Category Archives: Uncategorized

They’re rumored to be Lord of the Rings fans.

These are my Arts Editor’s doing, and I’d say they were done very well.

As expected, Alaska Republicans are infuriated at their unexpected loss in the Alaska special election to replace the late Rep Don Young (R), and are blaming it on ranked choice voting (RCV):

One of the most vocal critics has been Palin. On Thursday, she issued a statement saying this week’s ranked-choice results were “not the will of the people” and calling on the other finalist in the recently completed special election, Republican Nick Begich III, to end his campaign ahead of November’s general election in which the candidates will square off again for a two-year term. Palin also called for the state to provide more information on rejected ballots.

Begich on Wednesday issued his own statement portraying Peltola as out-of-step with most Alaskans and Palin as unelectable under the new system. He said the ranked-choice results made clear that in November, a “vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola.” [WaPo]

Finger-pointing galore – but making sure the Democrat who won, Peltola, is portrayed as being “out of step” with the electorate. It’s an insult to the electorate, really.

See, these Republicans are terrified. The Alaskan electorate has, through the mechanism of RCV, shown itself to be more of a moderate group than an extremist group, even if that’s ignoring the realities of special election voting, which typically feature lower turnout than normal elections^[1]. And that isn’t going to suit the extremists currently controlling the GOP; in a showdown between a politician wielding the magical phrase You are a RINO!^[2] and an RCV-implemented election, the magical phrase wielder will lose, as many have predicted.

The second prong of the trident attack of the Republicans on the electorate has been single-issue voting, and RCV will also have an effect on those voters. See, single-issue voters are apocalyptic voters, voters who believe that if enough of the wrong people are elected, their critical issue, be it abortion, or gun-rights absolutism, or what have you, will go the wrong way and the country will implode.

I’m not kidding.

So if such wrong folks are elected, promulgate policies, and the country doesn’t implode … some of those single issue voters will decide they were wrong. There is no smoking crater. That’s bending the prong of the trident, blunting the Republican appeal for votes.

And the extremists lose their appeal.

The above WaPo article told me something new: Nevada has a proposed constitutional amendment on tbe ballot this November to make RCV the law of the desert the election system for congressional, gubernatorial, state executive official, and state legislative elections. I see this as a looming disaster for Nevada Republicans, and possibly certain Democrats and other parties farther to the left.

The extremists recognize the threat, and they’ve chosen fear as their weapon of choice:

Despite advocates’ claims that ranked-choice voting is better for democracy because it would give voters “more options” on Election Day, such arguments ignore the extremely confusing nature of the process. While speaking with The Federalist, Zack Smith, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in Heritage’s Meese Center, explained the intricacies of ranked-choice voting and how the process oftentimes “obfuscates the candidates and their position” from voters.

Ranked-choice voting can potentially lead to “someone getting elected to office that only has a minuscule amount of support from the electorate,” he said. “If [candidates] have problematic positions, it can make it very easy to hide those [from voters].” [The Federalist]

First, yes, The Federalist Society did supply lists of judges to former President Trump for nomination to the Federal Judiciary, including SCOTUS Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Second, yes, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank. So, third, yes, this is conservatives talking to conservatives, not to neutral third party observers and analysts. Epistemic bubble time. They’re running around, hair on fire, flapping their arms in terror, and engaging in desperate mendacity – or just faulty analysis.

Or, in other words, No, RCV is not that complex. Ya got a favorite? Write them down here. Second favorite? Write them down here. Third? Put them there. Put the ballot in the machine. Done.

And, most importantly,

YOU DO NOT LEARN THE POSITIONS OF THE CANDIDATES WHEN YOU’RE MARKING THE BALLOT!

That comes earlier, from candidate materials, debates, gaffes, media reporting, and what have you – that does not change with RCV. Repeat after me, That does not change with RCV.

And it doesn’t hurt to tell the electorate they need to step up their game. In this case, it’s just not much of a step.

Why haven’t Democrats been pushing RCV harder? Well, for one thing, they inevitably have a salting of extremists who don’t like the idea that moderates may have more appeal. RCV does encourage cross-over voting in the secondary positions, doesn’t it? Better a conservative Democrat than an extremist Republican to the moderate Republican voter, for example.

It also gets rid of partisan primaries and caucus systems, both more susceptible to the party zealots; the open primary employed in most RCV electoral systems means anyone who can gather enough signatures gets to join the game. That favors people who’ve gained some fame or notoriety.

But I think the Democrats should push RCV harder. So far, no fundamental defects have emerged. Implementation can be a problem if computers are not available, resulting in several days delay for counting, otherwise it’s no big deal.

And for those of us who value moderates, who value humility, RCV is more likely to deliver the electorate’s honest choice.

¹ For example, in the late Rep Don Young’s (R) last election to this seat, a total of 353,165 votes were cast. In the recent special election to replace Young, which is the first of Alaska RCV voting and thus makes this comparison reminiscent of apples and oranges, 188,582 are listed as having been cast. Does this mean 188,582 voters participated? This should be clarified by Ballotpedia, my source for this information. But, as an afterthought, I would expect moderates to be less likely to show up for a special election than extremists, who, by definition, have more interest in politics.

² RINO is an acronym for Republican In Name Only, an epithet applied by right-wing power-seekers to those power-holders who get in their way. As I’ve said many times over the years, this is the mechanism, beginning probably with former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and in combination with team politics, aka voting straight ticket no matter what, and single issue voting, that has driven the GOP from a right-centrist party very capable of governance into a far-right collection of power-grasping fourth-raters, such as half-term Governor, for no particular reason, Sarah Palin (R-AK). In other words, yesterday’s wielder of this magical phrase can easily be today’s victim of same, with one of the most famous victims being former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). For some in the Republican Party, extremism is the primary measure of virtue these days, a fatal flaw in those voters.

Demonic pink eyes glowed in the darkness. Marcel offered an ointment for pink-eye, and it was hungrily grabbed from his hand and squirted violently into the monster’s eyes. The monster was … a ladybug.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), despite the date given to the film, is currently in theatrical release. This is your archetypal whimsical film in which documentary film maker Dean meets and documents the life of Marcel, a young, even child, shell creature, perhaps an inch tall. He and his grandmother live in a human house that Dean has rented, and they describe for Dean the life of a shell creature in this house, a creature akin to hermit crabs I’d say. From gathering food, to play, to watching 60 Minutes on the television, they seem have their own version of a full life.

But Marcel’s parents and, indeed, extended family disappeared when the previous human inhabitants had a fight and moved out, inadvertently taking most of the shell family with them. Marcel is devastated, yet firmly in control, caring for his Nanny. Dean represents an opportunity that Marcel doesn’t immediately recognize, but when Dean pre-releases parts of his documentary and attracts unexpected attention, Marcel realizes that perhaps he can search for his family via the Internet.

This leads to celebrity and all that implies – and then even more.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has some problems with the audio, or perhaps the theatre we visited did. As we were the only patrons on a Friday afternoon, it wasn’t a problem with other customers. The stop-action and computer-generated affects, however, were nearly faultless to my eye, though, and very appropriate to the subject. Please excuse the joke.

The charm does wear thin after a while, but the film does not extend too far beyond this point, and can be excused. A fun and witty show, it’s worth your time if you need a bit of gentleness in your life.

Recommended.

Inapposite:

inappropriate, not suitable for the situation [Wiktionary]

Hmmmmm. New one on me. Noted in “Trump aggravates the GOP’s national security and crime problem,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

Donald Trump walked right into it. His brain trust stupidly requested a “special master” to review the documents he took from the White House — totally improper since he does not own the documents and his claim of “executive privilege” is inapposite. (Executive privilege raised against part of the executive branch, the Justice Department, makes no sense.)

When it comes to the second choice of Begich voters in Peltola’s victory in Alaska on Wednesday, Aaron Blake of WaPo clarifies that their second choice is actually slightly worse for members of the Alaska Republican Party (ARP) than my interpretation suggested:

Almost as many Begich voters picked Peltola as their second choice (15,445) or didn’t rank one of the two finalists (11,222) as ranked Palin behind Begich (27,042). In other words, only about half of Begich voters were willing to also rank Palin ahead of a Democrat.

Which is very bad news for every extremist candidate fielded by the ARP. If a Democrat or someone else is better than the candidate bearing the ARP banner, the proud and famous candidate, then what about the far-right whose grasp on reality is, at best, dubious?

It remains true that ranked choice voting is a rare bird in American elections, but we can see that there’s a hesitancy, even wariness, to vote extremist when there’s a choice available. And Palin has her own set of unique political attributes – quitter and religious nutcase as well as an extremist, if you’re not in the mood for diplomatic language – to which many voters may have had a negative reaction.

But fighting ranked choice voting is moving up the list of dangerous issues for the current GOP.

Ever see a train with a snowplow attachment? This is sort of the same. Don’t think about that.

• “A-” rated Trafalgar’s latest poll in Wisconsin shows Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) leading incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) 49.4% to 47.1%, which is within the margin of error. That race is tightening up as the Republicans rally to the dude who spews conspiracy theories and dementia while talking about corrupting Social Security with investments in the stock market. Maybe they don’t like their monthly checks?
• Trafalgar has more news, saying that its latest poll shows incumbent Senator Kelly (D) of Arizona has only a 3.3 point lead over incumbent Blake Masters (R), 47.6% – 43.3%. I gotta ask, then, why is Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) Senate Leadership PAC withdrawing a lot of money from that race as if they’re writing it off?
• A temporary slump or is Georgia’s collective mental infirmity going to hold until the elections? A rated Emerson College Polling now has challenger Herschel Walker (D) up by two, 46% – 44%, ahead of incumbent Senator Warnock (D). This despite a history of mendacity on Walker’s part, possibly tied to his mental illness, last manifested yesterday, when he once again claimed to be a member of law enforcement, to the groans of the crowd.
• The race in Pennsylvania continues to be badly broken as Republican candidate for the open Senate seat Dr. Oz Mehmet plays on possible electoral concerns about Democratic candidate’s and Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s stroke in a debate proposal that included “concessions” such as an earpiece for Fetterman so he could be fed answers. While, yes, the offer was an insult, it’s on par with Fetterman’s jibes about Oz’s houses (just how many does he own?) and his lack of familiarity with Pennsylvania. It’s also very true that Fetterman’s stroke is relevant to the election. Just as is Oz’s endorsements of various snake oil cures over the years.
• Another week, another “generic Congressional ballot.” This time, The Wall Street Journal says Democrats hold a slight edge over Republicans, 47% to 44% … which is an improvement over earlier measurements. I contrast this with the right’s staple contention that the economy will wreck the Democrats. I see occasional citations, by Republicans, of Democratic consultant James Carville’s famous quip concerning the Clinton 1992 winning Presidential campaign in which he beat an incumbent President, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I’m beginning to think it’s a Republican, if not simply a political, habit to strip all context from everything. Carville’s context was the recession following the Gulf War, and it wasn’t entirely the economy, but disenchantment with President Bush (43) shattering his promise of Read My Lips, No New Taxes. Purist anti-taxation Republicans wouldn’t vote for Bush after that. Today? A pandemic that floored the economy, followed by a big recovery during the Biden Admin, including amazingly low unemployment numbers; the return of jobs from overseas as companies see the dangers of long supply-lines close up and personal; supply line issues slowly being resolved; infrastructure and other legislative wins for the Democrats, showing they can get things done; the Dobbs decision by the conservative wing of SCOTUS, threatening the autonomy of women regardless of political ideology; the January 6th Insurrection, never denounced by most of the Republican Party; extremist Republican election-denier candidates; and a former Republican President who has been caught with his entire head in the cookie jar, while screaming that the Presidency should be returned to him as if it’s a magical incantation, and he may be quite serious about the magic part. The context is both pragmatic and principled, and, while the pragmatic points are, I think, a slight inclination for the Democrats and still have two months to run, the principles are all, or almost all, good for the Democrats. Their blundering over the management of the transgender issue is a festering wound in their side, it’s true. But, in general, it’s been apparent from the moment Speaker Pelosi announced the January 6th bipartisan committee that there was a strong potential that the Red Wave theory of the November elections would manifest as the Republicans weeing in their diapers as committee members Representatives Cheney (R-WY) and Kingzinger (R-IL) kicked their unprincipled and immoral former Party members right in the head, and that has come to fruition, with more to come. The discovery of government documents at Mar-a-Lago is a gift to the Democrats, contaminating the Republican Party as a pack of lawless, power-grubbing fourth-raters. Senator McConnell (R-KY) may be anticipating being Majority Leader in 2023, but, for me, he’d better be praying really, really hard. There’s a potential for the Democrats picking up seven seats in the Senate, and a wild guess of 15 seats in the House, but that’s a best-scenario forecast. There’s plenty of time for both sides to disembowel themselves.

Previous snowdrifts here.

Back last week I mentioned, in one of my Senate campaign updates, that Mary Peltola (D-AK) was leading in the race to replace the late Don Young (R-AK) in the lone Alaskan seat to the House of Representatives, but election officials were waiting for absentee votes to be counted. Recall Alaska is using ranked choice voting (RCV), which I consider favorable to moderates.

The winner has been announced, and it’s Democrat Mary Peltola, says CBS News:

On Wednesday, the Alaska Division of Elections tabulated the final results during a public livestream, which showed Peltoa coming out on top with 51.47% after Begich’s votes were redistributed to his voters’ second choice candidate.

According to election officials in Alaska, 15,445 of Begich’s voters listed Peltola as their second choice while 27,042 put down Palin as their second option. The final tally showed Peltola with 91,206 votes to Palin’s 85,987 votes.

This is the latest in “Democratic overperformance” (they did better than expected) in special elections, and once again refutes the red wave theory, aka Republicans taking back the House and Senate in November, as touted by pundits up until a couple of weeks ago. What does it portend?

No red wave.

While Palin did pick up a majority of the second votes for Begich, who is presumably less extremist than the former Alaska governor known for her extremism, more than 1/3 of his voters chose to go with Peltola, which put her over the top.

To me, that indicates a sizable minority of Republicans do not buy into the long-held extremist proposition that Democrats are evil (“babykillers!”), as Peltola announces on her website that she is pro-choice. They recognize that the threat to the United States is not from Democrats like Peltola, who appears to be fairly middle of the road and focused on Alaskan issues, but from extremists like Palin.

Palin is running again in November for the same seat, as is Begich and Peltola. If Palin loses again, she’ll fade into the Republican extremist woodwork, showing up as a celebrity politician who makes extremist speeches and collects paychecks for doing so. Extremist politics is a grift.

Begich has something of a political background, and may be back.

And the Alaska Republican  Party (ARP)? This loss is a step towards their own political hell of irrelevance, as I said before. If Peltola turns this into a streak, there will be some serious upset in the ARP, and if archetypal moderate Senator Murkowski (R-AK) wins her reelection campaign, as I, and everyone else, expects, the ARP may just fly apart as moderates fight to regain control of a party that is becoming an extremist sandbox, to judge by their actions and not by any special knowledge on my part.

And, finally, if it wasn’t for the Trumpian debacle in Mar-a-Lago, RCV would be the target du jour of the Republican Party. RCV has the potential to be the bane of extremists on both sides of the aisle, so they’ll hate on it.

Until something distracts them.

It’s long been said in American politics that the third, fatal rail of politics is Social Security, because stirring up the old folks over their income will end your political career, and very quickly. Fear the people with walkers, eh? Something I read by Professor Richardson reminded me of that, and of what I think may be the future extension of this old aphorism:

While Biden is consolidating and pushing the Democrats’ worldview, the Republicans are in disarray. The revelation that former president Trump moved classified intelligence to the Trump Organization’s property at Mar-a-Lago has kept some of them sidelined, as they didn’t want to talk about the issue, and has forced others to try to justify an unprecedented breach of national security. Republican candidates for elected office who are not in deep red districts have been taking references to Trump (and to abortion restrictions) off their websites.

My amused bold. And, yes, you guessed it: the former President becomes the new third rail of politics. His divisive message and disregard for the law, much less norms of government, are just the beginning. His grasping, boastful, mean-spirited, self-centered ways, and his disregard for the value of simple truth will be perceived as deeply un-American, even by those Americans who have these character failings in abundance. These latter will scent the wind and adjust their sails accordingly.

And if Trump is accused by law enforcement of selling those government documents found at Mar-a-Lago to national adversaries? The amount of juice in our proverbial rail will go up by a magnitude. The only mention of Trump by American politicians will be as a synonym for failure and adherence to his Me! Me! Me! ideology, and that doesn’t work well with government, which is about helping out the people.

But let’s take this a step further: What happens if Chad Bauman did get this right and it’s all about Trump’s upbringing in a prosperity church? That the apparent madness of his repeated calls that he be restored to the Presidency, despite his manifest electoral loss as well as his  profound failure as a President, are the Name it and Claim it magical invocation of some Divine entity? Yes, that is his wand sputtering.

Consequently, and fortunately for us, we may see some holes in our cultural landscape where prosperity churches used to exist. Some may disappear, while others drastically shrink. Some prosperity church leaders – I hesitate to call them pastors or bishops or whatever title they’ve awarded themselves – will desperately try to keep the grift going, while others will head out to foreign lands to enjoy their gains. A few may meet untimely ends at the hands of angry followers.

And a lot of folks who lack Trump’s mental instability but are still burdened with the prosperity church teachings will need help.

And, meanwhile, this graph will continue its trend:

Source: Gallup

Evangelicals had celebrated Trump as Cyrus of the Bible, striding from its pages into their lives. It’s not looking that way now, and if I were them I’d have a chat about getting rid of the Biblical respect for Cyrus, who, as I understand it, is the guy who did bad things that benefited Christians, and so hey he’s blessed.

Remember Amanda “I’m Trump in heels!” Chase (R-VA)? She may be changing to flats.

Inter alia:

Adverb

1. – among other things [Legal Dictionary]

Noted in “Should Uncle Sam Worry About ‘Foreign’ Open-Source Software? Geographic Known Unknowns and Open-Source Software Security,” Dan Geer, John Speed Meyers, Jacqueline Kazil, Tom Pike, Lawfare:

We then used an open-source tool called GitGeo to analyze the contributors to packages and to predict, when possible, the country in which the developer resides. The GitGeo tool makes this prediction by using these developers’ GitHub profiles, a page similar to a Facebook profile where developers can optionally provide their location information, inter alia. We first look at the top 100 contributors to each package and then redo our analysis using only the top 10. “Contributors” to a package are those users who make changes to the package (that is, adding or subtracting code). The more changes an open-source software developer makes to a package, the arguably more central that developer is to the continued maintenance, health, and security of that package. Figure 1 displays the four graphs that resulted from this analysis. Each column of each graph represents one open-source software package and the stacked bar graph colors represent the different locations of developers associated with that package.

For those still wondering about supply chain issues, there are of course long-term questions, such as shortening those chains and whether or not the government needs to take action, or if the companies have taken sufficient warning from getting their fingers singed during the pandemic.

And then there’s the short-term question: is it fixed yet?

Here’s gCaptain with some evidence:

The number of container ships headed for the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — a traffic jam that once symbolized American consumer vigor during the pandemic — declined to the lowest level since the bottleneck started to build two years ago.

Eight vessels were in the official queue as of late Monday, according to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California & Vessel Traffic Service Los Angeles and Long Beach. That’s an all-time low, officials said in a statement, down from a record of 109 set in January and about 40 lined up a year ago. …

Though officials changed the way inbound ships queued in November 2021 — having them slow-steam across the Pacific rather than bunching them at anchor near the ports — the dwindling count reflects a slowdown in consumer demand, ample inventories built up by American companies, and ships rerouting through Gulf of Mexico and East Coast ports.

I suspect slow-steam will generate a little less pollution and lower fuel consumption, but probably not to any great extent.

And it distorts any claim  that supply issues are fixed, at best. There’s been progress, but it’s not fixed in my mind.

Putin’s War in a time-series map.

Reaching a grim six-month milestone: Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an animated map. pic.twitter.com/BuSiZsgugf

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) August 26, 2022

I like it, and I hope its successors show Russia being pushed out of Ukraine in the near future.

And so, presumably, is the rest of the Trump-wing of the conservatives, although I haven’t the time to explore. Erickson’s latest is a devious defense of the former President and his boxes of goodies, devious because Erickson hardly mentions the former President at all.

Instead, he goes after social media sites, claiming – and maybe he’s right – most social media sites are biased against conservatives, but even that’s a head feint. For those who’ve been watching national scandals for years, his final target is unsurprising: the bastion of conservatism, the FBI.

Why?

Because the FBI is the current greatest threat to Trump. They’ve found, with the help of the National Archives, that he took documents with him when he was kicked out of office by the voters, and some of those documents are Top Secret – or worse. He lied on a response to a subpoena. He’s alleged to have demanded all the documents back, that they’re his and not the government’s, all in violation of settled Federal law on the matter.

And, of course, there’s the Why of the matter. Not Why did the FBI investigate, but the Why did Trump take – perhaps, more accurately, steal – those documents? The man’s allegedly a billionaire, so it seems unlikely he’d be peddling them to potential customers. And the American capitalist system is the source of Trump’s prestige and power, so it’s hard to see his destroying that in some haze of hatred. Right?

But what if Chad Bauman is right? That Trump thinks, if you’ll excuse my macabre sense of humor, all that matters is He Who Dies Richest Wins?

That would certainly explain pilfering important documents for later sale to the highest bidder. And not caring about the future, given his age. And, no doubt, a number of other puzzling issues.

But as Erickson attacks the liberals and Twitter, he has a slip up. I don’t know if it’s him or if someone told him to write to a collection of talking points, but it’s the sort of slip up that makes it easy not to take him seriously.

TikTok is a Chinese intelligence operation wherein the Chinese harness woke Americans to induce our children into transgender surgeries, all while compiling a facial recognition database. It is the most dangerous social media site on the planet. Americans have allowed their children to be willing users of a Chinese surveillance system.

That entire last sentence implies that “Americans” have full knowledge of TikTok: its owners, goals, and internal policies.

And they don’t.

Persuasion is too often treated as a big chess game, where the moves and configuration of the chessboard are known at all times, and those performing the argument are boning for a position of superiority over their opponents and their allies: Look at how smart I am and how dumb they are!

But it’s just not so. I doubt 5% of American parents know more about TikTok than that it’s a social media site their kids use. That five percent may know it’s Chinese-owned, but almost none of them are aware of facial-recognition ambitions, since at least Wikipedia is also unaware of them; for all I know, Erickson is indulging a conspiracy theory.

As the far-right chews off its own leg? Nyah, too obvious.

But, conspiracy theory or not, it’s part and parcel of Erickson’s real goal, alienating conservatives from the very FBI which has stood in their corner during the Hoover years, and is often considered to have a conservative leaning, as one expects from law enforcement. It’s sad that he thinks he needs to make this case, but with Trump now in imminent danger of arrest and trial, and – it’s no longer unthinkable – eventual execution, he may think it’s necessary to throw the FBI and its Republican director, Christopher Wray, under the bus.

In the end, though, there’s an unmistakable dodging of responsibility. Trump is, by most accounts liberal and conservative, in trouble up to his neck. As a product of the conservative movement, his condemnation also condemns the movement. But Erickson will have none of it. He’ll blame the FBI, he’ll blame the social media sites, anyone but the conservative movement.

And it’s dishonest not to critically examine the movement’s social dynamics when they can produce and elect to the Presidency such a terminally toxic person as Trump. Erickson’s really embraced his role as a propagandist, hasn’t he? And, being one, it reduces his effectiveness.

We were just plowing the road and this popped up. Honest!

• Madison Horn (D) has secured the Democratic nomination for the Oklahoma Senate seat and will be facing incumbent Senator Lankford (R) in the regularly scheduled Senate contest. My apologies for implying Horn had already won the nomination in the above link, which was false; she actually ended up in what appears to have been an acerbic runoff. Don’t confuse this with the contest to fill the retiring Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) seat, held at the same time, with Rep Markwayne Mullin (R) vs former Rep Kendra Horn (D). And Madison Horn’s chances? Low, but not zero. Throw us a bone poll!
• Dueling polls in Pennsylvania: A rated Emerson College Polling gives Lt. Governor Fetterman (D) a four point lead over rival Dr. Oz Mehmet (R), 48% – 44%, which is well below the margin most other polls have suggested, and also clashes with The New York Times report that the NRSC has cut bait on the Pennsylvania race. Meanwhile, B/C-rated Franklin and Marshall College Polling has given the Lt. Gov. a nine point lead, 45%-36%,, more in line with other polls. What does it mean? Possibly ideological groups of voters are refusing to answer pollsters, or are answering dishonestly. This has been suggested by Erick Erickson as a reason to distrust polling. And the polls did get the recent New York District 19 special election wrong – but the Democrats won when the Republicans were favored. It’s all still unsettling, though.
• In Missouri Eric Schmitt (R) has an eleven point lead, 49%-38%, over Trudy Valentine (D) according to a poll by Saint Louis University and YouGov. Neither joint-conductor of the poll seems known to FiveThirtyEight, so it’s hard to say how serious this poll should be taken, but Missouri is considered very conservative these days. Valentine has quite a hill to climb, but that was a given going in. The last time a Democrat won a Missouri Senate seat, though, was due to a foot in a pothole having to do with abortion. Will Schmitt follow his predecessor? Will Valentine try to bait him into such a mistake? Stay tuned.
• The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) is canceling nearly $10 million in Arizona and Alaska ad reservations. This must raise further questions, but exactly their nature is not clear. Why? SLF is controlled by Senator McConnell (R-KY), who may be considered the strongest of the traditional Republicans still in a powerful position, what with the apparent failure of Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY) to gain the nomination of the Wyoming Republicans to her seat. The Arizona nominee is the Trump-endorsee Blake Masters, who has little else beyond that endorsement but whatever financial resources of billionaire Peter Thiel is willing to give him. Trump’s dislike of McConnell may be moving into legendary territory at this point, while I’m not sure about Thiel. We could be seeing an effort by McConnell to drain resources and, eventually, prestige from Trump by withdrawing financial support from a candidate associated with Trump who was doomed from the get-go. And the official explanation? “The McConnell-backed super PAC’s strategic change is in part a reaction to its massive $28 million commitment in Ohio, where GOP nominee J.D. Vance is facing a strong challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio).” Yes, it would be a major blow to Republican prestige to have not just one, but two, Democratic Senators from the supposedly reddish Ohio. Heck, those voters might learn that Democratic Senators are better than Republicans! McConnell is a tactician, but not a strategist; Trump is just a bum who got lucky once. Their mutual dislike and antagonistic maneuvering could lead to a smoking pile of rubble in the Republican camp come November.
• Yes, Alaska was also mentioned, above. I’ll go with the common wisdom on this one: incumbent Murkowski, McConnell’s endorsee, appears to be easily beating Trump endorsee and extremist Tshibaka, as well as the other two candidates in this ranked choice voting (RCV)-based race, so there’s little point in sending her money. RCV is biased towards moderates, and that’s Murkowski to a T.

Previous snert here.

Good Lord – it’s Pinhead vs. the Mob Boss.

In Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) we’re confronted with a confounding question:

Why did the producers bother?

Oh, sure, there’s big audiences and big money, wherein the latter is incurred in the big budget necessary to render monsters not derived from rubber suits, reportedly ranging from $155-$200 million. There’s gotta be an ego-boost in being told that you put that much money into a movie about a rivalry between an overgrown, supercharged chicken with a grumpy ‘tude and big fucking chimp. Fucking big chimp. However you prefer those overused adjectives ordered, eh?

But it might help to consider the traditional thematics of these two star critters. Gojira (1954) used Godzilla as the vehicle to ask what a society is to do when attacked by the forces of irrationality. Japan had not provoked this attack, at least in this version of reality, and its attempts at defense were dubious at best. Some reviewers narrowed it down to an implicit condemnation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, as Godzilla is contaminated with radiation; later stories gave him an actual nuclear heart, whatever that meant. But the terror of being menaced, minus provocation, by a vehicle of indiscriminate destruction made Gojira a true horror tale.

King Kong (1933) is a classic anti-free markets screed, as a corporate head chooses to transport a truly gigantic ape from its isolated island into the very midst of American civilization, all in pursuit of a lot of money; once Kong escapes and kills a few people, he must be exterminated, all while he expresses a slightly creepy affection for a normal sized woman. It attacks at least a couple of American ideals having to do with our favorite obsessions, money and sex, and that made it, along with the poor guy plucked from a tree and eaten by one of Kong’s dinosauroid rivals on the island, a real horror story for the American psyche.

But in Godzilla vs. Kong we have little more than a grudge match between two ancient rivals. Yes, there’s the corporate fellow who may be responsible for this clash in the middle of a city, but his motivation isn’t the crass chase after profits, but rather being the saviour of mankind. Maybe. Or maybe king of the world. He’s not well developed, unlike the hackers who get a role in this because … computers. Important, ya know?

This lack of clearcut connection to the earlier, effective sagas damages this story, leaving the audience to wonder just how much they’ve been taken for. Are they really here because they’re susceptible to the charms of a fight between an overgrown chicken with halitosis and a chimp borrowed from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)? And, maybe, a robot? A telepathic robot?

Or cyborg?

Yeah, it’s just a mess, as sequels often become. It’s flashy enough, but not very sensical. Don’t mortgage your house to see this. It’ll be hard enough on your good sense.

Off in cryptocurrency land, the platform known as Tornado Cash is leading quite a tale of existence. For example, there’s this odd claim:

But the sanctions aimed at Tornado Cash are novel. Tornado Cash is known as a mixer, obscuring the source of digital assets by pooling them together before users withdraw them. It exists as software code on a decentralized, globe-spanning network of computers, and its authors wrote it in such a way that even they can’t edit it. [WaPo]

Can’t even edit it? I sure wish WaPo had gone into a bit more detail on that claim, as it seems extremely unlikely. Perhaps they mean any modifications and the entire platform stops functioning.

But it strikes me as a childish resistance to authority.

“More than anything else right now, we’re an industry that needs guidance,” said Ari Redbord, a former Treasury official now with TRM Labs, which provides crypto companies with tools to monitor fraud and financial crime.

And that strikes me as good a reason as any not to use cryptocurrencies where possible.

The markets have been down a bit of late. Is Bitcoin proving to be a redoubt of value? Here’s the one month chart.

Source: CoinMarketCap.

The answer would appear to be No.

The 3 Day Novel Contest is open again this year, in case you’ve been feeling the itch. Registration is here.

No, I’m not.

Just like everyone else, I stare with wonder…

The Cartwheel Galaxy via JWST. Source NASA/ESA/CSA/STSci.

But we know that JWST is mostly sensitive in the infrared range, which means these images are false in the sense that our eyes wouldn’t see this. Scientists or algorithms select which visible color is mapped to by a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which we’re not sensitive.

And what if our understanding of JWST’s instrumentation is defective? Here’s an article from NewScientist (20 August 2022, paywall) on that subject:

When JWST sends data back to Earth, it doesn’t come as complete images. Astronomers have to process it to make it usable, which requires understanding the sensitivity of the telescope’s scientific instruments. As JWST takes more data, we gain a better understanding of that sensitivity. But new information on the performance of an infrared camera caused the telescope’s operators to update its data-processing algorithms in July – well after the first images were released – and this threw some astronomers into a tizzy.

“When the first images came out, it was a bit of an ‘astronomers at Christmas’ scenario with everyone diving in to see what they could find,” said Nathan Adams at the University of Manchester, UK, in a statement. “What I think flew under the radar of a lot of astronomers was a part of that report mentions that NIRCam (one of the main cameras on the telescope) was overperforming in its reddest wavelengths.”

This isn’t nearly as easy as I thought it might be.

Octonion:

In mathematics, the octonions are a normed division algebra over the real numbers, a kind of hypercomplex number system. The octonions are usually represented by the capital letter O, using boldface O or blackboard bold {\displaystyle \mathbb {O} }. Octonions have eight dimensions; twice the number of dimensions of the quaternions, of which they are an extension. They are noncommutative and nonassociative, but satisfy a weaker form of associativity; namely, they are alternative. They are also power associative. [Wikipedia]

That’s opaque, if I may be polite. Noted in “Octonions: The strange maths that could unite the laws of nature,” Michael Brooks, NewScientist (20 August 2022, paywall):

Mathematicians are excited because they reckon that by translating our theories of reality into the language of the octonions, it could tidy up some of the deepest problems in physics and clear a path to a “grand unified theory” that can describe the universe in one statement. “This feels like a very promising direction,” says Latham Boyle at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. “I find it irresistible to think about.”

Sounds exciting. I wish I had a brain that worked that way.

I’d dust it every day and never let the cat play with it.

Long ago, I recall reading a passage that claimed, truly or not, that the first class people in France went into government, and the first class people in America went into business, thus explaining a lot about both nations.

But when something like this comes up, it’s hard to say the Republicans are leaning into the old aphorism a bit too hard:

Laura Loomer refuses to accept her primary loss and declares "I actually am the Congresswoman in Florida’s 11th District, and everyone knows it," vowing to harass Rep. Dan Webster and "drive him into the ground every step of the way until he collapses in disgrace." pic.twitter.com/HUtyRX18EY

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 25, 2022

No, winning a primary is not enough, Mz Loomer. Not even close.

It’s this sort of mentality that really threatens to wreck Democracy. Some of these sorts have lived all their lives busily demanding all they can get without regard to fairness, penalties, or anything else outside of their narcissism. Some have watched the former President’s immoral ways and concluded they can imitate him and make their way to success. And some are just entertaining themselves, never having run into a brick wall before.

And so we end up with this frantic nonsense. No, nobody knows you traveled back in time and beat Webster in 2020, as well as his Democratic opponent, Mz Loomer, and you’ve been working in Congress ever since. Probably because it’s Webster cashing the paychecks.

A reader writes to correct my mistakes regarding the Colorado River – no doubt committed through sleepiness:

A correction to this statement: “In the map above, the olive and turquoise areas serve to illuminate the Colorado River basin, and it’s that area to which the Colorado River provides water.” No, the shaded areas are the areas _drained_ by the Colorado River.

The areas to which it _provides_ water are different, especially a significant amount of the water is pumped _out_ of that basin for use elsewhere. Those include:

• Water captured in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado just west of the continental divide in places like Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Lake Granby which is pumped over the divide to the Denver metro area and used by cities there.
• Water pumped out (I believe from Lake Havasu) and sent westward all the way to the Los Angeles basin to serve cities there.

Some further notes (as someone who has mentioned this disaster in waiting for decades, and who has lived in Colorado, Utah and California):

The vast majority of the water in that river system comes from snow melt, not rain. And most of that comes from snow melt in Colorado and Wyoming. Those other tributaries on the map, like the Salt River in Arizona, are tiny by comparison, although the Salt is also mostly snow melt from Arizona mountains.

And this is not new. But people have been doing everything they can to ignore it or imagine any shortages or droughts were just short-term blips for more than 30 to 40 years. I last visited Lake Mead in about 1974; it was completely full. I have not checked, but it’s likely that at some point shortly after that, it became less than full and has never regained that stature. More than that, historical climate evidence has shown that the period from about 1900 to 1950 was unusually cool, wet and heavy with snowfall for the Colorado basin. That is to say, when the states and the feds were divvying up the Colorado River water for users and guesstimating the future, they were using a baseline that was actually far wetter/plentiful than average. So even a return to average would have been a water shortage. Meanwhile, actual usage went way up (see how Las Vegas and Phoenix have doubled in size in Lake Mead was last full) and climate has not only returned to “average” but gotten drier and warmer.

I plead exhaustion. Old Age. Something bad. I should have recognized that was a drainage basin!

It appears both sides are certain of victory in November, albeit the the right comes from before the special election in New York, while the left comes after. First, the right is represented by my old favorite, Erick Erickson, in a post helpfully entitled Seasonal Polling Disorder is About to Run the Democrats Off a Cliff:

In 2014, Democrats took a lead in the generic ballot in the summer and surged in August. Breathless Washington reporters claimed the GOP was suffering with bad candidates like in 2010 when a GOP wave failed to grab the Senate. Obama had the wind at his back and the ship of state was sailing forward.

In November of 2014, the GOP had a polling average of about 2.4% and the actual election result gave the GOP over a 5% win.

If you go to Real Clear Politics and seek out their generic ballot archive, you’ll see that in August, the Democrats always get a noticeable bump in the polling average at this time of year. There are lots of theories why. My personal theory is that in August, Republicans — the demographic most likely to have large families — are either heading out on last minute vacations before school starts or they are already (as in my family’s case) going back to school and getting into the new school year’s routine. They aren’t talking to pollsters.

And this all means:

In Georgia, in 2014 and 2018, at this time of year, the Republicans were losing to the Democrats in both the gubernatorial and senatorial polling. That makes Kemp’s lead against Abrams right now even more remarkable and suggests a blow out for him in November and suggests a Walker win, despite a media narrative that Walker is too bad a candidate to beat Warnock.

In Pennsylvania, that means Dr. Oz still has a very good chance of winning and it makes J. D. Vance a shoo-in in Ohio and Adam Laxalt the most likely winner in Nevada.

That Erickson thinks – or at least is willing to say – that Walker is facing a malicious narrative rather than what anyone who cares to take the time to check can verify – that he’s badly misinformed at best, and speaks gibberish at worst, speaks to how much of this may be just propaganda to keep the conservatives together for November.

On the left, here’s Rule of Claw on Daily Kos: talking about polls after the special election in New York:

These polls add up to an average of R 7.6. Pat Ryan has won by about four. That is a, gasp, 11.6 miss. Take a look at the DCCC poll. Even that poll had it by 3 for Molinaro, although it showed the race within reach. If we assess this as the most accurate poll, it still missed by 7 points. Point of fact, were we to win seats Trump won by less than five, we would gain 30 in the House. By 7?

Seven is a Blue Tsunami. Now, this was a Biden plus 1.5 district, and an R PVI of 2 overall according to Cook Political Report. But this would still suggest the environment is 6 points more favorable to Democrats than neutral.

I don’t have time to check his or her sources or calculations, but the special election does speak for itself. I’ve been guessing a 10 seat gain for the Democrats in the House this November, but that’s a bit of blind guess based on the special elections in Nebraska and Minnesota, taking the unexpectedly narrow victories for Republicans to mean the independents have recognized extremists in office are a danger to their rights, and possibly even an existential danger.

But it’s interesting to see the clash in interpretations. So far I’d have to say that Erickson’s interpretation, based as it is on his understanding of behavior patterns, is inferior to Rule of Claw’s, which is based more on facts, but can’t account for unseen data.

So we’ll see.

And there’s a king-sized one out on the Sun:

[AR3088], which didn’t even exist yesterday, is inset in this Solar Dynamics Observatory map of magnetic fields on the sun. According to Hale’s Law, the sunspot’s magnetic poles should be arranged +/-, that is, positive (+) on the left and negative (-) on the right. Instead, they are rotated 90 degrees; positive (+) is on top and negative (-) is on the bottom.

This is a rare “perpendicular sunspot,” with magnetic poles orthogonal to the sun’s equator. What’s going on? Something unusual may be happening to the sun’s magnetic dynamo beneath the surface where this sunspot is growing. We’ll keep an eye on AR3088 to see what happens next. [Spaceweather.com]

Something to keep an eye on. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Yes, more, more. They never stop, do they?

• The final qualifier for the Senate seat race in Alaska is Buzz Kelley (R). In this RCV non-partisan primary, here are the rough numbers: Murkowski (R) 43.7%, Tshibaka (R) 40.4%, Chesbro (D) 6.2%, and Buzz Kelley (R) 2.2%. If Murkowski wins despite the endorsement of Tshibaka by former President Trump and the Alaska Republican Party, will the Party fade into irrelevance? This may be more likely than is first apparent, because the lone Alaskan seat in the US House is currently empty due to the death of the last seatholder, longtime Representative Don Young (R). The special election was held Aug 16th and is currently led by … Democrat Mary Peltola. But a lot of vote counting must still be performed. If Peltola wins the runoff for a couple of months of seat-filling, and then wins the regular election in November, has the Alaskan electorate given the Alaska Republican Party the big waveoff, basically telling the extremists to get out of town?
• The Kansas Reflector has an interview and profile of Kansas candidate Mark Holland (D).
• North Carolina’s contest between Rep Budd (R) and Cheri Beasley (D) is called “a dead heat” by the Civitas Institute, a conservative pollster. Each of the two candidates polled at 42.3%. This organization is not known to FiveThirtyEight, and so evaluating the poll is a bit difficult.
• A Trafalgar poll in Ohio gives J. D. Vance (R) a five point lead over Rep Ryan (D). Trafalgar is rated A- by FiveThirtyEight.
• A rated Fox News gives Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) a 50% – 46% lead over incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) in Wisconsin’s Senate race, which is within the margin of error. The consolation prize is that Johnson supporters are more enthused. Apparently, they want to lose their Social Security checks?
• Nevada’s Reno Gazette teams with Suffolk University to produce a poll showing incumbent Senator Masto (D) leading challenger Adam Laxalt (R) 45% – 38%. The last poll I saw gave Masto a three point lead, so this is a problem for Laxalt, who is Trump-endorsed. Suffolk is rated B+ by FiveThirtyEight. Masto appears to be benefiting from the Dobbs decision motivating Democratic voters. Is Masto safe yet? No. Trafalgar has released a poll showing Laxalt leading by three, 47%-44%. I’d wait until Masto, or Laxalt, has a twelve point lead before considering them safe.
• A rated Fox News gives incumbent Senator Kelly (R) of Arizona an eight point lead over Blake Masters (R), a considerable comedown from the fourteen point lead awarded by newcomer pollster Center Street PAC last week. That’ll learn me, darnit. But it’s still a lead outside of the margin of error in a purple state. In other news, though, another Republican+Independent group of forty leaders have announced their support for Kelly rather than Masters.
• It appears Rep Deming (D) has won the right in the primary to challenge Senator Rubio (R) for his seat in the Senate from Florida. The second place finishing Democrat didn’t exceed 10%.
• In Missouri John Wood (I) has ended his candidacy in the wake of Eric Schmitt’s defeat of Eric Greitens in the Senate primary.
• Oklahoma’s Rep Markwayne Mullin (R) will be the Republican’s nominee for the open Oklahoma Senate seat, as the Trump endorsee defeats T. W. Shannon with 65% of the primary vote. Does this signal a crack in the Republican voters? Probably not, but a poll would be welcome.
• In Washington McLaughlin & Associates claims the race between incumbent Murray (D) and challenger Smiley (R) is 49% – 43% for Murray, much tighter than other polls of this race. As I’ve noted before, this pollster is rated “C/D” by FiveThirtyEight, and in another negative note, RealClearPolitics, an aggregator of polls, does not appear to be willing to use this pollster.

A vague gesture of previous report & prediction here.

For those readers who don’t track special elections, a special election to fill an empty Congressional seat is often used to attempt to forecast the next general election for the entire country. Its usefulness depends on the nature of the district, the popularity of the individual candidates although appropriate adjustments can still yield prognosticatory … information.

So there was a special election last night in New York to fill the seat that was emptied by new Governor Hochul (D-NY) selecting Rep Antonio Delgado (D-NY) to be her Lt. Governor. Popular pundit opinion had it that Republican Marc Molinaro should beat Democrat Pat Ryan in a mildly close race.

The results? Ryan beats Molinaro, roughly 51%-49%. That’s stirred up the pundit class.

Marc Molinaro’s (R) On The Issues Summation.

But what does it mean for the November elections? Molinaro’s On The Issues page shows him to be an atypical Republican candidate, favoring abortion rights, and generally a libertarian, rather than what passes for a doctrinaire Republican these days. So this may suggest that the standard Republican base voters walked away from him, at least in part; the fact that he’s a poor match for the standard Republican voter may suggest that this special election is a poor specimen to use for forecasting the November elections.

But it’s also true that a lot of voters will simply see the Republican label and decide to vote against Molinaro, meaning he might have been better served running as a Libertarian! Teasing out the details from an election like this can be a tricky business.

So is this in line with the surprisingly close special elections run in Nebraska and Minnesota over the last few months? It’s probably good advice to both sides not to be complacent. It was fairly close one way instead of the other in New York. More detailed analysis of such factors as new voter registrations is not within my means, so I can’t take it any further.