? Sure, but that’s not anyone’s first choice. They aren’t worth anything anyway, they’re the better half of a decade old
Like, a phone is the most important part of a homeless kid’s kit. It can be used to access wifi for an afternoon for the cost of buying a coffee. The internet is a lifeline, you can arrange to stay at friend’s or to stay at a friend of friend’s. When you’re couch surfing you are always moving from one place to the next and you have to organise that. Likewise, nowadays You need the internet to find a new place to rent. All job applications are done online these days, and you will never see a phonebooth ever again, so if you need to call a prospective employer or landlord, you need a cellphone.
So why is it that people expect homeless folks to not have phones? Why do they get angry when they see them with them? Does a virtuous pan handler only own the cloths on their backs? Does a virtuous pan handler only ever buy sandwiches with THEIR money (that is no longer yours to make decisions about)? A homeless person knows far better what they need than someone who’s never been, and panhandlers know what they need to spend their money on too. It could be rent, it could be utilities it could be food. Not all panhandlers are homeless. And that doesn’t make them any less in need.
Original photo by Adam Schultz, used under Creative Commons license. Click on photo to be taken to the original.
The third presidential debate is in the books, and while the noisiest news coming out of it is about a petulant white nationalist blustering on stage about whether or not he’ll concede the election if he loses, as if that matters for the legal transfer of power (it doesn’t; it’s just that if he doesn’t, he makes himself look even more like a child than he already does), the most interesting thing about the debate — and all the debates, if you ask me — is how very fine a job Hillary Clinton did in each of them. Not just for herself, although she did just fine for herself in each of them, answering in detail when she chose to, and generally effectively deflecting when she didn’t.
No, her real skill was in getting Donald Trump to self-own, debate after debate. There’s the saying that one should not interrupt an enemy when he’s making a mistake; well, Clinton didn’t interrupt Trump, but she did prompt him, winding him up and then letting him spew, not only on the debate stage, but on Twitter and in rallies afterward. She wound him up and let him flail ineffectually at her, as if his onstage taunts and bluster were anything compared to what she’s put up with for over 30 years, but well aware how Trump grumbling that she was nasty or how he was going to put her in jail would play to the large majority of America that isn’t circling around in Trump’s ouroboros of denial. She positioned him to lie and lie again, not just about political subjects in general, but about what’s actually come out of his very own mouth. She made him make himself look like a fool, and she did it without breaking a sweat.
Ezra Klein of Vox has a longer piece on what Clinton was up to and how she did it, which I largely agree with, so I won’t go further into it here. Suffice to say, however, that Clinton played him, once, twice, three times (a lady!), and he never seemed to figure it out. But then, why would he? Trump is apparently mentally unable to conceive of being dunked on by a woman, which left Clinton free to dunk on him at will. Trump has no one to blame but himself — not that he would ever do that — but Clinton gets all the credit for happily exploiting his weaknesses.
This is one reason, incidentally, why the current GOP shibboleth that Clinton would have been defeatable if only she had been up against a different candidate is mostly wishful thinking. Clinton isn’t winning just because she’s up against Trump, and she didn’t cream Trump in the debates just because Trump is so very fabulously incompetent. She’s winning because she’s prepared — she knows her opponent, she knows his weaknesses, and she made him reveal them himself. And she would have done it to anyone the GOP would have thrown her way.
Honestly, now: Does anyone really think that Clinton wouldn’t have shredded Ted Cruz, that pulsating globule of smugness, in any debate they might have had? Yes, Cruz was a nationally-ranked debater in college. That’s very nice for him. Clinton would have walked him into his own wankery, the off-putting self-regard that makes everyone want to find a way to stop talking to him five seconds after he opens his mouth, and let that awfulness happen while he spewed his dominionist nonsense. And let’s not even imagine what she would have done to poor, unprepared Marco Rubio, although the words “chew toy” do come to mind.
Indeed, the only person in the GOP field who I think would have given Clinton a run for her money might have been John Kasich, whose largely-pragmatic and well-seasoned demeanor is not terribly dissimilar to Clinton’s. But the GOP’s not about pragmatic and well-seasoned anymore, and even then I think Clinton would have his number sooner than later — he’s got a temper on him, and she’d poke him until he popped. A Kasich-Clinton debate score would be closer, with no knockouts on either side, but I think in the end she’d win on points.
The fact is, Clinton is and continues to be underappreciated for her own hard-won political skills. It’s easy to say she’s not a natural politician like her husband or Barack Obama (the latter comment being ironic, considering how many comparisons to Spock he endured early on), but here’s a point to consider about “natural” talents — they can be lazy, because, after all, if you can get the “A” with almost no effort, why go for the “A+”? Trust me, I know a little bit about the laziness of “natural talent” and how difficult it is to put in the extra work to go from merely good to something better.
Clinton is not a natural politician. She works and works and works and makes a better effort than everyone around her and just keeps on coming. And if people underestimate how formidable that makes her, as Trump so obviously has, and as smarter politicians than Trump also have and continue to do despite all available evidence? Well, I suspect that’s just fine with her. She’ll do to them what she did to Trump in the debates. And then she’ll keep going.
