Unsightly Mental Blemishes

And some find the S. S. Minnow.

In case you’re not intimate with the Hunter Biden saga that the House GOP now threatens, spittle everywhere, to investigate, and you don’t read Kevin Drum, here he is on the Hunter Biden affair:

It’s still 43 days until the new Congress starts up, but it’s never too early to take a deep dive into some the important issues Republicans will be addressing when January 3rd rolls around. And anyway, there’s only one, so it’s not like you have a ton of homework to do. The subject, of course, is Hunter Biden and his laptop. Here’s a detailed rundown of this sordid affair:

• Back in the day, Hunter did a lot of drugs and got himself enmeshed in a bunch of sleazy deals. Apparently he routinely promised people that his ties to “Dad” would be a big help to their cause.
• There is no evidence that Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s dealings or was ever involved in any of them.

Also, come on. Even if you’re a total partisan hack, this doesn’t really sound like Joe’s style, does it?

The news sources are obligated to cover real news. I’d recommend ignoring anything that’s merely political speculation. Here, for example, on a slightly different topic is Rep Chris Stewart (R-UT), in an interview with far-right pundit Glenn Beck:

.@RepChrisStewart tells me he believes the House GOP's investigation into the Biden family may leave the Senate "no choice" but to convict Biden: "There's actual evidence of conspiracy with companies that are directly tied to the [Chinese Communist Party]." pic.twitter.com/ZttVgGuvGJ

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) November 18, 2022

@RepChrisStewart tells me he believes the House GOP’s investigation into the Biden family may leave the Senate “no choice” but to convict Biden: “There’s actual evidence of conspiracy with companies that are directly tied to the [Chinese Communist Party].”

Has he brought this evidence forward? No. Either submit the evidence, or do the honorable thing and keep your trap shut. You occupy a position of responsibility, you’re not running a blog as your primary route of public expression.

We’ll be seeing if the House GOP can be responsible or just the center ring of the a circus.

I must say, it’s been interesting watching progressives speculate that Musk’s apparent mismanagement of his latest acquisition, Twitter, may not be a matter of gross incompetence, but of direction, such as this, from bluedogsd on Daily Kos:

I’m presenting a thesis:   Elon Musk is breaking Twitter as a co-opted asset for the Putin Oligarchy with the purpose of disrupting or damaging the best information coming out of Ukraine to the public that bolsters support in NATO and the west. 

Of course this thesis can and will never be proven but I want to make what I think is a compelling case.

There’s been a couple of other articles of the sort on Daily Kos, as well as an alternative hypothesis of Neoreactionarism, or what I’d term a weak-minded belief that a strong man leadership is better than democracy. The association of this juvenile philosophy with libertarianism seems a trifle odd, as most libertarians seem to appreciate the positives of democracy, at least as far as I could tell ten or more years ago.

That these hypotheses are coming from the left, rather than the right, strikes me as a trifle funny is because I remember accusations of the left being in league with the Soviet Union, which had, at its core, Russia, coming from the right decades ago.

That now the left can make similar accusations of, essentially, traitorous behavior by Musk and some of his fellow right-wing millionaires and billionaires, and have those theories at least considered, is a fascinating insight into the use of the East as The Other, the eternally menacing shadowy creatures with which we strip adversaries of their honor and even their humanity.

It doesn’t hurt that accusations against the left from decades ago were partially substantiated when Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, members of the Cambridge Five and known for their left-wing views, were revealed as Soviet spies. Will we eventually see right-wingers being bought and paid for by Russian paymasters?

And how many of us will be able to appreciate the historical parallel?

What does it say, not about the East, but about the West?

Happy birthday flowers for my Arts Editor:

Raw materials from Byerly’s, arrangements by Deb. Approval and Security by Froogs, Inc.

Always an important bit of knowledge: When a former lover disses you without fear:

The New York Post buried Trump's 2024 campaign launch on page 26: "Florida Man Makes Announcement." pic.twitter.com/EfWVQmNWyN

— Dylan Stableford (@stableford) November 16, 2022

From almost a month ago, prior to the FTX collapse:

A cryptocurrency platform in the United Arab Emirates announced today it will offer a card linked to cryptocurrencies.

The Dubai-based BitOasis and Mastercard will partner to offer “crypto card programs” that will use cryptocurrencies for everyday purchases. The cards will convert the crypto assets into fiat currency, such as US dollars or Emirati dirhams. BitOasis said in a statement that the cards will launch in early 2023.

“We continue to witness sustained demand amongst our customers for crypto to be integrated into, and relevant, for their daily lives,” said BitOasis CEO Ola Doudin. “Research tells us that 47% of the Middle East population now believe crypto is the future of money.” [AL-Monitor]

Given the description, deeply simplified I’m sure, this rather defeats one of the purposes of the blockchain: to record who bought what for how much.

Ronnagram:

“If we think about mass, instead of distance, the Earth weighs approximately six ronnagrams,” which is a six followed by 27 zeroes, Brown said. [“Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in,” Daniel Lawler, Phys.Org]

Quetta is another 3 zeroes, and ronto and quecto down at the other end of the spectrum, describing painfully small measurements. WaPo’s article, “The Earth now weighs 6 ronnagrams. What does that mean?” appears to be terminally confused about the difference between weight and mass:

<Insert pathetic Harry Potter joke here, then jump off Niagara Falls in a flowerpot as an apology.>

The Woman In Black (2012) seems like a movie out of its era, at least to these modern eyes. Set in Edwardian or late Victorian England, young and probationary lawyer Arthur Kipps is sent by his employer to Crythin Gifford in England to process the estate of client Alice Drablow, lately deceased. Mourning the loss of his own wife in childbirth four years earlier, Kipps discovers a village that is standoffish, but not for the usual reasons, whatever they may be, but because the children of the village are dying.

In droves, I mean. And it’s all by, well, it appears inadvertent suicide. No, don’t walk in the train tracks. No, don’t drink lye.

But he has a job, and no matter how hard the villagers try, Eel Marsh House, late home of Alice Drablow and intoxicator of my Arts Editor, will be processed. So Kipps digs in and starts reading.

And hearing the noises.

And seeing the mysterious, disappearing figures. Indeed, we’re almost overrun by the haunted house tropes. In fact, I began to muse on how to flip them on their heads, just for fun.

And that’s the problem here. Each scene, for all its earnestness, for all its unconscious dedication to the art form of the earnestly haunted house, inspired not shivering or thoughtfulness, but straight lines.

“And this is Arthur Kipps, seen here extinguishing the very idea of humor in England,” as Stephen Colbert might intone.

The problem is that a haunted house story needs some sort of underlying theme, a Don’t ever do this moment, and … It. Doesn’t. Have. That.

And that lack leads the mind to wander.

Back to the story, and skipping a great deal of it, eventually Kipps’ four year old son comes a-visiting (“Hey! Make him bait!”), and soon we have the woman in black, as well as Arthur’s dead wife, at the rail station, but, too bad for her kid and still-living husband, she’s just useless in the protection racket, so terrible things keep on happening.

And, yes, the future is bleak for this little village. But moreso for a movie that is ultimately far too earnest for the current era, an era that demands cleverness and insight, and the haunted house genre, in earnest mode, just doesn’t seem to be up for it here.

If you want recently done effective horror, see Get Out (2017). Horror is not my gig at all, but I liked Get Out.

Governor DeSantis (R-FL) may be considered a leading contender for attention in Florida, but fellow Republican Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) may be giving him a run for his money, if not in the most salubrious manner:

The GOP’s post-election finger-pointing intensified Tuesday, with two senators calling for an audit of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

During a tense, three-hour-long meeting of the Senate GOP Conference, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said there should be an independent review of how the party’s campaign arm spent its resources before falling short of its goal of winning the majority.

Scott responded in a statement issued after this story was first published Wednesday morning, describing taking over the committee two years ago and “immediately” learning that previous staffers had been paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized and improper bonuses.”

Kevin McLaughlin, the executive director of the NRSC during the 2020 election cycle under then-Chairman Todd Young (R-Ind.), said in response: “This is what children do when they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They lash out. Obviously this is crazy and we welcome a full audit.” [Politico]

Some sort of corruption going on? Sure. But if it gets a Republican Senator marched off to jail, it may emphasize the point to many independents that the Republicans seem to be a different breed from the Democrats. Here we’re talking about Senators Young (R-IN) and Scott (R-FL), and if either broke the law, we may see a special election called for the guilty party.

What are the odds of a special election in Florida’s future due to corruption? Very small. The audit may detect misbehavior, but it may not rise to the level of actual criminality. Or a prosecutor might be overwhelmed by the position of whoever’s at fault.

But it’s worth contemplating. Even without criminal charges, the revelation may be enough to drive moderates away from the Republicans.

Erick Erickson is appalled at the behavior of the Republican leadership:

There was a time in Western Civilization when if the party screwed up as badly as the GOP screwed up last Tuesday, the people in charge would resign out of shame.

They have no sense of shame anymore. The grift is too strong.

Tom Emmers, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, thinks he deserves a promotion to House Republican Whip. In what world does the man deserve that after the GOP took a red wave and turned it into a bloodbath by suicide?

Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker. The man thought the GOP would get up to sixty seats.

And on top of it all, Ronna McDaniel wants to be RNC Chair again. What the actual hell is up with that?

But Erickson, so far as I can make out, seems to think this was a matter of tactics. It’s not; it’s a matter of a toxic culture within the Republican Party, where certain tenets, such as 2nd Amendment Rights are absolute, regulation and taxes are an unremitting evil which are used to hold down the little guy, abortion is outright evil (baby-killing in Erickson’s terms), and experience and competency in the area of governance, if not deeply suspicious, is of secondary or tertiary importance.

Being capable of the gun-rights polka, the anti-taxation jig, the anti-abortion waltz are the primary requirements of a Republican candidate, and after that it becomes a matter of proving just how extreme you can be, as Governor Stitt (R-OK) demonstrated as he tried to drag Oklahoma into theocracy over the last few years. The lack of interest in experience leads to candidate with, well, no experience, and it’s that lack of experience which leads candidates to shoot their mouths off irresponsibly.

That toxic team culture means that it’s going to be hell to reform the GOP, and Erickson does recognize the difficulty:

In Georgia, the Governor of Georgia has decided to gut the state GOP. Kemp is setting up a leadership PAC that will siphon off most of the GOP donors from the Georgia GOP. The Chairman of that state’s party found primary opponents for Kemp and several other statewide officials. The Chairman won’t resign, so the state Republican elected leader will destroy the party, and deservedly so. It must be burned down to save it.

But if Governor Kemp (R-GA), himself a shady character, as we may deduce from his failure to recuse (or resign!) when he was Secretary of State and running for Governor, doesn’t understand that reformation includes returning experience to primacy, and enabling dissent and discussion around what are now religious tenets, his accomplishment will be fleeting.

And the only reason the Republicans will continue to be competitive is a Democratic Party that has equal trouble resolving its mistakes, primarily its autocratic streak.

Car or stock.

More on the basis of the FTX debacle by Emily Parker, summarized by CNN as … executive director of global content at CoinDesk, a media, event, indices and data company, and a former policy advisor at the US State Department and writer/editor at The Wall Street Journal.

… crypto shouldn’t need a savior. The whole point of crypto is that it is supposed to be decentralized and transparent. Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall shows how far the industry has strayed from that ideal. Today’s crypto world is one of opaque entities run by larger-than-life personalities. There is perhaps no better example than FTX and its leader.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Bitcoin, the world’s first major cryptocurrency, came into the world on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis, which led to a deep disappointment in bankers and politicians. In light of the distrust in financial institutions, the basic idea was that this new system didn’t require you to trust anyone at all. Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a decentralized ledger known as a blockchain, which everyone can see and no bad actor should be able to fraudulently alter.

But Bankman-Fried’s empire, it turned out, was far from transparent. [CNN]

As fine an analysis as this might be, it still ignores the larger context. What is that?

Look, let’s stop ignoring the interests of society. Extreme wealth, which Americans and half of humanity, if not more, are taught to desire and pursue, is, at best, a neutral result for society as a whole; it is, I suspect, more of a negative result.

THE label society is a placeholder for the idea of group survival, a group which supports successful reproduction of enough of its members to ensure group survival at a minimum. An age-old definition, more recently, as we’ve overpopulated our various geographical niches, we’ve attempted to add factors related to environmental stability and robustness to the definition, which threatens the personal ambitions of certain individuals and, more importantly, groups that share misunderstandings of the purpose of capitalism and the sort-of meritocracy to which we sort of honor.

But once this aggregate entity is recognized, there is an inherent question of whether the individual desires are superior to that of the societal requirements, or the reverse; my inclination is the latter.

But there’s a lot of adversarial evidence, isn’t there? Various forms of government and economy, the tools of society, have been tried, and that of individual autonomy are generally considered to lead to robust nations. Monarchies, theocracies, autocracies, communisms, all have lead to societal turmoil, thus lessening the chances of group survival. We’ve tried most of the worst, now we’re on this one.

But in our particular case at hand, extreme wealth and its pursuit appears to lead to instabilities of various institutions and organizations, from endangering corporate entities such as Twitter to the endangerment of societal members health, such as victims of parasites when the price of Daraprim steeply climbed due to the manipulations of a hedge fund manager, who jacked up the price in a criminal pursuit of wealth, his name being Martin Shkreli.

It’s this single minded pursuit of wealth, whether individual or under the color of corporate wealth, that tends to damage society. The cryptocurrency industry, while not bringing any tangible benefit to society, seems to have minted many new rich people.

And then deminted them.

And how does this benefit society? Well, so far I haven’t seen any such thing. Capitalism, or the cessation of mercantilism, wasn’t just to give individuals a chance to advance in society on their own merits, but to advance society’s purpose of a stable environment where the best providers are best rewarded. This single minded pursuit of wealth, from that point of view, strikes me as more a mental illness than the solid contributions of societal members.

And that’s my concern over cryptocurrencies. Just more of the same.

As I read this, from an article entertainingly headlined, Congressional Republicans panic as they watch their lead dwindle …

With control of the House and Senate still undecided, angry Republicans mounted public challenges to their leaders in both chambers Friday as they confronted the possibility of falling short of the majority, eager to drag Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) down from their top posts as consequence. …

The first hurdles for a slim House GOP majority are leadership elections and agreeing on conference rules, a showdown that is expected next week. The staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus is calling for a delay to those housekeeping efforts — especially if control of the House is not decided by then. [WaPo]

… I thought, If McCarthy wins, he’ll face the problem of the Freedom Caucus, the same people who brought down Speaker Boehner (R-OH). Would he consider expelling one or two members of the Freedom Caucus from Congress as a signal warning to the rest of them?

Sure, seems highly unlikely. But who’d miss Rep Jordan (R-OH), Greene (R-GA), or Gosar (R-AZ)? Hey, there’s currently 43 members, maybe kick a couple out and tell the rest to get in line?

Nyah, won’t happen. Democrats would have to cooperate, as it takes 2/3 of the membership of the House to expel a member. But, hey, a little thinking outside of the box by McCarthy may be necessary.

Which reminds me, the Senate, as I type this, is at 49-49, advantage Democrats because they hold the White House and therefore get to break ties via VP Harris. Arizona was called for the Democrats yesterday, in case my reader missed the news. This means the Democrats must win one of the two remaining contests, while the Republicans must win both.

These contests are Senator Cortez Masto (D) vs Adam Laxalt (R) in Nevada, currently lead by the latter by a tenth of a point with an estimated 94% of the vote counted, and Senator Warnock (D) vs Herschel Walker (R) in Georgia, where there’s a requirement that the 50% barrier be broken, or the race goes to a runoff election. As Warnock is at 49.4% with 99% of the estimated vote counted, that’s almost certainly where it’s going.

Now let’s suppose that Senator Cortez Masto has enough votes in the uncounted vote pile to make up that tenth of a point and more, thus winning her seat again and, more importantly, guaranteeing the Democrats control of the Senate. Riddle me this: Given that Walker may be the most inadequate nominee to the Senate in a good long time, spewing gibberish, lies, and unacceptable policies every which way, do you, in your role of controller of Republican policy and monies, go all in on him for the runoff?

Knowing that he could be six years of unmitigated embarrassment, six years of damage to a Republican Party that unexpectedly failed to make substantial gains last week?

Or do you not support him and figure the Democrats can have the seat for six years, giving it to Senator Warnock (D), who apparently is gaining a reputation for oratory, for persuasiveness?

Tough question, really. I suppose you have to go all in, but it’s really a distasteful decision, at least in my view.

The saga of cryptocurrency continues on its sad, even tragic path, as FTX Group, a Bahamian-based cryptocurrency exchange, has foundered:

FTX Group said Friday it has filed for bankruptcy in the United States and that its CEO has resigned, marking a stunning downfall for one of the biggest and most powerful players in the crypto industry.

FTX said Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder of the exchange, will remain to assist in an orderly transition. The firm appointed a new CEO, John Ray III, and many employees are expected to stay on to operate the company in Chapter 11.

“I’m really sorry, again, that we ended up here,” Bankman-Fried wrote in a Twitter thread Friday. “Hopefully things can find a way to recover.”

The bankruptcy proceedings include FTX US as well as FTX’s crypto hedge fund Alameda and about 130 other sister companies. [CNN/Business]

While in isolation it’s not unlike a bank going under, in the context of the industry, it’s not good. Last time I was paying attention to Bitcoin, it went for something like $19K/coin. Now?

Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Call it $17K/coin. More importantly, yesterday the stock market had a marked recovery on a report that inflation is slowing.

Bitcoin didn’t.

Too much navel gazing? Not sensitive to that particular marker since the system is supposedly insensitive?

Maybe it’s deflating from unsupportable price spikes. Hello, tulips?

From WaPo:

As voters cast ballots largely without incident on Tuesday afternoon, former president Donald Trump took to social media to declare that a minor, already rectified problem with absentee balloting in Detroit was “REALLY BAD.”

“Protest, protest, protest,” he wrote just before 2:30 p.m.

Unlike in 2020, when similar cries from the then-president drew thousands of supporters into the streets — including to a tabulating facility in Detroit and later to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — this time, no one showed up.

After two years of promises from Trump and his supporters that they would flood polls and counting stations with partisan watchers to spot alleged fraud, after unprecedented threats lodged against election workers, after calls to ditch machines in favor of hand counting and after postings on internet chat groups called for violent action to stop supposed cheating, a peaceful Election Day drew high turnout and only scattered reports of problems.

Evidence that the American electorate can learn. The grifters are looking bad this time ’round:

Election officials said nationally that fewer partisan challengers showed up than they had thought likely, given pre-election rhetoric from figures like former Trump adviser and popular podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, who boasted of a massive new network of “election integrity” activists. (“We’re going to be there and enforce those rules, and we’ll challenge any vote, any ballot, and you’re going to have to live with it, okay?” he said on a recent episode of his show.)

Bannon’s a spent balloon – he may make a bit of noise if someone steps on him, but it turns out there’s really not much more to him than taking people’s money with little or no return on it.

In North Carolina, [Pandora Paschal, the election director in Chatham County, N.C.] said it was election workers who had kept partisan challengers from breaking the rules.

“We let them know we would not tolerate it,” she said.

The heroes of the election. Despite the threats and extra challenges, they went out and did their jobs, and, so far, by all reports quite well.

Photophoresis:

There is a known effect for levitating flat objects with two sides called photophoresis. This occurs when one of the sides absorbs lots of light and the other very little, creating a difference in temperature. Just like how temperature differences in the atmosphere cause winds, this temperature gradient makes molecules move in such a way as to create a lifting force on the object.

Benjamin Schafer at Harvard University in Massachusetts and his colleagues designed a device that could use photophoresis to levitate small atmospheric sensors that wouldn’t need motors or batteries to stay aloft. [“Weather sensors could float forever in the stratosphere using sunlight,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, NewScientist (29 October 2022, paywall)]

Here’s a meta-nominee. Or something.

A real quote from Donald Trump about tonight’s results:

"Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all."

pic.twitter.com/u0O8yWfCoE

— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) November 8, 2022

That’s right, the former President gets all the credit and none of the blame. In a very real way, it’s a paean to this man’s philosophy, a deeply broken philosophy that contributes to the disaster that seems to follow his life around.

So we had a mid-term election, and, like any good compromise, no one’s happy. The Republicans had, to some degree, bought into the mantra that It’s the economy, stupid!, and thus ignored their gaping flaws in their reaction to Trump’s January 6 Insurrection, which will loom over them as a black cloud of utter condemnation, the Dobbs decision, permitting the imposition of religious dogma on the American people via proposed Federal regulation, election denying, which is a strike against the very heart of how we handle transfer of political power, adherents to a set of economic tenets that are inferior, and a general incompetency. They thought Congress would be handed to them on a platter.

You’d think the Democrats could have run the table.

But they have too many flaws, and a few burdens, of their own. Chief among their current set of flaws is an autocratic thread that sets independent teeth on edge. I’ve mentioned this before, so I’ll keep it brief. It has become painfully apparent in their culture wars, chiefly in their style of managing the transgenderism issue, that rather than have a civilized discussion of the serious issues surrounding this small group of people, first they promulgated regulations that impacted a huge number of people, including the most vulnerable members of society, and then, when various folks try to have a discussion on the issue as required by the tenets of liberal democracy, the transgenderism advocates run around screaming BIGOT!

This is not in keeping with liberal democracy, or for that matter being an adult. But that first point, indicating an abrogation of their responsibilities under the social contract of being members of liberal democracies, is the most important.

Among their burdens is communications of difficult subjects. As a single example, the Republicans like to make that they’re the ones to trust on the economy, but all the studies I’ve seen show the stock market hates Republicans, the Federal budget hates Republicans, and the jobs report barely tolerates them. But this is not an easy message to communicate. When inflation kicked in, Democrats were in trouble, and then to compound it they didn’t have an effective counter-message. If asked, I would have advocated for a message of The Democrats are cleaning up after the incompetent Republicans, and just din that into everyone’s ears until they stuffed their ears with rags.

Would it have worked? I dunno. But they should have done more than they did.

Erick Erickson tries to tiptoe through the tulips with this post today:

This is the United States Balkanizing

Our united states seem more and more like a forced coalition of people who do not like each other.

Working-class neighborhoods of nonwhite voters shifted a bit to the right. White, rich neighborhoods that had long propped up the GOP shifted hard left.

In Republican states, the GOP did well. In Democrat states, the Democrats fared well. Republicans helped the Democrats in Maryland get the Governor’s Mansion. Democrats in Florida and Georgia voted for DeSantis and Kemp.

And, no doubt, Professor Turchin is muttering about the dilution of asabiya this morning, asabiya being the intellectual or spiritual bonds that hold diverse groups of people together. He might you that the collapse of the Soviet Union has led to this mess.

But Erickson (not Turchin) won’t tell you how much he and his ilk have contributed to this situation. From calling Democrats baby-killers, and thus not taking the entire subject seriously, to his really bad, context-free, nuance-free arguments, the angling of far-right conservatives for power, to grift, to generally act in a self-centered manner when that is not appropriate, has been a major factor in this situation.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the Democrats have their own horse in this race.

How bad is it? As I typed this, Senator Johnson (R) of Wisconsin, a conspiracy rumor nut, grifter, and probably certifiable crazy, has had his reelection race called in his favor. He may have won by a whisker, but he appears to have won – and he joins Senator Grassley (R) of Iowa in the victory dance, Grassley of 88 years of age, who makes a hobby of mendacity and potentially was involved in the January 6th Insurrection. He won far more easily than Johnson, so easily that I can only ask my neighbors to the south What the fuck are you thinking? And for those who think that two out of one hundred isn’t so bad, I urge you to examine Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Collins (R-ME) for signs of dementia as well.

What does the future hold? We may see new political parties formed. I hope they discard the arrogance that each of our two major parties are displaying to their mutual costs, or they’ll never become large parties.

Erickson forgets one thing in his calculations: the senior generations responsible for this mess, especially on the Republican side, are inevitably dying out, and new generations are observing how badly this is going. I think Erickson believes this’ll be a long-term Balkanization, but I think that as younger generations start taking up positions of authority, this’ll turn into something else.

How it’s shaped by overpopulation and climate change remains to be seen.

The political world’s worst kept secret:

Geoeffective:

Capable of causing a geomagnetic disturbance [Wiktionary]

Like making our telegraph lines catch fire? Noted on Spaceweather.com today:

INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES: NOAA forecasters have boosted the chance of M-class solar flares today to 25%. This is in response to the continued growth of AR3141. The big sunspot now has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for moderately-strong explosions. Any flares will be geoeffective as the sunspot is turning toward Earth.

No weighing in on our elections, dammit!

Our oncoming future, sigh.

And here we are at the last update for the 2022 Senate Campaigns from little ol’ me. The last update of news, rumors, and numbers is here. I’m thoroughly tired of collecting, transcribing, and speculating on the meaning of the various polls and pollsters, how the data source affects the data and its analysis, and all those other things that scientists also have to worry their heads about. There are a few more poll results coming in, but I don’t see them as really being relevant at this point.

As this was a new exercise for me, what have I learned, and what do I anticipate learning by the end of the week?

First, how did the ratings from FiveThirtyEight of the pollsters of 2020 apply to the pollsters of 2022? Is Siena College still an A+? Is Insider Advantage still a B? I hope FiveThirtyEight once again rates the pollsters, and makes it easy to compare the 2022 editions to the 2020 editions.

I mentioned data source evaluation, or data collection. How are its characteristics changing? Are voters still lying to pollsters, and, better yet, why? Is phone data acquisition still the gold standard, as I understand it, or is online collection, which I consider dubious and easy to game, not so easy and worth the effort? Are young voters really only available through online and SMS data collection, are they really shut out of voice/phone acquisition, and does it matter?

Who’s going to win? Sure, every pundit should try to answer that question, and I’d like to bow out right now. No? I can’t? OK, then I – we, you and I, reader, have to understand and select the model of polling we like best. Here’s the models I came up with.

1. Naive interpretation. If we naively simply accept the poll reports, then we can probably expect seriously contested States NH, AZ, PA, WA, and GA will be won by the Democrat, NC, FL, WI, OH. NV, UT, and IA by the Republican. Note that Republicans had far more states to defend, and in these two lists “flips”, being PA and NV, balance out. Also note pollsters seemed shy of trying to poll Alaska, probably because of their ranked choice voting system, but I expect it gives the moderate the edge, so I believe the middle of the roader, Murkowski, will win there. Her only competition is a Trump-endorsed Republican, not the Democrat.
2. Dishonest GOP polls influence the electorate. Back on Halloween DrFrink on Daily Kos expressed the opinion that GOP-aligned pollsters had put their thumbs on the scale to make it appear GOP candidates were ahead, all in hopes of influencing the elections. While it’s not the job of pollsters to influence, but to measure, I doubt we’ll ever know, absent a confession or leak, that this has happened. If it has and voters make the mistake of thinking that elections are, as former Governor Ventura (Reform Party-MN, at the time) put it, “horse races” (to clarify, he said “THEY’RE NOT HORSE RACES! VOTE FOR WHO YOU THINK WILL BE BEST, NOT WHO YOU THINK WILL WIN!”), then we may see AZ and even PA move to the Republican column. The idea of Senator Masters and Senator Oz would seriously compromise a Senate that already has a Senator Tuberville (R-AL).
3. Michael Steele’s “pink wave” is real. If Steele is correct, then pollsters missed an important component of the electorate, namely non-voting women who, outraged by Dobbs, will vote for the first time. This might result in WI, OH, NV, and IA moving to the Democratic column, although Iowa would be a stretch. But would pollsters miss this?
4. Pollsters are missing the “young voter” component of the electorate due to a flawed data collection method. Put forth by Rule of Claw on Daily Kos, if true then, again, WI, OH. NV, and IA might move to the Democratic list, as well as NC and FL on a really, really good day for the Democrats. Don’t count on it, though.
5. Pollsters lean liberal! I only put this forth for completeness, and so I can underline that most of the top of the line pollsters, with the notable exception of Emerson College Polling, continued to show Democratic candidates leading in various contests while known GOP-aligned pollsters, typically in the second tier (“B+” and lower rating), began showing GOP candidates leading, sometimes by outlandish margins. Then again, unknown pollster University of Nevada – Reno showed Senator Cortez Masto (D) of Nevada leading challenger Adam Laxalt (R) by 12 points, when GOP aligned pollsters were assigning narrow leads to Laxalt. Not quite matching UNR in magnitude, but still surprisingly, B+ rated UMass’ Lowell Center gave Senator Hassan (D) of New Hampshire a 10 point lead over challenger and election-denier Don Bolduc (R), again when GOP aligned pollsters were assigning narrow leads to the challenger. Qualitatively, though, the liberal leaning outliers were pollsters who, for all I could see, had conducted one poll, while the conservative leaning pollsters were issuing multitudinous polls.

This was selected to look restful.

You can just decide which I prefer. Will they win? We should know by Friday, I should think.

But, honestly, I’m also interested in the non-competitive contests: California, Hawaii, Oklahoma (2), Idaho, Kentucky, CT, others. Will the victory gaps change significantly in the wake of Dobbs and January 6th? Hey, how about a shocking, drama-filled upset?

But most interesting will be seeing which of two deeply flawed parties will beat the other. Virtually any analysis of the Republicans finds they can claim no operational advantage over Democrats in terms of economy, national defense, law enforcement, social nets, and many other areas. But they do excel in messaging, in picking up isolated, unpopular policy suggestions and painting the entire Democratic Party with them, such as Defund the police!, a policy that was not only never official, but resoundingly rejected when placed in front of voters and from which Democrats learned. Later, Democrats proposed more funding at the Federal level, which Republicans opposed. The Republicans specialize in fear: fear of the unknown, of cheating, of the replacement of a way of life. As if it were perfect.

But Democrats have their own set of flaws, and Andrew Sullivan, sounding a trifle frenetic, listed a few:

[Biden] championed the entire far-left agenda: the biggest expansion in government since LBJ; a massive stimulus that, in a period of supply constraints, fueled durable inflation; a second welfare stimulus was also planned — which would have made inflation even worse; record rates of mass migration, and no end in sight; a policy of almost no legal restrictions on abortion (with public funding as well!); the replacement of biological sex with postmodern “genders”; the imposition of critical race theory in high schools and critical queer theory in kindergarten; an attack on welfare reform; “equity” hiring across the federal government; plans to regulate media “disinformation”; fast-track sex-changes for minors; next-to-no due process in college sex-harassment proceedings; and on and on it went. Even the policy most popular with the center — the infrastructure bill — was instantly conditioned on an attempt to massively expand the welfare state. What on earth in this agenda was there for anyone in the center? [The Weekly Dish, paywall]

I personally think his analysis is shallow in the economically linked subjects, and slanted in his omissions on the foreign policy front, but in other areas, such as transgenderism, there’ll be certainly enough to offend larger numbers of independents. Will independents be more appalled by the January 6th insurrection, Dobbs, election denying, and incessant shrieking fourth-rate candidates from the right, or by postmodern genders, mass migration, no restrictions abortion, and a bigger welfare state on the left? It’s a serious question, and while my answer is pick the Democrats and then trim off the parts that are madness, such as encouraging parents to abandon their duties to actually, you know, parent, others, like Sullivan himself, may pick the other way.

Looking past the obvious?

I refuse to be a hater, I refuse to condemn Sullivan for making an assessment that I think is wrong. The Democrats and their abrogation of the liberal democratic model, inspired as it might be by the Republicans, is something that cries out to be corrected, and the usual approach to correction is to vote against those making the mistake.

Unfortunately, I think the Republicans are worse, and we need to slap them down, and hard. Sullivan disagrees.

Incidentally, if you were to read only Sullivan’s post, you might think he’s a bulgy eyed Republican. He’s not. He has literally years of blogging critiques of the Republicans, predicting their own abandonment of democracy, their flawed model of discussion, etc, not to mention his defense of such liberal projects as the ACA (ObamaCare). The problem with blogging is that relatively short posts are not balanced discussions. They’re more like blurts overheard at a crowded, beery party.

And there you have it, my refusal to really predict anything. Enjoy. Let me know what you’re thinking.

Poor ol’ Erick Erickson has been forced to say something that he never should have to say just two days before Election Day:

He got on stage at a late midterm rally and railed against Ron DeSantis. He blasted DeSantis’s handling of COVID. He claimed DeSantis was part of the Republican establishment. “Ron DeSanctimonious,” he called him.

This reminds me of last year when he went after Kemp in Georgia.

He said, “Stacey, would you like to take [Kemp’s] place? It’s OK with me… might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think. Might very well be better.”

An irrelevant reminder that summer will come again.

Yes, that’s all about the former President Trump. Narcissist, jealous faux-leader of the Republican Party, a shameless man who employs truth and lies as weapons rather than badges of honor and shame – and reportedly still adored by more than half of the Republican Party.

Erickson has been struggling to keep his listeners voting conservative, despite Trump, DeSantis, all the frantic election deniers, the would-be Whitmer assassins, the January 6th Insurrection, Dobbs, the power-hungry hypocritical opportunists, the slippery ethics and toxic culture of the Southern Baptist Convention, the mendacity, all of it.

An honest pundit would have declared themselves to be an independent, and then subject both sides to critiques. Expose the Democrats’ and Republicans’ autocratic tendencies, compare them, and come to some sort of recommendation.

Erickson is a propagandist, though, not an honest pundit. He calls people who need abortions baby-killers, shaves context from arguments, and in general leads his audience away from any argument that might threaten the Republican position on issues.

It’s really quite shameful.

What? Did you give birth again?

Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) is certainly no match for the eponymous flagship of the Despicable Me franchise, of which this is the fifth installment but second prequel, set when lead Gru is hardly a teenager, but compared to the previous addition, Minions (2015), it’s a marginal improvement.

When you, or kid Gru in this case, wants to be a super-villain, what’s your logical course of action? That’s right: find an old, washed up arch-villain who needs a bit of a buck-up, and then brown nose like mad. Wild Knuckles fills the bill, as his gang betrayed him on their last gig. Gru originally applies to replace his idol, but during the interview he gets dissed for being all of 12 years old.

And what should a villain do? Show his chops by stealing from the gang itself. The target, though, happens to be the gang’s most valuable holding, so when it disappears, youthful Gru finds disengaging from the finest gang of super-villains around is more of a chore than he expected.

But here’s a key part of the review: I wrote the above a month ago, forgot about it, and now I can’t remember the rest of the movie. I know it involves a great deal of classic pop and rock music. There’s a cursed Chinese magical charm that converts the members of the gang into their feral inner selves.

And, rather than being heart-warming and that sort of thing, it’s just sort of silly. It’s not memorable, not even close.

Which is too bad, but that’s the way of it. Don’t go looking for this to be as good as the first two installments, because the key to the first installment was Gru’s conversion from arch-villain to, reluctantly, adoptive father and general good guy. The process of that conversion helps the audience see how good people and bad people act, and the consequences thereof. The second installment, Despicable Me 2 (2013), continues that exploration and, perhaps accidentally, demonstrates that tools lack moral agency or moral attributes, it’s the intention that matters.

And so do jelly guns.

But, setting aside the boring third installment, these last two lack the moral dimension of the first two installments. Sure, there’s lots of badness, as it were, but Gru doesn’t grow morally, he merely outsmarts some other bad guys. Lessons are presented, but he seems impervious, and perhaps rightly so.

Because the rewards of outsmarting the gang aren’t damaged or disappointing. Add in the fact that he yearns to excel at being bad, rather than having a justification for his bad behavior, and the entire structure just collapses into a dull, dusty heap.

Gubbins:

1. dialectal, British : fish parings or refuse
   broadly : any bits and pieces : SCRAPS
2. British : GADGETS, GADGETRY
   // the gubbins for changing a tire
   // all the navigational gubbins
   — J. L. Rhys
3. British : a foolish or futile person : SIMPLETON
   // you silly gubbins [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Can a slew of nuclear fusion start-ups deliver unlimited clean energy?” Thomas Lewton, NewScientist (22 October 2022, paywall):

It remains to be seen if solutions like this can work in practice. Even if they do, no-one has yet built the gubbins that would surround a reactor to make electricity non-stop. Exhaust systems, heat exchangers, turbines – all of it must be custom-built from materials that can withstand the high-energy neutrons released during fusion. “Unless these companies have a secret research line in materials, after a few months of operation [the reactors] will simply fall apart,” says Donné.

Might it be the last one? Like the last mouse in the house? Nyah.

• When it comes to Pennsylvania, not all the news is small numbers. Some of it is big, even monstrous numbers. Like noted business tycoon and television star Oprah Winfrey: ”I said it was up to the citizens of Pennsylvania … but I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Winfrey said during an online discussion Thursday about voting and the midterm elections. Is Winfrey still the influential star that she was a couple of decades ago? Will the undecideds hear and heed her word? In other news, A rated Marist College’s final poll for this race – I hope! – has Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D) leading 50% to 44%, while GOP-linked, A- rated Trafalgar has Dr. Oz (R) leading Fetterman, 47.7% to 45.5%, and another GOP-linked pollster, B rated Insider Advantage, has Oz leading 48% to 46%. I think Pennsylvania wins the competition to be the most heavily polled State in the Union. But for all the GOP linked polls favoring Oz, iconic GOP pollster Fox News comes up with a lead for Fetterman, 45% to 42%.
• In New Hampshire, Emerson College gives Senator Hassan (D) a 49% to 45% advantage over challenger Don Bolduc (R). Not over 50%, but better than trailing.
• It’s just like a carefully timed hand grenade, isn’t it? Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R), in a tight race with Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D), has, frankly, not smelled good in a long, long time. Still, for conservative leaning independents, this may be the last straw: Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was pushing for a tax cut provision in 2017 that benefitted his former plastics company and many others as his family was acquiring properties around the country, a newspaper review of property records revealed. The tax cut to companies called “pass-throughs” benefitted not only Johnson’s company and big donors, as had been previously reported, but it came as the senator’s family was acquiring luxury properties that could also take advantage of the law, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday. No doubt the word “foul” can be heard throughout the State of Wisconsin, and in multiple contexts as well. Time to take a chance on new blood, Wisconsin independents.
• In Vermont, B rated Data for Progress suggests that soon we’ll be calling him Senator, as Peter Welch (D) leads Gerald Malloy (R) 63% to 32% in the race to replace Senator Leahy (D), who has been exhibiting health problems of late; no one else made it to 1%, indicating a sense of tribalism that may be a bit unfortunate. Incidentally, Senator Leahy won his reelection run in 2016 by nearly the same numbers.
• If you want more out of your polls than a couple three numbers, then you might want to read this post by Rule of Claw on Daily Kos. The writer believes there’s a serious undercount of young voters by the pollsters, and he has plausible reasons for that belief. Which is far more than election-deniers provide. Do I take him seriously? I will wait for results. If we have more than 52 Democratic Senators at the end of this fracas, then that might be good evidence for his thesis. Otherwise, it’s into the dustbin of history. But I will note this: I’ve noticed that, over the last couple of weeks, in most, but not all, A- rated Emerson College polls have been diverging towards the conservative candidate, unlike most other top-tier pollsters. Rule of Claw implies that Emerson College’s data collection methods, or perhaps their adjustment algorithms, may be antiquated. So it’s interesting to see someone with more knowledge than I having the same observation, and having more knowledge to make some educated guesses. Got that?
• The race for the Utah Senate seat between Senator Lee (R) and Evan McMullin (I) has been one that has left me quite mystified. Is it still a close race? Or is Lee all of a sudden ahead by quite a bit? Now it comes out that Senator Lee would prefer to rid the country entirely of Social Security. Here’s the link in case you’re interested. The Deseret News is on the case. But do Utah voters care about Social Security?
• A rated Marist College has Georgia Senator Warnock (D) leading challenger Herschel Walker (R), 49% to 45%. Similarly rated Fox News has Warnock leading by only one point, 44% to 43% – call it a dead heat, what with a margin of error of ± 3 points. Erick Erickson remains convinced that not only will Walker win, but he’ll break the 50% barrier and avoid a runoff. Why in the world Erickson wants Walker for his Senator beats me.
• Siena College gives Florida Senator Rubio (R) a 51% to 43% lead over Rep Demings (D), with a margin of error of ± 4.4 points. YouGov gives Rubio a similar lead.
• A rated Marist College has Arizona Senator Kelly (D) leading challenger Blake Masters (R), 50% to 47% among definite voters, and among registered voters he’s up 49% to 45%.

How much further, pray tell? Ouch. Pity about that.