@2:

It won't help, in fact it won't do squat because the State Department had already suspended processing visa applications a month ago (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/suspension-of-routine-visa-services.html). It's just another sop to his xenophobic base who apparently believe that immagrunts are a' comin' here during the "fake pandemic" to steal their jobs while they're all on lockdown.

It's Diddy, not Ditty.

I've always thought fundraising numbers are over-rated, probably even more so now. There have always been a small handful of "undecideds," who may be subject to potential sway and influence that could be targeted by a campaign ad. But with an unhinged, shit-brained extremist in office, any person with even a fraction of an ounce of critical thoughtfulness is gonna vote Biden (at least if they're in a state with a potentially impactful vote. And those without such a vote will dutifully support his campaign, even if we do so whilst holding our nose.) The actual number of voters these funds may actually influence has got to be continually shrinking. I guess a case could be made that Joe could benefit from a strong get-out-the-vote campaign, but again, anyone who gives a shit in the slightest will recognize the importance of doing so regardless.

It looks like the 404 troll commenters have been thwarted as the posting a comment from a new sign-up without email verification appears fixed.

@9: Of course, you an authorized troll as well.

@7 The primary determinant of political outcomes is what they call the "fundamentals". Which is to say, if the economy is up the incumbent will tend to win. If the economy is down, the incumbent will tend to lose. Its only when the economy is ambiguous that other factors (money, charisma, dirty tricks, etc) become important.

That's just science.

It assumes fair election conditions. Which we don't really have what with all the counter-majoritarian leverage baked into the US electoral system. But gerrymanders are brittle because you give your opponents invulnerable districts and give yourself as barely safe as you dare. And public sentiment can overwhelm that threshold.

Raindrop @8, assuming your observation is accurate, wow, this is abso-fucking-lutely fabulous news! Thanks, The Stranger. Maybe these comment threads deserve not to be shut down after all.

I'm going to give it a couple days just to see for myself that it's for realz and then make another contribution to The Stranger.

testing...

8
evidently not

12
Don't Wait!
Contribute Now!!

Sohla needs her own show with Hunzi's editing.

@12: Spoke too soon, even though they did work on email verification. Somebody's working on it though.

@17 1,000%

This is a test of the Emergency Socialist Notification System. This is only a test.
B E E E E E E E P
This has been a test of the Emergency Socialist Notification System. Had The Stranger actually been in danger of folding within the next 30 days, you would have been instructed to direct your browsers at Wonkette for news and official Socialist information. This is only a test.
B E E E E E E E P
This has been a test of the Emergency Socialst Notification System.

Results from a new study in which a representative population sample was tested for coronavirus antibodies in LA show that the coronavirus infection is vastly more widespread and its mortality rate is much, much lower than previously believed—by a full order of magnitude.

LA County Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said the much higher estimate of cases puts the coronavirus mortality rate around .1% or .2%. The mortality rate for the seasonal flu is around .1%.

Previous antibody tests in Copenhagen and Santa Clara County CA estimated the coronavirus mortality rate at .16% and .14%, respectively.

raindrop @18, I'd still be fine with the quick fix. Disable comments.

This pandemic has had a way of--not breaking systems--but exposing systems that were already broken. (Check George Packer's big piece just published in The Atlantic.) Slog was already broken long before the virus came along.

Biden just raised almost $50M in one quarter. Yes he's behind Trump, but now that's he's the presumptive nominee, he can start to catch up. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/politics/joe-biden-march-fundraising/index.html

In other news, I know you're a little butt-hurt about Bernie not making it, but you guys are going to start saying nice things about Biden at some point, right? You do know about the alternative, right? You're not going to be huffy all the way to November because you realize that would only help re-elect a genuinely monstrous psychopath who is literally killing his own citizens as we speak, right?

I wish they would quit hyping these national polls, as they can lead some into complacency. They're meaningless; the only polls that matter are those in about 6 battleground states, and those are significantly closer. It doesn't matter if Trump wins California and New York by 1 point or 41 points, if we can't win most of the 6 battleground states.

@8 Really?

@26: Logic dictates that the only thing now is that these authentication vulnerabilities and incomplete features in the commenting modules have the expect approval and the blessing of Index Newspapers LLC.

It's like the problems the IRS has with their automated systems. Nobody with the skill to fix them has any incentive whatsoever for doing so.

In fairness, I do regularly comment on Fox News articles claiming to be a racist, sexist, proudly ignorant, uneducated, gun-toting, fatass before advocating for Joe Biden.

Well it was obvious he was going to backtrack when corporations went ape shit on his ass about access to workers:

President Trump said on Tuesday that he would order a temporary halt in issuing green cards to prevent people from immigrating to the United States, but he backed away from plans to suspend guest worker programs after business groups exploded in anger at the threat of losing access to foreign labor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/coronavirus-live-news-updates.html#link-44cf0527