Winner. Almost every single person I know is a victim of child abuse or neglect, and only one ever had any encounters with CPS.

German stoicism and Latin-American sense of privacy, I guess, make the lie out of this. No way is child abuse remotely uncommon here, unless you're limiting it to outright injurious beating or sexual assault.

People in PA wonder why everyone they meet seems to behave like a jerk... how our parents treated us is likely why. Well, that and the relentless crushing poverty of ultra-high taxes, ultra-sparse services, ultra-low wages and shockingly high prices.

Unfortunately, the only thing unusual about this in my experience is that it's usually the dealership pulling this crap, and the independent station being more honest. Though that's obviously not a rule, just a tendancy. Or maybe just Toyota and Honda dealers are more often crooked.

When I bought my Toyota, the dealer was awesome for a few years. Then management changed hands. Instantly, inspections became a laundry list of shit I'd never heard of in 10 years of driving the car. Yeah, I don't think so. Never went back.

Plenty of corruption & their own pay raises. And Gerrymandering. They're really quite busy, just not at the business of government or the interests of anyone but their megadonors.

Next month's headline: Republican election officials do it anyway, Republican DA refuses to file charges, and when the Feds do, Trump-appointed judge dismisses the case...

I'm not so sure.

Presuming that this race was never as close as reported, and by a wide margin as I'm apparently hearing... then the Media is complicit.

The question is WHY?

Your post is making me question. I hadn't thought there was a positive spin to be put on making everything into a "horserace" when it really isn't, but it might actually drive turnout.

Personally I thought it was the usual, implicit right-wing bias seeking to dispirit Democratic voters, since Republicans always seem to have a fighting chance in the polls regardless of the insanity of their positions, campaigns, or behavior (see Walker...).

I'm surrounded by Trump signs, MAGA, et. al. If anyone was taking them out, I have a better-than-average seat to witness it. Is it impossible? No. But at some point weight of statistics comes into play. As in, you see & hear this bullshit constantly. With absolutely no examples of the opposite, not even edge cases, it's entirely rational to at least say they're rarer. You can't say that the media wouldn't love reporting it, if it were there to report.

But you go ahead and just assume it's bias. That's the mirror you're looking at.

Even if I didn't automatically distrust right-wingers, your account looks (and your posts sound) like a Chinese or Russian troll farm account, if not even a bot. Pound sand.

The vast amount of lying done by right-wing supporters makes it hard to believe you. Marking up one's own houses with BLM graffiti and the like. People supporting the barbaric ideology of the Right can't seem to be trusted to act or speak truthfully or in good faith. As evidenced by the dumpster full of Democratic signs.

Where do you live that people were destroying Trump signs? I flat-out do not believe you, because I see no evidence anywhere. Even the propagandists a la Tucker Carlson would be shrieking about it if it actually happened anywhere to any measurable degree.

I'm also going to challenge you to tell me why banned or expensive abortion is good, for anyone, because it isn't. Not for babies, families, men, women, or society.

I'll be the first to say that Democrats, especially the politicians thereof, don't have all the answers, aren't right about everything, etc.

But you don't see them doing this shit, or if you do it's an outlier. You don't see them resorting to the pervasive incivility, rule-breaking, law-breaking, lying & cheating at the direct campaign level. And it's entirely ubiquitous at all levels of Republican politics.

That alone ought to tell you who to vote for, at least until we can break the 2-party system via Ranked Choice voting, hopefully someday. In the meantime, you still might find yourself yelling angrily at your TV at some boneheaded policy or new law. But at least you have some reasonable hope of either changing their mind or at least voting them out. Republicans clearly have absolutely no interest in anything but plutocracy and fearmongering, and will stoop to any level of malfeasance to get there.

We have one of those! It's short, but very nice. Too bad there's just one pain-in-the-ass road between me and it that's not walkable or bike-able in a safe manner (no shoulders, no sidewalks), and it's like 5+ miles through heavy traffic to go around that spot. Sigh. It's RIGHT there, but I still gotta strap on the bike rack, etc.