Everybody is following the exciting race for the NFC East title, the most competitive divisional contest in the NFL. Two weeks ago, it appeared that the Philadelphia Eagles were primed to take control, following ivision wins against the Cowboys and Giants, for the semi -respectable 3-4-1 mid-season record — another win and they may justbe able to buffer against the coming deluge of legitimate football teams on the schedule to get to the final weeks of NFC East foes. But no. Still in first place, but as tenuous as it gets,you see, as…

Eagles 3 wins 6 losses 1 tie
Giants 3 wins 7 losses
Football Team 3 wins 7 losses
Cowboys 3 wins 7 losses

The other teams are on a roll.

And what came on Sunday? Both Washington generic stand-by name and the Dallas Cowboys winning actual non-divisional games — doubling the number of non divisional wins from two to four, and setting up a rposing Thanksgiving game where first place is on the line. Surprising, as the Cowboys jumped right back in wirh one win following a 4 game losing streak that began with the team having a losing record. They are perhaps back on track with the teturn of their back -up quarterback. Fans of chaos will be cheering on the Washington no name, as a Cowboys win probably makes them a prohibitive favorite — a more favorable schedule (Basically the last of the teams to have the Bengals are ahead, and more inter-division games)– and a Washington win ensures they win a season tie so may be able to withstand the losses likely coming.

The most controversial game decision of the season for the NFC East — to pass over a game winning long field goal attempt and settle for a tie stands as either a genius move that willallow them to win it all in the end — or maybe serve as a place holder for acoming dive to avoid the inglorious NFC East victory… Or amounts to nothing.

As were, 22 teams have a record that would place them in first place in the division, and an additional four teams rest within one game. Only leaving the Jaguars and the Jets out of it.

Walking across a park, my facemask — as usually is except when in any crowd or in indoor business — dropped off onto my neck for easy placement. Someone yells at me “Hey! You have a mask! Use it!”

I manage to bark out “I’m more than six feet from anybody!”, and a tad later wish I coulda added ” and if I had it on the six feet would collapse to me bumping into you as my glasses get fogged up.”

But after that I find myself looking at everyone in public, taking some note of who has it up and who doesn’t, at all times, and wondering — is this jerk barking this out at everyone, and if so doesn’t that get tiring?

We invited every single Republican senator to appear on Meet the Press this morning. They all declined. But we are very pleased that Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has agreed to join us this morning.

Sucks to be Hutchinson, knowing he was… Assuming that MTP is referencing current senators and not Senator Elects, just cause I don’t want to figure it out… Only on the show because 53 people prior rejected an invitation.

The last week, Mitt Romney was on. I assume they may actually have not invited him, or if they did — Romney can be excused at least for the implications. Also, would they really seiously want, say, retiring Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexandar?

… And counter historical claims of Kamala Harris.

Yeah, as things turned out what Bush did was start an Art career, painting up a storm. Politically doing nothing more than sending some broadly upbeat message of unity in the summer of the Pandemic.

I imagine our current President elect may end up in that photo-op mode of meeting with the predecessor — after Trump gets around to acknowledging, perhaps in Nixonian fashion by in a conciliatory speech that nonetheless alludes to vote fraud on behalf of Kennedy, his defeat — and producing a similar image as we got from Obama and Trump aftet meeting for the scheduled fifteen minutes but lasting over an hour and moving to followed with conciliatory upbeat talk — but Biden may opt for tne fifteen minutes with Trump. Whatever presidentisl business over the hour Biden will get from an hour Obama, replicating his prior talk with Trump.

I also wonder how some such an image as this one will come out — will the remaining presidents rearrande themselves, tne Overton Window that had Carter on the outs now moving him in with Trump out over there? Obviously, there may not too much time to test it out… Carter up there in age and all.

The most loathsome person to comment on this here blog has passed away at a reasonably ripe old age — possibly the most famous person to comment but I would tend to want to peg my favorite children’s book writer for that status just to keep me sane.
This was, of course, back in anothet decade, when people actually read anything here sometimes. It was also a reminder that people do do vanity searches on themselves.

Looking over some of the obituaries and news reports, it is a curious matter to dissect some things — did this dribble out, largely unnoticed from a neo-nazi / white suptemicist message board, picked up from something like the Southern Poverty Law Center a week or so later while doing routine “watch”-work, and then from there to NY Times and wider media? Or was there a more formal press release offered over to the “enemy zionist media”?

Mark Levin tweets a “reminder” suggesting states send electors in defiance of whatever even the state court concludes.
Mark Levin also tweets a denial that he said such a thing.

Curious, this exploration of the ending of the Trump administration posits, for crass legal purposes, a Trump resination and … Hrm… short — less time spent than William Henry Harrison — Pence Presidential administration, just long enough to pardon Trump. Such a move disturbs the understood meaning behind Pence’s “47 twitter feed following”, lined up as it with Trump’s 45, though I guess can be rectified by him following one more twitterer — since he will now be trying to be the new Grover Cleveland — getting to be counted twice.
Then again, if you follow the idea that a muzzled Pence is attemptimg to send cryptic messages while punlicly standing by his man, the point of this twitter follow number will expire in short order so he can just drop it.

The political divisions within the two parties, and how they may manifest themselves past the immediate future, are interesting to follow. On the Republican side, it becomes a looksee into how one addresses the Trump litigation and conspiracy theories on the Election. I will go ahead and skip the 2000 election in mode of comparison and ponder 2004 — which saw outlets like the dailykos website and the Al Franken radio show working as “gate-keepers” to patiently explain supposed discreprencies to the “vote steal in Ohio” ians — represented by other hosts at that now defunct radio station and forwarded by obvious grifters like Bev Harris of “Black Box Voting”. Today I see the National Review website, and I assume the printed edition, running articles debunking various shouts of supposed sightings of improprieties in vote tallying, or to note the shakiness of various “whistle blowers”. On the other side, apparently Mark Levin is posting to the whole gambit and calling out all the supposed allies not lining up to fight this fraud, posting to an American Spectator article which I see full of anecdotal bias in small town Pennsylvania with no one understanding who here may’ve voted Biden and full of selected poll numbers and frameworks that refuse to come to terms with the obvious idea that polling errors in whole will be inconsistent — or… distributed unevenly.
Worth trying to figure out if this is accurate, actual emissary, and I have no clue what this brawl represents but I guess it is his post Trump direction — walk into random restaurants end up shouting at everyone.
Mother Jones gets a little too cutesy with the “ask obvious no responders” on ” is this a coup?”

The Democrats are annoying. We can presume AOC will win twitter in any twitter battle against Joe Manchin, twitter losses costing Joe Manchin… Less than nothing. As wete, in the immediate contest, well, yes — Manchin is correct — ” defund the police my butt”, indeed.

Geographically, something interests me with this one…

Now, fill in the light reds and light blue — the vote tally is not about to change. And there is one inaccuracy not filled — there needs to a snatch of blue in Nebraska, and the red for bulk of physical Maine — perhaps the redistricters in Nebraska will think of this stray electoral vote in redrawing for partisan purposes, or perhaps they will remain wrary of depositing Democratic votes in the other districts.

The Maine vote and Alaska has the unfortunate effect of disrupting what would otherwise be one continuous Republican mass — if with the various Democratic blue intrusions, though of course the effect comes merely due to stateline political structures. As were, the Republicans can be broken into three stretches. The Democrats are stuck in a more jagged six stretches… If not for the intrusion of Canadian waters or the state of Ohio, the northern tier woulda broken it down to a more managable five.
As stands, it is twice what you get with 1976, when Jimmy Carter was King of the East, and notably that odd twin Alaska and Hawaii will always make continuity well nigh impossible. Naturally, larger landmasses than the Democrats suffered with their two islands — Massachsetts or Minnesota, and the District of Columbia — in 1972 and 1988 against three masses for Republican red.

In inveighing election results…

This is understood by your “What’s the Matter with Kansa”ns as “the rubes hoodwinked to voting against their interests”, but as you can digest… It is different than that.

Most Americans, Witko said, have political beliefs that are less consistent than those of the politicians they vote for. They want better health care but lower taxes; a smaller government but a bigger military; higher wages but cheaper products. In a 2014 study, researchers found that most so-called “moderate voters” were, in fact, people who hold extreme positions from both the political right and the political left.

I can’t tell what the tone of this 538 twitterer is, but it sounds — more or less (not perfectly, but everyone such will be the price for everyone’s explanation) — fair enough to me.

Here’s a Trump voter: “Trump is pro-life, pro-family, pro-business, defends freedom of conscience and religion, and wants to get out of foreign wars.”

That last one will always be a curious one for me — for a retort it does seem Biden is slightly more likely to continue war in Afghanistan and Trump is more likely in Iran — but telling that this falls off the ledger completely on those “In Our America” sloganeering litany flags all woke businesses dropped on their doors in December 2016 — even as it was what animated the previous decade and a half of this contingent.

But I imagine the swing basically falls down to an assurance that… we won’t be pressed into entertaining this thought on eleventh hour miltary brass shake-ups.

Or, in the most extreme scenario, would Trump try to get the military to help him stay in office beyond Inauguration Day?

Never low key rankles — and sure, but can’t eleventh hour manuevers be taken back to ninth hour manuevers?

Y’know… Though this election night hand wringing comes off flat…

It is bad analysis typical of Trump coverage…
will soon be apparent whether Biden’s low-key, some say lackadaisical, campaign was brilliant or foolish. One upside for Biden: it kept the focus on Trump, making the election a referendum on the president. Conversely, Biden’s making fewer campaign stops may turn out to have been too cautious.

The mismanagement of Trump’s campaign is one for the ages. If he overcomes it, the president will have been lucky. Hundreds of millions of dollars ill-spent, a campaign manager with a Ferrari who was only dispatched when it was too late, an inability to master small donor online fundraising—all of it made this campaign the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. In the final days of the race, Trump was forced to jet to California, a state where he stands no chance, to hustle money the old fashioned way—with a pricy fundraiser

Like it or not, it was what brought him, and ends up right there self – contradictory in assessment. Meanwhile, Democrats are stuck on a batch of high priced high profile senate defeats… Strategy needs to be thought and considered, don’t it, beyond this rote note.

Round about 2008 and 2009, I was musing over the prospects of Obama as John F Kennedy, partly due to the voguish and carefully crafted image creation and more darkly out of the murkily verified or disputed reports of an increase of threats against him. In playing the whole tapestry out, I imagined Hillary Clinton would be a Lyndon Johnson figure — she herself had in the 2008 primaries referenced Johnson as someone who could get it done “governing in prose even if not able to pull that poetry crap off” — as a succesor standing there with less flair as things fall apart and inevitable unfulfillable promises lead to disillusionment.

As turned out, Obama may have been both Kennedy and Johnson, Trump pulling together a bizarre Nixon. (Ask Roger Stone). We are at that “Last Days” stage, though if Trump were wandering around talking to presidential portraits, it would at least actually show self awareness.

So now we come to… Joseph Biden as Jimmy Carter. Election results make any partisan Democrat paralyzed, a brittle coalition and no clear promises in a setting of problems looming “not his fault”, and a party with some left-wing socialists dreaming of big things and non-ideological centrists with no plans.

Of course, if you told me in 2000 the next presidents — Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden — it is the last two names that would be insane.

Parting thoughts
Y’all really believe the Democrats would engage in a multi-state coordinated strategy to steal the presidential election, but keep the GOP in charge of the senate to block their agenda and keep GOP state legislative dominance to draw the next decade’s redistricting lines?

And, from 538 analysis, obvious strategizing in a world where the Democratic nominee was conventioning with too many damned Republicans… a sign of how mixed any win may be…

Of the eight Democrat-held seats that Republicans have flipped so far, Republican women are responsible for seven of them.