Category Archives: Uncategorized

They should have thought of that before they went there to do research:

When scientists discover a new species, they are allowed to make up its binomial (Latin) name. This results in interesting names, like Scaptia beyonceae, a horse fly that was named after Beyonce, or Laboulbenia quarantenae, which got its name because it was discovered during quarantine. Scientists from Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK, decided to keep it simple and name one of the species of myxobacteria after where they found it. The only problem: it was found in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, giving this species the name Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis. [Massive Science]

No offense to my Welsh readers, but I didn’t want to study that microbe anyways.

Long-time readers may remember my loathing for voting machines, and that I’d prefer to see a legion of volunteers doing the counting manually. This Politico report changes my opinion not a whit:

“We’re going to wind up with a thousand court cases that cannot just be resolved by just going into the software and checking to see what happened, because it’s proprietary,” said Ben Ptashnik, the co-founder of the National Election Defense Coalition, a bipartisan advocacy group that pushes Congress to reform election security.

In most elections, the intellectual-property laws that surround the machinery of America’s electoral system prove inconsequential in determining who won or lost a campaign, and software isn’t central to most contested-election scenarios, such as late-arriving ballots or issues with access to polling locations. But in instances where the vote tally itself is in question, analysts could need access to voting machines’ underlying code to determine if potential security flaws, errors or even purposeful tampering are behind the irregularities. And this year, with widespread fears of contested ballots, recounts and the potential for weeks of legal challenges that threaten to undermine public faith in the results, those IP laws could prove decisive.

“You know how Apple fights against law enforcement coming in and going into their iPhone software? Well, you’d be in the same position,” said Ptashnik. “You might have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get permission to get into proprietary software.”

Even if we had access to the hardware and software for full inspection, it’d not really be enough. Proving software is correct is a difficult proposition, and in all likelihood these companies aren’t using languages that lend themselves to automated proofs.

Hardware is it’s own ugly game.

As are backdoors in both realms.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: People are adders, computers are multipliers. Sure, people can be corrupted – but we know, or knew, how to keep a vote uncorrupted. A single counter can only affect a few votes, and a little redundancy will catch them at their game. At higher levels, it’s a matter of keeping an eye on management – and that’s what party lawyers can do.

But it’s a rare party lawyer who can say This machine is miscounting!

Pronk:

When fleeing from a predator, gazelles often perform a distinctive stiff-legged vertical leap known as “pronking” or “stotting.” This can seem strange, since these high bounces into the air make the gazelle more visible to predators, and also take up time and energy that could be dedicated to faster, more direct movement away from their pursuer. …

Scientists have considered several possible explanations for this, such as alerting other members of their herd to the danger or trying to avoid an ambush in tall grass. Research on Thomson’s gazelles, however, suggests pronking is a form of communication from gazelles to their predators. It may be a behavior known in evolutionary biology as an “honest signal,” in which a gazelle leaps to show off its own general fitness, potentially discouraging the predator by demonstrating how hard it will be to catch. [“8 Facts You Might Not Know About Gazelles,” Russell McLendon, Treehugger]

Ambitious Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) may have just thrown away his shot at the White House – or even keeping his Senator’s seat in purplish Florida:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) at last night's rally on the Texas Trump caravan that menacingly surrounded Biden bus:

"We love what they did, but here's the thing they don't know: We do that in Florida every day. I love seeing the boat parades … We thank all the great patriots…" pic.twitter.com/kRaLcW60jn

— The Recount (@therecount) November 2, 2020

The danger of playing to your base is alienating all those other voters, and this is an alienating move.

2022 is not far enough away for voters, or opponents, to forget about this endorsement of an act of intimidation.

As anyone paying attention knows, there are concerns that Trump will attempt to delay or confuse the vote counting in various states, in a far-fetched attempt to steal the election. He’s also expressed disinterest in a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.

So let’s setup a scenario here.

As is probable, let’s assume Democrat Mark Kelly wins the special election in Arizona.

Fairly improbably, but possible, Democrat Rafael Warnock wins the special election in Georgia.

Special election winners are seated immediately. This brings the Senate to 51-49 before Jan 21 – probably well before it.

And then there’s a new corruption scandal on the horizon – which will be known as the influence peddling scheme concerning the Turkish bank Halkbank:

If the New York Times’s story about the Justice Department’s handling of the case of a Turkish bank—and President Trump’s interference in that case—had broken any other week, it would be a very big deal. A week before the election, with the country inured to the president’s propensity to abuse law enforcement power, it has barely merited a yawn.

The case is worth your time.

Recall that back in June, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was dismissed abruptly under somewhat confusing circumstances. Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman had stepped down from his position—only for Berman himself to deny having resigned. Berman then refused to leave until President Trump himself issued a letter firing him, after which Berman announced that he would depart from his job with the expectation that his deputy would “continue to safeguard the Southern District’s enduring tradition of integrity and independence.” The strange chain of events, including why the attorney general was so eager to be rid of the U.S. attorney, has never been fully explained. [Lawfare]

Suppose, at 51-49, Trump is being recalcitrant and pulling his usual bully shit. Speaker Pelosi, with an even larger majority incoming (but not seated) than before, calls up Senator Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Majority Leader (R-KY), who will probably survive reelection, and lays it out:

1. Trump is shredding our nation.
2. Trump is destroying the Republican Party.
3. Trump is selling influence (see Halkbank, above), which reflects poorly on the Republican Party as well, especially with 2022 already on the horizon.

What to do about it?

Lightning impeachment. Seventeen Republican Senators is a long ways to go, but it’s not as improbable as it seems.

Impeachment articles can be drawn up in a hurry, if Pelosi so wishes it. They can be delivered to the Senate within a day or two. SCOTUS cannot save President Trump, only the Senate GOP members can save him.

And many of them are not happy with him. They see fellow Party members voting against him. And against them.

And some of the incumbents, besides those already lost in Arizona and Georgia, will also have lost, such as Perdue (also of Georgia – it’s the two-fer state), Gardner (R-CO), Daines (R-MT), Ernst (R-IA), Robertson (R-KA – he’s retiring, actually, but having nothing to lose but his Party, he may still be interested), and Graham (R-SC), all looking for revenge on the failure in the White House. In the Senate until Jan 21, it’s entirely possible that they, and a few Senators who were not up for reelection, just might be willing to turn on the Curse of the Republican Party.

So perhaps McConnell twists some arms, collects some promises – and then he, House Minority Leader Senator Schumer (R-NY), and Pelosi, after some horse-trading, compose a letter telling Trump to peacefully cooperate or face immediate dismissal.

A long-shot? Sure! But speculating about the possible is part of what gets me through these tension-filled times. And it would be quite entertaining if it came down to actual impeachment.

The senior Republican Party attorney, Benjamin Ginsberg, remarking on frenzied claims of voting fraud:

Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered.

The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist. [WaPo]

If anyone would know, he would. I always like retrograde opinions from knowledgeable people.

David French, a NeverTrumper, discovers the pleasures of being a political independent:

On the surface, this feels like a hard road to walk in a highly polarized time. And it can be. There’s an immense comfort in a sense of political belonging, especially if you live in a deep-blue or deep-red region. It can be personally difficult to chart a different path.

But there are deep rewards. First, it liberates you from uncomfortable and destructive associations and arguments. While the Bible promises Christians that they’ll face challenges and sometimes-fierce opposition in their lives, it is vastly better to face opposition for the things you actually believe and the values you actually hold rather than being forced to align with an ideological and political “package” you do not want to purchase.

Second, it opens up opportunities for unlikely friendships and unexpected relationships. It changes your posture towards the world to one that welcomes allies case-by-case. It cultivates a posture of openness and fellowship.

Simply by being an independent, one can influence friends, even strangers, who’ve retreated into Party membership and partisanship. But you must be prepared with sophisticated arguments, willingness to concede points, an open mind for new knowledge, and a thoughtful demeanor. But then, being an independent means building your own opinions and your own definitions of acceptance.

For the partisan who has been having doubts on either side of the line, being an independent is a viable course that lets you keep your intellectual integrity intact. It means that you and I don’t have to vote for someone whose competency is in doubt, just because they’ve been picked by the Party; it means I can consider the universe of choices and pick the one that I think will be best for their desired position for the term.

It’s good to see an influential former straight-line Republican voter evolve a more sophisticated approach to being a citizen – and implicitly reject team politics.

Some ornamental cabbage from a couple of weeks ago.

Probably gone now.

When you get that first uncomfortable feeling that you’ll soon need full access to the bathroom. Remember the lawyer dude in Jurassic Park?

Monster Island (2019) may not have had any real discernible theme, certainly no stars, and not even Godzilla, and yet this story of what a hard driving marine mining entrepreneur discovers on the floor of the ocean, amidst the manganese nodules he seeks, is unexpectedly charming.

And what does he find? A kaiju, a monstrously huge, tentacled, fiery creature that traps the mining CEO and the crew of their submersible craft when they investigate the sudden disappearance of their remotely controlled probe. As they ride out their situation, the Australian Coast Guard intervenes via ship and submarine, much to the woe of the Coast Guard, the kaiju – and its young.

But the miners are not without craft, seeking to find ways to destroy their foe. But when an attempt goes awry in unforeseen ways, a government inspector, along for the ride, who happens to be a geomythologist – a rather neat portmanteau – suggests bringing in an expert on kaiju myths, who directs them to Monster Island.

Because that’s where the kaiju killer … exists.

It all sounds silly, and some of it is. For quite a while, nary an Australian accent is to be heard. The physics and the biology beg for hoots of laughter. The reclusive expert on myths is given some bad dialogue. And, yet, it’s an earnest, almost charming, movie. Given a set of ridiculous assumptions about kaiju in the world, it quite calmly follows the logic, both physical and emotional, to its end point. It doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice a character to emphasize the serious situation in which they find themselves. The characters change in believable ways, and, even more importantly, they’re not cardboard cutouts. My personal favorite is the grizzled French captain of the rental boat used by the miners for transporting their, for he has a fine gift of subtle sarcasm.

The story comes to an abrupt end, in fact such an abrupt end that I wonder if they ran over-budget and had to prematurely terminate what could have been a truly messy kaiju fight. But if you’re in the mood for some big monsters trodding the boards, as it were, you may enjoy this uneven effort.

I know I’d watch a sequel.

In physics, a half-life is the time it takes half of a homogenuous group of unstable atoms to decay.. But in society? Take a guess as to how much longer the QAnon phenomenon to be, well, half way to disappearing.

Yeah, I don’t know, either. But if you guessed around maybe five more years – it first appeared in October 2017 – I think you’re way short of the mark, in light of this article by Amarnath Amarasingam and Marc-André Argentino on conspiracy theorists:

Rationalization is now seen by researchers as the most important factor in whether a group survives prophetic failure. Groups can do this in at least four ways:

1. Spiritualization: the group states that what was initially thought of as a visible, real-world occurrence did happen, but it was something that took place in the spiritual realm.
2. Test of Faith: the group states that the prophecy was never going to happen, but is in fact a test of faith: a way for the “divine” to weed out true believers from those unworthy.
3. Human Error: the group argues that it’s not the case that the prophecy was wrong, but that followers had read the signs incorrectly.
4. Blame others: the group argues that they themselves never stated that the prophecy was going to happen, but that this was how outsiders interpreted their statements.

The third strategy—reaffirmation—is also one used by several groups discussed in previous research. In this approach, the group brushes aside the failure of prophecy and reaffirms the value of the group, the benefits of membership, and doubles down on the importance of their journey on the path of truth. [Religion Dispatches]

As a big rationalizer myself – in common with most of humanity, I suspect – as well as an investor, this makes sense. Once that initial substantial investment is made, whether it’s a financial matter or a belief system, it’s hard, so hard to walk away. From social prestige within the group to the simple belief that you are privy to secret knowledge, QAnon has several features that attract and hold believers.

And will so continue, frantically rationalizing, no matter how many QAnon promises and prophecies fail. It’s much like the charismatic sect leader who proclaims the failure of his prophecy means his followers have prayed away disaster. It’s ridiculous, but nearly all of his, or her, sect members will buy it with hardly a blink. The alternative, of course, is to think themselves fools.

Based on this reading and experience with hard core believers of other conspiracy theories – and I include religious sects in that list for analytical reasons – I will guess QAnon will hang on for at least twenty years.

And possibly as many as fifty years.

For the next five years, they will be a potent force. We will soon have a QAnon believer in Congress, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple more are elected in 2022. After five years of lunacy, incompetency, and failed QAnon promises, though, I expect QAnon will start a long, long slide into oblivion. Hopefully, no one will be killed because of any associated ravings.

First and foremost for most Trump-gaggers has been then assault on American democracy by Trump and the merry band of gerrymanderers and voter suppression teams that preceded him. But there are other worries, such as the assault on the balance between religious “freedom” (is it a freedom to inflict one’s beliefs on another via the legal system?) and the secular system deriving from the Establishment Clause. Or the disregard of science when its conclusions were not politically convenient. Towards these two, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a free-thinkers organization, has developed a handy timeline and published it for all. Naturally, CFI’s peculiar concerns play a part in such a timeline, but I tend to consider that all to the good. To the right, I present just a portion of the timeline, without working links. If you’re looking for a handy summation of just how much Trump was manipulated by the right – or, if you prefer, how much he championed their causes, earnestly or not – this is a good place to start.

Phantasmagoria:

Phantasmagoria (American pronunciation (help·info), also fantasmagorie, fantasmagoria) was a form of horror theatre that (among other techniques) used one or more magic lanterns to project frightening images such as skeletons, demons, and ghosts onto walls, smoke, or semi-transparent screens, typically using rear projection to keep the lantern out of sight. Mobile or portable projectors were used, allowing the projected image to move and change size on the screen, and multiple projecting devices allowed for quick switching of different images. In many shows the use of spooky decoration, total darkness, (auto-)suggestive verbal presentation, and sound effects were also key elements. Some shows added all kinds of sensory stimulation, including smells and electric shocks. Even required fasting, fatigue (late shows) and drugs have been mentioned as methods of making sure spectators would be more convinced of what they saw. The shows started under the guise of actual séances in Germany in the late 18th century, and gained popularity through most of Europe (including Britain) throughout the 19th century. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “So, while we’re waiting . . . will Mike Pence ever be president?” Ben Terris, WaPo:

There won’t be any boat parades for Pence, but not all roads to the White House go through a marina. He might not call for the jailing of his political foes, but he might well find success in selling Trump’s phantasmagoria of “American carnage” — antifa mobs, police abolitionists, immigrant caravans, a new Red Menace — to voters who are more comfortable with a milder messenger.

This looks interesting:

An AI system can produce magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans with only a quarter of the data normally required, which could speed up the scanning process.

MRIs are created by placing a person inside a machine that scans the body and are often used to image brain development or muscle and tissue injuries. The speedy AI-based system, called FastMRI, was developed by researchers at Facebook AI and NYU Langone. It was trained on thousands of images gathered from 242 people.

The team then used the new system to create MRI scans of 108 people’s knees using 75 per cent less data taken during the scan to generate the finished image. The AI reconstruction uses less actual data, resulting in less time in an MRI machine. It manages this by filling in the “gaps” based on the images it was trained on.

The team then gave the 108 FastMRI scans to six radiologists, five of whom couldn’t distinguish them from MRI scans obtained using the traditional method. [NewScientist, paywall]

I get to spend another 45 minutes in an MRI machine in order to check how a cyst on my pituitary gland is changing, if at all, after pandemic vaccines are developed and approved, so something like this is interesting, if too late to reduce in my particular case.

But I do worry that the data of interest will reside in the gaps filled in by the machine learning algorithm. They don’t really address that possibility in this relatively short article.

I’ve been mulling Erick Erickson’s missive of yesterday and what it reveals about the far-right, but I’m not really sure what to pull out of it that he might acknowledge. Here’s the first paragraph that caught my attention:

I voted straight Republican this year except for my local sheriff and district attorney, two positions I do not think should be partisan anyway. I would not vote for a politician who supports abortion rights. Abortion is a euphemism for legally sanctioned murder. I would not vote for Joe Biden, a man who I think actually is nice, but whose policies are terrible and will wreck our recovering economy.

The abortion position remains an unreasoning emotional position. I’ve spent quite some time trying to reach it logically, and it doesn’t work. Either every bit of sperm is sacred, as a certain group of comedians once said, or his position is arbitrary. That he uses it as the single issue on which he rejects the Democrats is desperate and, arguably, un-American.

But his position on Biden is far more interesting. If Biden and the Democrats do, in fact, win mastery of the Executive and the Legislature, then I would encourage Erickson, and all serious anti-Biden voters^[1], to sit down and write out what’s going to happen that they believe will be bad for the country. It’s necessary to be both honest and fair; by the latter, I mean, using a hypothetical analogy to President Trump, recognizing that if Trump had supplied the proper leadership to close up the country early, the economy would still have gone down before recovering, and that would have not been fair game for the Democrats. Some roads lead into valleys before reaching the heights.

So write them down and, in four years, honestly evaluate them. For those regarding expertise that you don’t have, seek out non-partisan sources for help – sources such as National Review are not acceptable. If your expectations have been fulfilled, celebrate! Your mental model of politics, society, and the economy works.

But if your expectations are proven wrong? You have a few choices:

1. Walk away. Become an independent who is aware of your shortcomings, and work to resolve them.
2. Stick around and try to correct the far-rights’ misconceptions.
3. Stick around and take advantage of the other far-right denizens.
4. Stick around and marinate in the far-rights’ conspiracy theories.

Similarly, if my reader is a far-right conspiracy theorist, and of far right conspiracy theories there appear to be quite a few, I would encourage my reader to take a similar action. For example, using one conspiracy theory I ran across, you could write down your expectation that within six months of Inauguration Day President Biden will be sidelined through Vice President Harris’ inappropriate use of the 25^th Amendment.

List more than one, as that makes your study statistically significant, and if they all turn out negative, maybe it’s time to walk away.

The second paragraph, far removed from the first:

Stop nodding and agreeing, Democrats. Your morally corrupt, atheistic precious Obama did the same thing. He persecuted nuns and gave license to local authorities persecuting Christian bakers and florists and also gave license to sympathetic Christians and “Christians” to claim it isn’t really persecution because no one got shot in the back of the head.

Skipping the part where Obama has always claimed to be Christian and attended church regularly – unlike Trump, whose attendance is reportedly desultory – I’d like to focus on his derogatory use of the word atheistic. I don’t think the far right will ever welcome, or even accept, those who have embraced the concept that there is no spiritual realm, no divinities, who believe we evolved, and as individuals we come to life in understandable biological processes, live for a while, and die. I’ve heard, over the years, questions from the faithful about How  can atheists possibly be moral? a question which I think can be answered, once one accepts or at least stipulates to the absence of divinity, and accepts evolution as a working theory.

Source: Pew Research Center

But that morality can be constructed in a secular fashion cannot be accepted by the faithful, as it destroys a key part of the mythology of the divine, at least in Christian circles, as symbolized by the Ten Commandments – the gift of the rules of living. Given the gradual sinking of Christianity’s standing in American society, and the concomitant rise in popularity of the ‘nones’, as they’re collectively called, I have to wonder if far-right extremism is going to continue to be a growing problem in American society. Their opposition, in the absence of religious teaching of tolerance and love, and their feelings of persecution due to the shrinkage in their numbers and political influence, will result in sporadic far-right violence, paradoxically damaging Christianity, both bad parts and good, by its very existence.

Erickson’s worries about ‘persecuted bakers’ has a slight bit of merit; I’d prefer to see the bigoted bakers, as history will judge them, simply driven out of business by customers voluntarily going elsewhere, rather than legal authorities using the power of the State. It would drive home the fact that accepted the morality, nation-wide, is that homosexuality and the freedom to marry is now accepted; that condemning homosexuals, however well meant, over an immutable characteristic, is unjust and results in impairment for those so targeted, or to be graphic: they could be hurt or even dead due to the attitudes of these bakers over which he worries. Erickson may carp that it’s immoral according to the Bible, but then we don’t stone witches any longer, either. Morality, at least that listed in the Bible, has never been immutable; whether or not homosexuals are evil or not mentioned in the Bible becomes irrelevant when the standards of justice, as we understand them today & tomorrow, disagree with the Bible. We’re not a Christian nation; we are a Christian-influenced nation, which means we get to throw out the bad bits as they’re discovered. And that’s good for us. Of course, some of the good bits are temporarily discarded as well, as we see with the birth and growth of prosperity churches, an abomination of the Christian faith as far as this agnostic can see. I hope the realization that judging folks by their (self-proclaimed) financial worth, and that God will judge you by the same, is simply a road to disaster will come sooner than later.

Erickson continues on with some concerns, unknown to me, about nuns and persecution, probably having to do with abortion – because what doesn’t with him? – and thus it permits him to be bitter that the country hasn’t turned to evangelical Christianity as its saving grace.

Your side is burning down America with an American press blaming Donald Trump when it’s your activists and leaders encouraging it. And your last guy played with cigars and interns in the Oval Office and you made so many excuses for him that you incentivized a whole lot of the present President’s supporters making excuses now. But God forbid we point that out and make you confront it or point out some of you only apologized for it as an expedient way to now move on to criticizing the present President’s flaws.

The problem for Erickson is that he has to find a moral failing on the left equivalent to that of White Evangelicals desperate clinging to President Trump, in spite of his worldliness, profligate sinning, and profoundly awful incompetency. So Obama becomes an atheist and a persecutor of nuns, rather than just a member of a different Christian sect. Clinton – at least, I think he’s referring to the former President – had consensual sex outside of his marriage with an intern, which was a very poor choice by him due to the power relation between them, but not an unique or even unusual practice for those in positions of power, regardless of their political persuasion^[2], throughout history and largely regardless of the identity of the power structure. Erickson’s bitterness is a little hard to take seriously in the face of Clinton’s successes, while Trump’s many moral failures – lying, caging children – easily eclipses Clinton’s failures.

The thing is, I think Erickson’s in earnest.

I’ll give up on this, simply noting that the ‘nones’, of which I’m certainly a default member, will still face a rocky road ahead of them if they seek political power, i.e., contribute to the leadership of the country. There have been very, very few acknowledged atheists or agnostics in Congress or the Executive branch; it’s almost a requirement that one exhibit some sort of religious observance in order to be accepted by the American electorate.

One can only speculate on the magnitude of the cost of this bigotry, exhibited throughout the political spectrum, to the nation. How much political talent has not been of use to the United States because of this notion that only the religious can exhibit moral behavior?

It’s the same question that racial bigots and misogynists cannot answer without referencing ideology or theology of extremely dubious quality.

¹ As contrasted with those Trump voters who are voting for him simply to get the Democrats’ goat. They are not serious citizens, and are not amenable to the liberal democracy’s great advantage over competitor political systems, reason. Which, come to think of it, appears to apply to the far left as well.

² I must confess Erickson’s cigar reference escapes me, even though I remember wearing a Halloween costume featuring the cigar, and my companion wore a frock.

Gantlet:

noun

1. Railroads. a track construction used in narrow places, in which two parallel tracks converge so that their inner rails cross, run parallel, and diverge again, thus allowing a train to remain on its own track at all times.
2. gauntlet² (defs. 1, 2, 4).

verb (used with object)

1. Railroads. to form or lay down as a gantlet:
   to gantlet tracks.

Noted in “Kamala Harris knows things no vice president has ever known,” Monica Hesse, WaPo:

This isn’t because men can’t be compassionate and sympathetic to women’s issues. Of course they can. But in the entire history of the United States we have only had presidents and vice presidents for whom the experiences of women are known and understood secondhand, if at all. And there is a difference between being sympathetic to women’s issues and knowing that, if a condom breaks, you are the one who is going to be walking into a medical clinic through a gantlet of protesters screaming that you are a murderer.

The definitions of gauntlet also don’t work, at least according to Dictionary.com.

A super-typhoon with 180 MPH winds!

#Goni has undergone explosive rapid intensification in the past 24 hours: +70 kts (80 mph) and dropped 71 millibars (!). It is now a 175 mph (1-min avg sustained) Category 5-equivalent Super Typhoon. This is the strongest tropical cyclone on Earth, thus far, in 2020. #Philippines pic.twitter.com/skGrtYLX7r

— Steve Bowen (@SteveBowenWx) October 30, 2020

I’m awfully glad I don’t live in The Philippines. Makes me wonder if all able ocean going ships in harbor there have made a beeline for safer waters.

Kevin the Chingford Peacock:

About this morale-boosting wild peacock here.

This is the last part of an occasional series examining President Trump’s progress against Candidate Trump’s promises.

The promise: Candidate Trump promises to hire “only the best” to work in his Administration:

“I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people,” he told our Robert Costa in a phone interview at the time. “We want top of the line professionals.” [WaPo]

Results So Far: To use the phrase “utterly dismal” is not to go too far. Names such as Pruitt, Zinke, Wolfe, Price, Sessions, Whitaker, Barr, Ross, Azar, as well as the many worse-than-useless political commissars at NOAA, VOA, and other important government agencies come immediately to mind for their incompetency, their corruption, and the far-right ideologies they either hide behind, or to which they actually adhere. For the latest, go here.

The Bigger Picture: A President is strictly limited in their efficacy by the people they nominate or appoint. A President can have the best or the worst possible policies, but if their people simply can’t do the job through ignorance or incompetence, Presidential goals cannot be accomplished, good or bad.

So this may be the most important job of any President, and President Trump’s failures in this regard will condemn his Administration to a position in the “Worst Five Presidential Administrations” for a long, long time to come.

In this post, I suggested that folks such as Erick Erickson, as well as Associate Justice Brett “Way Too Sloppy” Kavanaugh, who think that Election Day is a fine day to stop collecting and counting mail-in ballots, are impairing voters who choose to – or must – use mail for sending ballots, whether it’s because they’re overseas, such as serving military, or facing daunting circumstances: weather, or more malicious circumstances, which slow or stop the mail.

Steve Benen has a post that reinforces my point, as he rounds up several debates that, if they had occurred as planned, would have been too late for voters to trust in mail delivery. Here’s one example:

But perhaps even more dramatic was a debate in Georgia this week, in which Jon Ossoff (D) humiliated incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R) — more than once. The two were scheduled to meet again for another debate last night, but that didn’t happen. …

“Last night” being October 29th, and we here in Minnesota have been warned that, as of last night, do not try to mail your ballots – they will arrive late and not be counted. (Hint, hint!)

Similar remarks apply to the Senate contests in Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, at least – and that’s only Senate races. What about debates of House candidates, gubernatorial, hell even city council spots?

Look: These arrogant claims that voters should make up their minds and mail in their ballots early disregard the independent voter who, in a normal election, may in fact still be making up their minds. Sure, this election is not normal – this is the only election, in my lifetime, that I can think of that turns on morality and not issues – but that should not matter. Rules should be made for the general case, and in the general case American Independents have a long history of repeatedly changing their minds.

And that’s a good thing.

So impairing a class of voters, for any reason whatsoever, is not tolerable. Kavanaugh and Erickson should immediately retract their opinions and apologize. This is a real injustice, and they should be ashamed of the position they advanced.

These days, the veterinarian has us come to the office, call them, they come scurrying out and grab the cats, and then we sit and wait while they do the necessaries.

While sitting, one of those big Yukon trucks motored in. Speculation began with them bringing in their pet elephant, but eventually we worked our way down to … their pet fly.

Arts Editor: Oh, doctor, doctor, my fly’s wing has an owie!

Me: Hmmm, yes, yes, I see it. A little tear. Nurse John, hand me that … stapler.

Arts Editor: Augh!

Me: Never worry, ma’am. (Raises hands, slams stapler.) And there we go, good as new …

Arts Editor: He appears woozy!

Me: Oh, that’s just the PTSD. For a fly, that lasts about five minutes.

Jon Ossoff and Senator Perdue (R-GA). It seems that Ossoff is spearing Sauron himself here.

Sen. David Perdue is out for himself — not for our health. pic.twitter.com/zbtmw6rU4Q

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 29, 2020

The dangers of the epistemic bubble is that you may end up looking the idiot when you’re outside the bubble.

Over the campaign various experts have complained that the Trump campaign may be one of the most incompetent to ever grace the United States, and while that’s easily enough explained as the result of chronic amateurism, sycophants, and third-raters, there is another hypothesis:

A desire to lose. For example,

The rallies have themselves become a symbol of his “reckless” approach to governing, said Guy Cecil, who leads Priorities USA, a liberal group that has blanketed the airwaves with advertisements against Trump on the pandemic.

“He’s making people less favorable and less open to voting for him,” Cecil said Wednesday. “He is actually hurting himself by traveling around the country holding these rallies.” [WaPo]

And that’s just one of several I’ve stumbled across. It’s as if he hates the job of actually governing, even if he loves campaigning.

Yet, Trump’s ambition and loathing for losers is well known, so that goes against the hypothesis.

But Trump may be doing a risk/reward calculation and may feel that he’s drained about as many resources as he can hope from the Federal government; sticking around leaves him open to another impeachment, followed by prison if he doesn’t leave the country immediately.

So it’s not utterly implausible that, having no loyalties but to himself and his family, he’s simply arranging his leave-taking from the government.

I’m still looking for him to leave the country before his legal protections disappear.

In a recent decision concerning whether or not Wisconsin can count votes with a pre-election postmark, but received post-election, Associate Justice Kavanaugh made a mistake in reference to Vermont election law, and the Vermont Secretary of State requested it be resolved:

We have formally requested that #SCOTUS correct the erroneous claim by Justice Kavanaugh that #VT has not changed voting procedures for the #2020Elections due to #COVID19. When it comes to issuing decisions on the voting rights of American citizens, facts matter. pic.twitter.com/cWvAJTuIEl

— Vermont Secretary of State’s Office (@VermontSOS) October 28, 2020

Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that it appears that Kavanaugh’s opinion is riven with errors, as Mark Joseph Sterns spells out. and (I haven’t read this) Tierney Sneed also noted.

In view of these flaws, along with the pure insanity of the decision as I detailed here, and since Vermont doesn’t have a finger in the litigation, perhaps a second letter, requesting the Associate Justice change his vote, is in … order?

It may not be legally possible, but it’ll focus yet more attention on a badly flawed decision which is hostile to voters, regardless of political persuasion.

National Review continues to carry a torch for President Trump. Kyle Smith, for example, is talking up a couple of outlier polls:

The Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly is an outlier among pollsters in that he thinks President Trump will carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, or both, and hence be reelected with roughly 280 electoral votes. (I explained his thinking here.) Last week another pollster, Jim Lee of Susquehanna Polling and Research, echoed some of Cahaly’s points about shy Trump voters being missed by pollsters. “There is definitely a submerged Trump vote,” Lee said. Asked for a prediction, he hedged a little but then predicted a Trump win: “I can’t call it. If the turnout is going to be what I think, Trump wins it.” …

In a recent interview for WFMZ, Lee elaborated, saying, “When pollsters get the results back and they look suspicious, or they should, because they’re showing one candidate with a double-digit lead in a state that was carried by one candidate by, you know, a point or two, they should realize something’s not right and that’s where the art of polling comes in.” Lee calls attention to what he describes as “garbage polls” showing a double-digit lead for Joe Biden in the past few weeks in Pennsylvania. He sees this as a replay of 2016 and adds, “I called on the American Association of Public Opinion Research to crack down on egregious polling to tighten standards for firms that clearly don’t understand the landscape of Pennsylvania.” (According to the FiveThirtyEight survey of pollsters, Franklin & Marshall is more reliable than Susquehanna.)

It’s fun to talk about embarrassed Trump voters dotting the landscape like kudzu, but I think there’s a lot of politicians and pollsters fooling themselves this time around. While some Republicans may be trying this ploy as a strategic matter – a bit of foolishness that may do more damage to their side than to Biden voters –  there’s little reason to really believe Trump voters are embarrassed. After all, are the pollsters going to shame them if they say so? No professional pollster will betray any emotion beyond a bit of gratitude for answering the questions. The whole concept seems silly.

For my money, the two best applicable polls are the 2018 midterms, which saw Trump and his allies take a real beating in the House even as they gained a couple of highly unstable seats in the Senate, while Democratic accomplished gains in State legislatures such as Virginia’s, and the 2019 Wisconsin special election last spring, which saw a mediocre Republican voter turnout get beaten by an angry Democratic turnout that resulted in a Wisconsin Supreme Court shocker.

The last poll is coming, though. If you haven’t voted, get out and get it done!