I should have known the last thread would close. Here’s a new one.
838 thoughts on “October 24 Open thread.”
I would not trust polls at all this cycle. Historically the polls have had error but it bounces back and forth both ways cycle to cycle. We had had 3 cycles in a row now that point to a left bias in polling. Some pollsters have responded by trying to adjust their polling voodoo to account for that (non-response bias adjustment, etc.). It’s very possible they will overcorrect.
The FBI has obviously gone off the rails. What happened? In a word: Mueller.
Mueller resolved and resolutely set about to change the FBI’s “culture.” That’s the word he used. He was going to make it into an intelligence agency, or in his repeated terminology, an “intelligence-driven” organization.
What went wrong with the FBI is the same thing that went wrong with many other institurions: A self reinforcing, politically biased, echo chamber that believes its own BS. Each level of BS is justified by the last, everyone with the clout to say no has been purged and demonized. It has never been clearer in recent times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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If you look at polling demographics, “educated” people vote democrat, and it shows in their attitude. While the “religious right” do it to save you from hell, the “cult left” do it to create heaven on earth, which is only kept at bay by the common person’s crippling ignorance and selfishness, otherwise known as freedom. They are determined to save you from yourself and you and everyone else from your bad decisions and choices. They just need to rid themselves of the shackles which bind them and reforge them for you.
The educated being captured by the Democrats is a relatively new phenomenon, as is the appeal of the working class to the Republicans. It’s a new sorting out of the parties, which is to say that both parties are a bit fluid in their belief systems on the edges.
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The biggest problem with successfully capturing a targeted demographic is the belief that you can then exploit that capture to newfound riches and power. What happened with academia is that people no longer trust academia for politically controversial subjects.
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This particular example is bad for society, and academia should have resisted being captured by a political party at all costs. But what is the academy full of? Humans with the same faults as everyone else.
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We see things like the NEJM coming out with political statements outside of their expertise, this is just misguided and needs to stop.
Tom Scharf,
The evolution of party positions is an interesting subject. I had dinner about a week ago with a life-long union member and consistent Democrat voter (retired a couple years ago). While he still strongly supports unions, and things like “fair taxes” (AKA soak the rich) he is adamantly opposed to all the woke nonsense the Democrats focus on, uncontrolled illegal immigration, and refusal to prosecute crimes. There truly is room for Republicans to get the votes of people who have historically voted for Democrats.
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IMHO, Democrats are lost in a wilderness of crazy woke faculty lounge rhetoric, and it is going to cost them at the ballot box until they pivot back toward something resembling common sense. Many former ‘liberals’ have said: I didn’t leave the Democrats, they left me. And that is truly the case.
NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.’ The economy is second and probably not statistically significantly different. About 80% of both Democrats and Republicans think there is a threat. Of course each thinks the other is the source of the threat. Obviously the Democrats are deluded and the Republicans are correct (/sarc). But then again, they both may be correct.
DeWitt,
“NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.”
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As usual, NBC news is in fact delusional, and they will be shocked (shocked!) when Republicans gain control of both houses of congress, add to their control of state legislatures, and gain a few governorships Dems expected to hold. Progressive policies are damaging in both the short and long term (and profoundly stupid to boot). That is why progressives will lose power come January.
DeWitt,
“NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.”
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Amazing how voters having the right to make decisions democratically by voting can be a threat to voters.
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Still the winds are blowing in all directions and will hopefully coalesce as the time for urgent action draws shorter.
angech,
What urgent action is that?
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Seems to me there are half a dozen policies that desperately need to be reversed.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #215662): “NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.’ The economy is second and probably not statistically significantly different.”
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Such results are sensitive to how things are lumped. So “threats to Democracy” lump together “Voter suppression”, “Republicans”, “Election fraud”, and “Government control” along with many other things to get a total of 20%. But they split “Cost of living” (18%) from “Jobs and the economy” (16%). So economic issue combined are 34%. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/parties-split-defining-threats-democracy-rcna48466
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The “Threats to democracy” graphics at the link above are quite interesting.
Election deniers being voted into office is a threat to democracy say election deniers.
russian missile attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure have dwindled to almost nothing over the last three days. Whether this is a temporary lull or a lasting change is anybody’s guess.
My proof is that the FIRMS fire map has shown fires no more frequent in Ukraine than its neighboring countries for three 24 hour periods running.
In addition, ISW concurs: “Russian forces conducted air, missile, and drone strikes against targets in Ukraine at a markedly slower tempo than in previous days. “
Perhaps the OSINT reports of russia running out of long range guided munitions are true, but some bloggers just think that the increased Ukrainian air defense capabilities have made the attacks uneconomic for russia. Either way, it’s a good thing, let’s hope it lasts. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-10-24..2022-10-25,2022-10-24;@37.5,47.3,5z https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-24
“Running out of missiles” would mean they might be getting to 50% or so. They aren’t literally going to run out. They have to maintain thousands for their nuclear arsenal and/or a future engagement should the war escalate outside of Ukraine. These glory weapons need to be looked at in context. These are being used as much for intimidation and propaganda here as anything IMO.
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Bullets might as well be infinite.
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A large artillery shell has about 25 lbs of explosives. 10,000’s of those a day can be fired.
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A F-35 can carry ~18,000 lbs of payload.
A B-2 can carry ~40,000 lbs.
The Predator/Reaper drone can carry ~3,000 lbs.
A Tomahawk cruise missile has a 1,000 lb payload and you lose the entire thing, but you don’t risk a pilot.
Note that there is a tradeoff between payload and fuel load.
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Loitering jets spent all day circling in Syria and Iraq with multiple 500 lb GPS guided/laser guided bombs for targets of opportunity. That’s what you want. It is still mysterious why Moscow never got to this point, perhaps they made a strategic decision to not risk their air force.
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It’s a great advantage, but the opposition adapts. ISIS dug extensive tunnel networks in their cities. They never group up.
What you prevent is things like the opposition coming at you with an armored convoy and you can keep their artillery out of range. This only works if you can suppress the opposition’s air defense. This is very difficult.
The FBI has a SCIF at Perkins Coie. Looks like Obama gave Democrats a way to spy on Republican opponents.
My comment disappeared in the last thread, but regarding vaccine mandates, I would expect them to take effect next summer.
I think many states and jurisdictions automatically accept the CDC recommendations, and action would have to be taken to remove covid-19 from the list. For example in Virginia, the mask mandates were considered part of CDC recommendations, and many school districts used this to resist the governor’s executive order banning them, until the legislature passed a new law.
One check would be whether flu vaccines are part of the same CDC schedule, as these are generally not mandated in schools.
SteveF (Comment #215666)
” What urgent action is that?
Seems to me there are half a dozen policies that desperately need to be reversed.”
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I agree that there there are a number of policies that need to be reversed but the government having made it’s bed for 2 years now has to lie in it.
Any reverses at this stage will just reinforce a sense of despair and be counterproductive.
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The urgent action is the voting process.
The time frame is now very short.
Ethics, ideals and wallets.
Both sides have their own versions of the first two.
Only one has a decent view of the third.
Not a single fire in Eastern Ukraine on the FIRMS map. Also more air defense gear is en route from the US. Maybe this phase is ending. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-10-25..2022-10-26,2022-10-25;@31.4,49.7,5z
“Shoot and Scoot”. Fastest artillery system in the world. Twelve of these Swedish Archer Artillery Systems on the way to Ukraine. Runs down the road at 60 mph, stops, fires three rounds and is back on the road in one minute and 15 seconds. https://youtu.be/d8x8ITwd4Vg
I see where Ukraine is requesting monthly funds from the West and the US and requesting additional funds for rebuilding war damage while the damaging is in progress. The war in Ukraine is still obtaining strong support from the US and the West – as most wars do in the initial phase – but one has to wonder how much oversight is exerted in determining where these funds are going and particularly in light of Ukraine’s past record on corruption.
I see Liz Cheney calling out fellow Republicans for not giving unquestioned support for the war. She appears to be following in the footsteps of her father who did not see a war he did not want to become engaged with and as an auxiliary held that government deficits did not matter.
I have a question about abortion legislation.
My understanding is that the Roe decision imputed a constitutional right to an abortion (at least within the first trimester) and hence invalidated a state law banning (or restricting) abortion. Dobbs reversed that interpretation, which (it seems to me) returns the issue to each state’s legislature.
However, Biden has proposed that if the Democrats retain control of Congress he will push for national legislation, and various political ads airing locally suggest that Republicans will seek legislation outlawing abortion (in full or in part). So both parties seem to agree that this topic falls within Congressional powers. My question is, what grounds does Congress have for legislating on this issue? [Understanding of course that e.g. the Commerce Clause has been stretched to cover subjects which do not seem to fall into the category of interstate commerce.]
Russell Klier,
The unblinking eye in the sky can counter the shoot and scoot artillery systems. Whether it is drone based or satellite based, the artillery fire can be triangulated and then the reconnaissance follows the mobile system back to where it is parked, then, end of system. You need to have fast reacting systems in order to do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9z8FbJ589s
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Spies on the ground can also do this in the low tech way. If you have air dominance then these systems just aren’t going to last very long. The Russian “mall attack” early in the war appears to be where Ukraine was parking S-300 systems. If you can drive them back to fortified tunnels then that works better.
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You can bet HIMARS are high priority targets for the Russians. I’ve heard almost nothing about how many of these have been taken out, but I imagine some of them have. However sometimes the launchers aren’t even that valuable if most of the tech is in the rocket.
I’m probably the only person who likes Dick Cheney, ha ha. He was definitely a war monger, no doubt. I just liked the way he spoke very directly and concisely, very little patience for political correctness or winning hearts and minds. I get that most people dislike him but if you are in a war then you want him on your side.
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The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with Liz Cheney. As I have said I do not mind politicians bucking the preferred narrative, but she miscalculated in a profound way how this was going to end up for her. She could have said everything she has said without overtly being disloyal to the tribe, so she was cast out more for disloyalty than saying Trump has some profound character flaws.
HaroldW (Comment #215681): various political ads airing locally suggest that Republicans will seek legislation outlawing abortion (in full or in part)”
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Who is running those ads? Democrats? The local Republican candidate for Congress? I am pretty sure it is not the RNC or the PAC’s controlled by McConnell and McCarthy.
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HaroldW: “So both parties seem to agree that this topic falls within Congressional powers.”
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I doubt that you have much basis for that claim. I don’t think that is the position of the Republican Party or Republican leadership. Of course there are some individuals who seem to disagree, such as the Republican Idiot-in-Chief, Lindsey Graham.
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HaroldW: “My question is, what grounds does Congress have for legislating on this issue?”
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IMO, there are no such grounds. I think that most Republicans agree, but I can’t be sure. Democrats seem to think that Congress has the power to do anything that Democrats want to do.
If either party passes national abortion legislation then the law will be challenged on constitutional grounds. I’m not sure anyone knows how that will end up. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/does-congress-have-the-constitutional-authority-to-codify-roe
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I don’t think we are near the point where Congress will be able to pass a law on this anytime soon. The extremes are dominating the argument and will never sign up to a compromise, this leaves the middles of both parties to agree and the recent history of that on culture war subjects is dismal.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, and in addition, the need for 60 votes in the Senate puts extreme laws of any kind on abortion out of reach. Even if Republicans gain control this year, and even with a very favorable electoral map for the Senate in 2024, it is unlikely they will reach 60 votes in 2024. The Dems chances of 60 in the Senate are even slimmer. So for the next decade or more, it seems very unlikely there will be any laws passed except at the state level.
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Even if a compromise law with some restrictions were to pass Congress, I think it very unlikely the SC would let it stand. There would be the three liberal votes against any restrictions, plus probably five or all six conservatives who will stand by the revocation of Roe, giving authority to the states. I think abortion is over as a national issue. And good riddance.
Mike M:”Who is running those ads? Democrats? The local Republican candidate for Congress? ”
Good question. Most of the ones which come to mind are from “3rd party” attack ads, not explicitly the Democratic candidate but obviously aired on their behalf. That said, this article provides some examples of candidates’ comments which can be quoted.
SteveF,
The problem is that the sixty vote restriction can be removed by a simple majority vote. That appears to be one thing that Manchin is standing firm for. So at present, the Democrats can’t muster a simple majority, or likely they would have canned the filibuster by now. Democrats do things like remove the filibuster for judges because they apparently assume they will always be in power. Harry Reid was warned that removing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees would end up biting the Democrats, but he didn’t listen and it did.
Some interesting things going on at Yale Law School. A federal judge (James C. Ho) got so fed up with activism there and shouting down of speakers that he now refuses to hire any graduates from Yale Law School. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gQkiD6eZyunLYwGaWKKk-ZS3r8v6wif3/view
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It’s an interesting read, nothing particularly new, just his decision to take action. About 12 others have joined him (anonymously, ha) and a couple others. Not a big movement yet, but enough that Yale has asked the judges to come for a talk. https://davidlat.substack.com/p/is-yale-law-school-turning-over-a
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Particularly entertaining was a student who was told that mentioning the Federalist Society in an email was triggering to some students by a disciplinary board and that he might get cut some slack because he isn’t white. They drafted an apology letter for him, he refused. How do we know this? Because somebody secretly recorded the proceedings. Yale responded by making surreptitious recording a major violation to “protect free speech”. Hilarious.
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A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but this is probably a thousand mile journey. Cancelling cancel culture is a bit of a self eating snake, but see the judge’s Bill Buckley analogy of the old lady and the bus.
Ramesh Ponnuru is senior editor at National Review, and a leading conservative writer on abortion who wrote the book Party of Death.
He has advocated for a 15 or 20 week national abortion ban, and didn’t seem to think there were any constitutional issues. He also advocates for using the 14th amendment to argue that the unborn are citizens and thus can be protected by Congress under civil rights law. He points to a federal partial birth abortion ban that is already on the books.
I think the federal law should not have been passed, and this should be handled by states.
Note that Roe v Wade had a companion case Doe v Bolton that got rid of the trimester scheme in Roe and eliminated almost all restrictions on abortion. Also, I think Casey has already overruled the holding in Roe v Wade.
DeWitt,
Based on the election map for 2024, it is very unlikely Dems will have even a 1 vote majority until 2026 or 2028, so they will not have the votes to eliminate the filibuster until then, if ever. Assuming Republicans pick up at least 1 seat this year, they will likely have the majority until 2028 (or later), and unlike Dems, they recognize the damage eliminating the filibuster would do. So I think it is very unlikely the filibuster will be eliminated, and even more unlikely that any kind of national abortion legislation will pass. As I said, abortion seems over as a national issue, and good riddance. California can allow the unborn to be killed during labor, while taking pains to improve the living conditions for pregnant sows; other states will do differently.
If the Republicans manage to win the Senate they should hold a vote to eliminate the filibuster the next day. Let’s see how many Democrats support it then.
In today’s WSJ, columnist, Greg Ip, writes about the current price inflation and various measures of it without once noting the Federal Reserve’s role in the money printing process and buying assets in the cause of price inflation. Never to be mentioned is that money inflation is no doubt and no denying a product of the Federal Reserve which in and of itself conjures up the idea that the Federal Reserve’s past actions are benign to price inflation and further that there is no limit from price inflation on the expansion of the money supply. I call this magical thinking. This thinking is very much in the purvey of Modern Monetary Theorists whether those holding these views are willing to call it that. Ig is, of course, not alone in the current intelligentsia on how he looks at price inflation and ignores asset price inflation entirely. I see only two reasons we see this view: 1. These people intellectually have their heads up their a$$es and/or 2. They feel compelled to defend the state even when the state has failed miserably. I see both of these reasons prevailing but with much emphasis on reason 2.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215695)
October 27th, 2022 at 8:49 am
The filibuster will surely be eliminated when the Democrats next get a small majority in the Senate. The Republicans might well do it in anticipation of the Democrats doing it. The filibuster is in its death bed.
The filibuster is a good thing IMO, a low pass filter to whiplash legislation. Super active governments are likely to cause more problems than they solve. The Democrats had at least two outspoken holdouts and I suspect some others who wouldn’t vote for it when pressed. Another answer is to start moving back to bipartisan cooperation, it doesn’t always have to move towards the direction we are going now. Perhaps wishful thinking.
The Fetterman debate was a legitimate disaster. I’m not sure it will end up changing things much, but Fetterman should never have taken the stage. The media covering for him previously looks rather bad in hindsight. Perhaps his brain still functions OK beyond hearing and speech, but it really didn’t look like it, and he can’t really drag along closed captioning systems everywhere he goes in DC. The Democrats should have replaced him but I don’t think the timing worked for that.
Tom Scharf, when Republicans won the Senate in 1994 elections, some Democrats put up proposals to get rid of or weaken the filibuster. I think Tom Harkin was one of them.
Another answer is to start moving back to bipartisan cooperation, it doesn’t always have to move towards the direction we are going now.
Tom, it has been my recollection that bipartisan works something like: If you vote for my (massive) spending or regulation bill I’ll vote for yours. In essence what is agreed is that fiscal responsibility and less regulation is out the door. The hoped for benefits of bipartisanship will be ephemeral.
Biden and Fetterman are examples of perhaps a new wave of electing and using the impaired to robotically vote the party line.
The 2020 Presidential election of Biden and his policies certainly show that the election and robotic part can succeed. The polls for Fetterman indicate an even more impaired candidate than Biden has an opportunity to be elected. I would guess if elected he would stick closely to the party dictates.
Those who say Fetterman should not have debated seem to me to be saying it is better to hide these impediments from the public. Politically it worked for Biden by his basement residence, but there has to be a moral issue here – even though I think debating abilities are not a good indication of candidate worthiness, it can show obvious mental deficiencies.
Yes, he should never have taken the stage for his and his party’s prospects. It didn’t help, those images don’t get forgotten immediately like most debates. Obviously the public should be aware of his actual condition. It was bad enough that even the usual suspects couldn’t defend it.
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He can sit in his office and do email and vote the party line successfully enough. This will be enough for most of the voters, but people sitting on the fence will likely not support him and it could suppress voter turnout. Lots of crazy people get elected, the electorate isn’t voting by demonstrated competency.
Perhaps Fetterman should have followed the old advice that it is better to remain silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. But refusing to debate would have led many people to conclude that he was, in fact, incapable. That likely would have been enough to ensure his defeat. If so, then his only hope may have been to take the chance and hope that either he could pull it off (like Biden two years ago) or that Oz would act like such an ass that it would neutralize the damage.
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Note that Oz has been steadily gaining and that RCP gives him a 3 point lead after adjusting for prior polling bias in PA. That is based on pre-debate polls. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/senate/pa/pennsylvania_senate_oz_vs_fetterman-7695.html
I will be surprised if Fetterman wins. He is obviously debilitated and unable to understand a spoken sentence or generate a coherent sentence of his own. I am surprised he did not withdraw back in May when the severity of his stroke became obvious to his doctors. Hiding his condition suggests a level of dishonesty for him and those around him that is extreme, even for politicians.
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The history of Pennsylvania polling (always prejudiced against Republicans) and the trends in polling numbers suggest Fetterman is going to lose; after the debate it is more likely the election won’t be that close. I’ll guess Oz by 3% or more.
It’s been rumored that counting is already delayed in PA.
We all know there is no such thing as election fraud, especially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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June, 2022
Former U.S. Congressman and Philadelphia Political Operative Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Charges https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/former-us-congressman-and-philadelphia-political-operative-pleads-guilty-election-fraud
“Myers admitted to bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others to tamper with election results.
After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine – also known as “ringing up” votes – for Myers’ clients and preferred candidates, thereby diluting the value of ballots cast by actual voters. At Myers’ direction, Demuro would add these fraudulent votes to the totals during Election Day, and then would later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate. Myers is also accused of directing Demuro to lie to investigators about the circumstances of the bribes and the ballot-stuffing scheme.”
“Democrat blows whistle on alleged ballot harvesting scheme, Florida opens criminal probe” John Solomon
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit has recommended state police open a full criminal investigation into a Democrat whistleblower’s detailed complaint of a long-running, widespread ballot harvesting operation in the African-American communities in politically important central Florida.
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Former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris filed a sworn affidavit in late August with the Secretary of State’s office alleging that illegal operations to collect third-party ballots have been going on for years in the Orlando area where voting activists are paid $10 for each ballot they collect.
She described an intricate system funded by liberal leaning organizations that dispatch ballot brokers into black communities to pressure voters to turn over their ballots. The $10 fee per ballot is divvied up among the parties who help complete the harvesting.”
Fraud schmaud. “Widespread fraud” is all you should be worrying about and there is no evidence of this, regardless of how many individual cases you bring forth, therefore, everything is ticketyboo and any action to secure elections is “voter suppression”.
SteveF (Comment #215705): “I am surprised he did not withdraw back in May when the severity of his stroke became obvious to his doctors. Hiding his condition suggests a level of dishonesty for him and those around him that is extreme, even for politicians.”
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The stroke was just a day or two before the primary. At the time, the extent to which he would recover might not have been clear. But I would think that by August it would have been clear that he should not continue.
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SteveF: “I’ll guess Oz by 3% or more.”
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I’ll be surprised if it not at least 5 points. I won’t be surprised if Oz wins by 10 points.
Under Florida law third party vote harvesting is clearly unlawful (third degree felony?). I am seeing jail time in the future for those involved.
DaveJR (Comment #215706): “It’s been rumored that counting is already delayed in PA.”
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Not a rumor. An official announcement that vote counting won’t be complete until at least least several days after election day.
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I really hope that Mastriano wins the race for Governor. That is much dicier than Oz winning the Senate race. PA badly needs a major overhaul of election laws. That won’t happen with a Democrat in the Governor’s office.
I still maintain that changing a statewide election is very hard. This would require many districts to cooperate and I speculate/hope/believe/pray/claim without evidence there are enough people who care about election integrity that it would not be feasible to pull off. The election would need to be very narrow to start with. I’m not saying it is impossible, just that it is going to require some proof. There are real safeguards in the system. The guys above got caught because the voting machine counts were higher than the people who voted.
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I wish there was a way to confirm my actual votes were counted as I expected. If only we had a globally connected information exchange system that everyone had access to, and votes were tallied by mystical devices called computers. This proposed system here would have some serious privacy concerns (hackers) but could be overcome.
I think I said this before, but for my county (and I think all of FL) I can get my mail in vote status via a county website. It says mine has been “counted”. I have no clue why it is so hard to count votes in PA but I think they have some screwy rules.
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Voter fraud can of course go both directions. You can “accidentally” lose a lot of mail in ballots in districts not favorable to you. I believe they do numerical checks based on neighboring counties and previous year’s votes to look for any large anomalies.
Tom,
Widespread fraud is much easier than you think. The key is mail in ballots. Some states have no real safeguards on those; many others have very weak safeguards. It may be that extensive fraud is very difficult in Florida. That is not true everywhere.
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The most basic safeguards are accurate voter rolls and verification that a ballot is being cast by the person entitled to cast it. The Democrat party is violently opposed to both.
Clearly, if you wanted to engage in “proper” fraud, you would target marginal districts, close races. Places where a slight tipping of the scales is all that’s required and your meddling would be far less likelyto be spotted. This is certainly aided by polling showing that your side probably should have won anyway, a lot of money, and dedicated fanatics with no jobs. How easy it would be to pull off? Well the WP claimed that Trump won in 2016 through 80,000 votes cast in 3 states. That certainly doesn’t sound like an insurmountable task for the motivated.
Each states processes are different.. My guess is PA is a state that only opens and runs the absentee ballots after verification of no in person votes. That is last vote wins. That means they need to wait for all precincts to report who voted and any provisional ballots. Then go through the absentee ballots to prune any that voted at the polls before running the remaining absentee ones through the machines. When you combine that with increasing percentages of mail in ballots the chances are you’re going to have to wait longer before being able to verify elections.
Deep fake political ads are a thing now: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/10/a-deep-fake-political-ad.php
I’m curious what people think will come of this. I’m still forming my opinions.
[Edit: I can think of a dozen things that may happen as a consequence. I haven’t arrived at things I think will happen yet.]
I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi, yet I will say it’s horrific to think somebody attacked her husband with a hammer. I cannot even imagine how an 82 year old survives an attack where somebody severely beats them in the head and body with a hammer, but I’m pleased to read he is doing well and expected to make a full recovery.
Good thing the San Francisco police came to his rescue. I hope they don’t perpetuate much racial injustice in taking care of this matter.
I think taking someone’s lifelike image, especially with good voice replication, and making it say things they wouldn’t, even with a disclaimer, is a step too far. It strikes me as akin to being made to falsely implicate yourself if it’s done with your face and your voice. I feel this possibly carries more weight than a disclaimer that it’s fake.
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Additionally, such things could easily be edited and presented as true and the truth could easily be edited and dismissed as fake.
DaveJR,
Do you think this sort of thing will be outlawed? I’m not sure how one would phrase the desired restriction precisely. What part of this is the step too far?
Personally, I suspect it has to do with the consent of the person faked. If a person or actor agrees with the message and the use of their image and voice, it’s not clear to me why there should be any issue. When the person in question does not agree or when it’s unknown what that person thinks about the use — that’s the problem.
It’s identity theft, fundamentally, I think. And even with the disclaimers, people tend to believe their eyes and ears even when their higher reasoning tells them that they are being tricked by an illusion.
“Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lying eyes?”
Have to believe that they have grounds on using their name and likeness without permission. This isn’t using carefully edited publicly available recorded videos of the candidate but creating new ones using their image and voice. Not going to help much in realtime, but they should have grounds for injunction and possibly a blanket ruling against them in the future.
Mark, I think you hit the nail on the head with “consent” and “identity theft” as an accurate description.
Political violence is just ridiculous. I assume this was the motivation but it’s not certain yet. The guy who showed up at Kavanagh’s house is similar. Using a hammer is a signal it is likely related to mental illness, there are more effective weapons. You see some hard to explain levels of venom in political discussions everywhere nowadays and people on the edges of sanity get pushed off the cliff.
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This is just a sorry tale that nobody needs to go through, and the media is going to jump immediately into “how do I spin this to benefit my side and demonize my opponents”. Very tiring.
You should own and control you own image and likeness. This type of thing should be illegal without the expressed written consent…
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People can’t legally sell athlete’s jerseys and names unless they license them. There’s a line here somewhere though, parodies such as SNL or South Park should be able to use a known obviously fake likeness of public figures. I don’t know exactly where that line is.
“Obviously fake” is my line for using someone’s likeness. There is no reason that the two should be able to be confused. That’s never really been a problem until now. Even Hollywood only produced superficial passing likenesses of real people they are trying to portray when they could probably go much further and have, so far, only resorted to deep fakes to bring fictional characters back to life.
DaveJR,
““Obviously fake” is my line for using someone’s likeness. ”
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I agree. If the image is obviously not actually the person being represented, then parody (for public figures) ought to be perfectly OK….. newspaper cartoonists have lambasted public figures for centuries in this way.
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OTOH, if the image is close enough to be mistaken for real (even by the most naive of viewers) then it should be prohibited without the subject’s approval. Disclaimers do no good, because the disclaimer can always be stripped and the synthesized video then distributed with no disclaimer.
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It is a bit like the well known “uncanny valley” in robotics, where a robot that nobody could possibly mistake for a real person (think Star-Wars robots) is usually viewed as positive, while one that starts to look too much like a real person (an ‘uncanny resemblance’ to a human) more often generates a strong negative reaction (or a ‘valley’ of acceptance in the plot of acceptance versus human-like realism).
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on affirmative action on Monday. That should be very interesting. Polls on the matter shows that clear majorities favor eliminating it, but it is a legal matter. One would have a hard time knowing people aren’t in favor because our venerable thought leaders in the legacy media are united in their support. Here is one random example of the profound thinking from US news: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2022-10-28/supreme-court-takes-on-affirmative-action-in-education
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“But given the court’s 6-3 conservative majority – a majority that many anticipate will overturn the longstanding civil right – an unusual coalition of higher education administrators, civil rights groups, former top-ranking officials from all branches of the military, faith groups, business leaders and the corporate community find themselves on the same side of an issue, arguing that eliminating race-conscious admissions policies would threaten the ability of the U.S. to remain an academic, economic and military powerhouse in a rapidly diversifying world.
“One thing is clear,” says Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund. “The future of our multiracial democracy is at stake. We must protect this vital tool for ensuring equal opportunity because we know college campuses that reflect the diversity of who we are as Americans make us stronger.””
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Wow, the stakes are much higher than I thought! I wasn’t previously aware that affirmative action was a civil right, it kind of seemed the exact opposite to me, a violation of civil rights and equality under the law.
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Calling Mr. Orwell, calling Mr. Orwell:
“Race-conscious admissions do not discriminate on the basis of race and merely level the playing field and allow people and applicants to talk about their full identity and their full selves.”
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Seriously though, I’ve read a lot these stories and they are all the same. They virtuously proclaim they are helping people based on race and willfully and intentionally ignore the fact that they are also punishing people based on race.
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My view is that the Supreme Court previously ruled more or less that using race as a tie breaker given nearly equally qualified applicants was acceptable, race conscious admissions. That’s not what actually happened, the latest lawsuits showed there are effective quotas in place and race is much more than a tie breaker, it is worth several hundred SAT points on average.
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Because this has been shown unequivocally now, the goalposts were moved and the new argument is race must be a major factor due to historic inequities. I foresee the Supreme Court is not going to fall for a bait and switch argument again, and this new argument is not going to be persuasive.
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Affirmative action will likely be removed and a legally justifiable economic/class based bias will replace it which they could have used all along.
Tom Scharf,
“…the latest lawsuits showed there are effective quotas in place and race is much more than a tie breaker, it is worth several hundred SAT points on average.”
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Sure, and it has been that way since I was entering college in 1969 (in very progressive Massachusetts). As a SC justice has said: “The way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating! I trust this SC will not allow racial discrimination to continue.
This amicus brief was not filed by the Babylon Bee.
(The did file one in favor of the comedian, and did The Onion. But the one in favor of the police- not filed– is even more hilarious.) https://babylonbee.com/amicus-brief
~grins~
Do you suppose the Justices will spend any time discussing the Onion and Babylon Bee briefs? I bet they appreciate them anyway!
That was pretty funny. I think the links are absolutely priceless.
The justices have been warned what they are in for if they rule in favor of the cops and against the comedians.
Lucia,
I hope the SC reverses the lower courts and the cops are held personally liable, but the whole qualified immunity concept seems muddled enough that the SC may let the outrageous behavior of the cops stand with no personal consequences. IMHO, obvious criminal behavior, especially when perpetrated by cops (or FBI agents), should always be punished. I hope the SC looks at it as a blatant first amendment violation and puts cops everywhere on notice that this kind of behavior will have severe negative personal consequences. Alas, It is not clear that will happen in this case.
SteveF,
Yes. Qualified immunity is something people have been talking about needing to be overruled (or at least drastically modified) by Scotus.
This case might be the one to make them at least curb it. Recently, even judge Ho, wrote
“n an opinion that quoted IJ’s amicus brief in the case, Judge James Ho wrote that because it should have been obvious to any reasonable police officer that the First Amendment protects the right of people, in particular journalists, to ask government officials questions, it should likewise have been obvious that arresting a journalist based for asking questions is a blatant violation of the Constitution. ”
Ho is an advocate of qualified immunity for cops. But he’s now qualifying that with “for split second” decisions.
There are circuit splits on this.
There are varying levels of punishment, from work discipline, to being fired, to being held criminally liable. Clearly whoever decided to arrest this guy should be fired. On the face this appears to be another “the process is the punishment” type of thing. I would agree with Ho that in my mind qualified immunity is there because cops are intentionally inserted into volatile situations where some decisions are going to be poor in hindsight.
Most people who were to be given a series of these things over a decade would likely eventually make a mistake.
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Something like a screaming wife saying her husband attacked her, the cops try to arrest him, he resists, he gets tased, he dies. Turns out the mentally unstable wife was the attacker all along. Cops get sued.
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This case doesn’t fall into that category. There was plenty of time for sound and reasonable decision making. It doesn’t mean that the legal decision was wrong depending on the way the law was written (no doubt favorable to police). Over at Reason they complain about qualified immunity all the time. There are many cases of injustice related to this law. https://reason.com/search/%22qualified%20immunity%22/
This case doesn’t fall into that category. There was plenty of time for sound and reasonable decision making.
Precisely. Not only was there plenty of time for reasonable decision making, there was even plenty of time for cops to say something like “How can I get this guy?”
My impression is a lot of qualified immunity law is based on interpretation of precedents. And as someone somewhere said: This level of first amendment violation is huge compared to the idea of protecting cops from mistakes.
And honestly, quite often when 1A comes into tension cop action, the cops are just wrong. Not absolutely always, but someone calling a cop a jerk– expressing an opinion– is not putting his life in danger. The cop doesn’t think his life is endanger. He doesn’t need to make any split second decision. He’s just pissed and arrests someone.
The 1A bad-cop situations are rarely decisions like chasing someone down, excessive roughness and so on where you can see that a split second decision had to be made to avoid getting killed or injured.
I’m sure the judges will read the amicus curiae decisions that are filed. Whether they will read the even funnier one that is not filed… dunno. I don’t think they are required to sequester themselves from news though. So I bet they will. I found that on a law blog. 🙂
Qualified immunity is, in my view, just another case of the so-called compelling state interest rationalization whereby judicial decisions are made in favor of making governments jobs easier to perform at the great sacrifice of individual freedoms that are otherwise supposedly protected. Once individual freedoms are compromised, we are on the path to losing those freedoms.
If a law enforcement person can be prosecuted for his actions, even in cases where quick decisions have to made and human error comes into play, those persons get their day in court just as the ordinary citizen does. No one should be above the law and particularly when it comes to protecting individual rights from government infringement.
For anyone else who might have been curious like me how Paul Pelosi survived an attacker beating him with a hammer, apparently it went down like this:
David DePape forced his way into the home through a back entrance, Scott said. Officers arrived at the house, knocked on the front door and were let inside by an unknown person. They discovered DePape and Pelosi struggling for a hammer, and after they instructed them to drop the weapon, Scott said, DePape took the hammer and “violently attacked” Pelosi.
link here.
I’m sure he didn’t get a lot of good whacks in with the police standing there. Still, I think Paul is lucky to be alive.
Ken,
The difficulty lies in issue related to civil rights. Occasionally, for various and sundry reasons no one knows whether something is “a right” or “not a right”. The reason could have to do with technology being new, a right being on the borderline of what is established and so on and so on. So a police officer has to make a quick decision and trample’s something that is later decreed a right.
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And they are in a position where they must make a decision. Some degree of protection is warranted there.
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The problem is that the qualified immunity is then over-extended to other cases. So someone argues that there has merely been no supreme court case. Well… yeah. I think there are no cases where SCOTUS has ruled about a situation where the military quartered soldiers in private houses. (Not sure….) But if there are no cases it’s because the amendment is so clear that no one is going to claim to misinterpret it. There shouldn’t be a “gimme” when, in fact, it’s so darn clear that the local military can’t just knock on my door and tell me I will now be housing private joe blow.
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The “pro-qualified” immunity lawyers always try to slice and dice cases to the point where it appears nothing has been decided because no past cases were absolutely, completely 100% ‘this’ case.
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The due to the stupendous “uniqueness” of the case, the police argue that the right was not “clearly established”. It’s the huge leeway given on “clearly established” that is rather eyepopping.
lucia (Comment #215743
Lucia, all that should be sorted out in a court of law with the protection of individual rights given more emphasis than making a general exemption for the actions of police officers. With the power that law enforcement has over individuals it is the area that should be most scrutinized.
Back in the day when Miranda rights were put into effect, I always thought that a police officer should be legally held responsible for failure to follow the law in this matter rather than the punishment being solely against the process.
We all at some point in our lives have to make snap decisions and most of us are not trained in handling such situations as police officers are, yet we can be held accountable for those decisions. Catching bad guys does not excuse bad cops or cops who violate individual rights.
mark bofill (Comment #215742)
It sounds like the offender grabbed the hammer and beat Paul Pelosi while the cops were in the same room witnessing the violence. Law enforcement was given the usual accolades for their timely presence, but it did not appear to save Pelosi from a violent beating.
I wonder how long it will take to get the timing of events in this case. It certainly took awhile in the recent Texas school shooting.
Ken Fritsch,
“With the power that law enforcement has over individuals it is the area that should be most scrutinized.”
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Yes, that is what makes qualified immunity so problematic. The public empowers cops to use force and arrest people to protect the public’s interests. With that power comes a clear obligation not to use that power except in the public’s interest, and certainly not to hammer some private citizen who criticizes the police. It is the betrayal of public trust by police which makes qualified immunity so troubling and so often offensive. Had there been no cell phones recording the last minutes of George Floyd’s life, a sociopath cop like Chauvin would likely have suffered few consequences; that Chauvin will likely spend all (or nearly all) the remaining years of his life in prison is a testament to how strongly the public reacts to the betrayal of trust by police.
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The only appropriate response to the police arresting someone for criticizing the police is every police officer involved be immediately fired and face personal legal liability for making an unlawful arrest. Their actions were motivated by self interest; the consequences should be similarly personal.
“We all at some point in our lives have to make snap decisions and most of us are not trained in handling such situations as police officers are, yet we can be held accountable for those decisions.”
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Police are working in government sanctioned jobs which intentionally inserts them into potentially violent confrontations that they cannot simply walk away from in many cases. This is a significant discriminator. Soldiers in war zones are not held to the same level of behavior as civilians.
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There are teams of people who serve warrants. They go around and round up violent felons with outstanding warrants to take them to jail. This is dangerous work. Society isn’t particularly sympathetic to claims of assault in these cases. There is a process to file complaints but I don’t have a problem with different standards of evidence for people whose job it is to take people to jail. I completely support mandatory bodycams to sort out the evidence though.
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Prisoners weren’t previously able to file lawsuits for mistreatment in prisons. The Supreme Court overruled this. What followed was an avalanche of frivolous lawsuits. Prisoners got a day out of prison to go to court, etc. Eventually they put courts in prison just to hear these cases and/or remote testimony. Along the way some problems in prisons probably got better. Both things can be true simultaneously. You can hold police accountable for excessively bad behavior and you can still give them a longer leash than the common citizen.
I don’t think you discipline someone who goes out to arrest a person with an active warrant. The person who decided to file a charge against this guy for a parody site should be disciplined. To me this is a termination offense, a gross misuse of power. District attorney? I don’t really know the details.
DaveJR (Comment #215709)
Fraud schmaud. “Widespread fraud” is all you should be worrying about and there is no evidence of this, regardless.
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When fraud works Dave there would be no evidence of it if well done
How can you detect widespread well organised fraud?
When a lot of people complain the no smoke without fire adage is worth remembering
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Lucia,
I need some quatloos.
How about a prediction on the Rep seats?
2.9% swing to Republicans times Biden times turnout times momentum minus Roe equals 66 seat majority?
angech,
Quatloos?
SteveF’s crystal ball says Republicans will have ~40 seat majority in the house, and 52/48 in the Senate.
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So there will be two years of gridlock with most every law the Republicans pass vetoed by President Brandon Alzheimer. There will be plenty of Congressional investigations which the Alzheimer administration will refused to cooperate with.
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Republicans will probably end up cutting funding for non-cooperative agencies (virtually all of them), which the Alzheimer administration will also veto. Then a budget crisis…. it will be an endless stalemate.
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There are two very different and mutually exclusive visions for the future of the USA. The last two years of all-Democrat control in Washington DC have shown some of what one of those visions means for the country, and the voters don’t like what they see. Whether that will translate into all-Republican control in January 2025, and reversal of much of what has happened in the last 21 months, is the crucial question. If Trump does not run in 2024, DeSantis will win easily and that reversal of damaging policies will likely happen. If Trump does run, then I expect he will lose to an unhinged Democrat, leading to more stalemate and four more years of lawless executive actions by a Democrat president.
Steve,
That’s pretty much the way I see it too.
Police are working in government sanctioned jobs which intentionally inserts them into potentially violent confrontations that they cannot simply walk away from in many cases.
Legally police are not bound to insert themselves in violent confrontations.
“Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a professor and associate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government has only a duty to protect persons who are “in custody,” he pointed out.
Ken,
Protecting you isn’t the only situation that is potentially violent.
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Apprehending a violent hammer wielding criminal is a violent situation. Even stopping and ticketing a speeder is potentially violent if it turns out they don’t want to be ticketed. Police get called to crime scenes. It’s their job. It can become dangerous much more frequently than most jobs.
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We do want violent hammer wielding criminals to be apprehended when encountered. We do want warrants served. We do want police to do certain things that are dangerous and not just so, “Oh. That looks dangerous. I’ll go home now.”
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Some sort of protections make sense. The problem is they’ve gone too far. Ridiculously too far. In the Parma cop situation, evidently getting a couple phone calls to the police switch board was deemed as “disruptive”. I mean… come on.
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The reality is the cops and justice system went after this guy because they didn’t like being made fun of.
SteveF
Is there a way of overriding a presidential veto if the house and senate majorities are great enough?
Mind you it would have to be bigger than achievable this term I guess.
Say 2/3?.
Trouble is that you still may have a President of Kamal or Nancy.
Unless you impeach all 3
angech: “Is there a way of overriding a presidential veto if the house and senate majorities are great enough?
Mind you it would have to be bigger than achievable this term I guess.
Say 2/3?.”
Yes, if 2/3 of both House & Senate are in favor, they can override a Presidential veto. Hasn’t happened too often in history, e.g. only once during Trump’s term, and once during Obama’s two terms. See this list if interested in more detail.
[To explain the “pocket veto”: if a bill is passed in the last few (10?) days before a Congressional adjournment, the President doesn’t need to veto the bill explicitly, merely not sign it into law. The President figuratively puts the bill in his/her pocket, neither signing nor vetoing it. No override vote is possible in such circumstances.]
angech,
What HaroldW said. It is very rare.
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There is almost no chance of an override of presidential vetos with strong political divisions. It is only when there is overwhelming agreement that an override happens. The single one for Obama was when Congress prohibited by law the closing of the prison for islamic terrorists at Guantanimo Bay in Cuba and bringing the terrorists to the USA for ‘normal’ criminal prosecution. Obama vetoed the bill, but there was a very strong national consensus that the terrorists should not be given access to the domestic criminal justice system, so Congress overrode the veto and Obama was forced to keep the terrorists at Guantanimo. The confused Obama insisted Islam was ‘a religion of peace’, and the islamic terrorists were no different from your average street criminal. He was so far out in the weeds on that issue that he was smacked down by Congress. The violent, cruel nature of fundamentalist Islam and its clear conflict with western culture and values was one of Obama’s few political blind spots.
angech,
One other point on overrides: There are enough “safe” seats in both houses of Congress (overwhelmingly progressive or overwhelmingly conservative) that reaching 2/3 majorities to override presidential vetos on a routine basis (Congress effectively takes control of the Federal government from the executive) is almost an impossibility. If any president were so far out of step that his vetos were being routinely overridden, he would likely be impeached and removed from office.
HaroldW (Comment #215757),
Cool list.
So the champ in having vetoes overridden was Andrew Johnson, with 15 in just under 4 years. I think I knew that. But Ford also has a claim to the title, with 12 in just 2.5 years. Reagan and FDR had 9 each. So 57 from those 5 and a total of 55 from all the rest of the Presidents, an average of about 1 per term.
I have attempted to make three points in this discussion of qualified immunity: (1) The first being that qualified immunity derives from the more general upheld judicial notion of compelling state interest which sacrifices individual rights for making it easier for the state to carry out its duties. In my view these situations compromise individual rights without bound, i.e. how easy do we want to make it for the state, (2) Law enforcement is given a most powerful position in their interaction with individuals and can readily compromise their rights and be unrestricted in the process. Given these powers policing the police becomes a process that cannot be minimized by reference to the dangers that some police officers in some areas and in some infrequent occurrences face and (3) The pubic view of the dangers of police work are very much influenced by the instances portrayed by the media and even televisions series whereby the more mundane duties of police work are overwhelmed by the more rare occasions of violent intervention – and even those instances are not portrayed as they occur in the real world. I would question the portrayals we see on television, where immediately after a violent crime has occurred, we have government officials congratulating one another on their reactions to the occurrence – which often afterwards we find did not go down as initially indicated.
I suspect that those individuals doing police work in the US are probably much the same in demeanor and behavior as the ordinary citizen for whom they work with some differences due to the qualifying process for police work. I see numbers as high as 90% of officers who have never fired their guns in the line of duty. I could not find online a good comparison of the dangers of being a policeperson in the inner city of the US versus other areas of the country, but it becomes rather obvious to me that being a policeperson in the inner city of Chicago, IL is much more dangerous than being one in Wheaton, IL.
Making police work less dangerous should hold the politicians in charge of the cities with high crime rates the most responsible. Yet that does not appear to be the case as those officials are certainly not held accountable at the ballot box or by the media or even by the populations of the cities who are the victims of these crimes.
I find more interesting the link below which SteveF linked and which accounts for the number of vetoes by US Presidents and the number overridden. If a President never vetoes a bill he would never have been overridden. If a President vetoes hundreds of bills he could have a few overridden that becomes a lot when absolute numbers are compared.
I would agree that it is likely legal that we can construct an “anarchist” version of the police as Ken describes, but it is also legal to construct an interventionist version of the police with policies for engagement in violent confrontations. Society has chosen the interventionist model. Crazy man in a public park with a big knife is an example where society basically instructs police to intervene for public safety. A lot of these crazy people are off their meds and end up dead, and it is possible a majority of them would have harmed nobody if left alone. Society does not want to take that chance. The point here is that society gets to choose.
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There is some local experimentation with the model, recently a lot of places have decriminalized some bad behavior, or no longer pursue stolen vehicles in most cases. The result has been more criminal behavior in many places and it has become a leading election issue to reel that back in.
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Personally I am agnostic, my neighborhood is safe and I don’t like locking up non-violent people based on economics alone. If my neighborhood was not safe I would almost certainly be calling for more intervention.
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My understanding is that police unions have pushed through qualified immunity laws in many places that are way too protective of bad behavior. That is expected in the same way teacher’s unions are highly self serving lately. The police unions aren’t fundamentally interested in protecting society.
One of the proposals for Musk’s Twitter is a rating system and the ability to choose your own censorship (oops, I mean “moderation”) option. It was always a bit weird to me that this was never discussed previously, on top of an already ability to not listen to anyone you didn’t want to. The one-size-fits-all censoring (oops I mean “safety”) system before reeked of authoritarian control of speech.
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Note that I have never had a Twitter account so count me as a non-expert. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I would agree that it is likely legal that we can construct an “anarchist” version of the police as Ken describes, but it is also legal to construct an interventionist version of the police with policies for engagement in violent confrontations. Society has chosen the interventionist model.
Tom, if there are no Constitutional articles or amendments or laws that reference that law enforcement has to intervene I am not very sure that society has explicitly chosen the interventionist version. They merely say that they can intervene. Human nature could easily determine when and where law enforcement intervenes.
Alternatively, if the situation you describe occurs on private property, a private security force representing the private property owner would be within its legal rights to remove such a menacing person.
I judge that a reasonable approach to inner city crime is to get the neighborhoods there involved with some autonomy and the exclusion of the city politicians who have over time amply demonstrated that their interventionist approach has been a dismal failure and not about to be remedied any time soon through the ballot box. That autonomy would have to look more like a private property issue than something in the public domain.
Thanks, Harold, for providing the link that I credited to SteveF. Over time you have been a fount of informative links.
Tom Scharf,
“It will be interesting to see how this plays out.”
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I suspect the Alzheimer administration will start hammering all of Musk’s businesses with ‘investigations of violations’ of one regulation or another. I would not be surprised if SpaceX rocket use by NASA and the DOD is suddenly found to “not be the best option”, despite being much lower cost. Twitter itself will get hammered by the regulators in Brussels over lack of moderation of ‘dangerous’ tweets, and they are not limited by the First Amendment. If they have the power to do so, the left simply will not allow opposing views to be presented to the voting public…. never have and never will. They are not interested in an honest, open debate. They want only power. I suspect Musk is in for a lot of headaches if he actually allows free speech on Twitter. If Republicans control Congress, that may help a little, but the Alzheimer administration can still torment Musk via a ‘process is the punishment’ approach….. at least until Jan 2025.
Thanks for that list of vetoes, HW.
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The next 2 weeks is a perfect firestorm.
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So many things going on in the world on all levels.
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Turns out the intruder was not a Republican.
Did he bring a hammer or did Paul have one to defend himself?
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Not that it is that important but might be if he was not armed, only delusional and had not intended attacking anyone.
The Democrats and some in the media are trying to blame Republicans for the attack on Paul Pelosi.
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The whole thing seems very weird. I am puzzled by how the kook got to the back door, let alone broke in, without triggering the security system. The police say there were at least three people in the house. Given that, not much else that we have been told makes sense.
Mike M,
Apparently the guy is part of a ‘radical nudist’ group and is Canadian by birth. Everything known about the suspect suggests he is totally bonkers.
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The police statement says Pelosi’s husband called 911 then grabbed the hammer, but the intruder took it away from him and started beating on him with the hammer as the police arrived.
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Unlike the shooting of Rep Scalise several years ago, which was politically motivated, this attack sounds more like a crazy-man gone completely out of control. But I am sure it will somehow turn out Ron DeSantis caused the attack.
SteveF,
I agree this sounds like total crazy-man.
I don’t want to get wrapped around the axle on David DePape’s ideology, because the dude was indeed apparently crazy. Crazy trancends ideological boundaries.
This said, the guy was a leftist.
But yeah. The Washington Post paints him as a Republican and a Trump supporter. Because lots of Republican Trump supporters are nudist activists who live in Berkeley communes with BLM flags outside. Obviously.
It’s a little silly.
New
CNN
The hammer that was used to assault Paul Pelosi was brought by DePape, according to a law enforcement source and a senior congressional aide briefed on the assault.
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Should be body cam and security cam footage of all the events.
But?
They do go missing at convenient times.
Police were not very helpful with details of his car crash either.
This pretty well sums it up: https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/pelosi-and-kavanaugh-murder-plots
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Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster; this guy seems even nuttier than Hinkley. If there is any lesson to be learned here, it is that having people who suffer long term psychosis untreated and roaming the streets is a bad idea… as those pushed by crazies to their deaths on subway tracks have learned. Mental health is yet another of the issues where the left has adopted policies which are terrible for society and for public safety. That they blame Republicans for the consequences of their idiotic mental health policies is almost too rich to believe.
I think there is a need for new legislation to ensure that all homeowners (a) take a mandatory course in hammer safety, and (b) have a locked hammer safe in their houses. Even one hammer attack is too many.
In unrelated news, I’m opening a school to teach responsible hammer usage, and another company to manufacture lockable hammer cabinets.
With Lula da Silva’s victory over Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil there has been a sweep of all Latin American nations having far left administrations. If the current US and Canadian admistrations are included there are leftwing administrations in all the North and South America nations.
It is my view that this situation arises out of the leftwing bent of the current intelligentsia and their influence on the voting public. For example, the news section of the WSJ had an article concerning the Brazilian presidential election whereby they had nice things to say about the socialist Silva who had been previously convicted of fraud and nothing good to say about Bolsonaro. Even when the news is unfavorable to one’s political philosophy it is good to know where things stand. The non-left is swimming against a strong current.
In another WSJ piece, it quotes Randi Weingarten, the AFT teacher union president, in lecturing the Supreme Court in the case of universities using racial preferences, “ensuring equal access to educational opportunities is a compelling state interest”. Meaning that compelling state interests can be used to override supposedly Constitutionally protected individual rights.
SteveF,
As I remember, the movement to deinstitutionalize mental patients was bipartisan. But the community support that was supposed to take over never happened. And without legal committment to an institution, there is no way to force people to stay on their meds. So the question is whether it’s better to warehouse people drugged to the gills with thorazine or let them wander loose on the streets. There should be a better choice, but I don’t see anyone actually doing anything about it.
The left decided to fix the problem by redefining normal people as the ones with the mental issues.
In unrelated news, I’m opening a school to teach responsible hammer usage, and another company to manufacture lockable hammer cabinets.
I would hope that your school and company are receiving grants
from a Public Safety agency, but I fear that we need stricter measures than what you evidently are prescribing.
Hammer owners could be registered or better in light of the advent of nail and staple guns why should anybody need a hammer – except to be used as an assault weapon. You can search far and wide in the US and state constitutions but you will not find any protection of hammer ownership. I see compelling state interest written all over this necessary move.
As I remember, the movement to deinstitutionalize mental patients was bipartisan.
It was motivated, in my view, by the miserable job governments were doing in running, controlling and/or financing these institutions. In IL we had state operated developmental centers that were doing such a bad job that they are being shut down to be replaced by state funded non-profit run residences. There are still problems but at least the state can find agencies to review the nonprofits whereas the state centers appear to be review proof – except when the media decides to investigate.
I worked at a mental institution when I was in high school, I spent a lot of time in “closed ward”. Involuntary admission. For the most part these people were just having periodic mental breakdowns and their families couldn’t handle it or feared for their safety. 99% harmless. There was another state institution that housed the violent offenders. They came in, got back on their meds, and left usually within two weeks. We had a few frequent fliers. Probably 80% of the facility was voluntary admission. There was a children’s section as well, some very sad cases there. I saw some electroshock therapy, it was medieval as it sounds, but produced some amazing results that were unfortunately temporary. You can’t always just fix mental illness and the side effects of the meds are serious. They may control the patient better but the patient obviously doesn’t always see it that way.
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The place I worked at was closed decades ago.
I’m in the middle, I support hammer ownership except for military hammers. We need to ban any hammer that has scary looking black pieces.
Ken Fritsch,
I know quite a lot about Brazil. I was in Brazil last week (in the days leading up to the run-off), and I have two dual citizen children who live there. You should not draw too many parallels with the leftism in the USA and Canada and the leftism in Brazil.
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Most of the middle and upper classes (generally more educated and with higher average income) in Brazil supported Bolsonaro, while Lula was mostly supported by poorer/less educated people. Geographically, the less economically developed states in the north and northeast of the country (with he highest proportion of very poor) supported Lula, while the more economically developed south supported Bolsonaro. Lula gets the votes of the poor because he directly promises to give them greater material wealth via direct government benefits and changes in the law (dramatically increasing the minimum wage, for example).
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One thing which is mostly downplayed in US coverage by the MSM is that Lula is in fact corrupt; he and his family pocketed many, many millions of Brazilian Reis from kickbacks and influence pedaling while he was in office the first time. I have had discussions with Brazilians who have *personal* knowledge that Lula was accepting large cash bribes from companies when he was a labor leader (before becoming a politician). He spent nearly two years in prison following conviction for corruption, and was freed by the Brazilian supreme court on a pure technicality (bribery charges filed against him were claimed to have been filed in the wrong legal district). The Brazilians I have talked to (in Portuguese) say his release from prison was 100% politically motivated (the SC members are mostly aligned with Lula’s party), and that everyone understands he and his government were profoundly corrupt.
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Of course, lots of lefty politicians (and especially Brazilian lefty politicians) are corrupt, but in Brazil, poor people seem mostly to vote for whoever promises they will receive more benefits, even if they know that politician is corrupt.
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The odd comparisons with Trump (‘Trump of the tropics’, etc) are garbage; Bolsonaro has held elective office for a long time, and he is nothing like Trump in his personal behavior. A better comparison might be Josh Hawley, were he 20 years older.
Ken Fritsch: “Hammer owners could be registered…”
Yes, a hammer registry is an excellent idea. We should also have a ban on “assault hammers”, defined as any hammer weighing over 16 oz. There will no doubt be some resistance from builders, but it’s all about framing the issue properly.
We need to take steps to get automatic repeating hammers such as hydraulic jackhammers out of people’s hands as quickly as possible. Nobody needs that kind of destructive power, it’s just common sense hammer control.
They can have my hammer when they claw it out of my cold dead fingers!
When is a private company, not a private company?
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“Truth Cops: Leaked documents outline DHS’s plans to police disinformation”
. https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/
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There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live.
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Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020. Meeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to “process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.” In practice, this often meant state election officials sent examples of potential forms of disinformation to CISA, which would then forward them on to social media companies for a response.
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In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote more flexibility to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one CISA official quoted in the IG report, “counters all types of disinformation, to be responsive to current events.”
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Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.
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CISA has defended its burgeoning social media monitoring authorities, stating that “once CISA notified a social media platform of disinformation, the social media platform could independently decide whether to remove or modify the post.” But, as documents revealed by the Missouri lawsuit show, CISA’s goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions.
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In June, the same DHS advisory committee of CISA — which includes Twitter head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird — drafted a report to the CISA director calling for an expansive role for the agency in shaping the “information ecosystem.” The report called on the agency to closely monitor “social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.” They argued that the agency needed to take steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information,” with a focus on information that undermines “key democratic institutions, such as the courts, or by other sectors such as the financial system, or public health measures.”
Good work by The Intercept.
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Shocked! Shocked I say! That the government misinformation control bureaucracy has grown like a malignant tumor inside a nuclear reactor.
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In some countries the platforms must legally adhere to government takedown requests. The US government should not be getting this kind of service except in some extreme circumstances and then it needs to be transparent what they are censoring. The worst part of all these censorship committees is their lack of transparency, an open invitation to corruption both soft and hard.
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One can argue that the government should get the ability to request takedowns like normal citizens but they should not get special privileges or leverage. Any request from government that even comes within a mile of legally protected speech should be dismissed out of hand and given lower priority than a citizen, and made public. My view is the entire effort should be disbanded and defunded.
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I find it hilarious that the “government” who are made up of the same exact people who are sending me the most outrageous disinformation about their political opponents every single day in the mail for the past month deem themselves a respectable arbiter of the truth.
If you have been following Glenn Greenwald you will know he left The intercept because they refused to print his story on the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop. This part of the new story (starting on about paragraph 99) is going to give him a stroke, ha ha.
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“In retrospect, the New York Post reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election provides an elucidating case study of how this works in an increasingly partisan environment.
Much of the public ignored the reporting or assumed it was false, as over 50 former intelligence officials charged that the laptop story was a creation of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. The mainstream media was primed by allegations of election interference in 2016 — and, to be sure, Trump did attempt to use the laptop to disrupt the Biden campaign. Twitter ended up banning links to the New York Post’s report on the contents of the laptop during the crucial weeks leading up to the election. Facebook also throttled users’ ability to view the story.
In recent months, a clearer picture of the government’s influence has emerged.
In an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook had limited sharing of the New York Post’s reporting after a conversation with the FBI. “The background here is that the FBI came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan. The FBI told them, Zuckerberg said, that “‘We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump.’” When the Post’s story came out in October 2020, Facebook thought it “fit that pattern” the FBI had told them to look out for.
Zuckerberg said he regretted the decision, as did Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter at the time. Despite claims that the laptop’s contents were forged, the Washington Post confirmed that at least some of the emails on the laptop were authentic. The New York Times authenticated emails from the laptop — many of which were cited in the original New York Post reporting from October 2020 — that prosecutors have examined as part of the Justice Department’s probe into whether the president’s son violated the law on a range of issues, including money laundering, tax-related offenses, and foreign lobbying registration.
Documents filed in federal court as part of a lawsuit by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana add a layer of new detail to Zuckerberg’s anecdote, revealing that officials leading the push to expand the government’s reach into disinformation also played a quiet role in shaping the decisions of social media giants around the New York Post story.
According to records filed in federal court, two previously unnamed FBI agents — Elvis Chan, an FBI special agent in the San Francisco field office, and Dehmlow, the section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force — were involved in high-level communications that allegedly “led to Facebook’s suppression” of the Post’s reporting.
The Hunter Biden laptop story was only the most high-profile example of law enforcement agencies pressuring technology firms. In many cases, the Facebook and Twitter accounts flagged by DHS or its partners as dangerous forms of disinformation or potential foreign influence were clearly parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence.”
“‘We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump.’”
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They long had the Hunter Biden laptop, and they long knew it was 100% authentic…. a laptop which proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, an obscene level of influence pedaling and personal corruption in the Biden family. The FBI lied for political gain and to influence the 2020 election.
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The only real solution to FBI’s appalling corruption is cutting the FBI budget by 75%, leading to giant lay-offs, followed by firing every single remaining person not protected by civil service rules. The FBI is 100% corrupt and 100% evil. For the good of the country, the FBI has to basically disappear.
Pelosi and DePape were in their underwear?!
It seems that the police are now saying that Pelosi opened the door while struggling with the crazy guy for control of the hammer. I, for one, find that very hard to believe. Then the crazy guy got control of the hammer and started to beat on Pelosi. I have not heard the explanation of how he got more than one blow in with the cops standing within a step or to.
I suppose we will never learn what actually happened.
Interesting factoid: The Paul Pelosi attacker was also an illegal resident with a very long overstay of his allowed time in the USA. Hummmm…. maybe it would be better to send illegal aliens back to where they came from. If so, Paul Pelosi would have less of a headache today.
Some of the earliest reporting indicated that DePape was in his underwear. Here is one from three days ago that has not yet been changed.
I read that this is currently believed to be a mistake in early reporting. It is unclear what Paul Pelosi was wearing, but having reportedly been awakened by the intruder, I don’t see that it much matters.
DePape was nuts and a nudist activist besides, so I don’t see vast grounds for astonishment or even strong evidence of intimate activity even if he truly was arrested in his skivvies. Further, even supposing Paul Pelosi had been … trysting … with DePape, well. So what. I don’t see what real difference any of it makes.
This is why the bofill rating agency gives this story one shrug:
shrug.
Stuff like how people were dressed easily gets garbled and deserves a shrug.
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But the claim that the crazy guy got in without setting off an alarm seems more than passing strange. Enough to make one (or at least me) wonder how much of the truth we are being told.
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We are told that Pelosi got the guy to let him use the bathroom and called 911 from there. So the bathroom door doesn’t have a lock?
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We are now told that there were just two people in the house and that one of them opened the door for the cops. I don’t see how to square that with alleged struggle over the hammer and subsequent beat down.
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Such things rate more than a shrug.
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Well actually, I might have just given the whole thing a shrug if Democrats did not immediately start politicizing it.
Mike,
Yes. Some of the details are odd and in my opinion are worthy of further investigation and review. The underwear angle isn’t one of them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
mark bofill,
“Some of the details are odd and in my opinion are worthy of further investigation and review”
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The local authorities are not explaining what actually happened….. maybe they will be more forthcoming after formal charges are filed, but then again, maybe not.
Steve, yep.
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I sort of take exception to what in my view is an excessive and inappropriate use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to describe people’s theories about exactly what went down.
Theorizing that Paul Pelosi might have been having a sexual encounter with Depape isn’t a conspiracy theory. The only part that might qualify is the idea that the police might cover something up at Paul or Nancy’s request. And – while that might technically satisfy the criteria for conspiracy theory, I don’t think there is anything particularly far fetched about that. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the USA is about as well connected politically as they come. It is downright naive in my view to think the Pelosi’s have no pull with local law enforcement. So I wish people would quit with the conspiracy theory BS. I know they won’t, but I wish they would anyway.
On the other hand, whatever pull they might have didn’t get Paul Pelosi off the hook for DUI recently. So maybe local law enforcement doesn’t much care.
Yeah. The Twitter guys have to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for a week, or maybe a week and a few days. Cry me a river. I don’t know the software developer / software engineer who hasn’t been in that situation. I’ve endured long shifts for longer periods of time than that on more than a few occasions over the years. It happens.
Listened to 5 hours of affirmative action arguments. Sotomayor has a habit of arguing from the bench constantly. “What you are are really saying is (fill in argument), right?”. Overtly leading the witness. She constantly seems frustrated the lawyers aren’t answering the questions the best way. She is pretty pi**ed off about this case. Alito is her nemesis on this argument, he was incredulous at times (“It’s family lore that one of my ancestors was an American Indian”, ha ha).
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The conservatives ask questions, sometimes very difficult. “How do you know when you have reached your diversity goal?” They re-asked that 4 or more times without any answer. They cornered the lawyers on their arguments that “race matters, but we aren’t discriminating by race”. “race is a plus for admissions, but there are no minuses”. A lot of incoherent circular logic because using actual numbers to measure the goals of “diversity” ends up clearly unconstitutional due to racial leveling being impermissible.
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So they allegedly use multi-factor holistic admissions to be blind to the quotas, but race is part of this. They won’t define what diversity actually is, and most importantly when it would end because they are boxed in legally. The conservatives were very critical about this. It seems the failure to put forth any explanation of when this would end really hurt their case.
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There are arguments that “checking the race box” is meaningless because it can’t be * proven * that holistic admissions makes that determinative in any individual case, although statistically it obviously does. Then they turn around and praise how important race is for admissions and education. They finally admit 1% of decisions at UNC are determined by race (the real number is likely higher), then are asked why they need race if they are already mostly achieving diversity without the checkbox.
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Alito and Thomas was were very hostile to letting this continue. Chief Justice Roberts seemed rather skeptical. Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett were also openly skeptical.
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It’s almost certain something is going to change here by listening to these arguments. It can be multiple levels of redress but declaring use of race unconstitutional seems very possible. It was brought up many times 9 states have already done this.
Tom Scharf,
Thanks for the summary. If memory serves, admissions of black and latinos to the most selective schools is expected to drop by 2/3 or more if admissions were actually race/ethnicity neutral. Of course, even if race were bared as illegal and unconstitutional as a factor for admission, the most selective schools will continue to admit based on race/ethnicity, even though they will deny they do. I would be shocked if schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT ever allowed their admission of blacks and latinos to drop by even 1/3 from where they are today. In California the drop in black and latino admissions to the most selective public schools has not been as large as expected, so it is clear those schools are STILL favoring certain racial and ethnic groups.
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I have heard some commentary that favoring people from poor backgrounds, which would be defensible under the law, could be used to increase black and latino admissions, but I doubt it. There are far, far too many intellectually capable poor whites, Vietnamese, Chinese, and others who would compete for spots with blacks and latinos if admissions favored kids from poor backgrounds.
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I think admissions to the most selective schools will remain indefinitely tilted toward favored groups, as they have since the late 1960s, no matter what the SC says. The discrimination after the SC rules may not be as blatant as today, and may not have quite so large an impact on admissions, but it will continue to be substantial. The left never accepts laws it disagrees with, and always violates and works to subvert those laws. The left never relents in its pursuit of ‘equity’ by any means available.
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If Harvard were honest, it would simply stop taking Federal funds and continue to discriminate based on race. I would be perfectly OK with that and would applaud their principled position. But they won’t stop discriminating, and they will continue to receive Federal funds. The mendacity of the left is without limit.
SteveF
I have heard some commentary that favoring people from poor backgrounds, which would be defensible under the law, could be used to increase black and latino admissions, but I doubt it.
State schools could do that. But Harvard, Yale etc want the later donations that come from admitting rich kids. And the non-rich kids are partly attracted by the hope of rubbing shoulders with rich kids and making connections with rich parents.
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One of the reasons the kids from Ivy’s make money is they had more connections before they went there. If your parents own a huge company, and their friends own companies, successful networking tends to be easier.
If Harvard et. al. really wanted diversity, then they wouldn’t allow segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies, among other things. My guess would be that the interaction between rich and non-rich isn’t very large either.
The hammer puns above were indeed suitably awful.
If Harvard were honest, it would simply stop taking Federal funds and continue to discriminate based on race.
Harvard pulled in 800 million in research grants last year which makes up 17% of their income. 70% of that came directly from the federal government. Tuition was 21% and endowment proceeds 36%. The even bigger issue would be their students not being being able to use federal grants or student loans. There’re very few institutions if any that can even consider going total free of federal funds. Even Harvard with their huge endowment and yearly budget surpluses isn’t one of them. That’s what gives the department of education power over education even though it’s not a power vested with it in the constitution.
Andrew P,
But in addition, some of the tuition funds are via Federally sponsored student loans.
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Harvard’s return on invested endowment plus a bit of the principle would allow them swear off all Federal funding and to discriminate undisturbed for many decades, if not forever. Besides, kindred political spirit CCP (China) would probably be happy to fund Harvard’s blatant racial discrimination. Harvard won’t sear off Federal funds, but they will continue to discriminate.
Lucia,
Sure. The admission of legacy applicants is the most blatant example of selective schools protecting their long term financial interests. Another is ‘special admits’ of the children of the extremely wealthy and/or politically influential (Chelsey Clinton: Stanford, Oxford, Colombia. I saw her efforts at TV journalism…. she didn’t get in on her intellect.
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I know one of these admits to Harvard, the son of an incredibly wealthy Brazilian family. Nice guy, and reasonably smart, but really, it was the money not his incandescent intellect that got him in. He owns a small to mid-size company in Brazil today, which I suspect is as much a hobby for him as a way to make a living.
Tom Scharf,
“It seems the failure to put forth any explanation of when this would end really hurt their case.”
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The honest answer is NEVER. That is what really hurts their case.
We were in it up to our eyeballs! The Ukrainian drone attack of the russian ships in the Black Sea had our help.
[Forbes] “Russian sources [Pravda] also claim a large U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawk long-endurance surveillance drone taken off from Italy likely conducted pre-strike reconnaissance on Ukraine’s behalf that morning.”
It was our old friend FORTE10, a plane I have noted here several times. I watched this event in real time.
Maybe more importantly but not reported, the US had a RC-135V/W Rivet Joint spy plane nearby. This plane has onboard mainframe computers that analyze data from all relevant sources [air, ground and satellite] and produce 3D battle maps that are sent to ground commanders for targeting.
The Urasian Times has a description and screen shot of the actual track:
“As a leading Russian publication, Pravda said an American RQ-4B-40 Global Hawk reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea could have controlled the Ukrainian attack.
It quoted data from Flightradar24 that showed an unmanned strategic reconnaissance aircraft with the tail number 11-2046, call sign FORTE10 and belonging to the Pentagon, taking off from a NATO airbase near Catania in Sicily.” https://eurasiantimes.com/us-rq-4b-global-hawk-drone-coordinated-ukrainian-strike-on-russia/
A gem:
“If Harvard admitted students on a colorblind basis, it would be 43 percent Asian, 38.4 percent white, 0.7 percent black, and 2.4 percent Hispanic, according to a 2013 study by the university itself. Instead, Harvard’s undergraduates in 2013 were 43.2 percent white, 18.7 percent Asian, 10.5 percent black, and 9.5 percent Hispanic.”
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Mac Donald concludes, as I do, that Harvard and similarly selective schools will NEVER stop discriminating, no matter what the constitution and existing laws say. Their smug moral superiority over the 70% of Americans (basket of deplorables?) who oppose racial preferences, puts them permanently above the law.
In a truly free market without government strings attached, a private school like Harvard could have any admittance policy it might choose. I would certainly approve of that situation.
Harvard is a brand that denotes connections for furthering a graduates career. The brand does not always give the promised results, but at a rate, and particularly for those in high positions, that it remains a good marketing tool. That brand is held up for Harvard and other like universities by the current intelligentsia as their agendas are much the same. Practiced in the real world those agendas would eventually be exposed for the general public to see the inherent weaknesses and outright wrongheadedness of these policies, if it were not for the existing situation whereby the intelligentsia gets to say what is working and what is not and totally ignoring problems and failures.
Harvard will not (have to) change until the approach we have for evaluating changes.
There was open and frank discussions of what would replace affirmative action. The conservative justices were honestly interested in race neutral alternatives, they really don’t want to zero this out. Top 10% in your high school class, socioeconomic plus points, first in your family to college, reducing legacy admissions, allowing discussions of overcoming prejudice or cultural barriers in essays were all seen as legal and would likely pass muster.
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The Students for Fair Admission kept talking about “Simulation D” (which Sotomayer kept referring to as “Stimulation D”, ha) that implemented 50/50 socioeconomic diversity at Harvard and expanded overall racial and other diversity (although Blacks fell from 14% to 10%). Harvard demurred to comment much on this, except to say their “important” diversity metrics would suffer greatly. More mysterious hand waving.
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So the net effect here will not be great, everyone who is in a disadvantaged minority will say so in their essays, and Asians will continue to pretend they aren’t Asian. The people at Harvard are clever and I think the justices didn’t get good answers that Harvard would be incapable of implementing race neutral alternatives. However the legal distinctions are important from my point of view. Overt racial leveling will be harder to implement and impossible to justify. But actual diversity beyond race will improve, poor white people will not be left out, etc. Conservatives make up 7% of Harvard’s incoming class, this bias is permissible at Harvard (almost all bias is permissible at private institutions, federal funding being a complication).
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One interesting point which Thomas talked about is why the burden of proof for racial bias is one way in disparate impact cases and now the opposite in admissions cases. This is not legally the reality in my understanding, but is the reality in practice from Thomas’s view.
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The personalities of the lawyers is not very determinative, but I thought the Harvard lawyer came off as evasive, smug, and elitist, he kept sighing as if he was explaining obvious legal concepts to 5 year olds. That’s probably my bias though. The Students for Fair Admissions lawyer was strong as was the other side’s lawyer who represented the military academies. She was on point constantly and directly answered direct questions.
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They spent much longer talking about sunsetting affirmative action than eliminating it than I thought (the 25 years debate from Grutter). Apparently the Grutter precedent specifically talked about this and more or less let affirmative action continue in 2003 but with a written legal expectation it would be eliminated. It was put on probation. This angle is such that the conservatives are not going to see themselves as overturning a precedent but eliminating affirmative action “on schedule”, Alito referred to next year’s class graduating at the 25 year mark. The media has been silent on this concept.
“In California the drop in black and latino admissions to the most selective public schools has not been as large as expected, so it is clear those schools are STILL favoring certain racial and ethnic groups.”
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It is very clear the courts are not going to micromanage admissions and tell schools to admit by test scores. They accept that universities have a “compelling” interest in a “diverse” student body and that universities are best suited to decide that for themselves. That is not going to go away and it is likely appropriate if you assume good faith admissions. They are the experts in their domain and the court is very hesitant to tell them how to do their jobs.
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Obviously one worries about the cultural effects of a liberal slant in admissions and the running of universities. This stigma hurts them now, and will continue to hurt them if they increase their bias.
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UF has been going through a spasm trying to affirm an ex Republican Senator as UF’s next president. This opposition is expected, but I’m amazed this guy is even on the hire list at all. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/us/ben-sasse-university-of-florida-president-no-confidence-vote
I’m seeing questions raised as to whether the websites claimed to be DePape’s, actually were. These are the only evidence that he is a “far right” conspiracy theorist. Godisloving.wordpress.com and http://www.frenlyfrens.com/blog only appeared on archive.org on the 28th Oct. 2022. An opportune Peter Gleick by proxy?
Tom Scharf,
” They accept that universities have a “compelling” interest in a “diverse” student body and that universities are best suited to decide that for themselves. That is not going to go away and it is likely appropriate if you assume good faith admissions.”
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That is certainly the situation now, but if the SC blocks explicit use of race to create a “diverse” student body, then other means to reach similar ends will be needed. Harvard specifically wants middle class and wealthy black admissions, so they are never going to be able to adopt the “top x% in all public schools” like the state schools can. Assuming good faith admissions? Not sure what that might include.
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Besides, assuming Harvard acts in “good faith” on anything is a leap of faith I am not willing to make. I saw what they did to Larry Summers, and it was anything but good faith.
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I do agree that one way or another, selective schools will in fact continue to discriminate by race for the indefinite future; they will just have to be a lot less blatant about it.
On the subject of Gleick, I thought I’d see what wikipedia had to say about his little incident. I thought perhaps it would have been erased, but I guess vindication is a better alternative:
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“Gleick was reinstated following an investigation, in which the institute found no evidence to support charges of forgery and “supported what Dr. Gleick has stated publicly regarding his interaction with the Heartland Institute.”
DaveJR,
The first craw of the site was about 3 PM on October 28. The guy was arrested some 12 hours earlier. It is not unusual for rarely visited websites to not be crawled, and I expect this one was crawled based on the guy’s arrest. That does not mean the site did not exist before the 28th.
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I spent a few minutes looking at the archived pages on the wayback machine. The site has dozens of pages of content, with lots of disturbing images and lots of text expressing hatred for jews, women, homosexuals, transvestites, and many, many others. While some of his pages suggest ‘conservative’ POV, mostly they all scream “crazy and disconnected from reality”.
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According to the Whois service, the site was created on August 9 of 2022; the first blog entries were dated a couple of days later. There is no possibility that the website is a spoof created between 3:00 AM and 3:00 PM on the 28th of October.
Harvard demurred to comment much on this, except to say their “important” diversity metrics would suffer greatly. More mysterious hand waving.
Their classes would be filled with all poor and middle class people. Their diversity metrics probably need more rich people.
On a different topic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/
There is something fundamentally wrong with the argument that people should be excused for doing evil because they were ignorant. I feel like this embodies an important difference between progressive and conservative, but maybe it’s just me. In my view, it is irresponsible to infringe on people’s freedoms when you are ignorant. The possibility of necessity is not justification for trampling people’s rights. I feel like responsible adults ought to know that already going into such situations.
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At the very least, don’t ask me for forgiveness or amnesty afterwards. Ignorance is a completely unacceptable excuse. Next time kindly leave us the heck alone.
If one is not ready to accept responsibility for being wrong, one is not ready to exercise power, is the simplest expression of what I’m trying to get at here.
mark bofill,
Yeah I read that one too. Found it a bit predictable and self serving.
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Here is one in a similar vane, Tim Robbins opining on changing his attitude from vaccine scold. A bit more compelling writing but much the same end result. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tim-robbins-and-the-lost-art-of-finding
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I think this is mostly people dealing with the cognitive dissonance of having demonized their out group for their previous behavior, but now they are behaving exactly the same. Everyone is currently on the irresponsible Republican death cult plan (no lockdowns, no masks, no mandates, open schools, not taking boosters, etc.).
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Admitting the Republicans were right is not on the possibility list, but they might forgive Republicans for being right, maybe, ha ha. Everyone was stumbling around in the dark to some extent, the proper behavior was to be a bit more humble from the beginning.
lucia,
I suspect that the most important diversity metric to Harvard is legacy admissions. If they start admitting a lot more Asians, then they will be more pressure down the line to admit fewer whites and more Asians. Given all this hoorah, I seriously doubt that all that many Asian alumni will be big donors. OTOH, maybe they will want to see large donations from legacy alumni before admitting their offspring.
I should probably link the WSJ article on the arbitrariness of racial classifications.
Here it is:
Affirmative Action Mocks Ethnic Diversity
As the Supreme Court takes up preferences at Harvard, legal scholar David Bernstein argues that labels like ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Asian’ are completely arbitrary.
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Mr. Bernstein, 55, is the author of a recent book, “Classified,” that traces the haphazard codification of the federal government’s racial labels. “We created these classifications in 1977 in a very different America, right, that was primarily black-white,” he says. “Now we have all these other groups, and we have much more division within the groups, and we’ve barely changed them at all.”
The decisive player in the ’70s was the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial and Ethnic Definitions, set up under the Federal Interagency Committee on Education. A task force with three interested federal workers—Mexican-American, Puerto Rican and Cuban-American—debated a Spanish-language label. The eventual result was a document with a title only a hardened bureaucrat could love: Statistical Policy Directive No. 15.
Issued by the Office of Management and Budget in 1977, Directive 15 set definitions for the racial categories we mostly know today: white, black, Asian and Native American, with an ethnicity option for people of Hispanic heritage, who can be any race. In 1997 a Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander grouping was split off. A complaint from Hawaiians, which echoes today, was that colleges treated them as Asians.
In a country that’s far more diverse five decades after Directive 15, its labels show up everywhere from college applications to clinical trials. The problem is that these blunt categories are arbitrary and historically contingent. “Asians are supposed to have descent from the original peoples of Asia, whatever that means,” Mr. Bernstein says. That grouping covers half the world’s population and a dizzying number of ethnicities. Yet according to the feds, Asia ends at the Pakistan border. Pakistani-Americans, like Japanese-Americans, are classified as Asian. Afghan-Americans are officially white.
mark bofill,
“Next time kindly leave us the heck alone.”
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Hear, hear!
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“We were afraid and that made us do bad things” is a crap excuse.
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Better to stop acting like a frightened 4 year old and accept that life has risks. To insist we, as a society, trade individual liberty for a very uncertain hope of “social safety” is idiotic and dangerous. The world was much impoverished by covid, but sadly, the most important impoverishment was the precedent that personal liberty is secondary to a very uncertain hope for safety. May it never happen again in the USA.
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“Those that give up freedom for safety deserve neither.”
DeWitt,
“I suspect that the most important diversity metric to Harvard is legacy admissions.”
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Sure, they will fight to protect legacies, along with “special” admissions for the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful, to their last breath… too damned much money involved to not admit them.
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What I suspect will happen is they will get rid of most (white) athletic admissions, cut admissions for blacks and Latinos by maybe 15%-20%, and increase Asian admissions with those freed spaces. So mercenary, so unprincipled, so dishonest…… so, well… so very Harvard.
Lucia,
“Their diversity metrics probably need more rich people.”
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Ouch! 😉
Nationally, Covid deaths are now in the high 100’s per day, and falling. Covid is a non-issue, save for the long term damage idiotic public policies did to the country, the economy, and especially to school age children.
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With just a bit of luck, the most Covid unhinged, like Whitmer of Michigan, will be tossed from office next week. There is absolutely nobody more deserving of unemployment than the Covid unhinged.
Real Clear Politics now projects 4 Senate seats will go from Democrats to Republicans next week. If that happens, a filibuster-proof majority for Republicans will be in reach in 2024, when Dems are very likely to lose at least 4 seats in states where Dem policies are wildly unpopular.
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DeSantis as president… check
House majority…. check
Filibuster-proof Senate majority…. check.
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All the really bad Dem policies since Obama took office could be quickly reversed.
Reasonable mistakes can be forgiven, especially when the perpetrators admit they were wrong. Perverse actions taken just because they could are not.
Closing down schools in the spring of 2020 is forgivable. Keeping them closed through the 2020-2021 school year is not.
Advocating vaccines that turned out to be far less effective than advertised is forgivable. Mandating an experimental vaccine even after it is clear that it does not prevent transmission is not forgivable.
MB
“There is something fundamentally wrong with the argument that people should be excused for doing evil because they were ignorant. I feel like this embodies an important difference between progressive and conservative. In my view, it is irresponsible to infringe on people’s freedoms when you are ignorant. The possibility of necessity is not justification for trampling people’s rights. I feel like responsible adults ought to know that already going into such situations.”
Too harsh.
Have you ever stepped on an ant by accident.
More pertinent is the comment responsible adults.
Being responsible implies awareness or a duty to be aware.
They seem to be more uncaring than ignorant?
SteveF Polls are amazingly variable.
What do people really feel?
Due to bias I expect a bigger swing in one direction but in reality any swing one way could equally go the other way.
Due to too much right wing reading I have to go to the Hill and CNN to restore my balance.
1 week left!
angech,
“What do people really feel?”
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My sense is that voters really feel Dems are incompetent to govern, and will vote for Republicans. These people should be nowhere near the helm of the ship of state. The key issues voters care about: inflation, open boarders, crime, education. But most of all, Dems care about issues voters never pay any attention to: abortion, climate change, no voter ID requirements, beating up on Russia, etc.
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Of course, only the final tally matters, but I think you should count on a red wave.
I do not see ignorance as the problem with misguided Covid-19 policies and mandates, but rather the inclination of a goodly portion of the population, the media and politicians to favor strong government responses to “emergencies” and without consideration to any unintended consequences. It was just do something and the more stringent and dramatic the better – will sort it out all later and attempt to instill guilt in those who point to misguided policies.
Mike M,
“Mandating an experimental vaccine even after it is clear that it does not prevent transmission is not forgivable.”
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It is an interesting example. I have to believe a sensible democrat like Clinton would have recognized that difference and quickly recalibrated. But Biden has dementia, and he has surrounded himself with people who are disconnected from reality, so his policies were worse than just factually wrong, they were destructive for no potential gain. History will not be kind.
Re Covid Related School Shutdowns
There has been a lot of discussion here about the effect of Covid school shutdowns on students, and most of this discussion has been lacking in data. In Australia (and yes Australia is not USA …) we are starting to get some data, NAPLAN tests are nation wide standard tests for 9, 12 and 15 year olds. Many experts predicted that shutdowns would lead to a fall off in results … well the numbers are in and the answer is no: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/31/naplan-tests-show-australian-students-literacy-numeracy-mostly-resilient-despite-covid
One of things people like about a paternalistic government or religious entity is it gives them comfort. That is probably worth something to them. We never tell our young kids anything other than everything will be all right. “Hey junior, an uncertain global pandemic just started and it may kill your parents, have a nice day at school”. In theory we grow out of that, and we know that everything may not be all right and that the government or selected deity isn’t always going to protect us.
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Some people imagine government as a responsible loving parent, others imagine government as a financially irresponsible overly strict parent prone to abuse.
Andrew,
Standardized tests of 4th and 8th graders in the USA show large drops in reading ability and record drops in math ability. Australia is not the USA; it is far more homogeneous in the demand for educational excellence, even while the Australian populace is becoming more diverse via the import of people from elsewhere. Unfortunately, in the USA, the biggest drops in educational achievement were among those already behind the average in education, and who could least afford to fall further behind.
Steve, Ken, [Edit: Mike,] thanks for your responses.
Ken, yes. There were many problems with the idea the article put forward and I thought that was one of them as well.
Angech,
1) AFAICT, there is no reasonable comparison whatsoever to be made between accidentally stepping on an ant and the poorly reasoned / often draconian policies put into effect during COVID over the past few years.
2) Regarding ignorance vs caring, well. I didn’t write the article, I’m just responding to it. The article appeared to me to be full of the idea that people should be excused because they were ignorant. (I.E. from the article, But the thing is: We didn’t know. and so on).
Using diversity to rationalize actions which can very well be counterproductive and doing it by making it a righteous mission appears in my view to be a worst case of virtue signaling.
First of all admitting students for the cause of diversity that might not be ready to handle the education rigor can have lasting negative effects on the student admitted under these conditions.
Second students admitted by way of racial or any other quotas can be considered second rate student-wise by themselves and others.
Third such admissions can color those quota eligible admitted who would have been admitted without a quota.
Fourth the problem of the education systems and other critical factors that lead to college and university, where a disparity in readiness can be seen in the quota eligible groups, gets thrown under the rug. Why is not the focus further down the line if these diversity parties are really interested in helping the quota eligible? Maybe they do not want to upset the teachers unions, or the politicians who control the urban schools that do a very poor job of educating, or even placing some responsibility on the parents in those areas. Maybe Harvard and other like universities could provide entry on submission by an unprepared student after the student attains preparedness in an intermediate educational setting provided by Harvard, but without any quota eligible considerations.
Fifth, special favors can be taken as a form of condescension from a class above to a lower class. I have heard progressives say that there should not be a time limit on affirmative actions and quotas which makes me wonder whether they truly want to see change or maybe just do not want to give up the cause that makes them feel better.
Your comment “Australia is not the USA; it is far more homogeneous in the demand for educational excellence” is also very interesting, do you have any data in support of this because my impression in Aust was that demand for educational excellence was very low — Australia has been ranked 39 out of 41 high and middle-income countries in achieving quality education, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), I suppose you could mean the demand was homogeneously low.
NYT: “While nonresponse bias is challenging to prove, there was one possible marker of it in the New York Times/Siena College data in 2020: White registered Democrats were more than 20 percent likelier to respond to our surveys than white registered Republicans.
In our final wave of Senate and House polls in the last few days, that hallmark of nonresponse bias looks as if it’s back. Overall, white registered Democrats were 28 percent likelier to respond to our Senate polls than Republicans — a disparity exceeding that from our pre-election polling in 2020.”
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I’m not particularly interested in polling beyond some post election discovery of why people voted the way they did. I’m not even sure what purpose pre-election polling really serves?
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“First of all admitting students for the cause of diversity that might not be ready to handle the education rigor can have lasting negative effects on the student admitted under these conditions.”
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They are solving that by lowering standards so everyone can pass. It’s becoming pathological. Merit has a negative connotation now.
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Affirmative action has been ongoing for 50 years so they have had a couple generations to attempt to fix the education pipeline problem and have made only minimal progress. They have essentially thrown in the towel, declared unsolvable systemic racism, and resorted to crude handouts as a replacement for actual progress. It sure is easier.
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It is a very hard social problem, and anyone tasked to make progress here quickly discovers this is a lifetime project. Politicians and pundits have little choice but to start saying crazy things like “math tests are racist and are only measures of wealth” because fixing it is beyond their skillset and professional timelines. Blaming the victim gets them fired.
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If we want to fix our rugby and cricket deficiencies here in the US then it’s going to take a long time. Can’t we at least be as good as Sri Lanka? We just don’t care about cricket culturally, that’s why we are bad at it. We did actually get better at (mens) soccer but the gap between elite countries still looks a long way out of reach.
Andrew Kennett (Comment #215840),
That report sounds to me like a government official cherry picking data to keep the government from looking bad. Reading between the lines (all that is possible without the data) it sounds like the impact on Australian students is much the same as in the States. The better students did OK, the weaker students got crushed, and the weakest students disappeared and probably no longer have much of a future.
mark bofill (Comment #215844): “1) AFAICT, there is no reasonable comparison whatsoever to be made between accidentally stepping on an ant and the poorly reasoned / often draconian policies put into effect during COVID over the past few years.”
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Indeed. I have stepped on ants both intentionally and, I am sure, unintentionally. But I have NEVER stepped on ants while proclaiming to the ants “This is for your own good”.
My eyeball of the numbers and graphs supports the report.
Tom Scharf,
“They have essentially thrown in the towel, declared unsolvable systemic racism, and resorted to crude handouts as a replacement for actual progress. It sure is easier.”
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There has been no progress because there has been no effort to address the fixable problems, which are almost 100% cultural. The political consequences of “blaming the victim” (as Daniel Moynahan learned) are so severe that politicians are unwilling to even describe the actual problems, never mind try to actually fix them. They haven’t thrown in the towel after trying to fix the problem…. they never tried.
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The year my wife completed her PhD in chemistry one of the grad students in her group, a young black woman, also finished her PhD. She was smart, dedicated, and responsible, and I believe 1 of the only 4 or 5 black female PhD’s in chemistry that graduated that year….. in the whole country. We went to her wedding (she married a fellow grad student, who was white). To say she was culturally out of place in her own family is something of an understatement.
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Culture is destiny. If the culture can’t be changed, neither can the outcomes…. except via the insanity of racial preferences and the dumbing-down of courses and grading, which do nothing but create more problems…. like incompetent professionals.
“I’m so sorry you got hurt. How could I have known it would hurt you when I hit you with that bat?”
“I appreciate your apology, but it will be hard to stay friends knowing you’re capable of something like that.”
“Like what? I didn’t know the bat would hurt you. How could I have known?”
“Because physics, physiology, common sense – Oh, and I screamed, ‘Don’t hit me, that’s going to hurt!’ right before you did it and, ‘That hurt!’ right after.”
“Well, I’ve never read a study that concludes that hitting people with baseball bats will hurt them. In fact, I was told it was necessary to keep us all safe and that anyone who refuses is selfish.”
“And you believed that? That’s crazy!”
“Well, obviously, I don’t anymore. Duh.”
“But why did you believe it then?”
“Because I didn’t know.”
“Are you going to hit me again?”
“No way … unless, of course, it will keep everyone safe.”
Andrew Kennett (Comment #215851): “My eyeball of the numbers and graphs supports the report.”
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The scores do indicated that, with the exception of grade 9 boys and indigenous students, who took it on the chin. The real issue is what is hidden in the increased rate of non-participation.
What is most incomprehensible is that while a few on the covid-panicked left acknowledge they made ‘innocent mistakes’ in the ‘fog of war’, not a single one says that steps have to be taken to ensure the same panic driven madness is impossible in the future. The damage was both too costly and too unnecessary to simply ask forgiveness ‘on all sides’ and not change laws to make sure it can’t ever happen again. Learning requires first admitting and understanding mistakes, but ALSO changing how you do things so the mistakes don’t happen again. I see zero evidence of any learning on the part of the Brownshirts that caused most of the damage from Covid. That means many of the Covid Brownshirts will be tossed from positions power. Fauci obviously understands this, and I expect others will follow his departure rather than face the pubic exposure of their incompetence.
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Plenty of Covid lunatic politicians will get tossed from office next week, of course, but it will take longer for the consequences of all the mendacity and 100% politically driven choices to reach incompetent bureaucrats.
not a single one says that steps have to be taken to ensure the same panic driven madness is impossible in the future.
Yup. That’s the dishonest element behind the ‘forgive and forget’ BS. They don’t really think there is anything to forgive. “We didn’t know any better, we did what we thought we needed to do.” This is not an admission of error or an apology, but rather a justification. What they are really asking, in my view, is for us to accept that they acted correctly and reasonably.
It’s not going to happen.
I don’t know, at least somebody is admitting it wasn’t a great plan. One person having some humility, even if it is self serving, is better than zero.
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The impulse is to claim you were right in spite of the facts, and just endlessly justify your past actions. The science changed! The virus changed! We could have beaten the virus if not for those irresponsible anti-vaxxers! etc. So I consider this progress that anybody was able to get that article past the editors at The Atlantic. What I find is that the usual behavior is to just memory-hole the topic and never talk about it again (Trump Russia Collusion). After you claimed your Pulitzer Prizes of course.
mark bofill,
“What they are really asking, in my view, is for us to accept that they acted correctly and reasonably. It’s not going to happen.”
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No, it is not going to happen. And I note here that the USA is still officially operating under a “covid emergency” which allows the Alzheimer administration to ignore a bunch of laws that would otherwise limit what they can do. It is all so transparently dishonest, so transparently political, and so transparently wrong.
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Last week when I returned from Brazil, I was informed by the airline company (in Brazil) that I should fill out and sign a US form that declares (under penalty of perjury) that I have been vaccinated against covid. I took the form and tossed it in the trash. I was never asked for it nor for my silly yellow covid vaccination card (which I could forge in 20 minutes if I wanted to) when I arrived in Miami. Not a single one of the ~350 passengers and crew on the plane wore a face mask. But the crew was forced by regulation to re-iterate in Portuguese and English that the CDC recommends all travelers wear masks, and especially any in poor health. The madness will not completely end until Brandon Alzheimer is out of office.
SteveF (Comment #215856):
not a single one says that steps have to be taken to ensure the same panic driven madness is impossible in the future. The damage was both too costly and too unnecessary to simply ask forgiveness ‘on all sides’ and not change laws to make sure it can’t ever happen again. Learning requires first admitting and understanding mistakes, but ALSO changing how you do things so the mistakes don’t happen again.
Brilliant. We “forgive and move on” only after suitable reforms have been made.
If they won’t agree to reforms, then they are not actually interested in forgiveness. They only want us to forget so that they are free to do it again in future.
Tom Scharf,
“So I consider this progress that anybody was able to get that article past the editors at The Atlantic.”
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I think even the editors of The Atlantic understand that there are going to be political consequences for many ‘progressive’ politicians who did so much damage to the country for no good reason, and hope that a ‘mea culpa’ (which is not really a mea culpa at all!) will help defuse the righteous anger of those who suffered the consequences of ‘progressives’ irrational fear, incredible stupidity, and endless mendacity. As mark bofill says, it is not going to work.
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I will see progress when Democrat politicians start agreeing to laws that demand broad consensus (like 2/3 majorities in state legislatures and in Congress) for any ‘declared emergency’ to last more than a few weeks. I doubt it will happen until Dem politicians see lots of other Dem politicians tossed from office.
Improving the plight of those people of color who were historically marginalized is a worthy goal that is implied as the rationale behind affirmative action. That colleges for the most part have only considered diversity through the simplistic lenses of color or sexual orientation is the tragedy. By doing so they limit the impact of the change they make on society by focusing on those only slightly marginalized and ignored those whose families are truly stuck in the poverty cycle.
They could have filtered by color and income, by neighborhood, by firstgen etc and actually made a difference.
Doing so though would have come at a greater cost. Like Lucia said development runs on wealthy alumni. It’s a much better risk to select students already high up on the curve than to select from poverty. There’s more support needed also for first Gen. More remediation. It’s much easier to take the easy path and pretend you are making a huge difference when you are really not.
Covid, like climate change, just screams over adherence to the precautionary principal. Where things are done without reference to cost, risk, and benefit. The biggest crime was ignoring all together any consideration of natural immunity. That was just illogical.
The people who took part in the outright demonization of those who didn’t toe the exact “right” policy line are now in an untenable position. I suspect a lot of Twitter comments are being purged. I would reserve most of most contempt for here.
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Those people don’t deserve much forgiveness and their spite will not be forgotten. DeSantis (oops, DeathSantis) also got lucky because a lot was unknown, but his instincts proved correct. Who can forget the outright worshipping of Cuomo who had by far the highest death rates of any state at the time? The prioritization of vaccines by race? The justification of protests based on ideology? The meticulous tracking of motorcycle “super spreader” conventions while giving huge White House journalism dinners a complete pass? It got weird.
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For me the most unforgivable part was the misuse of the authority of science to force preferred policy. It wasn’t science driven policy in many cases, it was policy driven science. It damaged their credibility and that helps nobody in the future. Science cannot allow themselves to be captured by the left, they need to visibly fight this perception, perhaps The Atlantic article is a first step, perhaps not.
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Make no mistake though, anytime a large bureaucracy stumbles into something unprecedented like a global pandemic it just isn’t going to go well. We need the CDC to do better.
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Do masks work? I still don’t really know.
The forgiveness pieces are examples of the intelligentsia getting to evaluate the policies that they favored. Sure there are those of us who see those policies as failures and saw the general approach of saving a single life no matter the cost as being obviously wrong, but unfortunately we do not have the influence on the public that the intelligentsia has. If you think it is lessons learned wait until the next “emergency” occurs. If we have an outbreak of Covid-19 cases this winter it will essentially be the same old same old – unless a citizen revolt can survive an aggressive shaming onslaught.
The intelligentsia likes that emergencies can rationalize great government power and for long periods of time.
I think we should kick them while they are down. The Ukraine war has devastated the russian military machine. Their conventional military might is at a level not seen since the 1960s. Their production of modern weapons has been all but halted. It will take a generation or more to rebuild.
In addition, the russian prestige and political clout throughout much of the world is also in the toilet.
We should take full advantage of this situation. I have some ideas..…
-Press for the removal of russia from the UN security council.
-Kick them out of all world economic forums.
-Deny their outrageous territorial claims in the Arctic ocean and make strong territorial claims of our own, in consort with Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Denmark.
-Probe russian air defences with strategic bombers. [like they did to us for decades]
-Foment discord in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Much of current day russia is made up of ethnic peoples previously conquered.
I expect there are many more examples.
I think it is important to also state that the medical establishment did a stellar job. They took the most risk on the front lines and did the least complaining. Nobody had it harder than those guys.
[Edit: Russell,]
Don’t poke the nuclear missile bear for kicks.
mark bofill (Comment #215867)
“Don’t poke the nuclear missile bear for kicks.”
I bet the bear’s nuclear arsenal is as inadequate as his conventional arsenal.
But my proposals aren’t just for kicks. We are in a long term existential struggle with russia. Now is the time to take strategic advantage.
Russell,
Russia will ultimately use tactical nukes to save face in Ukraine. The trick here is to allow Russia to save face and be effectively ground down to not be a future threat to NATO. Spiking the football after WWI with Germany ended up with WWII as some read the history.
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We don’t have a viable defense against a Russian nuclear attack. We don’t.
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The real trick is to never enter these wars because they end up forcing these kind of decisions to be made. Putin is not in a good position. It’s really threading a needle here, we want Ukraine to win, but can’t risk Ukraine winning.
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NYT today:
Russian Military Leaders Discussed Use of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Officials Say
The conversations alarmed the Biden administration because they showed how frustrated Moscow had become over its battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.
Andrew P,
“ignored those whose families are truly stuck in the poverty cycle”.
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My (reasonably selective) science/engineering college did admit about 10% of the freshman class from that specific group (full scholarship plus room, board, and books) and hired 3rd and 4th year students with good grades to tutor those students so they could catch up.
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I tried, with 0% success to tutor several of these students in math. The issue was that they were not just unprepared for introductory calculus, which was the class they were in, they were unprepared for almost any kind of math. Some, but not all, could do long division and multiplication and get the right answer. As far as I could tell, none had the slightest clue about algebra, geometry, or trig. Even if they had been highly motivated (and most were not), and even if they had reasonable capacity to learn math (and most did not appear to have that capacity), it would have taken years for them to catch up. They were admitted to a rigorous science and engineering program with, at best, 5th/6th grade math skills….. and those were the more capable ones. It was hopeless: 100% flunked out. The waste of money was appalling. I think the “special admissions” program went on for two years before the school administration gave up on it.
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My school continued to admit a few (very few) minority candidates through the regular admissions program, where being black gave a candidate a boost over comparable white candidates for admission. Most of these kids did graduate, but not with high class rank.
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If kids go through their first 12 years of education learning almost nothing, then they will never have success in college except maybe in a field of study that makes no demands upon them. For the most disadvantaged, the problem begins when they are still in diapers, and from there to 12th grade is were things have to change if these kids are going to succeed in college…. and in life.
Tom Scharf,
“DeSantis (oops, DeathSantis) also got lucky because a lot was unknown, but his instincts proved correct.”
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I don’t think it was luck or instinct. DeSantis’ first instinct was much like many other governors. In mid April 2020 I was stopped by Florida state police as I entered Florida from Alabama on Interstate 10. All my personal information collected, and I was told I would be subjected to arrest and prosecution if I left my house during a “required” 14 day quarantine period. Lots of other states did similar things.
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The difference in Florida was that unlike most politicians, DeSantis is actually pretty damned smart. He began reading original literature on the spread of viruses, along with all the earliest literature on Covid, and quickly concluded that covid was only a significant threat to those in very poor health, those over 65, and especially to those over 75. DeSantis recognized early on that turning the state inside out over covid was stupid and destructive for no good reason, because a large majority of the population, and especially kids, were at very low risk from covid. So by the end of April he had opened the beaches, and began emphasizing that those at high risk should do their best to avoid the virus. The stay-at-home and quarantine rules were very short lived. The “social distancing” and mask rules were soon dropped.
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He was vilified by the MSM, of course. But he was right because he recognized the reality of the covid age/risk profile early on, and responded rationally with policies consistent with that risk profile. Same with masks: he knew there was zero data supporting the use for masks, and especially not silly cloth masks, and instituted policies consistent with that lack of data. More vilification in the MSM. Same with school openings, same with prohibiting mandates for vaccinations (it was clear the vaccines did not stop people from becoming infected). Same with school mask mandates. Always more and more vilification.
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But DeSantis was consistently right, because unlike the hysterical MSM, and those motivated by fear, he was acting based on facts and reason, not fear. And not instinct.
The original vaccine against the original strain did a pretty good job of preventing spread. It shutdown symptomatic infection.
That changed with the variants. There was a general failure to reconsider policies given the change in virus behavior.
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The failure to quickly recognize aerosol spread was perplexing, I must say I expected science to be able to determine this much faster than they did. We still don’t know the relative risks of aerosol vs surface spread. They are still guessing here today. I hear things like “maybe the flu is mostly aerosol spread too”. What? We don’t know that either in 2022?
SteveF (Comment #215872): “The difference in Florida was that unlike most politicians, DeSantis is actually pretty damned smart. He began reading original literature on the spread of viruses, along with all the earliest literature on Covid”.
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Also unlike Fauci and Birks who were *not* reading the literature, if Scott Atlas is to be believed. FWIW, I think Atlas is to be believed.
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DeSantis is truly impressive. Some Republican governors, notably Noem in South Dakota, took strong consistent stands based on ideology. The results were better than most Dems, but one could argue that was at least partly luck. Some governors, like Abbott in Texas, tried to balance things but were wishy-washy, responding to whoever was pushiest. But DeSantis was open minded, collected info, made good decisions, and stuck by them. Awesome.
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I really hope that DeSantis has only two more years as Governor of Florida. 🙂
Tom Scharf (Comment #215873): “The original vaccine against the original strain did a pretty good job of preventing spread. It shutdown symptomatic infection.”
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I don’t think that is true. It produced a temporary reduction in spread and symptoms that faded in just a few months. Boosters have a similar bust faster fading effect. Variants, other than the lab engineered omicron, have nothing to do with it.
I was looking at the 4 and 6 year graduation rates from Harvard for all categories of race – which were many. I was surprised to see that those rates over all groups are very much the same and very high for the 6 year rate at around 98%.
If graduation rates were correlated with preparedness for education at Harvard, those rates would indicate very near equal rates for preparedness . If that is the case why should race be used in determining admissions? I would have to dig deeper to determine why the rates are so very close for all races and very near 100%.
Mike M,
“I really hope that DeSantis has only two more years as Governor of Florida.”
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Me too, but there is a certain ex-president who lives in Palm Beach who may keep that from happening.
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BTW, it is completely true that the ability of the vaccines to stop symptomatic infection and spread dropped to low levels within a few months. But what the vaccines continued to do (and still do) was to reduce the incidence of severe illness (hospitalization and death), as New Zealand and Austrailia show clearly. We should also remember that more easily spread strains (delta to omicron) probably reduced the effectiveness of the vaccines against infection/spread, complicating the analysis of how long the vaccinations reduced infection/spread.
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The most offensive abomination of the Alzheimer administration was/is the refusal to admit that previous infection was/is multiple times more effective than vaccination at preventing re-infection, spread. The mandated vaccination of people who were already infected was a policy that could be justified by nothing except a need to show absolute power of government over the individual. There are times I wished I believed in things like Hell, so that I could at least hope those responsible for the covid cluster-f*ck would spend an eternity suffering for their evil. Alas, I don’t.
Kenneth,
Up thread I think there is a link explaining that the academically unprepared who are initially interested in challenging studies in STEM and economics mostly shift to fluff courses where little is demanded of them. Easy to pass when your course work is on ‘lesbian-gay-transgender-studies’, ‘the history of homosexual inspired art since 1650’, ‘the history of systemic racism against native Americans in Wisconsin’, and the like.
The Australian experience with educational results during the Covid-19 restriction period points to looking at the counterfactual – even though we will never know it. Consider that performance was trending upward in Australian and that it might have trended higher without the restrictions. The same could be said for the case where performance was trending downward.
The article under discussion as I read it was lacking details in data and what might have been different in the actual school environment to obtain no negative effects from the Covid-19 restrictions.
I would think that the analyses of the Covid-19 effects nationally on education should be looking at the actual education process changes that occurred during the Covid-19 crisis and making deductions from that. From the anecdotal evidence I have from teachers who experienced the process changes in the US, I could easily deduce that the restrictions would have a negative effect on learning and much more on the already lesser performing students.
It is much like the empirical studies of the effect of raising the minimum wage on youth unemployment whereby those who favor the raises can find local areas where the raising increased youth employment but often times by ignoring all the factors of employment. Deductively, with everything else being equal, raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment and particularly for the younger employed.
A reasonable answer is that if you are smart enough to get into Harvard, then you should be able to graduate. They probably don’t grade on a curve because they are already getting the top 0.1% of students. Showing up and making an effort will get it done. Failing the bottom 15% of this group doesn’t really make sense. I’m sure reality is bit more complicated though.
I’d have to look it up, but as I recall the initial mRNA protection against infection with omicron is around 30%, but the protection against infection from the original strain was near 95%. You can see this also in antibody levels (20x lower with omicron). They both fade, but they fade from different baselines so the original strain protected longer.
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Suffice it to say the vaccines are poor against infection protection now and are ineffective against stopping spread.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, new strains have reduced the effectiveness of the vaccines against spread. But previous infection was always more effective against spread than vaccination, and that is still very likely true. Any argument that vaccines should be mandated for everyone was always weak technically, and especially for those at very near zero risk. Arguing that those already recovered from covid should be forced to receive the vaccines was always idiotic, and still is idiotic. The Alzheimer administration continues to insist on this, because well, the Alzheimer administration is obviously run by idiots.
WH gets fact checked:
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WH: seniors are getting the biggest increase in their SS checks in 10 years through president Biden’s leadership”
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Reader added context: seniors will receive a large SS benefit increase due to the annual cost of living adjustment [ ]…
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WH deletes tweet..
My polling place was much busier than I have ever seen it. One of the volunteers told me that has been the case every day. If so, then maybe the polls don’t mean anything.
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But is it that people are turning out in droves to throw the bums out? Or is it that they have fallen for the Demagogue Party’s scare tactic that Republicans are a threat to democracy? We shall see.
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I know which one I am hoping for. 🙂
The vaccine protected better against reinfection with the original strain. This changed with delta, after that natural immunity protected better, the crossover is in July. See 4th column of Table 2 of this CDC study from Jan 2022: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7104e1-H.pdf
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All the usual questions and caveats on timing, etc. apply.
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From what I have seen natural immunity protects better against severe disease than vaccination with omicron, but I’m not sure about reinfection. It probably does, but natural immunity still wanes pretty fast for reinfection. I think it was on the order of 4 months(?).
Here is some data from Qatar: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2203965
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Effectiveness against symptomatic omicron infection
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Previous infection: 46.1%
2 dose mRNA: 0% (all participant > 6 months out)
3 dose mRNA: 52.2% (probably less time here)
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“No discernable differences in protection against symptomatic BA.1 and BA.2 infection were seen with previous infection, vaccination, and hybrid immunity.”
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One would need to do a better analysis involving days since infection and vaccine dose.
Tom
The failure to quickly recognize aerosol spread was perplexing, I must say I expected science to be able to determine this much faster than they did. We still don’t know the relative risks of aerosol vs surface spread. They are still guessing here today. I hear things like “maybe the flu is mostly aerosol spread too”. What? We don’t know that either in 2022?
Well… no. “We” didn’t know. Because, honestly, the medical community is sometimes content with “lore”. This is a situation where the reality is “you know, that hasn’t really been studied. But there was a manuscript written at some time that decreed X and now we all decree X and the origin of that decree is lost in the mists of time.”
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Influenza had dimmed as a big problem and no one was really studying it’s transport as a “science” issue.
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Then engineers got involved in analyzing data on particulate transport during Covid. 🙂
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Specifically, Lindsey Marr at VPI dug into the medical literature on influenza. The idea that it was not transported by aerosols was based on… well… no Mechanics of particulate transport.
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A fair number of computational modeling types also got involved.
Also: from an engineering (i.e. particulate science ) point of view, there isn’t a bright line distinction between “aerosol” and “particulate”. So the spread isn’t either/or. It can be both. But it’s clear that it’s “both” for Covid and for Influenza. Which dominates? I’m guessing it depends.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215885)
“From what I have seen natural immunity protects better against severe disease than vaccination with omicron, but I’m not sure about reinfection. It probably does, but natural immunity still wanes pretty fast for reinfection. I think it was on the order of 4 months(?)”
Being pedantic, sorry Tom, the fact is that natural immunity,generally, does not wane.
I know this sounds wrong.
Consider your Chicken Pox vaccine, virtual immunity for life.
Along with many others, Whooping Cough being an exception.
The immune response, natural immunity with antibodies is to a group of specific antigens.
The memory cells keep the blue print almost forever and start production when needed almost instantly.
The immunity does not wane, it is there forever.
The problem is the concept of re infection.
With Covid and cools in general you may encounter the original virus or something close enough to it to activate that always present immune code and response.
Or you meet a variant which has the same name but is no longer the same virus in terms of its changes antigens.
The immunity has not failed, the virus is different.
How quickly can the virus mutate to a new virus?
I think you gave us the answer.
4 months.
It is not a matter of natural immunity waning but of the virus evolving, a totally different rationale.
I think you can get reinfected with omicron, but perhaps more often with sub variants of omicron. There certainly have been cases of multiple reinfections reported but no clue how common that is. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfection.html
“After recovering from COVID-19, most individuals will have some protection from repeat infections. However, reinfections do occur after COVID-19. We are still learning more about these reinfections.”
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They have measured declining antibody response over months and this correlates with the incidence of reinfection going up after an infection with time. My limited understanding is that the first line antibody defense is strong right after infection but wanes, and the second line T-cell immunity remains (forever?) but takes longer to activate, thus allowing enough time for symptomatic reinfection but protecting you against severe disease.
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I would agree that they rarely discriminate between variants with reinfection data in the media, sometimes I see it in reports but it is hard to parse.
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I also tried to find if the severity of the illness is lower after multiple infections but couldn’t find anything. Cross variant immunity is a throw of the dice, but one would expect that the cross variant exists because it has some immunity escape from the previous version.
A reasonable answer is that if you are smart enough to get into Harvard, then you should be able to graduate.
That was kind of my first thought on the graduation rate. But smart does not always get you graduated if you do not put in the effort or you become disinterested in the course work. I was surprised to see the 98% graduation rate even if it took 6 years. (What happens to a scholarship after 4 years?) I was also surprised to see essentially no difference in the graduation rate by racial grouping – but if everyone or almost everyone graduates than there will be very little opportunity for differences to show.
I was at a blog where there were differences of opinion from Harvard grads about how difficult it is the graduate from Harvard. One commented that it would be difficult not to graduate and another said it was hard – he was a physics major.
There was also a discussion about what is best for the Harvard brand: a high graduation rate or one that indicates more rigor.
Ideally one could think that being admitted to Harvard makes those admitted much more serious students and being lackadaisical would not be an issue – even for the rich kids. Or better that there is seriousness simply in applying to Harvard.
I am now curious. My brother graduated from Harvard but that was so long ago he probably does not have any insights into the current situation. He gets and reads The Harvard Crimson so he might have some insights, although they might be tinged by generational gaps.
First calculated in the mid-90s, the graduation rate keeps a record of full-time, first-time students who start in the fall and graduate 4 years later. All transfer students are excluded, whether transferring out to complete at another college or transferring in to complete their degree.
I did find this factoid that might have significant bearing on graduation rates.
TS the antibody level does drop over time but only because the cells shut down production when not needed.
That is different to the fact that the cells that detect a new infection activate the antibody producing cells to produce new antibodies very quickly when needed.
I draw your attention to chicken pox again..
Very few people get a second attack ever.
Those that do usually have an illness effecting their immune system ie it is unable to manufacture enough new antibody.
The chicken pox virus does not mutate like the cold viruses
angech (Comment #215893): “I draw your attention to chicken pox again..
Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Not a great example, since a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.
Mike M.,
I agree that chickenpox is not a good example here. You don’t get shingles by external exposure to varicella zoster virus. It’s a flare-up from dormant virus in the body. And it isn’t contagious, i.e. someone with an active case of shingles will not give someone else chickenpox or shingles. The original shingles vaccine had a limited effective lifetime as well.
lucia,
From what I read, I don’t think the medical community knew much of anything about aerosols. And they had been somewhat misled by tuberculosis. TB only infects cells deep within the lungs, which means the particle size has to be 5 microns or less. Anything larger will get screened out. So 5 microns or less became the definition in the medical community for an aerosol. The fact that particles between 5 and 100 microns can travel for distances longer than six feet and persist in the air for more than a few seconds was either unknown in the medical community or ignored.
Everything I’ve read says that surface transmission, fomites, is a very small fraction of COVID infections. So all the handwashing and surface decontamination was probably a waste of time and effort. I seriously doubt that we actually know this information for influenza or even the common cold.
Mike M,
“..a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.”
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I had shingles. They suck.
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As best I can figure, the lifetime risk for shingles is on the order of 35-40%. If you have never had shingles, two doses of the vaccine reduces that risk by a factor or ~4-5. So for people who have never had shingles, the vaccination likely makes sense.
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The reduction in lifetime risk of recurrent shingles from the vaccination among those who already had shingles is not data I can find. OTOH, if you have already had shingles, then your lifetime risk of recurrence (with no vaccination) is on the order of 6-7%. Balanced against that is the substantial likelihood of having side effects from the shots…. arm soreness, fever, headache, body aches, malaise, etc. The general recommendation is to plan on being out of commission for a couple of days after the shot.
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Don’t know about you, but accepting a high chance of several days of felling ill against some (unknown) reduction of lifetime risk of recurrence of shingles (from 6-7% to some presumably lower level), doesn’t seem to me a very good bet. I haven’t gotten the shots, and I won’t.
YMMV.
I agree with SteveF that shingles suck. I have had some painful experiences but shingles was the worst. I was vaccinated for shingles with the earlier vaccine.
When I had shingles my grandson was living with us and thinking he had been vaccinated for chicken pox (he wasn’t) I was not cautious about contact. He came down with chicken pox. There were no known cases of chicken pox in his immediate contact exposures.
Ken Fritsch,
“I was vaccinated for shingles with the earlier vaccine.”
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Before or after you got shingles?
Shingles suck !
Shingles was responsible for a very bad 3 months of my life. I took the single shot variant after infection and just took the 2 shot variant as a booster as recommended by my doctor. Low odds of reoccurrence, but reduced risk of reinfection is a worth taking the shots to my mind.
FYI…no symptoms at all to either variety of shots for my part.
The link above is to an article from The Harvard Crimson that discusses and shows the rate of historical grade inflation over time. It is a steep trend upward. The main point covered in the article concerns grade compression where the very high current mean GPA has a small variation.
That situation could, in my view, explain the very high graduation rate with a very small variation among racial groups. So maybe the current Harvard brand is not scholarly achievement but rather a favorable networking arrangement and the near certain outcome of a degree from prestigious Harvard.
I did not take the time on my tablet to remove the search path from the link.
Ken,
I think one way would be to look at class rank by group if that could be found. Unfortunately I think this information is now closely guarded because of past controversies.
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A Penn Law teacher claimed in 2018 that:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the [Penn Law School] class and rarely, rarely in the top half”
This was met with the the expected criticisms. What never happened as far as I know is Penn Law releasing data to refute or confirm this statement. They did state:
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“”[B]lack students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process,” the email read. “And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers” https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/penn-law-dean-ted-ruger-professor-amy-wax-removed-racial-conservative-graduate-upenn-philadelphia
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I would expect results to show the same trends seen through the rest of the education pipeline. Statistically significant group differences with a lot of variance in each group. The differences at the extremes tend to be even more pronounced. Men are more represented at the very highest levels of IQ tests for whatever reason. If Harvard is giving help to academically inferior groups then you would expect them to be disproportionately grouped near the bottom.
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This is expected unless Harvard does something special to improve group performance at their institution, and if they are successful here then they would likely share that information publicly and tell everyone else how to do it.
I got a two shot shingles vaccine this year. No side effects.
One of the reasons for the very high graduation rates at 4 years now (compared to decades ago) is that almost all high performers enter college with a large number of college credits from AP / IB college courses in high school. Both of my daughters were able to graduate averaging only 12 to 15 credits a semester.
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Also, most scholarships are good for 5 years or more nowadays, at least the Florida state sponsored ones are. This kind of makes sense for economically distressed students who also happen to show up behind in academics. Cutting them off at year 4 can be a huge burden.
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It gets a bit weird where if you use up your scholarship getting the job done early they will not pay for graduate level courses in the 4th or 5th year. YMMV.
This might be a big deal:
From NLwartracker, @NLwartracker,
“Kherson update, people driving around Kherson city, are reporting all roadblocks, and soldiers are gone. Flags are taken down from governement buildings. Defensive positions north of the city are abbandoned”
It hasn’t been verified by a conventional news source, but I trust this site. I have also seen hints at it from other sources.
I was vaccinated with the outdated shingles vaccine before I was infected with shingles.
When I first had the shingles symptoms and before it broke through the skin I had a pain in my back that prevented me from sleeping for 2 nights. I went to immediate care where they were setting up for a full array of tests. They made 2 failed attempts to quell the pain until a doctor arrived and asks if I wanted to completely relieve the pain upon which I said hell yes. After about 5 minutes I was sound asleep and the staff let me sleep for 2 hours before resuming the tests. They could not find the source of the pain until 2 days later when I arrived at the clinic with a massive skin break though on my backside. The doctor after a quick look said you have shingles and I said but doc I was vaccinated. The doctor repeated slowly and loudly YOU HAVE SHINGLES.
I had nerve damage and continue the feel the affects years later, but nothing that requires medication or compromises my quality of life. My father had shingles later in life and took nerve medication for 30 years until he died at 94.
Tom, when I was in college my minimal load was 18 credits per semester even when I was playing baseball. It allowed me to have sufficient credits to graduate early, but I loved the college social life and had not decided what I wanted to do next. I decided to take a load of courses out of my comfort zone and cared little about my GPA. It was probably my most successful learning semester and definitely the best socially.
My Harvard brother told me that he did not understand why I did not graduate early like he did. I told him it was the social life.
Ken,
“….before I was infected with shingles.”
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Thanks for that clarification. Nitpick: you weren’t infected with shingles, you had the virus in your nervous system since you recovered from chickenpox, probably as a child.
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My experience was similar. Extreme pain in my front right upper abdomen/chest, that kept me from sleeping for two nights. Based on the location it seemed like possibly a liver problem (abscess?), so I was loath to take any over-the-counter pain medication. At the hospital they found a slight rash on my back along the same rib as the pain in front, and they said “you have shingles”. Said the ER doctor: “Have you been taking pain medication?” When I said no, he said: “Too bad, it would have reduced your pain a lot.” I got the antiviral, and along with ibuprofen, the pain was reduced significantly within 18 hours. Complete recovery was about 10-12 days.
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All very unpleasant.
Tom, I agree about getting college credits in high school is a much larger issue today than it has been it the past. My twin granddaughters have gotten loads of college credits in high school and in tough courses. I wonder though with grade inflation (and compression) in high school and college how well we can compare the past and the present. Maybe it is something like professional sports although it is readily obvious that today’s participants are better athletes. I suspect that younger people today are more intelligent and better informed, but I am not at all certain that translates directly to better scholarship.
My children took more than 4 years to graduate college. My daughter took 5 years and my oldest son who dropped out of college his senior year to trade commodities went back to get his degree on the urging of his wife several years later. He got all As and was on the Dean’s list.
This was just reported by the russian Ministry of Defense regarding the activity in Kherson: “Russian troops retreat victoriously. Ukrainian army runs after them in panic.” It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river. Senior officers and military equipment seems to be gone from the West side. They left the untrained and ill-equipped new conscripts behind to fend for themselves. I expect large numbers of KIA and POWs will result.
Grade inflation is really bad now, the past in no longer comparable on that metric. Different high schools and colleges have a different amount of inflation so they aren’t comparable. One of the reasons for using the SAT and ACT was to normalize GPA’s across schools. Equity activists want to dump these tests because of that reason. The debate on this stuff has become so disingenuous as to not be worth having anymore. Everyone graduates, everyone gets a trophy. Meanwhile I still have panicky dreams about being at college and not being ready for a test.
Tom Scharf,
“Everyone graduates, everyone gets a trophy.”
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When my kids were in grade school, I was horrified to see the schools refuse to allow excellence to shine….. everybody gets a blue ribbon, even if their work sucks. We now reap the harvest from that very misguided planting. Everyone is NOT the same, and there are people who excel at certain things and other people who do not. To deny this is to deny reality, which damages kids by making them unable to recognize and appreciate excellence.
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Or as Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Russell Klier (Comment #215914),
ISW has been saying for some time that the Russians have been withdrawing from Kherson city. It is difficult without usable bridges. Ukraine does not seem to be pushing their advantage. Napoleon advised that one should never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake. So it might be that Ukraine is waiting for the right moment to strike.
Russell, I tend to doubt the Russian Ministry of Defense made any such statement unless they have more of a sense of humor than has been shown previously. Now I would believe that this statement came from the UKRAINE MoD.
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General Autumn is in full force and will be for a number of weeks yet. The entire front will be in muddy condition and little will move fast or far until the freeze.
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Russia is continuing to reinforce along the entire front, including Kherson. No withdrawal from Kherson is happening.
Ed Forbes,
Looks to me like a long winter of sitting in your existing position is setting in. People who think they have access to the full ‘faith and power’ of the US government tend to be a bit unrealistic in thier actions.
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Could change, of course, but I kinda doubt it. Maybe this winter will lead to negotiations, but you never know.
Steve, I agree on both sides wanting to sit in their positions. Both sides want the other to be the first to go to a full on attack so they can then counter attack a now weakened force.
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I still see this as working better for Russia than Ukraine as Ukraine is losing mobility with the electric power grid being demolished and the west running out of heavy artillery ammunition to send to Ukraine.
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But it will make for a long war similar to WWI where everything was mostly static until one side collapsed.
Ed Forbes,
Well, perhaps negotiations will start. Both sides have nothing much better to do until March. Which is not to say negotiations will happen. But I sure hope they do. The situation strikes me as just about crazy; closely related people, closely related languages, complicated territorial history over the last 600 years, no strategic interests for one side in the conflict (NATO/USA), yet a 100% refusal of that side to negotiate. It is bizarre.
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History will not be kind.
Tom Scharf,
Meanwhile I still have panicky dreams about being at college and not being ready for a test.
Me too, or at least something similar.
Taking AP credit in math was a major error for me. I was able to skip the first two quarters of calculus and was totally lost when I started the third quarter.
Russia & Ukraine had a deal pretty much worked out in March/April but the UK and the US stepped in to pressure Ukraine to kill any deal at all.
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After the west and Ukraine bragged about not implementing the signed Minisk accord to deal with the east Ukraine problem, I am not sure Russia will now trust any signed agreement as Ukraine and the west have blown off prior signed agreements. I don’t see Russia trusting these parties. If their is no trust, where does this go? Trust is the capital that is spent facilitating diplomacy, and as far as Russia is concerned, that capital has all been expended.
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Russia may have reached the point of requiring a major dismembering of Ukraine that fully dissolves Ukraine ability to both be a threat to Russia and to provide NATO an additional foothold on the Russian border. As such, I do not see any agreement from either side to end the war that does not see one of the parties in complete collapse.
DeWitt
Taking AP credit in math was a major error for me. I was able to skip the first two quarters of calculus and was totally lost when I started the third quarter.
My evaluation of AP Physics “credit”.
If your school gives you credit
(a) If the course is NOT a prereq to anything else, take the AP credit.
(b) If it IS a pre-req seriously consider not taking it.
Under (b)– If you got 5s on BOTH AP Physics EM and ME, then it might be fine to take it. Especially if you think your “5” would be a “7” if they ever reported 7. (The cut off for 5 would, in my opinion, be at best a “C” in any meaningful course leading to an engineering degree. Do you really only want to know physics at “C” level and move into later classes? When you are potentially an A student. I mean, it’s fine to take a “C” if your potential is C. Yes, you’ll struggle all the way through– which is fine. That’s a victory. But… why move on with “C” understanding from high school and then have trouble getting even B’s in the next class? Cuz your entry level was “C”? This is not smart.
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Of cousre, do you know if your grade would have been “7”? Nope. College board’s highest score is “5”– which corresponds to “C”. (They call it their assessement of “well prepared”. But “well prepared”, for what?
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State legislatures have mandated giving “credit”. Schools are figuring this out and make up what amount to remedial courses and give kids with 3s and 4s in stem classes credit to Physics 1xx. (And by xx, I mean literally ‘xx’.) These do not count toward your required physics class.
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This was not the case a few years ago– but schools don’t wants kids coming in, getting “credit”, not knowing as much as they should an moving on. So they made a work around legislatures forcing them to give “credit” when the kids did not achieve as much as they need to achieve to meet prerequisites.
Two comments in reply to some seeming misunderstanding on my postings.
“angech (Comment #215893)
TS the antibody level does drop over time but only because the cells shut down production when not needed.
That is different to the fact that the cells that detect a new infection activate the antibody producing cells to produce new antibodies very quickly when needed.
I draw your attention to chicken pox again.
Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Exact words are very important [that Willis fellow]
Particularly in relation to understanding medical events and terminology.
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Chicken Pox is the term usually used to describe a [usually initial] infection with the Herpes Varicella virus.
Varicella (chickenpox) and herpes zoster (shingles) are distinct clinical entities caused by a single member of the herpes virus family, varicella-zoster virus (VZV).
Herpes zoster is characterized by unilateral dermatomal pain and rash that results from reactivation and multiplication of latent VZV that persisted within neurons following varicella.
Multiple viruses persist in our bodies or years or life after infection.
Chicken Pox is not unique in that happening.
This statement is absolutely accurate
“Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Hence I was talking about a viral infection called Chicken pox, not the other entity called shingles [same virus, different modus operandi]
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“Mike M. (Comment #215894) November 2nd, 2022 at 8:36 pm
Not a great example, since a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #215897)
Mike M., I agree that chickenpox is not a good example here.
You don’t get shingles by external exposure to varicella zoster virus.”
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This comment also needs clarification
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DeWitt Payne (Comment #215897)
It’s a flare-up from dormant virus in the body. And it isn’t contagious, i.e. someone with an active case of shingles will not give someone else chickenpox or shingles.”
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is unfortunately not correct DeWitt.
The second most common way of acquiring Chicken Pox is from the lesions of someone with shingles.
The first of course is to have contact with an actual case of current Chicken Pox.
I think this is a very important message to anyone with Shingles is that they are infective probably until the rash settles, possibly longer.
O-my
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North Korea secretly shipped munitions to Russia through the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. says.
. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/world/europe/russia-ukraine-north-korea-ammunition.html
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The national security spokesman, John Kirby, Is either lying or is very stupid. Russia and North Korea share a border and their rail is connected. Why would Russia ship artillery ammunition, which is both bulky and heavy, other than directly by the existing rail system? https://www.rt.com/business/russia-north-korea-railway-241/
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No comment on the truth of the sale, but considering the rest of the NYT article, I would not give it much credibility.
Looks like another major victory for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are meeting almost no resistance as they roll through Kherson City. [Ukrainian commanders are warning their units that this may be a trap.] Kherson was the largest city captured by the russians when they attacked in February. My guess is that the russians have finally learned how to retreat like an army. Lord knows they have had a lot of practice.
“One of the main checkpoints in Kherson, just across the roadbridge toward the harbour area. Has been deserted by russian forces, this was the access road toward the area where alot of russian activity was noted. This roadblock normally consisted of 2 BTR’s and at least 15-20 soldiers.” https://twitter.com/NLwartracker/status/1588248875764416512?s=20&t=SWnw62P9ypmSwiIz_BHpAg
I have been out of the game professionally for about 5 years but could tell a hundred stories about missed shingles diagnoses and shingles pain which [post herpetic neuralgia] can go on in some people causing continual discomfort for the rest of their lives.
Hence the episodes already told here back up those experiences.
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I am an anti vaxxer when it comes to freedom of choice.
If a person does not want to take an action that is very beneficial to them that is their choice.
I am an anti vaxxer with vaccines that offer little or no help to the majority of the people being vaccinated. [only a few]
I happily gave vaccines to people who requested them and advised those who needed them to have them all my working life and still would.
I hated the actual having vaccines myself because of needle phobia,
always preferred being on the other side but jumped in to have hepatitis shots and pneumovax when they became available.
Gardasil for HPV , even gave it to my boys to reduce the chance of them either catching or passing on the virus to a a partner.
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The original shingles vaccine was one I did not take.
A live vaccine it had the admittedly small potential to give chicken pox and later shingles to anyone who had missed out on the disease and could theoretically activate the latent shingles most of us have in some cases.
Reading the list of side effects [Ho Hum no different to all other medications] benefits and success rate I was struck by the effect that the immunity, such as it was, was said to wane over several years meaning paying a large sum of money for something not that effective and needing continual top up.
Safe to say the Australian Government was not paying for it, always a sign that there is not much benefit to the politicians because…
The new vaccine, correct me if I am wrong, in USA is not live disposing of one of my main concerns and may be a partial antigenic sequence[?] so less risk overall and a longer period of effectiveness.
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Think of it this way.
The virus is in your system always.
It is always trying to produce some virus and putting it into your system.
Hence you are possibly giving yourself a self vaccination of your own virus every day of your life.
When you get tired and run down, and your immune system is under working you get a small outbreak of sub clinical shingles. When it does not work or you have chemotherapy or cancer, out comes the Shingles attack.
Why pay to do something your own body is already doing for you every day?
My views are my own , not advice.
If you do not take the vaccine you will undoubtedly get shingles, Murphy’s Law.
angech,
“This statement is absolutely accurate
“Very few people get a second attack ever.””
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Which is why I have never gotten the vaccination after the first shingles episode.
At UF they gave us a chart which showed the AP/IB test score with what people who ended up taking the class got in a letter grade. This way it was easier to judge whether it was worth it. When you wanted to skip increasingly advanced classes the letter grades started to drop quickly.
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There was some other details, skipping a class doesn’t get you an easy A which counts toward your GPA, for whatever that is worth.
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They also didn’t let you out of some humanities classes if you were a STEM major. Not sure if this was purely an economics call for them or what.
AFAICT the live shingles virus (Zostavax) is no longer available since 2020. The new shingles virus is called Shingrix. This was free when I got it. They are telling people who got Zostavax to still get Shingrix. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html
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“More than 99% of Americans born on or before 1980 have had chickenpox”
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“In adults 50 to 69 years old with healthy immune systems, Shingrix was 97% effective in preventing shingles; in adults 70 years and older, Shingrix was 91% effective.
In adults 50 years and older, Shingrix was 91% effective in preventing PHN; in adults 70 years and older, Shingrix was 89% effective.
In adults with weakened immune systems, Shingrix was between 68% and 91% effective in preventing shingles, depending on their underlying immunocompromising condition.
In people 70 years and older who had healthy immune systems, Shingrix immunity remained high throughout 7 years following vaccination.”
Tom Scharf (Comment #215934): “The new shingles virus is called Shingrix. This was free when I got it.”
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Not “free”. Sounds like your insurance paid for it. Mine cost about $45. For each shot. From everything I hear about shingles, money well spent.
I think I took a test to get credit for Physics 2 in college, after getting a 4 on the AP Physics C. I don’t remember what I scored, but I got the credit and was probably C level for physics after that.
Russell, not even ISW believe this fluff on Kherson falling anytime soon. It’s clickbait, pure and simple.
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“.. ISW has observed that Russian forces are continuing to prepare fallback positions on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River while continuing to set up defensive positions northwest of Kherson City and transporting additional mobilized forces there….”
. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-3
It has been written on these pages that russia will use tactical nuclear weapons if Ukraine continues to dominate the battlefield. I do not speculate as to what a brutal dictator like Putin may do; I do contemplate what our reaction should be if he does go rogue. It’s complicated because there is a senile man in the White House. The US reaction [or overreaction!] may be irrational.
There are many possible reactions but I classify them in five categories:
1. Throw in the towel and sue for peace.
2. Stay the course. Change nothing.
3. Give Ukraine longer range, more lethal conventional weapons capable of countering the russians.
4. Fire off a few cruise missiles of our own targeted to reduce russia’s ability to deliver tactical nuclear devices.
5. Start a nuclear war.
I vote for numbers 3 and 4.
Ed Forbes (Comment #215938)
I agree on the fallback position of the russian retreat. I said this in Comment #215914:
“It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river.”
How much if any of the Western side they may try to hold is undetermined. The Ukrainians have blown almost all of the bridges so russian resupply to the East is by ferry, and many of those have been sunk.
With the territory taken so far, it’s a major victory for the Ukrainians already.
Ed Forbes (Comment #215938): “not even ISW believe this fluff on Kherson falling anytime soon.”
ISW: “Russian forces are continuing to prepare fallback positions on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River”.
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So it seems that the *Russians* are expecting Kherson city (on the left bank) to fall sometime soon.
MikeN,
On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with getting Cs. But it’s a shame to set smart hard working kids up for having a very hard time doing better because you let them skip!
Also: we as a society and universities as academies should want a graduating class to include true “A” level kids. If all the kids with potential to truly master are given credit based on achieve “C” level in high school and only the remaining take the actual freshman level course, universities sort of do have to lower standards. And then what? Should they admit that Freshman year in college has become what we used to call senior year level in high school?
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This is sort of the problem with the push toward AP. Legislatures have wanted to take the college boards word that a 5 is “well prepared” and a 3 is “adequate” and force schools to give “credit” even for 3s.
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The universities are able to detect that at least in STEM a 5 on the AP test is not what academics consider “well prepared” for a subsequent class that needs that class as a prerequisite. It’s more like “just adequate to let someone who struggled through move on”. You do want to let kids actually enrolled in college graduate if they achieve “adequate”. But you really do want to have most people graduate with better than “just adequate”.
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Honestly, I like that AP classes do encourage high school’s to offer a certain amount of rigor. But I dislike that lots of kids take AP Physics 1 (especially) as their first physics class. High school physics at the traditional high school level was never some sort of bozo, easy class. In the past it was almost a defacto pre-req for any college physics class required for most STEM majors. (Colleges tended to not admit you if you had no high school physics.)
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Luring high school kids into a “college level” physics class as their first physics class isn’t entirely fair. And based on the distribution of scores on the test, not successful. (Fewer than 50% even get a 3.) And given that school are all figuring out to only give “real” credit if you get a , really not successful.
My speculation is that there is an unofficial and unspoken agreement in place now: Ukraine doesn’t touch the Russian homeland and Russia doesn’t use WMD’s. From a strategy perspective it makes zero sense that Ukraine wouldn’t force Russia to defend it’s long border or make sure Russia citizens feels some pain … except nukes.
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If Russia uses WMD’s then at a minimum conventional weapons will probably start crossing the border.
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Also, any country looking at this is going to rationally come to the conclusion that they need nukes too. The incentives toward a more peaceful world are not enhanced with this type of war.
“Fifty years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press — which I’m not certain of, but if that is true — a historian will say, what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed,” he said.
Who would you guess would say something like the above about the mid term elections if the Republicans gain control? A far-left politician or a left wing media type? The answer is historian(?) ,Michael Beschloss. It is actually good to have statements like the above that better allow gauging a historian’s depiction of history.
After doing some research on Harvard University’s evaluation of student educational performance, I think Harvard is reaching the level of statistically defying evaluations similar to those of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”.
Yes, the hysteria on “danger to democracy” is reaching its peak predictably before the election. Biden was at it again the other day. Yawn. I have a hard time determining if they actually believe this lunacy or it’s just typical blather. I don’t think it is very effective because they consistently leave it undefined with a hand waving menace.
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The people handing out constitutions are at right wing rallies. The simplest explanation I have of all relevant behavior here is danger to democracy = governing class voted out of power … ironically by democracy.
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On its face they worry about people doubting the outcomes of elections which is more prevalent now but hardly new or one sided. The over playing of Jan 6th into a national emergency of general menace isn’t very persuasive. People wearing tactical gear are monitoring election drop off boxes! Aaaaaggghh!
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I’m beginning to wonder if we wouldn’t be better off if the Viking King had seized power. Just another clown show.
I have noticed that the Left tends to tell the truth in a fun house mirror sort of way. What they accuse their opponents of is what they are doing or plan to do.
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So I think it is likely true that “democracy is on the ballot”. We have a choice between democracy and Democrats.
What would happen if we randomly selected citizens for the House? Would performance really be any worse?
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I’m not very convinced that our current process produces better outcomes than Random Joes, but I’m willing to concede that should be the null model. If only we had alternate timelines to test that theory.
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Random Joes would definitely not be a good model for President, but 435 of them have a normalizing effect.
Whether the people spouting this nonsense believe it or not, there are those they convince of it, and they’re increasingly resorting to violence and murder. As far as “dangerous rhetoric” and “dog whistling” goes, they are quite open about it. There are plenty of examples which don’t require linguistic torture to interpret. Just the other day, The View called “white” women voting for republicans “cockroaches”. The results are quickly tossed into a media memory hole or face a thinly veiled “they had it coming” justification.
I see that comments on how Kherson has fallen has changed to Kherson will fall “soon”.
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“Soon” is so very ambiguous. It can mean later today, next month, next year, or sometime after the heat death of the universe.
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As there’s video out showing convoys of prefab concrete pillboxes and mechanized reinforcements moving to Kherson front lines, I see all the fluff on the imminent Russian withdrawal as more Ukraine hopes than fact. Russia has doubled its forces on the west bank over the last couple of months and the Russian buildup continues.
Reason has a new 30 minute video on the history of the lab leak theory. https://reason.com/video/2022/11/03/the-lab-leak-deception/
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A lot of evidence their public messaging didn’t match their private suspicions. Nothing new here, just a summary.
The black students at Harvard come from higher income families that are mainly of direct African and Caribbean ancestry. Diversity at Harvard appears to be mainly a matter of skin color. I wonder if this subject has been touched upon by the Supreme Court.
Kenneth Fritsch,
“The black students at Harvard come from higher income families that are mainly of direct African and Caribbean ancestry.”
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It is a shock to some I know, but if you are raised in a destructive culture that tolerates violence, dishonesty, and crime, then you will normally perform poorly in school, and in life. If you are raised in a culture that encourages hard work, responsibility, and excellence, you usually do well in school…. and in life.
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Obama was the son of an African immigrant and a white American woman; he was raised for much of his childhood by middle class white grandparents. That Obama got special admission to selective schools as a minority applicant is, IMHO, an abomination; indeed as is most of “affirmative action”.
Tom Scharf,
Of course it was likely from the lab in Wuhan.
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As Occam might have observed: 1) The illness broke out in a city that has one of the few labs in the whole world that works on closely related bat coronaviruses. 2) That lab was hard at work on making those bat viruses attack ‘humanized mice’ via genetic manipulation. 3) That lab had known (reported) very sloppy containment protocols. 4) Workers at the lab came down with a mysterious illness. 5) The repository of virus genetic sequences for that lab suddenly ‘disappeared’ after the virus started killing people.
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We will likely never have 100% proof, but my guess is there is a ~90% chance it was a lab leak. The tragic thing is that if that kind of dangerous genetic manipulation is not 100% stopped, there is a very good chance there will be another lab leak and another viral pandemic…. and the next could be a lot worse for humanity than covid.
Ed Forbes,
The first casualty of war is accurate information. It is impossible to know (without daily military satellite photos) what is happening between the Dnipro and the front. Are the Russians pulling back? Are the Russians reinforcing their front? Are the Russians going to abandon Kherson?
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The answer is the same to all: unknown and unknowable.
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To which I would add: really, who cares? The Dnipro is a natural defensive frontier, and I was a bit surprised the Russians ever went beyond it to capture Kherson. None of this fundamentally changes the situation: Russia will continue to hold a land corridor between the Crimea and the Donbas, whether that includes Kherson or not. It is far too important for them not to. They might (might!) abandon that land corridor in a negotiated settlement, but that is a long way off…. and maybe not until the end of the Alzheimer administration.
mark bofill… I saw that in real time, cracked me up. Flyboys will be flyboys!
The situation in Kherson is still murky. My usual underground sources are silent [I suspect they know what’s happening and have dummied up]. The russians have retreated across the river…or not!
Oh and regarding the other thing – regarding Russia’s nuclear missile capability – it looks like they have that in working order, at least the missile and warhead delivery portion of it: https://eurasiantimes.com/new-russian-nuclear-submarine-successfully-test-fires-bulava-ballistic/
I have to believe that’s the hardest way to do it – submerged submarine launch. It’s probably simpler to fire missiles from land, and probably much simpler to deliver nuclear bombs via bomber. If the submarine launched ballistic missiles are in order, I tend to think the Russian nuclear war capability is probably healthy and ready to go.
[Edit: Cross posted: 🙂 ]
mark bofill (Comment #215963)
Source: Russian Defense Ministry said ”Russian Nuclear Submarine Successfully Test-Fires Bulava Ballistic Missile Amid Tensions With NATO”
I haven’t been able to find an independent confirmation of this.
I see. Thanks Russell.
The Russians have had submarine launched ballistic missiles since 1961 and submarine launched cruise missiles since the 1970’s as I recall. These people know how to build a rocket and put a nuke on it. They have great expertise in these areas. They detonated the largest ever nuclear bomb, 50 Megatons, the Tsar bomb.
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Assuming no delivery system whatsoever the Russians can smuggle warheads across the Mexican border or use a rubber dingy to deliver them to Miami. They can probably FedEx them to the US in a container ship.
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A wildly optimistic best case scenario would be we could stop half of bombers, ballistic, and cruise missiles with the aid of some unseen top secret technology. Great, only >1000 nukes make it through. There is no viable defense. A viable defense would give one side a first strike capability, and this was why Reagan’s Star Wars system was so controversial and threatening. They can’t stop ours either. MAD is still the game.
New details on the Pelosi attack from NBC reporter Miguel Almaguer. But it seems NBC has pulled it without explanation.
Almaguer’s report noted that when police were dispatched to the Pelosi home, they were informed that the case was “high priority” but were not aware that it was the House speaker’s house. They did not arrive on the scene until some 30 minutes after the call was made, presumably meaning that Pelosi was alone with his attacker for at least that amount of time.
The report went on to say that Pelosi himself opened the door when police arrived, and made no attempt to flee the home once authorities were on the scene. Instead, he went back into the house — walking away from police and toward his attacker. Source said that, at the time, police could not determine whether Pelosi had already sustained any injuries.
Tom,
Yes that’s the way I see it too. The Russians got the other half of the German rocket scientists, and they’ve been doing nukes a looong time. Plenty good enough to put everyone in their graves, just like ours. As you say, MAD still rules.
If you really want to lose sleep at night, just be aware that nuclear weapons are used in exercises at various times, and planes have accidents. At least 6 US warheads have been lost and never found. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032
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Planes have wrecked during takeoff with nuclear weapons on board, not to mention an active nuclear missile exploding in its silo in Arkansas.
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Who knows how many the Russians have lost. Did the USSR really account for all their warheads during their breakup? I would suggest they are just as paranoid about this as we are.
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The good news is that these things just don’t go off by themselves very easily, and one assumes that it is nontrivial to detonate one if you found one laying around, although exactly how this is prevented is undisclosed. Let’s hope it is more sophisticated than “don’t cut the red wire first”.
Tom Scharf,
All modern nuclear weapons are plutonium implosion type, at least the trigger. The implosion requires that an array of high explosive ‘focused charges’ surrounding a cast plutonium ‘pit’ be set off at exactly the same instant (with sub-microsecond accuracy), compressing the pit from all directions, and taking it supercritical. Accidental detonation (say from fire or impact) is unlikely to achieve the required timing accuracy, so would produce a dud. Maybe why accidents haven’t caused explosions. OTOH, the original ‘gun-type’ bomb made with U235 requires only that a slug of U235 be driven down a channel at high speed by a single explosive charge, so those might be more subject to accidental explosion, assuming no ‘disarming’ mechanism (like physically blocking the channel) is used to make unintentional explosion impossible.
Mike M,
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
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Yup, seems there is more here than meets the eye. How could an 80 YO man hold off a much younger attacker for 30 minutes, then not flee when police arrived? If he opened the door for the police, why would he not have escaped his attacker long before they arrived? Makes zero sense. Maybe the police and prosecutors will clarify what happened, but I am beginning to doubt it. More likely they will offer the accused reduced charges in exchange for a guilty plea, so the case never goes to trial, and they can continue to blame ‘MAGA Republicans’ and Ron DeSantis for Pelosi’s injuries.
Interestingly, the arrest affidavit which was released was by an FBI agent who was not present at the time of the arrest, rather than local police officers who actually arrived at the Pelosi house and have first hand knowledge of what happened. Police body cam footage would be even more informative.
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Sounds like maybe Pelosi tried to take the hammer away from the crazy guy after the police arrived, and that’s when the crazy guy hit Pelosi on the head.
My bet is DePape wanted to talk policy with Nancy and turned on Paul when he found out he’d been “betrayed”. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d sent hundreds of emails to Nancy and been “ignored”.
Steve “who cares?”
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Not sure if thats a request for more detail or not.
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Its a bit like “inside baseball”. My x could go on for hours on the building and play of her preferred baseball teem. The subject bored me to death.
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I could go on for pages on why the positions on the west bank matters to both Russia and Ukraine, but lets just for the moment leave it at “it matters”. Would be happy to expand on this if you are interested.
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The part of the “Russian withdrawal” I find most amusing is that the current flap started with someone seeing the pulling down of a Russian flag from an abandoned building and extrapolated that action to “the Russians are withdrawing!!”.
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This was compounded by the normal internet feeding frenzy posting that flags were coming down from all the government buildings ( they weren’t), checkpoints were being abandoned (they weren’t), and Russian forces were fleeing for their lives (they weren’t).
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Ukraine MoD posted statements that this was all a Russian trap to entice Ukraine into attacking strong Russian positions. I chock it up to normal internet hysteria.
Why Ukraine is not pressing its advantage in the Kherson region. Thoughts from a military genius (or maybe random thoughts from an armchair general.)
One, Ukraine may not have sufficient forces or the right kind of forces to mount an attack in a major city. Remember the original Southern offensive was just a ruse before the attack in the North.
Two, Ukraine has become very adept at using its superiority in artillery and rockets in this region. They have severely bloodied the russians here. They have blown the bridges and have them pinned down and short of ammunition. The status quo favors Ukraine.
Three, Ukraine may be hesitant to destroy one of its largest cities.
… and maybe all three!
Russell,
Ukraine first has to get through strong and in-depth Russian entrenchments, backed by superior Russian air and artillery support, and with having to advance in mud over open ground before it has to worry about taking the city.
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Nothing happing on this front until the freeze, and maybe not even then.
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Russia has been conducting an attritional campaign and is quite content to sit on the defense using its short supply lines and massive artillery ammunition stockpiles to attrit Ukraine forces with minimal casualties to itself.
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One just has to review what the west, mainly the US, is sending as support to Ukraine to see that Ukraine will be quickly running out of heavy artillery ammunition and heavy tanks. The western stockpiles have never been extensive and are now almost nonexistent.
Ed Forbes,
By ‘who cares’, I mean: the strategic defensive position that matters is the river, not the west bank area. No matter if Russia tries to vigorously defend Kherson or not, it is not a strategic decision, because it does not materially change the situation: Russia controls a broad ‘land bridge’ about 200 Km wide from the Russian border to Crimea, and they are very unlikely to give that up except (maybe) in a negotiated settlement of the war…. no matter who controls Kherson in the mean time.
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The tendency I think is for some people (and certainly the MSM) to look at the day-to-day details (“The Ukraine captured 8 square miles that were once in Russian hands!!!”), ignore the more important strategic realities, and most of all ignore how the war can plausibly come to an end….. and at what costs to the USA. Are we willing to spend $500 billion to help the Ukraine? $1 trillion? $3 trillion? Nobody seems to be asking the hard questions. Sadly, the warmongers at the State Department seem to be of the same empty-headed mindset.
Bill Maher is usually able to see Dem craziness a little more clearly than most progressives. Not now: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bill-maher-goes-apocalyptic-over-181031413.html
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Unhinged, delusional, and disconnected from reality. All of the things he claims the GOP will do are EXACTLY what the Alzheimer administration, the ‘intelligence’ agencies, and the Dem controlled Congress have in fact been doing for nearly two years. The guy has a serious projection problem.
Trying to take a heavily defended urban area is going to be costly. The Russians were faced with this early in the war with Kyiv and decided not to continue.
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The Russians replaced commanders recently due to poor performance so one would expect tactics will change, he surely is not going to continue the same thing.
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Both sides are likely pretty exhausted at this point. From the quantity of videos I see on Reddit there is a heck of a lot of dying going on in the past several weeks. It is a meat grinder.
Steve,
Strangely that one irritated me too, more than normal. Probably because I’d hoped for better from Maher, given that he has been gently calling out some leftist BS for awhile now.
[Sarcasm begins here: ]
Well, this too will pass. In a few more days I guess the Third Reich revision 2.0 will take over, and all the progressive kids will be locked up and killed just like Beschloss suggested, and our Republic will come to an end. But on the upside, the world was heading off a cliff anyway because of runaway global warming, so maybe it’s not such a huge loss. At least the transphobic bigoted racist white supremacists won’t laugh for very long.
[End of Sarcasm]
Yeah.
Steve, Addressing the strategic reason for not withdrawing to the east bank.
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“War is politics by other means”. A famous quote that reverberates as true down the ages.
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Withdrawal from the west bank without a major effort to defend would be an internal political disaster for Russia now that the area is part of the Federation. Giving up homeland can not be taken lightly. While perhaps tactically prudent, political consideration forecloses this option.
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Strategically, the west side is a jewel of a position for Russia. It allows a pathway to Odessa and affectively cuts the Ukraine army in two. Ukraine is finding it much harder to move forces back and forth between the east and the west with the destruction of the power grid that so much of Ukraine rail depends upon. Withdrawal to the west bank would allow Ukraine to consolidate their forces.
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Supply to the west bank is becoming much easier with the withdrawal of the civilian population and their removal makes fortification of the city much easier.
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Russian control of this portion of the west bank acts like waving a red cape in front of a fighting bull. As long as Ukraine is willing to use its limited numbers of highly expensive HIMAR missiles trying to cut supply to the west bank, Russia is more than willing to let them. Having Ukraine make assaults across open ground results in heavy casualties for Ukraine, which is the strategic posture for Russia currently, and is also to Russian advantage.
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Russia has a large number of river barges to move supply and putting engines or rope & pulleys on pontoon sections if needed to improvise river barges is both cheep and effective. Ferrying supply by helicopter across the river is also easy. As such, supplying the west bank after removal of the civilian population is not a problem.
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With over 300k additional troops called up, Russian issues with a lack of manpower has ended. Numbers were Ukraines major advantage and they have now lost it.
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I could go on but will stop here.
“The only reason we are losing is because the opposition doesn’t believe in democracy” is pretty weak tea. They could actually ask people why they are voting. They did. “I want to end democracy” didn’t make the top 10. Some pundits don’t seem interested in looking. This is the scream and pound the table argument when the facts aren’t on your side.
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People don’t listen to the media and pundits because they are no longer trusted messengers. The vast majority of the fault is their own.
Ya mark, it’s strange. I mean, everything Biden and the Dems in Congress have been doing is very bad for the country, incites social strife, and exacerbates the already existing deep political divide. I am pretty sure the suburban women who are going to vote for Republicans and toss Dems out of office are not going to go along with Tump as dictator….. they loath him for the most part.
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If Maher is till around, I hope someone plays that silly rant for him after there is a peaceful transition in 2032, with some mealy-mouthed Dem elected president after 8 years of executive sanity under DeSantis.
From the NYT, a recent analysis of the artillery and rocket duel taking place in Kherson:
“With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War”
In the southern Kherson region, Ukraine now has the advantage in range and precision guidance of artillery, rockets and drones, erasing what had been a critical Russian asset.
And:
Ukraine now has artillery superiority in the area, commanders and military analysts say.
In Kherson now, Ukrainian commanders say the sides are firing about equal numbers of shells, but Ukraine’s strikes are not only longer range but more precise because of the satellite-guided rockets and artillery rounds provided by the West.
“We can reach them and they cannot reach us,” American-provided M777 howitzers firing precision-guided shells and striking up to 20 miles behind Russian lines.
And:
The city [Kherson] lies on the west bank of the Dnipro River, making its defenders reliant on bridges to Russian territory on the eastern bank that now lie within easy range of Ukrainian rocket artillery and, for the most part, are now unusable. President Putin has reportedly overruled his generals’ recommendations of a retreat to safer and more easily defended ground on the east bank.
And finally:
“Russia is unable to maintain logistics supplies” to the west bank of the Dnipro, said Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst and the director of Rochan Consulting, based in Gdansk, Poland.
Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-artillery.html?smid=url-share
Ukraine is no longer on fire. For a few days after the embarrassing Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea fleet, russia had stepped up its missile launches towards civilian targets. But during the last few 24 hour periods the fires in Ukraine are no more frequent [outside of the battle zone] than in neighboring countries. In the previous 24 hours there have been only four fires, and these probably are natural wildfires or agricultural burns.
NASA FIRMS NASA | LANCE | Fire Information for Resource Management System link: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-11-05..2022-11-06,2022-11-05;@36.1,53.4,5z
For those of you having difficulty loading the NASA GIS system I have a screenshot here: https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1589124639053451265?s=20&t=eVf9nzI5-BsTUu8RUzRsWg
With the great influx of NATO air defense systems Ukraine claims to have been shooting down 75% of the incoming russian stuff, but I cannot confirm that number independently. I was seeing about twenty fires a day after the Black Sea fiasco, but I don’t know how many of those were shoot downs.
I wonder if the numbers of fires seen this summer are reduced by the current rain and muddy conditions? 🙂
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Ed Forbes (Comment #215987)
“If supply to Kherson has been reduced to critical levels, why is secondary items still being shipped across the river?”
Ed, you got it all wrong [again!]
The russian defensive line is being constructed EAST of the Dnieper river. Those concrete boxes have been installed in Nova Kakhovka, on the EAST bank of the river. None of this stuff is crossing the river, it is coming from the East. russian material crossing the river is under Ukrainian artillery and rocket fire. It is a shambles.
That reference you quoted is useless. Here is a detailed description of the new fortifications, including maps and aerial photographs. https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1588924419002740736?s=20&t=vqEb88NkzNfZrksoseAgNQ
Looks like another bloody battle is in progress…. battle of Pavlovka in Donetsk Oblast, south of Donetsk. The information is a fog right now.
Some recent posts:
“Pavlovka turning into a killing field, with Russians continuing frontal assaults & Ukrainians pouring in more and more reinforcements. Terrible fighting & high casualties all around. Very grim indeed.”
“Pavlovka is a strange battle. Both sides report severe difficulties on TG channels, and both sides have complained to their superiors that it’s not worth fighting for”
“From what I understand, most of the fighting is occurring in this small area between Yegorovka to the south and Pavlovka to the north, with both sides having difficulties moving through the fields (that have turned into deep mud) & desperate skirmishes for the woods.” https://twitter.com/failure1991/status/1589317988108292096?s=20&t=1KpDhK0UYsrMgdAPug68Tg https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1589299268551995392?s=20&t=r5nR4_chjtcb4jReuoRiWg https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1589301225891463169?s=20&t=r5nR4_chjtcb4jReuoRiWg
There is talk among conservatives about stopping US aid to Ukraine. I have formulated my thoughts on this.
Long term, I think we save a lot of US dollars by funding Ukraine’s dismantling of the russian war machine. From April, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” … Austin said Russia had “already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”
Ukraine has had great success in destroying everything russia sends its way. The OSINT organization ORYX keeps a detailed record of documented [by photo] russian equipment losses. This is considered a very conservative list:
Tanks (1420, of which destroyed: 814, damaged: 61, abandoned: 53, captured: 492)
Armoured Fighting Vehicles (684, of which destroyed: 422, damaged: 9, abandoned: 24, captured: 228)
Infantry Fighting Vehicles (1626, of which destroyed: 1005, damaged: 33, abandoned: 77, captured: 511)
And many more categories: “Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine” https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
The US is committed by treaty [NATO] to defend Western Europe should russia attack. For the past 70 years, we have maintained, at exorbitant cost, a military capable of countering russian aggression in Europe. Combine the huge russian losses with sanctions that cripple russia’s ability to manufacture new, high tech war machines and we look forward to a generation of a crippled russia and we can put our military dollars toward countering China.
Nothing has really changed here, Ukraine and the US are friends of convenience. There is no lasting mutual heritage here that would bind us together through tough times, such as for example the UK. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is certainly an old saw that is meaningful in this situation. We used to be friends with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and started fighting them a decade later. A commonality? The Russians.
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Unfortunately our very public and open debate shows the cracks in unity that the Russians will exploit for their own propaganda. There is a real advantage to the tightly controlled media of the Russians and China, propaganda is still around because it works to keep the public in line.
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You can almost set a stopwatch to how quickly certain sectors of the public will start growing weary of ever escalating costs and death during wars. The Twitter generation has a focus time of about 12 minutes. If the opposition can’t be canceled in that time then move on to the next target. If I was the Russians I would keep this going for at least 6 more months to see if public support gets exhausted, this will lead to more favorable settlement terms.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215991)
Tom, I think you have probably captured here how political figures in war time think. It is rather matter-of-fact political decisions about reactions of populations to killing, maiming and destruction and without much attention to any moral or emotional content of killing, maiming and destruction.
In other times these same politicians would be (over)reacting to much less difficult situations for governed populations – not that they were doing anything about it but rather reacting for political points.
I have to consider that Russia are also fighting a shadow proxy war, whose aim has the same goal as yours, Russell. The US, and west in general, have gleefully thrown away self-sufficiency and economic might at all levels. It would take considerable time to recover that. Meanwhile, China have been busy using the money we send them to economically colonize everywhere they can, to the extent they set up police stations in other countries. Should “crippling sanctions” be thrown our way instead, there may be no “military dollars” available to put towards countering China.
Remember when the All Star game was moved because of the “voter suppression” laws and “Jim Crow 2.0”? All sorts of corporate genuflecting was occurring. We have record early turnout (including GA) and my guess is this will be very high turnout for a midterm.
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They were wrong and their rhetoric was excessive. This is so common as to not even be the least bit surprising. It is just another reminder why there is little trust to activist initiatives that are perceived to be parroted by far too many who have confirmation bias as a way of life. How can you tell a legitimate initiative apart from cultural propaganda today? I don’t know.
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Corporations need to be a bit wiser here, and the media needs to engage less with credulous apocalyptic future outcomes that serve a preferred narrative. Stop handing a microphone to these people.
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What happens here is all the false and self serving predictions are memory holed only to be repeated in the next cycle. Zero accountability undermines trust. People become very cynical and that leaves an opening a mile wide for Trump, who correctly calls this stuff out and then fills in his own psycho version of reality.
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Example: NBC (of all people) runs an article today documenting the endless “election denial” from the 2016 election. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trumps-denial-second-big-lie-ask-hillary-clinton-rcna55764
“It’s no wonder that this year, a Rasmussen survey found 47% of likely U.S. voters believed it’s likely Russia changed the outcome of the 2016 election.”
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The media has mainstreamed the term “election denier” for their opposition but cannot look inward, but the voters can and do.
Russell,
The Russians are building on the east side in addition to the west side of the river. Very much a layered defense. The fortifications on the east side makes sense as the US and the UK are sending large numbers of river craft to Ukraine and this defensive line protects against a river crossing by Ukraine to try and cut supply coming from the eastern side.
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Reports of layered concrete Russian defensive lines on the west bank below
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“ The Ukrainian army has been gearing up for a new assault to retake the urban centre, but on Wednesday officials told Al Jazeera their counteroffensive had slowed in recent days, partly because Russian troops were heavily dug into fortified positions.
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“The fortified positions that the enemy has established are concrete and they have a minimum of three lines of defence,” a Ukrainian army commander who identified himself as Mykola said.
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“We are in high spirits, but we are lacking in equipment to move forward. So we are accumulating the hardware from our international partners [and] then we will advance because we are trying to protect our soldiers and they are prepared for us,” he added.”
. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/20/in-kherson-spirits-high-for-ukrainians-but-arms-supplies-low
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Also, Russian supply is not dependent the main bridges as the article you posted stated. Supply is dependent on multiple pontoon bridges and river barges. This is a port city, so accommodates roll on roll off barges on both sides of the river.
Russell Klier (Comment #215990): “There is talk among conservatives about stopping US aid to Ukraine.”
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I am glad that conservatives can talk about that. It seems that Democrats can not question the war without getting stomped on, like Tulsi Gabbard.
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Russell Klier: “Long term, I think we save a lot of US dollars by funding Ukraine’s dismantling of the russian war machine.”
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If that were our only reason, I would support getting out. The administration has given little reason to believe that their objective is not to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. That is unacceptable. Their failure to make a good case for supporting Ukraine makes it easy for people to oppose that support.
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We have given Ukraine security guarantees on multiple occasions, most significantly to get them to give up their nukes. It sends a very bad message to walk away from such commitments. We have dangled NATO membership in front of them, knowing that is a red flag to Russia. The Biden administration restricted our energy production, thus ensuring that the world would need Russia’s supply. The Biden administration consistently displayed weakness, thus tempting Russia to be aggressive.
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Ukraine is a democracy; in general, the more democracies there are the better for us and the worse for Russia and China. It is in our interest to deter 19th century style aggression since such aggression is destabilizing. Failing to stand up to Russia would tempt China to believe that we won’t stand up for Taiwan.
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We have many interests in supporting Ukraine. Sticking a finger in Putin’s eye should be the least of them. Sadly, we don’t really know what the Biden administration’s objectives are.
Mike M. (Comment #215996)
“The administration has given little reason to believe that their objective is not to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”
The resolve of the Ukrainian people to wage war is a decision to be made by the Ukrainian people. Right now the people and their leaders are committed to waging war. It is not Joe Biden’s decision [or yours].
“We have many interests in supporting Ukraine. Sticking a finger in Putin’s eye should be the least of them.” I agree. But in a world where the likes of Kim and XI lead countries it might be therapeutic to have Putin get a bloody nose as a result of his aggression.
The russian missile attack on civilian targets has taken another day’s hiatus. In the previous 24 hours I see only four fires outside of the war zone and those were in very rural agricultural locations. I think a lot of the current hype is coming from President Zelenskyy He keeps yelling for more air defense weapons and NATO keeps delivering. These same weapons can be used in the battle for air superiority in the war zone. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-11-06..2022-11-07,2022-11-06;@34.1,50.0,14z
Russell Klier
“Looks like another bloody battle is in progress…”
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Will we have another stolen election is the question.
Bet the DOJ will not be doing any supervising in California.
Getting control of the Senate would require a 5 seat majority to eliminate the RINO power hidden veto of Republican issues.
24 Hours, except for Pennsylvania, to find out.
angech,
5 seats in the Senate is almost certainly out of reach for the GOP. More likely 1 to 4, most likely 2 or 3.
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Pennsylvania looks closer in the polls than I think is actually true in the Senate race. Fetterman is mentally debilitated from a stroke (difficulty talking and understanding spoken language, confusion, inappropriate word usage and unfathomable ‘sentences’ which don’t actually have the structure of a sentence). I expect voters are loath to tell pollsters that they won’t vote for him because of his disability. Dems have been counting on Fetterman capturing the currently Republican seat in Pennsylvania to balance one likely loss elsewhere, but it looks to me unlikely he will. Unfortunately, that may not be known for some days after the election.
Getting control of the Senate would require a 5 seat majority to eliminate the RINO power hidden veto of Republican issues.
angech,
BTW, the greatest significance of control of the Senate for the next two years is blocking the very worst/least competent/dedicated socialist judges from the Federal bench. Not much legislation will pass that Biden will not veto, even if Republicans control both houses. The Biden administration has been appointing lots of absolute nut-cakes to the Federal judiciary, and there has been nothing the Republicans could do to stop them. Democrats screamed when Trump appointed judges they didn’t like, but the pace of Biden appointments of the most extreme judges has been significantly greater than Trump’s pace. That will change if Republicans take control in January.
mark….
cross posted.
No worries Steve. Your answer was better. Of course you are correct about the appointments.
Given that government never really agrees to limit its own power voluntarily, a split government that stops it at least temporarily from functioning in the other direction is a win.
I am shocked (shocked!) that public health officials delayed Pfizer’s announcement of its vaccine trial results until after the election: https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/nate-silver-liberal-elites-pressured-pfizer-to-delay-covid-vaccine/
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OK, I’m joking. It was obvious at the time (and I wrote that on this blog) that hurting Trump was the only plausible explanation after Pfizer met with FDA regulators and decided to change their long planned protocol and delay release of results…… until after the election.
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It’s hard to say what effect a positive announcement from Pfizer would have had a week before the 2020 election, but it seems it could only have improved Trump’s chances significantly. I remain (truly) shocked that this was not immediately investigated by Congress. That delay probably cost some lives, but it was also blatant interference in an election by Federal bureaucrats, which is unlawful and grounds for termination if not prosecution. Maybe the new Republican majority will call those responsible to task, but it is by no means certain they will. My guess: everyone involved would take the 5th, and (surprise!) all documents, transcripts, and emails relating to that meeting will, amazingly enough, have been forever lost. The left is inherently dishonest and unprincipled.
I’m a little surprised it’s Nate Silver saying it.
Shrug.
We really have no idea what will happen tomorrow. It is not like the polls can be believed. RCP has recently gone back from +4 to +3 for the GOP in the Senate. That could be off by 3 or even 4 seats either way.
Many of the covid rules that allowed vote fraud are still in place. Nevada codified them into law, while in other places the courts undid some of them. There is too much absentee balloting.
It’s not like Pfizer didn’t know what the results were at that point. It was an accumulating database that they can track in real time. They do have real rules to keep results confidential and not disclose this stuff before a final report, probably for stopping insider trading as much as anything. Results of big pharmaceutical trials are huge deals for stock value, and this was an even huger trial to say the least.
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The change in the protocol to get more information was always a bit strange. Looking back it is suspect because the final report was all rainbows and butterflies for mRNA. However the other vaccines had some real problems in their protocols as I recall.
I have no idea how to “see the electrical grid” at that link.
Mark
Though an unpopular point of view I think the Republicans should do what they failed to do last time, support Republicans being abused by the DOJ and FBI.
What a difference a bit if guys back then would have made.
Policy wise can they do anything like reopening oil pipelines or does the Biden veto outweigh them?
Hunter Biden will get a run but again no DOJ support.
A SCOTUS block on new Democrat appointments would be handy.
If De Santos was to look after Trump I would be happy to see him run yet he is just another untrustworthy swamp critter until he proves otherwise.
I have never been good at having elections go the way I want but like horse riding having momentum, good jockeys and form is a good start not to be taken lightly.
angech,
“If De Santos was to look after Trump I would be happy to see him run yet he is just another untrustworthy swamp critter until he proves otherwise.”
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DeSantis is anything but a swamp critter. He is loathed by the MSM and Dems (but I repeat myself). He has consistently stood up to the very worst of the covid mania in Florida, and prohibited teachers from talking about gay and lesbian sex with 6 year old kids. He has tried to stop the on-line canceling of voices the left doesn’t want heard (that one is currently blocked by Federal courts and will likely end up at the Supreme Court). There are plenty of RINOs around; DeSantis isn’t one of them.
mark bofill,
“I’m a little surprised it’s Nate Silver saying it.”
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Silver has seen the woke mob in action (eg, when he tried to hire Roger Pielke to write about climate), and plenty of the people who work for him are the worst of woke Karens, and just about insufferable. Maybe like some other ‘classic liberals’ (like Johnathan Turley) Silver is realizing that the dishonest left is consistently a force for harm: the ends don’t always justify the means.
angech
If De Santos was to look after Trump I would be happy to see him….
Sounds like you support the RITO’s (Republican in Trump Only.).
DeSantis is clearly not a “swamp critter”. Trump has only decided to dislikely him because DeSantis is his major competition for the nomination for president. Major. Trump is definitely only a Republican in Trump only. He only cares about Trump.
Mike M.
“Russell,I have no idea how to “see the electrical grid” at that link.”
Sorry, I had a lot of ‘Bells and Whistles’ turned on and they may not work on your system. Below is the home page, click on ‘Black Marble’ and you should get the basic version. https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
angech,
I think the Republicans should do what they failed to do last time, support Republicans being abused by the DOJ and FBI.
I don’t disagree, but I’m not really sure what support they can offer.
Policy wise can they do anything like reopening oil pipelines or does the Biden veto outweigh them?
So generally speaking, Congress passes laws (subject to Presidential veto) and the President executes the laws using his administration. A recurring problem (in my opinion) with our system these days is that the executive and supporting bureaucracy have a great deal of de facto freedom to ignore the letter of the law handed to them by Congress and do as they please. Sometimes the problem is that Congress was vague in passing a law and the bureaucracy takes advantage of this to seize power Congress never really intended the bureaucracy to have. All of this is a long winded way of saying — no not really. There isn’t a whole heck of a lot Congress can effectively do in a timely manner to impact Biden’s executive energy policy decisions.
Hunter Biden will get a run but again no DOJ support.
There are those who speculate that the left is about to turn on Biden and Harris. If so, Hunter could be an easy avenue by which Biden could be effectively removed from running for office again. Democrats have largely realized that Biden must be replaced in the next election cycle, and it’s not at all clear Biden and Harris agree. But I mostly don’t care about Biden corruption. This doesn’t really even rank for me on the top 10 problems facing our country.
A SCOTUS block on new Democrat appointments would be handy.
SCOTUS is the pinnacle. But I think all federal judge appointments are probably important. I don’t really know much about this though (federal judges), just my impression.
angech,
Federal judges are important for reasons like this: Federal Judge Rules Federal Oil And Gas Lease Moratorium Exceeded Biden’s Power
Here is an example of the mechanism by which the abuse of executive authority on energy policy is checked. It’s slow and difficult and not very effective, to fight in federal court. If it takes a year and a half or more to get a decision, well. That’s a substantial portion of the four year window of a Presidential administration.
Thanks Steve.
I never knew Silver wanted to hire Roger Pielke. Neat.
Pielke Jr. got cancelled by the officially approved know-it-alls after Silver tried to hire him. It was vicious and fact free (as always). Pielke found the situation so distasteful that he stopped writing about climate almost completely for a number of years and has only recently started back again on Substack. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/
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I came across RPJ over a decade ago when first researching climate change affects on hurricanes (or the lack thereof). https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about
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He had all the data and wrote extensively on the effect of climate on disasters and disaster costs. Many of his opinions were unwanted and quite unpopular with the climate illuminati (e.g. disaster costs have only gone up because more stuff is at risk). He was only one of many given this treatment, but it formed the foundation of my view that this is a fundamentally unserious sector of science controlled by rampant activism and dogma.
Tom,
I’d read the seemingly endless criticisms of his ‘The Honest Broker’ and I knew about his unpopularity with the climate elect. It’s just the bit about Silver that I didn’t know. Or I’d thoroughly forgotten if I ever did know.
I would expect the DOJ decisions on charging Trump and Hunter Biden will occur during the lame duck period before the next Congress is seated.
At his arraignment, the defendant was asked by a federal magistrate if he understood the charges against him and whether he was thinking clearly. “I think I have a reasonable understanding,” the young man replied, “but I wouldn’t say I’m thinking clearly.”
Yes, Trump will likely be arrested on multiple felonies, each threatening several years in prison, probably in a pre-dawn raid by armed FBI agents in bullet-proof vests, and perp-walked in his PJs for CNN outside Mar a Largo. It is a political necessity for the DOJ.
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Hunter will never be arrested; he will either face no charges or plea guilty to a trivial charge, pay a fine, and get a short parole…. and the DOJ will never talk about it again. Another political necessity for the DOJ.
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Merrick Garland is a profoundly corrupt, mendacious scumbag. He should be impeached and removed from office.
Maricopa County:
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“So what happens is we have two tabulators. One tabulator isn’t working. The other tabulator is taking about 75% successful, so about 25% of them are being misread. So it could be a printer issue or it could be in the tabulator itself. So when it’s misread, you have an option to put it in what’s called “box 3″, and it gets read whether it goes downtown and gets read manually, or whether it gets re-fed into our tabulator.”
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I would have thought a printing issue would be obvious, and if it isn’t a printing issue, optical recognition shouldn’t be having huge issues unless dirt was introduced. What a shit show.
NYT Today: Hillary Clinton Accepted Her Loss, but a Lot Has Changed Since 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/opinion/midterms-election-denial-winners-losers.html
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What a howler. At least I will credit the normally liberal commenters at the NYT for having none of that revisionism. Ultimately Trump never conceding and going batsh** crazy will make him unelectable in 2024. That’s the lesson to learn from this madness, you are hurting yourself.
For optical scanners the ballots should be preprinted and use an optical scanner after filled out. When I voted this way the ballot was scanned in front of me before I left. If it failed it was read again. The filled out ballot is saved.
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The ballots are put in boxes and can be rescanned at a later time. In my county there was an “anomaly” during the infamous 2000 recount where a box of ballots was accidentally scanned twice during the recount. The mismatch at a specific polling precinct was noted and the problem was identified. AFAICT recounts on optical ballots almost never amount to anything beyond a few votes.
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The media could have done everyone a service by documenting how voting really works and the security and checks in place. Instead they concentrated on drama and condescension for 4 straight years. The government should invite skeptics to view the process, not treat them like they are roving menaces. The reality is that it is drab and boring.
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Count the people who walk in the door, make sure the vote tallies match that. Allow no single point of corruption (like Philadelphia). Monitors from both parties. Look for statistical differences from past elections and recount or investigate them. Make sure the ballots are secure until the election is certified.
Tom wrote: “For optical scanners the ballots should be preprinted and use an optical scanner after filled out.”
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This is what it appears they are doing. One wonders how you can get 25% rejection of predetermined content from a printed source. Dirt on the scanner is the only reasonable explanation I can think of.
Maricopa was giving out sharpies in 2020.
Ron DeSantis is hated by NeverTrumpers because he got elected after pursuing Trump’s support, with an ad of him reading a story to his son about Trump, and building a wall with blocks.
Nevertheless, the swamp is supporting DeSantis, with one big donor expecting globalism again. Scott Walker backtracked on his immigration positions after being talked to by a donor, I think it was Stanley Hubbard.
I voted (FL) with a paper ballot. I noticed that the reader had two slots, one marked “insert ballot here” and another marked “insert card here”. I asked about the card, and the poll worker pointed at a machine which allows touchscreen selection, and prints out your selections to be fed into the vote-counting machine. She said that one should check what gets printed.
Only one machine, vs. 7 or 8 booths for paper ballots. But it sounds like a good system, I will try it next time.
MikeN: “Maricopa was giving out sharpies in 2020.”
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The election official said it could be a problem with the printer, so I go with printed source. I discount this possibility because it would be evident quickly that the ballots from a certain printer were being rejected, never mind that a cursory examiniation of a rejected ballot should show a visible defect.
Having the White House be in charge creates an obvious conflict of interest. But frankly I don’t know how to get an unbiased assessment. Red team / blue team will likely provide 2 oppositely-biased views. Which is probably adequate if one has enough incentive and knowledge to balance them. But politicians will just cite the one they are prejudiced toward.
Expanding on prior comments on Ukraine air defense
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Can the United States Do More for Ukrainian Air Defense? https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-united-states-do-more-ukrainian-air-defense
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“.. Unfortunately, turning good intentions into battlefield realities will be difficult. The United States has already provided many air defense systems, including Stingers, the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), and S-300s, but is nearly out of equipment to provide. Recent DOD statements on air defense recognize the problem but do not announce any new U.S. actions. Austin pointed to the Europeans as the primary source of help in this area.
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The Europeans are stepping up, but they can provide only small numbers of systems in the near term. In the longer term, the United States and Europe will provide systems from new production, but those will take years to arrive..”
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Western Air Defense Arrives in Ukraine: Too Little, Too Late https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wuf8ir3Fro
I’m just thinking out loud here. Pretend I have Tourette Syndrome. Tabulation machines in various places aren’t working well. Mail in voting favors Democrats, and ballots that are ‘exception processed’ through the system may well be more vulnerable to ‘accidental’ errors. Additionally, the longer the tallying takes, the more mail in ballots can arrive to be processed. If rules are violated and ballots are accepted which should not be accepted, well. This is only making sure that every vote counts after all and that technicalities that may tend to disenfranchise minorities more than white males don’t interfere with Democracy.
This is on purpose. Not an accident. Not saying the machines were sabotaged necessarily. Maybe maintenance wasn’t scheduled and performed, or routine cleaning, or whatever.
It strikes me that requiring people to vote is voter suppression. What we need is an electoral version of a climate model to determine the “will of the people” without such burdensome requirements.
Long lines between getting the ballot and getting to a voting station. It’s partly just busy, and partly a poor choice of pens. It took a long time to just fill in the little rectangle.
MikeN
Ron DeSantis is hated by NeverTrumpers because …
I’m not sure who classifies as a “never trumper”. I hate Trump. I don’t hate DeSantis.
….he got elected after pursuing Trump’s support, with an ad of him reading a story to his son about Trump, and building a wall with blocks.
I don’t mind that an aspiring politician got support from someone who could get votes. DeSantis didn’t sell his soul to Trump– as is readily apparent. I have no problem with him being supported by Trump earlier on.
Nevertheless, the swamp is supporting DeSantis, with one big donor expecting globalism again. Scott Walker backtracked on his immigration positions after being talked to by a donor, I think it was Stanley Hubbard.
Well…. I guess I don’t know who “the swamp” is at this point. SteveF seems to support DeSantis. He doesn’t seem to be what those who use the term “the swamp” used to think it means. I’m guessing some are now calling “the swamp” anyone who doesn’t support Trump. Well… ok.
Certainly mechanical systems such as printers and page feed scanners break all the time, especially if they have been sitting around for a year almost never used. I’m sure they would be tested before use, but I haven’t met one of these things I didn’t want to throw out a window within a year of using. I’m not entirely confident rigorous testing by our government bureaucrats who can’t figure out an ATM machine is up to the task. They probably have spares available that can be shipped out to precincts, and for larger ones redundancy on site.
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There is enough paranoia (especially this year) that I doubt any clumsy scheme could be successful at any large scale. Transparency on counts with multiple people watching should be enough. I’m sure there will be accusations and assertions, I will wait to see how the evidence pans out.
The ISW has come to two conclusions similar to mine… The russian attacks on civilian infrastructure have nearly stopped and the lights are coming back on:
“Russian forces have greatly depleted their arsenal of high-precision weapons systems and have suffered significant aviation losses and will likely struggle to maintain the current pace of the Russian military’s coordinated campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure.”
“Ukrainian sources reported on November 7 that Ukrainian officials and engineers could restore power supplies to normal levels in a few weeks if the pace of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure dramatically slowed.” https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-7
Today’s FIRMS fire maps show about a dozen fires in the last 24 hours, all but two were in rural agricultural settings. The two in urban areas could be russian attacks or could be something else. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@0.0,0.0,3z
Personally, I think the the DeSantis/Trump feud is just the kind of news that, if it didn’t exist, the media would have to invent. Great for clicks and ratings! Fortunately, they are far too principled to do any such thing. I’m also sure DeSantis and Trump wouldn’t consider taking digs at one another to encourage such a thing for free publicity. Neither are particularly well known for media baiting.
Ed Forbes (Comment #216036)
HAH! That CSIS report you cited undermines your position. The russian campaign to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure is a failure! The article ends with this conclusion:
“However, Russia no longer has enough missiles for a sustained campaign. That means periodic suffering for the Ukrainian people but no prolonged attacks and no change to the course of the war.”
Tom,
Probably. Never assume evil intent where incompetence is sufficient. Thanks.
Just saw Matt Taibbi’s game. It sounds like fun for those who dare.
Drink EVERY TIME:
Anyone, from a candidate to a TV anchor, mentions that “democracy is on the ballot.” Double-shot for use of the phrase democracy itself, e,g, “democracy itself is on the ballot.”
You’re told this is the most important election of our lifetime, or the most critical moment of our lives, etc. You may drink an additional shot if you’re certain today is not any of those things.
Steve Kornacki draws a frenzied geometric shape around Pennsylvania.
John Fetterman’s shorts are visible in a video report.
Nate Silver reminds you he doesn’t do predictions, but rather publishes percentage-chance forecasts.
Liz Cheney is mentioned (i.e. as if mattering).
Elon Musk is blamed for something. Double-shot if the bad thing is “in the name of” or “under the guise of” free speech.
Anyone mentions “over a hundred election deniers on the ballot.” Also drink for permutations on the theme, e.g. “60% of Americans will have an election-denier on the ballot,” or “Over half of GOP candidates are election-deniers,” “election-denier JD Vance wants to ban books,” etc.
Anyone mentions the “specter of violence” or “conditions ripe for violence,” or reports votes are being counted “amid threats of violence.” Do an exclamation shot at the end of the night if no violence is ultimately observed.
A politician or a pundit warns that everything might come down to the “wild card” in Georgia, and with suspicious gleefulness reminds you we might all be waiting until December 6th to find out who’ll control the Senate. Call it the “No Sleep Till Georgia” rule.
SPECIAL MSNBC “DECISION 2022” ELECTION NIGHT RULES:
Tune in at 8 p.m. Guess which of Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle or the aforementioned Kornacki will be first to blame any Republican victory on disobedient or insufficiently centrist Democrats and/or third party “spoilers.” Drink the first time this happens anyway, and drink a double if you guess correctly.
Guess which contributor will be the first to make a cringe sports-related joke about Herschel Walker. Drink the first time this happens, and drink a double if you guess correctly or the person botches the terminology (e.g. “For once, Herschel Walker can’t pile the move”).
Guess which contributor will be first to convey warnings from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, US Capitol Police, or National Counterterrorism Center about threats, misinformation, or the impending end of civilization. Drink the first time this happens, and drink a double if you guess correctly or the contributor happens also to be a former government official.
Guess which contributor will be the first to invoke Nazis, fascists, or white supremacy, or suggests without irony that tonight might be the last time we ever have elections. Drink the first time this happens, drink a double if you guess correctly.
OPTIONAL: Keep a running count of how many times the word “Trump” is mentioned on the broadcast versus all mentions of all other issues (health care, education, the economy/inflation, etc.). If at the end of the night you have a “hot deck,” i.e. the number is +4 for Trump, you may drink that many times. If the deck is cold, drink coffee. Or whatever.
DRINK ONLY THE FIRST TIME YOU HEAR:
“Red wave.”
“Red mirage.”
“Russians/Putin want you to vote Republican” (e.g. “a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort”).
Lucia, it was not a matter of Trump supporting DeSantis, but that DeSantis was supporting Trump in such a way.
I am thinking of NeverTrumpers like Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and the like who are allegedly conservative but then didn’t like DeSantis either, and the main reason seemed to be that he won his primary by being all in for Trump.
Anyone who doesn’t support Trump is of course not equal to the swamp. I am saying that certain establishment folks are getting into DeSantis’s orbit. I read he has a new campaign team now.
The Karl Rove types, are now supporting DeSantis as a means of stopping Trump. It is not clear if they are doing this because they want him to win the nomination, or just to split the conservative vote so someone like Romney or Larry Hogan or Liz Cheney can win. Jeb Bush has endorsed DeSantis, which previously I would have thought unlikely. In 2020, the swamp was trying to get Jeb Bush to be the nominee, spending tens of millions attacking Rubio to clear the anti-Trump lane.
Lucia
“Well…. I guess I don’t know who “the swamp” is at this point.”
–
Whom or what?
–
The swamp is a term for an ever shifting conglomerate of people and organisations who bend the rules we all live by to advantage themselves outside professed ethics and rules.
–
You can have smaller swamps existing independently inside the bigger swamp like a PTA or social or sporting club.
–
If you are in the swamp or a swamp you definitely know what it is.
–
If you don’t know then the probability is that you are one of the nicer normal people not in the swamp.
–
De Santis is a politician.
Most politicians are or become swamp creatures naturally.
The proof that they are not part of the swamp is when the swamp destroys them or tries to destroy them.
–
On a lighter note I used to read Pogo 40 years ago.
De Santis would be Albert Alligator.
The three new Supreme Court justices could be the three bat boys.
The whole crew has reassembled under new names.
Might be fun to identify a few of the others?
The Deacon would have to be the Attorney General, I guess.
MikeN,
DeSantis is going to win Florida in a landslide, because he is very capable governor. He is NOTHING like Jeb!
.
It is true that lots of people prefer DeSantis over Trump (I am one of them), but comparing a potential DeSantis candidacy to Jeb!’s candidacy in 2016 is kind of weird. Jeb! was the ultimate swamp nominee for the Republicans. Not a democrat, but really not much different policy-wise. DeSantis is anything but part of the swamp. .
I hope that as DeSantis becomes better known outside Florida in the next year, he will get past Trump’s voter recognition advantage and start winning primaries over Trump. DeSantis is better at policy and implementing it than Trump, smarter than Trump, infinitely more self aware and self controlled, and handles the press better than Trump.
angech,
“The proof that they are not part of the swamp is when the swamp destroys them or tries to destroy them.”
.
Ummmm… the MSM and the Democrats have be reviling DeSantis since before he took over as governor in Florida; the willful lies, slanders and misleading statements have been ever growing.
.
He fought ‘the swamp’ on school openings during covid, beach openings during covid (in Florida, the sunshine state!), public social distancing rules, limitations on parties, businesses, and workplaces, mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates everywhere in Florida, gay/lesbian education/training in public schools for 5 to 10 year olds, critical race theory in public schools, the censoring of conservative voices on line….. and more. He has resisted every single one of the nutty, woke-Karen policies the swamp has tried to institute…. and won most of the battles, both legal and political.
.
He is so far from being part of the swamp that to even suggest it tells me you are lacking information about DeSantis.
angech
The swamp is a term for an ever shifting conglomerate of people and organisations who bend the rules we all live by to advantage themselves outside professed ethics and rules.
So… that would make Trump and Trump supporters part of the swamp.
You can have smaller swamps existing independently inside the bigger swamp like a PTA or social or sporting club.
I would thing given the definition you could have entirely different swamps side by side. (That’s what you can have in real life too.)
The proof that they are not part of the swamp is when the swamp destroys them or tries to destroy them.
That can’t possibly be the proof. Because it’s obvious people in the swamp try to kill people in the swamp all the time.
it’s obvious people in the swamp try to kill people in the swamp all the time.
The swamp is not one organisation.
that would make Trump and Trump supporters part of the swamp
No by that logic we are all part of the swamp
If I try to talk about election results before like 9 or 10, somebody slap me and tell me to wait.
I am still working with the NASA “Black Marble” and the Ukraine electrical grid. Because the NASA gis files are difficult to work with I have posted two screenshots that everyone can load:
3NOV2021, before the war. Ukraine is very sparsely lit compared to its neighbors to the East [Poland eg]. It is an agriculture community with vast expenses of darkness.
3NOV2022, after 10 months of war AND Putin’s attempt at taking down the grid. Ukraine is still sparsely lit but not a lot different than 12 months prior.
3NOV2021 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134143345897473?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
3NOV2022 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134373529317379?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
Those of you with the ability to work with the NASA gis files please check my work, I’m still learning this system: https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
angech,
No by that logic we are all part of the swamp
I’m just looking at the definition you gave. By that definition, Trump is part of the swamp.
.
I get you are backing off your definition because you don’t want the swamp to include Trump. But then you’ll need to define it if you want to use it and mean anything.
mark
If I try to talk about election results before like 9 or 10, somebody slap me and tell me to wait.
I’m being saved that fate by my tutoring schedule. Ciao for now!
OOohphfff. I haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time all the way yet and I am done for the day. I was hoping to have a better feel for the results, but I’m gonna have to wait till morning looks like. My impression so far is that Republicans might or might not win the Senate. So – just don’t know yet. Georgia might end up in a run off.
Night all.
Yeah, it sure looks like no red tsunami. Maybe even not a red wave. Disappointing.
SteveF, I think Jeb Bush had a good record as governor of Florida too. Did school choice get implemented when with Jeb?
I agree DeSantis has been a good governor. However, there appears to be a chance he will become like Scott Walker and surrender to the donor class.
Yep. No red Tsunami. Maybe no wave.
MikeN
However, there appears to be a chance he will become like Scott Walker and surrender to the donor class
Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
.
Criticizing someone because you predict he might do something in the future? Not very fair. Nor wise.
Donald Trump, the gift that keeps on giving. Btw, did you know that ‘das Gift’ in German means poison?
Wow! Republicans underperformed everywhere except in the south. If they gain control of the House, it will likely be by not more than 2 to 5 seats, and there remains some chance Pelosi will remain speaker, which would be a catastrophe for the country. The Senate looks to go 50:50 again. The biggest Republican disappointments across the entire country were Trump endorsed candidates, who almost all came up well short of their pre-election poll numbers…. in some cases 6 to 8% below expected results. Truly terrible. IMHO, Trump is toxic. He needs to retire from politics, for the sake of the country.
DeWitt,
Poison indeed…. or toxic.
MikeN,
My memory of Jeb! was that he refused to act decisively on any issue. He was the anti-DeSantis. Of course, part of that may have been that Florida was a lot more closely divided when he was governor.
There were two problems with the Trump endorsed candidates.
(a) they were poor candidates with dis-likable features and
(b) they were associated with Trump who — whether RITO’s like it or not– in not popular.
H.L Mencken quote for the day:
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Lucia,
Yes those were both problems, but they really are the same problem: Trump stepped into key primary races and elevated weak candidates because they parroted the worst of Trump’s rants about the 2020 election. Several Senate candidates more likely to win were kept out of the general election by Trump. Same with the House, although there were plenty of poor Republican House candidates who won the primary on their own. If Trump doesn’t get out of politics, the Republicans (and the country!) are screwed in 2024.
SteveF: “Several Senate candidates more likely to win were kept out of the general election by Trump. ” Agreed, but also there was a lot of Democratic $$ spent on promoting these less-electable persons in the Republican primaries. (Among many sources: this)
Senate control may well come down to a GA runoff, as it did in 2020. I blame Trump’s rants for causing both of those 2020 races to end in Democratic wins. I hope that Trump stays the heck away from GA in the next month.
lucia (Comment #216070): “There were two problems with the Trump endorsed candidates.
(a) they were poor candidates with dis-likable features and
(b) they were associated with Trump who — whether RITO’s like it or not– in not popular.”
.
That theory does not fit the data. Vance was strongly associated with Trump and beat a strong opponent by a comfortable margin. Oz was clearly a much better candidate than Fetterman, was no more strongly associated with Trump than, say, Youngkin, and seems to have lost anyway. O’Dea in Colorado was attacked by Trump and got creamed by a weak incumbent. DeSantis has been strongly associated with Trump and destroyed hi opponent. Smiley and Dixon were strong candidates with no particular connection to Trump who got beat badly.
.
“Trump” does not explain what happened.
I, for one, overlooked the obvious. Wedge issues have a track record of working. Republicans ran on issues that matter to the average person. Democrats ran on wedge issues.
Silver lining: Even if “Trump” does not explain what happened yesterday, it was a bad day for Trump and a great day for DeSantis.
That theory does not fit the data. Vance was strongly associated with Trump and beat a strong opponent by a comfortable margin.
Vance was considered a never Trumper before he was a candidate. The democrats did Vance a favor by running ads in heavy rotation pointing this out. The voters that cared about that issue were not likely to vote for Ryan. On the abortion he has also stated on record he was in favor of ban after 15 weeks not a total ban so that allowed him to dodge that wedge.
“I think it’s totally reasonable to say you cannot abort a baby, especially for elective reasons, after 15 weeks of gestation,” he said. “No civilized country allows it. I don’t want the United States to be an exception.”
In the end I think he’ll end up a quasi-moderate republican which fits the swing nature of Ohio. His danger has been getting through his first primary which is when he tacked right towards Trump. His familial and educational interest with the white underclass makes him dangerous to democrats so they dumped quite a bit of money into defeating him.
I hope that Trump stays the heck away from GA in the next month.
Unfortunately Walker doesn’t need Trump to fail here. He’s one of those candidates that probably shouldn’t have won the primary. The amount of resources from the democrats and the media that is going to go into detailing each and every one of his skeletons and missteps to the public over the next few weeks is going to be pretty ugly for his campaign.
Mike M,
“Smiley and Dixon were strong candidates with no particular connection to Trump who got beat badly.”
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Smiley was not a strong candidate: she got under 34% in the “jungle primary” while the incumbent got 53%. Smiley was also too cute by half about her positions on the 2020 election and abortion, seeming to flip-flop based on what she figured would work in the general instead of the primary.
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Dixon holds some pretty standard Republican positions, but her stand on abortion (absolutely prohibited except to save a mother’s life) is so out of step with Michigan that she may have been unelectable even before Trump endorsed her. When asked in a debate “do you believe Donald Trump legitimately won the 2020 election in Michigan?”, she answered “Yes”. Kiss of death in Michigan. The Republican’s had a gaggle of candidates in their primary, and Dixon took the nomination with just under 40% when three more moderate Republicans split the other 60%. She was anything but a strong candidate.
.
Oz was a poor candidate because he 1) wasn’t really from Pennsylvania, AND 2) only won the primary (with 31%!) because he was endorsed by Trump, which gave him a razor thin win. Once again, two more electable candidates, who were actually resident in PA, split most of the remainder of the votes. Hint to Trump: endorse candidates who actually are residents where they are running. Other hint to Trump: please get out of politics.
Y’all have said everything I had to say.
Andrew P,
“The amount of resources from the democrats and the media that is going to go into detailing each and every one of his skeletons and missteps to the public over the next few weeks is going to be pretty ugly for his campaign.”
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Yes, it is going to be ugly, and even uglier if Trump gets involved. I expect hundreds of millions of Dem money to be spend making sure Walker doesn’t win…. except in the unlikely even Masters beats Kelly in Arizona, which would make Warnoc’s re-election much less important.
Andrew P (Comment #216077): “Vance was considered a never Trumper before he was a candidate.”
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In 2016, Vance was a Trump skeptic. But he became a strong Trump supporter once he saw what Trump was actually doing in office.
———
Andrew P: “The democrats did Vance a favor by running ads in heavy rotation pointing this out.”
.
That is an astonishing claim that I will not accept without strong evidence. SOP for Dems is to depict all Republicans as extremists. I seriously doubt they did the opposite in Ohio.
.
In the *primary*, some of the other candidates spent money depicting Vance as a never Trumper. That strategy collapsed when Trump endorsed Vance.
————
Andrew P: “On the abortion he has also stated on record he was in favor of ban after 15 weeks not a total ban so that allowed him to dodge that wedge.”
.
Quite a few Republicans did that. It did not help them.
———-
Andrew P: “In the end I think he’ll end up a quasi-moderate republican which fits the swing nature of Ohio. His danger has been getting through his first primary which is when he tacked right towards Trump.”
.
Nonsense.
.
Vance was depicted as weak candidate who only got nominated because of Trump until he actually pulled ahead.
.
I don’t think that Vance tacked to the middle at all; but I don’t know that for sure. So far as I know, a bunch of successful and not-yet-eliminated Republicans (Johnson, Budd, DeSantis, Walker) did not tack to the middle at all. I do know that Oz, Ronchetti, and O’Day all tacked to the middle to no effect. Some others who stood their ground (Bolduc, Dixon, Smiley) got slapped down. There does not seem to be a consistent pattern.
Andrew P (Comment #216078): “Unfortunately Walker doesn’t need Trump to fail here. He’s one of those candidates that probably shouldn’t have won the primary.”
.
In the primary, Walker got over 5 times the vote of his nearest competitor. It would have been nice if Georgia Republicans found someone better, but he seems to have been the best they had.
SteveF (Comment #216079),
I did not know about Smiley flip-flopping. So she lost because she flip-flopped and Dixon lost because she didn’t. Huh.
——–
SteveF: “Once again, two more electable candidates, who were actually resident in PA, split most of the remainder of the votes.”
.
Two? I am not sure there was even one. I was intrigued by Barnette, but she went in as a nobody. Had she won with Trump’s endorsement, she would have been depicted as the ultimate unqualified Trump candidate. But there is a chance she could have caught fire.
.
McCormick is an ESG and China supporting hedge fund manager. He would have been the perfect foil for Fetterman with no appeal to either Trump Democrats or MAGA Republicans. It is not Trump’s fault that PA could not find a candidate who was actually good.
All is well in Florida! What happened to the rest of you chumps?
Ha ha. DeSantis won easily and actually carried Miami-Dade county. If you knew Florida’s voting history you would know how amazing that stat is. Rubio also easily won the Senate race.
.
It doesn’t take Carnac the Magnificent to predict this might get a little messy, especially in the Senate. I hear both parties are flying in plane loads of conspiracy theorists for possible recounts. Let’s hope the psycho-pundits don’t start burning down buildings.
.
Hopefully the Republicans can win the house.
I should also add that many on the left should better understand how Trump got elected after Fetterman won his race.
.
My speculation without evidence is 3 problems for the Republicans:
1. Trump
2. Trump
3. Abortion
Tom Scharf,
I agree with the first two problems. On the third, that was the candidates themselves, not Trump or the SC. No moderate positions in states where a moderate position on abortion is the most popular.
..
.
Mike M,
“Dixon lost because she didn’t. Huh.”
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Dixon lost because she was way out of touch with popular sentiment on abortion, AND because she embraced Trump’s “big steal in 2020” position. She was NOT a good fit for Michigan, but was the candidate because more electable candidates split the more moderate votes.
I believe the midterms were a victory for big government. We had negative GDP growth for first half of the year and now have price inflation at rates not seen in decades. That economic bad news has obviously not produced anything close to a red wave. A good statist can ignore bad economic news as long as the state is in control and gaining more power. The partisan approach is to blame the candidates which in this case would be the Republicans. The Democrats put up equally bad candidates and candidates that were further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right.
I have always found it best to look at situations as honestly and realistically as possible even when the results are not to my liking. The electorate is moving to left and being influenced ever more completely by the media and academia. That particularly goes for the younger part of the electorate and makes me curious about how their votes effected the midterms. I also believe that there were hints of the change to favoring more security from big government during the pandemic.
In IL I noticed that the Democrat candidates who have won close races in the Western suburbs for the first time over the past couple of cycles are winning currently by larger margins. My US House district is a redistricting effort to obtain two Hispanic districts in IL with a shape that screams gerrymander. It elected Delia Rameriz 67% to 33% over her Republican opponent. There has been talk of her joining AOC’s gang of four. She is certainly qualified. In IL we also had a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would greatly favor public unions. It requires a 3/5 majority and is very close to that in recent counting.
Tom wrote: “I should also add that many on the left should better understand how Trump got elected after Fetterman won his race.”
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I thought Trump got elected because, like DeSantis, he didn’t do the mealy mouthed, wishy washy, routine of talking around the issues and surrendering to his establishment critics. Fetterman won, like Biden, because he’s not a republican and is one of those people who fails through life being virtuous and can get away with it because of his family’s money. ISTM as mayor of Braddock, he set himself up as lord of the manor. Using the position to work on his image and feel good pet projects, but largely excusing himself from any actual work. He strikes me as a lazier version of AOC.
“MikeN
However, there appears to be a chance he will become like Scott Walker and surrender to the donor class
Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
.
Criticizing someone because you predict he might do something in the future? Not very fair. Nor wise.
”
That is unfair. However, I am not criticizing DeSantis other than the Ron is God ad they put out, which may have been the reason for DeSanctimonious quip.
However, I do worry he will fall under influence of these establishment folks who will push him away from what he’s been doing and have him run a more standard campaign.
SteveF (Comment #216087): “She was NOT a good fit for Michigan, but was the candidate because more electable candidates split the more moderate votes.”
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That is not true (the part about the primary). There were no other decent Republican candidates. Dixon got more votes than the 2nd and 3rd place finishers combined.
.
One could speculate that things might have been different had the Democrat-turned-Republican Craig not screwed up. But polling showed him slowly but steadily losing support, then rapidly losing support as voters got a better feel for him.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #216088):
I believe the midterms were a victory for big government. … The Democrats put up equally bad candidates and candidates that were further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right.
I have always found it best to look at situations as honestly and realistically as possible even when the results are not to my liking. The electorate is moving to left and being influenced ever more completely by the media and academia.
Oz is associated with Trump. Oz has independent name ID, but he won the primary because he was endorsed by Trump. He ran a good race and did not do badly like some of these other Trump endorsed candidates. Oz is also likely a liberal Democrat, but not as liberal as Fetterman.
Trump has several other endorsed candidates who won. Adam Laxalt is leading for now. He half endorsed Eric Schmitt in Missouri. Budd in NC won the primary because of Trump’s endorsement, and won narrowly. It is the one Republican win that is smaller than I expected.
Katie Britt in Alabama is likely a NeverTrumper who got his endorsement by saying the right things in person. I would prefer Mo Brooks be the Senator. Mitch McConnell ran ads against him in an earlier race that ended up with Mitch’s candidate and Brooks losing in the primary and a Democrat beating Roy Moore. Trump had endorsed Brooks this time but switched to Britt when it looked like Brooks would lose, and Brooks wasn’t willing to talk about 2020 election.
Trump is now trashing several of his endorsed candidates who lost.
Mike M,
“With regard to Michigan, maybe Whitmer outspending Dixon 13:1 was also a factor.”
.
Sure, that huge difference in spending would hurt any candidate. But why such a huge discrepancy? I think in large part because the RNC and Republicans in the Senate concluded she didn’t have much of a chance, so they didn’t fund her except at the very last minute. It is notable that most of Whitmer’s funding came from out-of-state… Dems are desperate for potential presidential candidates for 2024. Of course, Whitmer being one of the world’s most irritating and obnoxious Karens is a negative for 2024.
Democrats knocked off three Republican incumbents in the House.
Two of them are associated with Trump, Lauren Boebert and Bo Hines who switched the district he was running in after the campaign started when Budd ran for Senate. The third is Steve Chabot who I assume was overconfident and didn’t campaign.
My bad, there have been 5 Dem pickups to date. The Latina who won a special election this year in Texas was beaten in the rematch. Doyle in PA lost.
Democrats have gained seats nationally if you exclude Florida.
Will Democrats reward Sean Maloney? Republicans spend about ten million to beat him while he was running the Dems House campaign arm.
I did a quick nose count on all outstanding House races. Making a few assumptions, it looks like the Republicans will net +5 to +8, just barely gaining control of the House. But the uncertainty is probably +/- 2 seats, so we may still have Pelosi around. After thinking about that, I am inclined to vomit.
MikeN,
Probably Maloney gets a job in the Biden administration or maybe an ambassadorship to a European country…. where he can go on vacation for a couple of years.
Russian forces commander Surovikin just announced another victorious retreat:
“Kherson and settlements around cannot be supplied and function. It is proposed to take up defense along the left bank of the Dnieper River.”
Remember where you first heard that prediction?
Comment 215914, Nov 3:
“It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river.”
Comment 215941, Nov 4:
“The Ukrainians have blown almost all of the bridges so russian resupply to the East is by ferry, and many of those have been sunk.”
Careful! Bit of confusion: The right bank or side is always on the right side of the direction in which the water is flowing ie facing downstream, and the left bank is always the left hand side facing downsteam. The Dnipro river flows North to South so the Left bank is the East side. [on maps where North is up]
Mo’ Brooks was a weasel. Just saying. I’m sure Katie is just as bad if not worse, but the fact remains.
The third is Steve Chabot who I assume was overconfident and didn’t campaign.
Redistricting did Chabot in. In the last election the Ohio went 12-4 to republicans and we lost a house seat. The new map leaves the possibility for 13-2 but several of those districts are really competitive. Those went blue including Chabots District 1.
In SW Ohio the previous map split the urban core of Cincinnati with suburban and rural areas. Western Hamilton county, western parts of the city, and warren county to the north made up Chabots District 1. The Eastern side of hamilton county was combined with five rural/suburban counties east to form district 2. In the 2022 map those two districts were split into three. Western part of Hamilton County and city was combined with the 3 rural counties north in district 8 that Enoch won. Chabot’s base was in that western part. The eastern part of Hamilton county that he received was in Wenstrup’s district last time so Chabot had lttle existing connection to them. It doesn’t help that there is a real East-West animosity historically in the City.
It looks like the people who voted for Libertarian Chase Oliver in Georgia (a bit over 2%) will get to choose whether Warnock or Walker is elected on December 3, and probably which party controls the Senate. I’ll be surprised if those voters support Walker, but you never know. Most likely but sad outcome: Biden gets to appoint crazy-left judges for the next 2+ years.
MikeN,
Whoever came up with that crazy idea for an ad should be fired immediately and never allowed to work in politics again. Badly done, really offensive, and stupid. Good grief.
SteveF and MikeN have excellent analysis but Mike M right is on the money that there was no pro-Trump or Anti-trump pattern. Trumps fearlessness and leadership in policy is balanced by his lack of self-awareness and easiness to lampoon.
Most agree that DeSantis is a much better politician who can step in to take Trump’s mantle — if Trump will have the good sense to pass (which he likely won’t).
The pattern that I see is states with mail-in balloting that are controlled by Democrat governors or secretaries of state. Every registered Dem can be given concierge service to provide them weekly mailings of ballot applications months before the election, praise for applying, alerts when the ballot is coming, daily text and email reminders to send it in, praise for voting with their acknowledgment that it is received, all 30-60 days before election day, usually before the first debate.
Oh and voter registration is automatic when one moves into the state and gets a driver’s license. No proof of citizenship is necessary. Nor is there a need to show residency for the required time, usually a year but sometimes 6 months. It’s all honor system now in Dem states.
It won’t be the Libertarians who decide the Georgia runoff. The outcome will be dictated by turnout.
.
Following on from Ron Graf: I wonder if there might be a correlation between Republican under performance and poor control of voting integrity.
Key states for Ron’s thesis would be Wisconsin, California, Nevada. I’m not sure how much of their previous covid rules that Wisconsin eliminated. Nevada passed everything into law. California is super lax and right now the Republican takeover of the House is in races in California and a few in New York where they have small leads.
A North Carolina race in 2018 was overturned because of absentee ballot violations, suspicion that someone was changing votes after collecting ballots. This would never be noticed in California.
Florida has mail in ballots and it was a GOP rout all the way up and down the ticket. Probably mostly related to DeSantis coattails is my guess. FL flipped 3 house seats, and it is 20-8 in a nearly 50/50 state. Gerrymandering? FL has been turning red over the past 10 years for sure.
.
DeSantis margin in 2018 = 0.4%
DeSantis margin in 2022 = 19.4%
.
We can probably depend on Trump bringing a wrecking ball to GA again, ha ha, groan. I just wish he would go away at this point, but it’s a free country. Kind of.
I doubt Trump will have any further effect in Georgia. Demagogue Party messaging will continue to be “All Republicans are equivalent to Trump” and “Walker is Trump’s water boy”. Or some such. I don’t see what Trump can do about that.
Interesting comment from John Hinderaker:
The major exception to last night’s gloom was Florida, where Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio both won crushing victories. Why was that? At least part of the explanation is that Florida was one state where the Democrats couldn’t pretend Trump was on the ballot. Ron DeSantis was on the ballot.
Maybe the best case for the Republic in 2024 would be for Trump to run and lose the nomination to DeSantis.
Mike M.
Oz was clearly a much better candidate than Fetterman, was no more strongly associated with Trump than, say, Youngkin, and seems to have lost anyway.
I disagree. Oz is much more strongly associated with Trump. Oz’s entire political credential is “Trump backing”. Youngkin is a sitting governor and has a record. No matter what Trump, nor what the situation might have been in the past, he now has a record. So Youngkin is not a “purely-Trump” candidate.
.
Oz is precisely the sort apurely-Trump Republican candidates. THe failed to win a seat that should have been next to impossible to lose. . A candidate with some positive would have beat Fetterman. But being only-Trump-endorsed resulted in him losing an otherwise winnable seat.
.
DeSantis has been strongly associated with Trump and destroyed hi opponent.
You are using past tense. DeSantis is absolutely, positively no longer a “Trump” candidate. Trump was attacking him shorter before polling! Trying to use his election as evidence in favor of Trump backing is absurd.
.
Trump has shut up on that now because he probably realizes it’s not working. But DeSantis is not a Trump candidate.
.
That some non-Trump candidates lost is irrelevant. Trump backed poor unappealing candidates — like Oz. And those candidates lost.
Mike M,
“I don’t see what Trump can do about that.”
.
He could:
1) not got to Georgia to campaign
2) issue a carefully worded public statement urging Republicans, Libertarians, and independents in Georgia to vote for Walker, noting that Republican control of the Senate is needed to block the appointment of judges who ought not serve on the Federal bench
3) not say a damned word about 2020
.
OTOH, the above is about equivalent to asking him to sprout wings and take his 250 pounds to the air.
Russell
Not sure what to think on the Russian announcement to withdraw from the west bank, but I tend to agree with the Ukraine position.
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“..Actions speak louder than words. We see no signs that Russia is leaving Kherson without a fight. A part of the ru-group is preserved in the city, and additional reserves are charged to the region. ???????? is liberating territories based on intelligence data, not staged TV statements…” Nov 9 https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1590379076464041984
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No Russian movement off the front lines as yet and I find it unusual that Russia would give Ukraine a heads up on its strategic plans.
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I can well believe a slow leap frog back to continuously pound the Ukraine troops moving up in the open and out of their entrenchments. This would be consistent with Russian tactics of an attrition strategy and Russia can always say its changed its mind about a full withdrawal from the west bank later. Mud season is here and I foresee little movement over the next several weeks until the freeze
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I am also confused about your comments on my last post about the problems regarding Ukraine ability to replace Ukraine air defenses. I did not address infrastructure. Or were you responding to a different post? I do find your comment that Russia has failed to destroy a good bit of Ukraine infrastructure to be at odds with even Ukraine statements on this subject.
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I don’t think it’s been established that Trump support or non-support was irrelevant. He definitely backed some bad candidates. For awhile it looked like some of those bad candidates might win, but they were still not good decisions by Trump. He endorsed Romney in 2018, and learned nothing from it in picking some NeverTrumpers again. Wray was his pick for head of FBI. One of the people involved in framing him as a Russian spy, he chose to be head of the CIA.
Not sure why Russia would announce a withdrawal, it’s not their style. I would treat their intentions with skepticism. Perhaps the new commander knows he can get away with it now and blame it on the old commander.
Mike M: “Maybe the best case for the Republic in 2024 would be for Trump to run and lose the nomination to DeSantis.”
I agree. The Republicans can then adopt a true platform, and run on something other than “let’s have 4 more years of Trump.” Perhaps after a few primaries, all the other candidates will line up behind DeSantis, to avoid nominating Trump. (As Dems did in 2020, supporting Biden rather than Sanders, whom many considered unelectable.)
DeSantis had the largest margin of victory in FL since 1868, Not a single major newspaper in Florida endorsed him, which went unnoticed by the voters. Humorously this is now a badge of honor for Republicans.
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WSJ: “In a victory speech in Tampa, Mr. DeSantis proclaimed that his state is where “woke goes to die””
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As HaroldW states the establishment lining up behind DeSantis in 2024 isn’t necessarily going to help much against Trump. The only thing they can really do is clear the field so it is DeSantis vs Trump.
Trump backed some weak candidates, but I don’t see that he was responsible for those candidates. Mostly he backed candidates who were likely to win anyway, then took the credit.
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At the time Trump endorsed Oz, about a month before the primary, Oz had a slim lead over McCormick. With Trump’s endorsement, Oz managed a very narrow victory over McCormick. A lot of voters made up their minds in that month, so maybe few of them would have gone for Oz without Trump. We can’t know. But I don’t know of much evidence that says Trump made much difference.
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Trump’s endorsement seemed to provide a big lift for Vance. That was partly because Vance’s opponents tried to convince voters that Vance was a never Trumper. And Vance went on to handily beat a very strong Democrat candidate.
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One place where Trump really went in for underdogs was in a couple of Georgia races. His guys lost; badly as I recall.
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Trump is an important figure. He is not some sort of magical demon.
The kerfuffle here over the Republican candidate lack of quality loses sight of the Democrat candidate lack of quality and being much further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right. Ben Shapiro today was commenting on the lack of quality Republican candidates and just as I was about to yell what about the Democrats he did a vocal hand wave with something like low quality candidates are accepted on the Democrat side.
I see a bit of contradiction here with when the potential for winning an election big seemed possible and it was the all-knowing voting public would throw the bums out and when that did not materialize it appears that the voting public was fooled by appearances and messaging.
In my view most of the voting public does not have the time or desire and sometimes the intellect to make informed decisions when it comes to voting and thus depend on the media and other members of the intelligentsia for that information. The public is more informed about their cell phone, house, car, food, clothes and sundry other items than they are about their political candidates ideas (or lack thereof) and the implications. I will take the free market over the democratic process when it comes to being or becoming informed.
NY was curiously a disaster for Democrats in the house. It looks like the Republicans may flip 5 seats there. This story evolved over the past year.
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NY passed a state amendment to prevent gerrymandering. A new map could not be agreed upon by an independent commission (big surprise) and the NY state assembly and governor summarily made their own ultra-gerrymandered map. The state’s Supreme Court rejected it, and ultimately had to draw the maps themselves. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/27/1095100208/new-york-redistricting-rejected
Apr 2022: “The legal fight over New York’s redistricting process could be a factor in the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the U.S. House.”
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #216120): “The kerfuffle here over the Republican candidate lack of quality loses sight of the Democrat candidate lack of quality and being much further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right.”
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Exactly right. A bunch of the Democrat Senate incumbents (Hassan, Wernock, Bennet, Murray, Kelly, Cortez Masto) are a pretty lackluster lot. But they did have the advantage of incumbency. Fetterman was a joke even before his stroke. Hochul is both inept and a lousy candidate. etc.
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Virtually every Democrat supports abortion up to the moment of birth. I don’t think that any Republican is that extreme.
Of course it is the candidate’s quality. It must be!!! It certainly couldn’t be the voters rejecting your righteous policy platform, that only happens to the other guys who are immoral and only tricking people into voting for them with slick subversive ads.
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Abortion, Jan 6th, supporting dubious claims of election fraud. No actual economic plan. No separation on how to handle Ukraine, China. Etc. Not helpful in close races.
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All in all, a mediocre unfocused race run by both sides IMO. The Republicans should have done better given the environment, but they didn’t. If they hold on to the house the net effect of a split government will still be accomplished. A narrow win but the polls were apparently within 1% this time. Only people’s expectations were off.
Personally, I’m not sure most democrats know what democrats support. The overwheming theme on democrats who walked away was an “awakening” that what they believed was true, about democrats and republicans, actually wasn’t.
It is just barely possible that control of the Senate won’t come down to Georgia. Counting ballots in Arizona is taking forever. It seems that the early ballots have been counted; the delays are with ballots counted on election day. Quite likely mostly Republican. Kari Lake claims the biggest delays have been in strongly Republican areas. Of course, she might be biased.
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That said, it does seem that Masters has an awful lot of ground to make up to beat Kelly.
Mike M,
Election officials in Arizona have been congratulating themselves on being able to have ‘nearly all’ ballots counted by Friday afternoon. There is something very wrong with your system if 3 days to count most ballots is considered ‘good’.
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I think Ms Lake may be mistaken. My understanding was that the uncounted ballots were mostly from the Phoenix area, and even as vote totals have increased (very slowly!) the differences between Dems and Republicans does not seem to have moved much. My guess: Lake has a modest chance of winning, but Masters is very unlikely to win. Which means another Warnock runoff for control of the Senate, where Dems will pour a hundred million dollars in to make it very unlikely Walker wins.
Florida may be where woke goes to die, but if so, then California is where woke tries to kill you.
They already spent $27 for each Georgia citizen in that race. They may double that if control of the Senate is on the line. Crazy.
Ed Forbes (Comment #216114) “I do find your comment that Russia has failed to destroy a good bit of Ukraine infrastructure to be at odds with even Ukraine statements on this subject.”
Yes, I think the Ukrainian are hyping the grid destruction far beyond its actual destruction. They are trying [successfully] to get newer and better NATO air defense systems. I say they will move these to the war zone to increase their battlefield advantage.
My analysis I posted in Comment #216057:
“I am still working with the NASA “Black Marble” and the Ukraine electrical grid. Because the NASA gis files are difficult to work with I have posted two screenshots that everyone can load:
3NOV2021, before the war. Ukraine is very sparsely lit compared to its neighbors to the East [Poland eg]. It is an agriculture community with vast expenses of darkness.
3NOV2022, after 10 months of war AND Putin’s attempt at taking down the grid. Ukraine is still sparsely lit but not a lot different than 12 months prior.
3NOV2021 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134143345897473?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
3NOV2022 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134373529317379?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA”
Source: https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
I don’t think it’s going to come down to this, but the RNCC/DNCC lawyers’ wet dream is a 217-217 House, to be decided by Boebert’s district in CO, currently with a margin of fewer than 100 votes. Can you imagine how many ballots one can challenge out of 300K? It’ll keep them busy for weeks!
The real election lawyer enrichment plan may be Arizona. People went to a polling place, checked in, but the workers could not print the ballot. So the officials told the voters they could just go to a different polling place. When they tried to check in at the other polling place, they were not allowed to on the grounds that they had already voted.
MikeN: “Key states for Ron’s thesis would be Wisconsin, California, Nevada.”
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Add PA, GA and AZ. All of the key swing states that there have been questionable statistical anomalies changed their voting administration for 2020. In PA the legislature objected to the changes as being in violation of the state’s constitution but they were overruled by the PA Supreme Court, who according to the US constitution has no power over election laws. The legislature appealed to the US Supreme Court who declined to get involved. Eight other states sued PA in the Supreme Court after the election but the SCOTUS said they were too late (Latches).
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Either everyone should vote by mail or limit it to those unable to vote in person. This is Kari Lake’s issue and it looks like AZ voters agree with her, at least the ones who stood in line to vote.
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The WaPo is projecting she is favored to win.
“According to our model, Lake is behind in the vote count, but slightly favored to win after all votes are counted. Hobbs still has a chance.”
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I think Blake Masters lost. A lot of the Dem vote was already in before his strong showing in the polls. I will credit that they had their debate before mail in voting started, unlike PA, which had it ~30 days after ballots were mailed.
Ken Fritsch,
“I was about to yell what about the Democrats he did a vocal hand wave with something like low quality candidates are accepted on the Democrat side.”
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I think it is very clear that there are plenty of politicians who are unlikely to blind us with their brilliance. It is also true that there are many hopelessly dumb politicians (Maxine Waters, Mazie Hirono, Rick Perry, and Kamala Harris are but a few well known examples from a huge population). But even if voters recognize a politician is pretty dumb…. or suffers from obvious dementia or even brain damage…. a politician will continue to win elections if they consistently act to protect the interests of their constituents and continue to reflect their constituents values.
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One of the reasons Congress seems always willing to defer to ‘experts’ in the bureaucracy on critical choices is that they are woefully short (on average) of their own expertise. I find it distressing, but I doubt it will ever change.
Tom Scharf,
“They already spent $27 for each Georgia citizen in that race. They may double that if control of the Senate is on the line.”
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Sure, and it has already started. There have long been complains about contributions from the wealthy to Republican politicians, but the reality today is that lots of people with astronomical personal wealth, many from the tech sector in California, are spending untold millions to support ‘progressive’ causes and politicians. Has there even been a level of personal political expenditure like the $400 million “zuckerbucks” program to get out democrat votes in 2020? I doubt it. The level of personal wealth that the tech sector has generated is unprecedented in the country’s history, and so is the level of political influence those very wealthy people now exercise.
I counted up outstanding votes in each county in Nevada and calculated (based on votes for each candidate tabulated so far in each county) how many more votes Laxalt and Cortez-Masto are likely to get. Results: Laxalt is likely end up with close to 442,000 votes, while Cortez-Masto will get close to 426,000 votes in the final tally. So Laxalt will almost certainly win….. and the Georgia runoff will determine control of the Senate.
There is some real chance Manchin will switch to an independent before his next election if he chooses to run for Senate again in 2024. Although he is very well liked in WV he may not be able to overcome knee jerk anti-Democrat vibes there this time. Switching will guarantee his reelection. If the Democrats don’t come through with his promised permitting reform then he may leave the party.
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This weeks election in WV had Republican US House reps winning by >30%.
WV Senate is 29/4 Republican
WV House is 87/11 Republican
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Banning and limiting abortion also has a lot of support in WV.
I predict Hershel Walker loses the runoff.
Tom Scharf,
If Joe Manchin wants to have real influence AND get re-elected in 2024 (for certain), all he has to do is declare himself an independent and then caucus with the Republicans, a la Bernie Sanders with the Democrats…. giving control of the Senate to the Republicans. I doubt he will, but I think he should.
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Lucia,
I agree, Walker will likely lose the run-off; not certain, but likely. Three factors will work against him:
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1) many millions of dollars worth of negative ads the Dems will run
2) the bad vibe of being associated with Trump (which may be why he didn’t win on Tuesday)
3) the people who voted for the Libertarian are more likely aligned with the Democrats than the Republicans
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But as you say, predictions are hard.
“I predict Hershel Walker loses the runoff.”
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If so, would it be because Warnock would have won in a rank choice voting once the liberatarian was removed or are you just feeling past is prologue in a GA senate runoff?
Russell,
There are a number of explanations for the Russian announcement and their current moves to withdraw from Kherson. One that seems interesting is that the US and Russia have made a deal requiring several steps by both sides, to be implemented one step at a time. May likely be internet fever dreams, but still an interesting idea.
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The US to lean on Ukraine to accept. As their budget is completely underwritten by the US, I do not see how they could not follow the US lead on this. Neither side may admit to a deal, but actions speak for themselves.
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Withdrawal across the river to be without Ukraine pushing the line and no attacks on Russian convoys during the withdrawal.
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Ukraine to withdraw from artillery range of Donetsk city and from other areas of Donbas.
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The US signs a treaty for no NATO membership for Ukraine.
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The US to lift economic sanctions and unfreeze assets.
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Basically what could have achieved last April. We will see over the next week or so if this is just internet fever dreams or not.
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I’m not enthusiastic for Walker’s chances. He was a great running back for UGA though.
Walker was not as good a running back as OJ Simpson…. but definitely a better person. 😉
SteveF,
There’s a fourth factor: absentee dad stories about Walker will hurt with the demographic he has to pick up.
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Yeah, he’s not as bad as OJ. Murdering your wife puts you in a different category from other things. But Walker isn’t running against OJ.
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or are you just feeling past is prologue in a GA senate runoff?
I’m feeling Walker specifically will be unattractive to the voters who didn’t vote for either of the run-off candidates.
Ed Forbes,
Yes, just fever dreams. The Ukraine is clear: they will not begin to negotiate until they get 100% of what they want before negotiations start….. it almost seems they are not interested in negotiation. I speculate that is because they are not interested in negotiations. Having your country funded at $100+ billion a year with no obligations whatsoever may have something to do with that.
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That the USA is going into debt to the tune of about $2,500 per year for each Ukrainian citizen seems to have been forgotten by everyone involved. This is not sustainable. You may have read what Herbert Stein said about things that can’t go on forever; it certainly applies here. We just have to wait for the numbskulls in Washington to understand that.
Turnout in the runoff will surely be lower. Whether Walker of Warnock wins will likely be decided by who votes and who does not. Over 200K Georgians voted for Kemp but not Walker. If they normally lean Republican, they may not see much point in bothering to vote again for Warnock. That would work to Walker’s advantage. Ditto for the 50K+ who voted Libertarian for Senate but not Governor. Of course, there are other groupings that might go the other way. I see no basis better than a coin flip to make a prediction.
SteveF (Comment #216145): “The Ukraine is clear: they will not begin to negotiate until they get 100% of what they want before negotiations start”.
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No, they are just not going to make concessions until negotiations start. Perfectly reasonable.
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What concessions are being offered by Russia? None.
Lucia,
Maybe that will hurt him, but here is what Walker said:
“I have four children. Three sons and a daughter. They’re not ‘undisclosed’ — they’re my kids. I support them all and love them all. I’ve never denied my children, I confirmed this when I was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports Fitness & Nutrition. I just chose not to use them as props to win a political campaign. What parent would want their child involved in garbage, gutter politics like this? Saying I hide my children because I don’t discuss them with reporters to win a campaign? That’s outrageous. I can take the heat, that’s politics — but leave my kids alone.
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Maybe his motives are not so bad as his opponents suggest.
Mike M,
“No, they are just not going to make concessions until negotiations start. Perfectly reasonable.”
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Not sure what you have been reading, but here is what Zelenskyy said on November 10:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the international community late Monday to “force Russia into real peace talks” and listed his usual conditions for dialogue: the return of all of Ukraine’s occupied lands, compensation for damage caused by the war and the prosecution of war crimes.
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How is that not demanding 100% of what you want before you agree to start negotiations? The Russians have made no demands to start negotiations that I am aware of. Do you have a list of Russian demands to start negotiations?
Real negotiations have to be held privately. A bunch of public posturing strutting around like peacocks is counterproductive.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, pubic bluster is counterproductive if you want negotiations….. another reason to believe neither the USA nor the Ukraine actually want negotiations.
Maybe the red wave happened, just not where expected. This says that Republicans won the popular vote for the House, 52.8% to 47.2%. https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-midterms-2022/results/house
Not final, but it should not change much. If the numbers hold up, it is roughly WHAT WAS EXPECTED from the generic ballot polling assuming a 3 pt Democrat bias.
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In 2020, the Dems won the popular vote, 50.8% to 47.7%. So Republicans went from -3.1% to +5.6%. Nearly a nine point shift. From 2016 to 2018 there was a shift of 9.7%; that produced a swing of 41 seats. But this time the swing in popular vote did not translate into seats.
Mike M,
I think you have to look at the vote totals state by state to evaluate the total vote difference. Could be that Democrats in uncompetitive states just didn’t bother with voting, so no impact on the house or senate outcomes, but a big shift toward Republicans in share of total votes. There are so many non-competitive districts (and even whole states) that vote totals may not mean what they did in the past. Look at Massachusetts: not a single Republican elected to any state-wide or national office (and not many to local offices). A Republican might just figure voting in Massachusetts won’t make much difference.
The Russian withdrawal has several reasons floating around the internet. A couple of the main ones
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Russia and the US nave made a deal. This is generally thought to be a reasonable solution, so not thought likely.
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Russia is withdrawing the forces on the west bank as they heavily consist of paratroopers, their best troops, and want to put them back in strategic reserve. Russia feels they can get Kherson back later. Russia then destroys all the bridges over the Niper river, cutting supply to a major portion of the Ukraine army fighting in the far east of Ukraine . This is followed up with attacks using the 300k reserves called up.
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Russia defense is collapsing and they are running to safety on the east bank of the river.
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Ed,
The east side of the river is the sensible defensive position. Seems odd that you are searching for other reasons, some far fetched, and ignoring the obvious. Ever heard of Occam? The simplest explanation is usually the right one. The Russians don’t give a hoot about Kherson, they care about their land corridor and the canal delivering water to the Crimea.
SteveF,
I think you are right about Russia moving to a more easily defended position. It is significant that they *have* to that because they are losing. They certainly care about keeping Kherson, but they have to prioritize. They need to shore up defenses elsewhere with troops freed up from Kherson.
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The interesting part will come when Ukraine redeploys their troops from the right bank. They won’t need to make a contested crossing of the Dnieper to do that.
Perhaps Republicans overperformed in districts that don’t matter, where they usually get 20-30%.
I have been following the OSINT reports on the Kherson retreat. These are sources I have come to trust over the months. They are anecdotal reports from soldiers, media and civilians. It’s a complicated situation. Here are some samples.
On the Ukrainian advance:
“Dozens of settlements have been liberated in the last 24 hours, most notably Snihurivka, a russian stronghold north of Kherson city for the past 8 months.”
“The following animated map is a best guess of Ukrainian troop advances in the past couple of days. Noteworthy that it’s only a few miles deep but it’s along a 75 mile long front”, https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1590859897469833216?s=20&t=nygHAE08kig7RfnXlPC9eg
On the Russian retreat:
“Several ferries and barges crossing the Dnipro river are visible in satellite imagery from today as Russian forces withdraw from the river’s right (west) bank.”
“Ukrainian forces continue to conduct constant pinpoint artillery strikes on Russian crossing points over the Dnipro.”
“Russian column of military equipment was hit in Antonivka as they tried to retreat.”
“Russian sources are now also reporting a large amount of Russian forces are still stuck on East side of the Dnipro.”
“There is reports of large amounts of Russian personnel at the crossing areas.”
“If you Ukranians don’t start negotiations soon all the russians are going to be gone.” …. seems to be what the “Negotiation Nuts” are saying to the Ukranians.
From Radio Free Europe:
“Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region have since September 6 reclaimed more than 300 settlements and areas home to around 150,000 people”
“Ukraine had retaken 6,000 square kilometers in its recent counteroffensive in the northeast, where dozens of areas, including the cities of Izyum, Kupyansk, and Balaklia have been retaken.” https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-battlefield-advances-zelenskiy/32029337.html
…and now there’s Kherson in the South.
“Perhaps Republicans overperformed in districts that don’t matter…”
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Precisely. Dems have shown a superior ability to concentrate their resources on close races. Mail-in balloting has allowed them to have many ways to influence the election besides media blitz and TV ads.
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I would concur with Lucia’s prediction on GA runoff except for that I think libertarian are not casual voters and mostly identify with GOP. And Dems already gave it all they had for Warnock.
I think Georgia result depends on the other results. If it is 50D-49R, then some voters might be more likely to vote Republican who don’t like Walker. This was how Trump got elected with the Supreme Court.
Pollster expect Republicans to eventually lose in Nevada. 538:
“In Nevada, Laxalt leads Cortez Masto 49 percent to 48 percent — a margin of 15,867 votes. However, there are roughly 100,000 ballots left to count, and they’re mostly mail-in ballots, which favor Democrats. So we think Cortez Masto will probably take the lead once they’re counted.”
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Amazingly all the slow counting states get just enough votes to let Democrats win. This may be reality but it’s not going to be accepted graciously by the skeptical and needs to be fixed.
Tom Scharf,
If Laxalt loses in NV, then nobody is going to spend a fortune on the runoff in Georgia….. it just won’t matter as much.
Ron Graf (Comment #216160): “I think libertarian are not casual voters and mostly identify with GOP.”
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I have no idea if libertarian are casual voters or nor or if they tend to prefer one party. But all the evidence I have seen (such as exit polls) is that Libertarian candidates in competitive races have very little impact. I think the reason is that the people who *vote* for them are “a pox on both your houses” types. So they don’t much care whether the Republican or Democrat wins.
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There is no reason to believe that libertarians and the people who vote for Libertarians are the same people, although there is overlap.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216162): “Amazingly all the slow counting states get just enough votes to let Democrats win. This may be reality but it’s not going to be accepted graciously by the skeptical and needs to be fixed.”
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Indeed.
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Laxalt says that most of the ballots to be counted are not actually mail-in. They are mail-out ballots that were returned by hand to polling places on election day. He claims they are mostly Republican, unlike traditional mail-in ballots. We shall see.
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Congress sets election day. They should specify that “election day” means the last day for receipt of valid votes.
Mike M: “There is no reason to believe that libertarians and the people who vote for Libertarians…”
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Great point. I never thought of it; I wonder if Libertarian candidates realized this.
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The people that wish a pox on both of your houses are not liking Biden more than not liking Trump right now because Trump is out of power and already being pursued by all sorts of people with guns and warrants.
Mike M,
“Laxalt says that most of the ballots to be counted are not actually mail-in.”
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Maybe, but here is reality: Yesterday at this time Laxalt was ahead by ~15,000 votes, it is now ~9,000 votes, with “12%” remaining to be counted. Based on where the outstanding votes are, I would guess that lead will narrow by at least 5,000 votes.
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If Laxalt manages to win, it is going to be by a few thousand votes, and nothing like the pre-election polling suggested.
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The situation is much worse for Lake and Masters in Arizona: the vast majority of outstanding votes are in the two counties that went strongly for the Democrats. I put Lake and Masters chances of winning at close to 0%.
“Congress sets election day. They should specify that “election day” means the last day for receipt of valid votes.”
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That sounds nice, but it is not what Congress would likely do if they ever got involved in state voting rules. More like: 100% mail-in voting, with votes counted if received within 14 days after “election day”, no requirement for voter ID or signature match, ballot harvesting everywhere without limits, and no guarantee a voter is even a citizen. Which was pretty much the bill Democrats wanted to pass this year. Be careful what you wish for.
SteveF (Comment #216169): “If Laxalt manages to win, it is going to be by a few thousand votes, and nothing like the pre-election polling suggested.”
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RCP’s final rating on that race was “toss up” with Laxalt projected to win by 0.6%. That would be 6000 votes. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/senate/nv/nevada_senate_laxalt_vs_cortez_masto-7392.html
The final RCP average had Laxalt up, but polls in Nevada historically underestimate Democrat support. My guess is that is due to effective ballot harvesting.
SteveF (Comment #216170): “Be careful what you wish for.”
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I am being careful. I am not advocating any expansion of federal power. Congress already sets election day, they have done so for Presidential elections since 1845, more recently for other federal offices.
The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/7
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Note that “the day for the election” is undefined. It used to be that there was no need to define that term; now there is a need.
Gosh, have I become Republican establishment? From this article
Trump’s critics in the GOP establishment are blaming him for their disappointing performance in Tuesday’s election, in which Republican candidates lost key races across the country and Republican turnout fell short of expectations.
Republican strategists worry that if the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and GOP candidate Herschel Walker turns into a referendum on Trump, it will likely result in a loss that could cost them control of the Senate.
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[Quoting a Republican aide ]“He [Trump] doesn’t know how to do anything other than make things about him.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Mike M,
My main point about Laxalt was that his claim of most outstanding votes being Republican is nonsense, and the clear trend over the past 48 hours shows this. His lead three days ago suggested he would likely win, but that now is not at all certain. He may squeak by, but there is at least a reasonable chance he will lose by a thousand or so votes. If I were Laxalt, I wouldn’t be making dubious public statements.
HaroldW,
“Gosh, have I become Republican establishment? ”
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Not unless I have too…. and I doubt that I have. Trump’s behavior is just so destructive (to Republicans!), so idiotic, and so selfish that I simply can’t support the guy…. evah. He needs to retire from politics.
On the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, I find it strange that for an army supposedly cut out of supply, they were able to evacuate an estimated 25k troops and their equipment from the front lines and over the river in about 24 hours.
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Much of the withdrawal was over the “destroyed “ bridge.
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As I surmised, the Russian issue with supply was not current, but concerns of possible future issues that drove their planning.
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The withdrawal was a tactical success, but the Russian public looks to be furious because of the withdrawal from Russian territory. The Russian political leaders are working to assuage this anger or face political problems at home. Success on the other fronts are now required now to address the Russian public concerns.
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The freeze is coming in the next couple of weeks that will allow far reaching mechanized movement. We will see what happens then.
Mike M,
“I am not advocating any expansion of federal power.”
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OK, but there is no possibility Democrats would go along with changing the law to require ballots be received by election day. They would be more than happy to do make the other changes I listed.
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Loosie-goosy voting rules and ballot collection in states controlled by Democrats will continue indefinitely, and may get worse. I suspect 2024 will not have an election day, but rather an election week, and after that, maybe an election month… say early November to early December. I think the goal for Democrats is the ability to harvest ballots from “legal voters” even after election day, so they can win every close race.
I think Trump is finally done. I’m reading a lot of this. And between the options, I think I prefer it this way. Trump out of the way for 2024, no diffusion of blame for the next couple of years of trouble onto Republicans.. Things have a better chance of working out in the end. Just have to survive the next few years, and I think the next few years were going to be rough no matter what happened with the Senate anyway.
[Edit: Well. Less grounds for successful diffusion of blame, maybe I should have said.]
A Federal district judge has stopped the Biden administration’s loan forgiveness program as unconstitutional. There will be an appeal to the 5th circuit court of appeals, where I expect the judges ruling will be upheld by the appeals court….. then on to the Supreme Court…. it may take until 2024 to play out.
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The reason the Biden Administration will never end the “national emergency” of the covid pandemic is because that is the only justification for the student loan forgiveness program (2003 HEROS act). The loan forgiveness program has nothing at all to do with the intent of the 2003 law, but is the only fig leaf the administration has to justify its unlawful actions.
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So in case you wondered when the covid “emergency” will end, the answer is: not likely until a Republican is elected President.
“Russian territory”, ha ha. I’ll check last year’s maps.
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Russia can just declare London their territory, right? Ukraine can declare Moscow as Ukrainian territory, right? Thus, it is so.
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I think reasonable people would call this territory under dispute, but others apparently think Russia can just assert ownership of anything, anywhere. The Russian people might be feeling a bit embarrassed by the performance of their mighty army so far, and that is a direct threat to Putin’s ego and future.
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Right now you look at what Putin has done and wonder what has been gained here and what it has cost. Compare this to what they probably thought was going to happen, Crimea II. You can only hide that reality from the Russians for so long. As it sits Putin might be wise to get out of this while the getting is good.
I would love to see Trump go, but everyone spiking the football on his exit should be aware that the fundamental conditions that brought Trump to the forefront still exist. He will only be replaced by a sane version of Trump. DeSantis or someone else.
Tom,
I agree. I’m really only glad Trump is out for a couple of reasons, like (1) I won’t support him because I think he thinks his political interests are more important than the preservation of our political system and (2) I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of occupying the Oval Office again.
But sure. The problems that gave rise to Trump still exist. Maybe DeSantis or someone like him will clean it up. I’m just glad to think Trump might not be able to stand in the way of that.
Tom Scharf,
I am perfectly OK with a sane version of Trump like DeSantis, but not the insane version we have suffered for most the last 6 years.
mark bofill,
“I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of occupying the Oval Office again.”
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Well, he may have a slightly better chance than I do…. but not a lot better. Far too many people loath him for him to win election, and with good cause. I do hope the execrable and incompetent Merrick Garland heeds some sensible words: “Never murder a man who is committing suicide.” Forget about filing charges while Trump is self-destructing; filing politically motivated charges will only help Trump, not hurt him.
Two recent things about Trump.
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One is that before the election he made a wonderfully Trumpian statement that if the Republicans do well, he should get the credit, but if they do badly he would not be to blame; followed immediately by a prediction that the exact opposite would happen. If you take Trump literally, that is one more example of how unhinged and egotistical he is. But if you take Trump seriously, you realize that he parodied himself to illustrate the silliness of his critics.
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He was absolutely right. Lots of people are blaming Trump for the disappointing election results. How many would have given Trump credit for a red tsunami? Few or none, I think.
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Then yesterday Trump sent out a borderline deranged email attacking DeSantis: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/11/dementia-don.php
It is often said that Trump has been living rent free in the heads of his opponents. I am starting to think that DeSantis has taken residence in Trump’s head.
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I think this is the beginning of the end for Trump. He has already alienated many of his supporters with his behavior since the 2020 election. He knows he can’t beat DeSantis without going negative, He can’t go negative without alienating DeSantis supporters, but that includes most Trump supporters. Either way, he loses.
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I hope Trump runs in 2024. That way Republican voters can officially repudiate him.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216180): “I think reasonable people would call this territory under dispute”.
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I disagree. One might call Crimea “territory under dispute”. But Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts are Ukrainian territory partially under Russian occupation.
Ed Forbes
“they were able to evacuate an estimated 25k troops and their equipment from the front lines and over the river in about 24 hours.”
Well maybe the russians have finally learned how to retreat like a professional army. They have had a lot of practice. Try, try again! As for me, I’ll ignore the news from the Kremlin and wait a week to see what the final tally of lost equipment, kia and pows.
I think I would give Blake Masters a higher chance than Laxalt to win. Definitely Kari Lake.
Maricopa county is huge, but I just learned that you can vote anywhere in the county. When you go to vote, they print out a ballot for your area if needed.
Mike M: “I hope Trump runs in 2024. That way Republican voters can officially repudiate him.”
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I hope Trump endorses DeSantis, either before announcing his own run or at some point after where he would withdraw. I support Trump’s policies and thank him for his service but I have been waiting patiently for 6 years for him to adjust away from his bad habits. I think my patience and many others has run out.
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As others noted, he has made some very bad appointments, though he did not screw up on the SCOTUS ones. He just did not realize the size and depth of the swamp. He needed to declassify the Russia-gate documents and assign someone who did not hate him to get that done.
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There is a long list of people that screwed over the country because they were weak or naïve or Trump hurt their egos, including, Sessions, Flynn, Pence, Maddis, Kelly, Tillerson, Bolton, Barr, etc… This does not include the half of his cabinet and appointees that resigned after Jan 6.
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In short, there are not a lot of people that I can imagine that would want to give up a successful position to work for him.
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He was a true maverick and changed the party for the better. But like Patton and McArthur we must say thank you and goodbye.
Ron Graf (Comment #216190): “I hope Trump endorses DeSantis, either before announcing his own run or at some point after where he would withdraw.”
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I used to think the same. But I now realize:
(1) It ain’t gonna happen.
(2) It will hurt DeSantis by allowing the Demagogue Party to label DeSantis “Trump 2” or some such.
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Ron Graf: “He was a true maverick and changed the party for the better. But like Patton and McArthur we must say thank you and goodbye.”
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Spot on. Although fate intervened in the case of Patton.
I was at the Politico website and I see the Republicans have won 211 House seats with the Democrats at 194. The Democrats are leading in 20 undeclared contests and the Republicans in 10. If the leaders hold the House would have a Republican advantage of 221 to 214.
If the later counted votes break in high portions to the Democrats as they normally do there is a chance that the Democrats hold the House.
“Although fate intervened in the case of Patton.”
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There is a more than trivial chance it was not fate.
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“…allowing the Demagogue Party to label DeSantis “Trump 2”..”
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“Trump” and “MAGA” will be the Dem’s lips for twenty years after he has left the scene.
Harry Reid won one of his Senate races by about 400 votes.
I have been a never Trumper for a long time before Trump was running for President. He was a committed Democrat back in those days and had all the personal character flaws that he currently carries. When he was elected, I was as surprised as most people were and thought if he is not impeached, he will be a gift to the Democrats. That worry has come to fruition over the last 3 election cycles.
Having said that, do not think the media and the rest of the current intelligentsia will relent on Republicans if Trump were removed from the political scene. There enemy is more capitalism and smaller government and anyone who might lean that way even if the leaning is more talk than action.
The current election cycle strongly suggests, in my view, that when a party underperforms in the face of a troubling economy with the other side in power, the other side has some ardent true believers. I hold that that belief is supported by the intelligentsia who informs the voting public. It is not so much that the media as part of that intelligentsia get it wrong in pointing to problems with Republicans but that they totally ignore the problems with the Democrats and their policies.
My intellectual enemy is not the politicians or voters, whom I view as followers, but rather the current intelligentsia.
If Libertarians were Republicans they would vote Republican.
If Libertarians were Democrats they would vote Democrat.
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Some of them are hard core freedom of speech, anti big government, low taxes, and for individual liberty, they will likely vote Republican. Some of them are legalization of marijuana, against excessive police force, anti-interventionalist, and pro-choice in which case they will vote Democrat.
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I think they tend to vote Republican more often when forced to make a choice, but haven’t gotten any evidence for that. An empty ballot question is one thing, but there are actual people on the ballot in real races.
Tom, I am for legalization of marijuana, against excessive police force, anti-interventionalist, and pro-choice but would never vote for a Libertarian unless there were five other viable parties in the system.
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I doubt Antifa and anarchists are voting Libertarian when the Dems are representing them just fine. That leaves people like Judge Andrew Napolitano and Ron Paul but I would guess they would hold their noses and vote for Herschel in a runoff against Warnock.
In Georgia, it looks to me like the Libertarian candidate for Governor was probably much stronger than their Senate candidate.
Libertarians got 28K votes for Governor and 81K for Senator.
My guess is that a big chunk of those 81K were really “none of the above”.
I’m about 80% libertarian but consider voting for that party throwing my vote away. Like many people I’m voting against things I dislike more than I am voting for things I like. My priorities are mostly attached to individual liberty, free speech, and limiting government control. I don’t want the government to be paternalistic.
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Any major party is going to need to be good at herding cats. I always find it odd that some people support 100% of a party’s positions. That seems statistically unlikely, but I chalk it up to tribalism. Personal ideology isn’t random, but it isn’t like red and blue are such an obvious antithesis of each other across the board.
With latest small drop of votes in Nevada (about 3% of the total), Laxalt’s lead has dropped to under 1,000, with more than 100,000 (~10% of the total) left to count. Laxalt is very likely going to lose, and the Georgia run-off race then becomes much less important. At 51/49, Joe Manchin becomes just another Senator; he is about to lose all his clout in the Senate, and he looks to me now much less electable in 2024. Next year, when he is 76 years old, will be a good time for him to announce his retirement.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216196)
With my contacts and reading what libertarians – as opposed to Libertarians – are saying is that, with the Democrats moving to the far left, they overwhelmingly and publicly favor the alternative, i.e. Republicans. They reserve the right to criticize Republicans and point to the times when there is little essential difference between parties. Libertarians are more into thinking that their philosophy can be directly applied to the public and the voting process whereas libertarians are more into changing the political landscape through intellectual pursuits.
When a political philosophy holds for little of no government, pursuing changes by direct political action appears contradictory. The Libertarian party has candidates for almost all political contests which makes a protest vote by a non libertarian easy to do by marking their candidate.
Some of them are hard core freedom of speech, anti big government, low taxes, and for individual liberty, they will likely vote Republican. Some of them are legalization of marijuana, against excessive police force, anti-interventionalist, and pro-choice in which case they will vote Democrat.
Most libertarians I know are for all those items – like I am.
I am also of the judgement that Democrats when they do support something that is less government they are not for less government but for having a wedge issue and/or applying/not applying government force where it suits their purposes. That is not to say that Republicans do not have contradictory issues.
SteveF (Comment #216200)
Those late gains by Democrats has to be worrisome for the Republicans in the House contests yet to be decided.
Ken Fritsch,
Sure, especially in California. But there are four almost certain seats the Republicans will take (NY, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, three of which should already have been called), which puts them at 215. There are four incumbent Republicans in California who are ahead, and most likely will win, and two non-incumbents who appear to have a good chance of winning. I figure a minimum of 219, and more likely 220, which is what NBC news projects will be the final number.
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With that thin majority, I don’t think the Republicans can get much done, but at least they won’t be passing endless unfunded trillion dollar boondoggles. And best of all, Nancy Pelosi will be gone, like the wicked witch of the west, who she resembles, both physically and morally.
WSJ Editorial Board opinion:
“Any settlement now would give the Russians a chance to regroup, reinforce their defensive positions, and prepare for a renewed attack. Every war ends with some kind of negotiation, but Ukraine has earned the chance to restore its Feb. 24 borders, at the very least, before it sits across from Mr. Putin.”
and:
“Russia’s retreat from the city of Kherson on Friday is another major milestone in Ukraine’s counteroffensive to reclaim territory lost since the Feb. 24 invasion. Ukraine’s progress continues to vindicate Western aid and shows the price Russia is paying for Vladimir Putin’s folly.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-kherson-breakthrough-counteroffensive-russia-vladimir-putin-11668199263?st=udfto1byvwrocx0&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Kherson Oblast, Street parties have broken out in the city and remote towns to welcome their conquering heroes. It is similar to the scenes of French villagers greeting Patton’s army during WWll. The following picture is very moving…. A babushka greets a soldier. https://twitter.com/IrynaVoichuk/status/1591089670812622848?s=20&t=NjzCHmF5pBmpdHqpCj0T0A
Also on Kherson, the OSINT folks I follow posted about the russian retreat almost a week before anyone else knew about it. I reposted it here and was met with skepticism. OSINT has been well ahead of the curve for months now. The good ones have an occasional mistake, but the vast majority of the time they turn out to be spot on, like in this case.
SteveF (Comment #216204)
November 11th, 2022 at 8:18 pm
I looked at Politico this morning and their count of decided is 211 Repubs (unchanged from yesterday) and 199 Dem (plus 5). In the undecided races Dems lead in 15 and Repubs in 10. If the leaders all win it would still be Repubs 221 and Dems 214. It appears that the Dems are closing faster than the Repubs.
Ken Fritsch,
Yes, most uncalled races are going to be won by dems. But the most likely outcome remains the Republican hold a seat or two more. Of course, that may not be final for several weeks. The western states (and especially California) are in no hurry to count votes. The counts in California have mostly remained fixed for three days! Arizona now does not expect final results until mid next week. Then there will be recounts (eg Colorado) which will add even more time. This is now bordering on crazy. How can it possibly take this long?
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Laxalt’s lead has fallen to 820 votes as of this morning, with 5% estimated outstanding. Whether or not Laxalt ends up a few votes ahead or behind, there will be another recount, so whether or not the Georgia runoff really matters may not be known for weeks, and there will be huge sums spent in Georgia for a race that may end up not being very important. It’s nuts.
The GOP lead in the total House popular vote is up to 6.1%, topped by only one election in living memory (2010, with a 6.6% margin). https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/red-wave-after-all-gop-winning-popular-vote-wide-margin-despite
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Obviously, that must be some combination of winning by bigger margins in places they won in 2020 and losing by smaller margins in places they lost this time. The latter might be due to GOP progress with minority voters.
“Republicans did relatively well with black and especially Hispanic voters. But it didn’t translate to seats,” tweeted Sean Trende, senior election analyst for RealClearPolitics
I think demographics have changed significantly in the past few years. Sane people fleeing democrat insanity. The traffic on the roads around me has got significantly worse since covid. So yes, I think it’s likely republicans have overperformed in areas in which there is already good support, and underperformed in areas of democrat insanity.
DaveJR,
I suspect in the final counts there will be noticeable swings toward Republicans in most places, but there are so many non-competitive seats in the House and so many non-competitive States in the Senate that even significant changes in % of total votes doesn’t make as much difference as in the past. Remember also that in midterm elections the average voter is more partisan and motivated than in presidential election years, making the divergence of election results from total votes even greater.
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The Trump-endorsed parade of Senate and governor candidates mostly lost badly in places where they were expected to be competitive. While many don’t want blame Trump, I do: he consistently endorsed candidates who embraced his “2020 was stolen” endless tirade, rather than candidates who were more electable. The results speak for themselves. Trump needs to retire from politics, play a little more golf, and most of all, keep his stupid mouth shut.
After watching football for 30+ years this is the way it goes. In some seasons you win most of the close games and very successful, and some seasons you lose most of close games and seem very unlucky. The difference between the two can be marginal.
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Yes, I don’t know how they can make no progress counting votes at all. One article I read said that Florida bought letter opening machines that cut open ballots with a laser and inserted a puff of air to make extracting ballots much faster. My guess is that some rural counties still use very old methods and are constrained by voting laws. It’s kind of lunacy with a rep from both sides verifying each mail in ballot.
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Mail in ballots should have a deadline of a week before the election and they should all be removed and verified before voting day.
The Democratic strategy of funding the Trumpiest candidates appeared to be successful. I’d like to see less of this stuff in politics, I am already cynical enough. Totally legal.
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I kind of find it funny as the legacy media congratulates themselves on holding back the red wave with “Democracy won!” and “The voters are sane!” that nobody brings up Fetterman. Clearly a turnip can get elected if it makes it through the primary in most places.
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The house needs to have a 3 or 4 seat margin just to prevent election chaos. Imagine a one seat margin, overturning any of the 400+ races will flip control of the house. That’s a target rich environment for corruption and conspiracy.
My guess is the people in Kherson would much prefer the war go somewhere else for a while. The unilateral withdrawal by Russia is still mysterious. Making the opposition take an urban area gives the defenders an advantage usually. What are they going to do later, just shell Kherson into oblivion if they want to retake it? You can bet Ukraine will defend it and it’s much easier to hide from artillery in a city. It doesn’t add up.
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Wishful thinking is that this is the beginning of the end and a negotiated settlement over the winter is on the way.
Tom Scharf,
Kherson city proper was only a small piece of the 1,500 square miles (approximately) russia retreated from. The vast majority was flat open farmland. It was similar to the farm areas to the North that Ukraine rolled over and routed the russians.
Tom Scharf,
“Wishful thinking is that this is the beginning of the end and a negotiated settlement over the winter is on the way.”
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Wishful thinking indeed. Negotiations are not close to starting, and won’t start so long as the Ukrainian position is that negotiations can’t start until Russia agrees to 100% of its demands: return of all Ukrainian territory (including the Crimea), Russian payment for all war damage, and criminal prosecution for war crimes… which in the Ukrainian interpretation appears to mean every Russian up the line of command to Putin. In other words, the Ukraine clearly does not want negotiations at this time, and neither does the USA. That will change, since no resolution is likely without negotiations, but my honest guess is may be years of stalemate and continuing military costs/losses on both sides before negotiations begin.
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The good news is there has been some movement: the chairman of the joint chiefs is pressing the State Department to work toward negotiations… but so far State refuses to consider it. Thoroughly Modern Miley is probably looking at the drop in US conventional weapon stocks and is not happy about it, especially since restocking conventional weapons is costly and may force reductions in woke anti-racist training programs, gay and lesbian support programs, and possible cuts in funding for zero-cost transgender surgery in the military. Who knows, maybe Miley is planning on having that surgery.
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At some point it will dawn on the geniuses in Washington that $100+ billion a year in extra debt for the Ukraine, on top of the ongoing rapid growth in Federal debt, is not sustainable, unless destructive inflation forever is your goal. A recession from now to 2024 and falling real (after inflation) tax revenues with huge budget deficits may ultimately start to sharpen minds in Washington DC. But those minds are plenty dull, so the sharpening will likely be slow. On second thought, Biden’s mind, or what is left of it, is never going to sharpen. Let’s hope his handlers guide him toward accepting negotiations at some point before he leaves office in January 2025.
There is nothing mysterious about the Russian withdrawal from Kherson. Ukraine made it impossible for Russia to keep their forces supplied at the level needed to defend that territory. So the Russians cut their losses and fell back to a more easily defended position.
The Political numbers have not changed since my last post, but I looked at the leads that the contested races have. The Repubs have 6 of 10 with leads of 1.6% or less while the Dems have only 1 contest out of 15 with a lead of 1.6% or less. With most of the remaining uncounted ballots evidently being mailed-in and those going in large majorities to the Dems, I see control of the House going down to the wire.
“Prolonged election counts like this create suspicion and distrust and are unacceptable.” – Charlie Kirk
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The Dem counter point is that election tallies never got finished on election night due to military ballots and provisional ballots, etc.
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What has changed is that early election returns can no longer be assumed to be a homogenous sampling of the vote on the event: election day. Once that assumption is plausibly discarded there is no statistical guardrail from having late dumps that are unexpectedly skewed just enough to save the Democrat. And it the loser does not know how its being done, and surveillance cameras go out overnight, all they can do is make reckless accusations based on suspicions.
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All these close races that are being won in the late counting by Dems have a perfectly legal explanation. In many of these states they bring in non-profit organizations funded by millions of dollars to personally go out and collect the ballots that were mailed out to registered Dems but not received back. This information is made available to them by friendly state administrators, likely legally. I saw a registered Dem’s email was filled with reminders. If the election workers don’t receive the ballot Dems can offer to pick it up and drop it on election day for them.
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If the the voter does not respond there it would be a hard to resist for a radicalized Dem to fill in a ballot for them in their name knowing that signatures can’t be verified anyway, as we learned in 2020, and knowing a Dem that did not respond is not going to care either way to say anything about it.
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The one bright spot is that the NV Dem governor lost so that the 2024 election can be perhaps administered with integrity in NV. We can only cross our fingers that Kari Lake will not suffer Laxalt’s fate in a day or three.
Today I saw dozens and dozens of pictures of russian mechanized equipment left behind in Kherson. Everything, including tanks and helicopters. Most of it has been destroyed but some is in working order. Also pictures of munitions, tons of munitions.
The area is huge, roughly 100 miles x 15 miles. It’s gonna take a while to find it all.
A few examples: https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop
Ron Graf,
Karie Lake will lose in exactly the same way as Laxalt.
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Where Democrats have changed the law to allow mail-in voting, email reminders, harvesting, etc. the only way Republicans are going to win elections is do do the same things. So far, Republicans have counted on their voters showing up on election day…. it is not working, as we saw in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
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The truly frightening prospect is the same will happen in all the remaining house races. If the Democrats have even a one vote majority in the house and Manchin can’t stop them in the Senate, there is no upper bound to the economic and social damage they will do in the next two years.
Mike M,
There is one clear problem with late reporting: voters in states with polls not yet closed could look at early results from other states showing their party well ahead and decide to not bother voting.
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Republicans need to start using mail-in ballots the same way as Democrats do: a method to “turn out their voters” by making sure likely Republican voters get and turn in mail-in ballots, including ballot harvesting where it is legal.
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Republicans can (and obviously do!) object to election rules Democrats have put in place which undermine the security of elections, but that will not help them win close elections. They need to accept the reality that elections in many places simply will not be very secure so long as Democrats have control over a State, and do their best to use the same tactics that Democrats use to win close races.
The latest House results give the Democrats 204 seats and the Republicans 211 seats. The Republicans lead in 10 races, but have 3 or 4 that could easily go to the Democrats with mail-in voting yet to be counted. If the Democrats hold their leads and the Republicans lose 4 close races it would be Democrats 218 and the Republicans 217 in the House. I think it is looking like a real possibility.
Ken Fritsch,
Real Clear politics (based on AP calling the remaining Oregon race for the Republican, I think) has the Republicans at 212. Boebert will win in Colorado (after a recount), and the remaining race in upstate New York will almost certainly go to the Republican (1.5% ahead with 6% outstanding…again, after a recount), putting them at 214. NBC News still projects Republicans to end up with 219. It is possible that Democrats will win two seats they are not expected to win (that would be two flips of five current Republican seats in California), but the most likely result is that Republicans end up with control…. by one or two votes. I am keeping fingers crossed.
As I recall my mail in ballot had an individualized bar code on it, so I think you can’t just fill in blank missing ballots.
There are going to be some moderates in 435 house seats. Nothing crazy will happen with a closely split house. Things like chairpersons and committees are important though.
Tom wrote: “There are going to be some moderates in 435 house seats.”
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From a statistical POV, you should be correct. From a practical one, I have no idea what is considered moderate anymore.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216228)
November 13th, 2022 at 10:41 am
Tom, I believe in the past few sessions the so-called House moderates in the Democrat party stuck to the party line usually 100%. The moderate tag is essentially for talking and getting elected in the House.
In the Senate there were only 2 Democrats and sometimes one who very occasionally voted against the party line. Those occasions were only to overspend by some portion of what the Democrat line wanted.
The not-so progressive Democrats know that they owe their souls to the Democrat party, while the not-so conservative Republicans tend to be more independent and especially when they have a chance to overspend on so-called partisan bills. Conservative Republicans can be relied upon to spend big on defense and support foreign military actions and even self-destruct with nutty positions on social issues.
The midterms have been a victory for Biden’s agenda of big government with lots of spending and regulation. That momentum could carry over into the next election cycle regardless of the House and Senate party make up. As they say elections have consequences and in this case I see it being good and hard.
The midterms have given the Biden administration more confidence in using executive actions to push their agenda and has probably given a number of judges out there leeway to adjudicate with these results in mind. It is that living Constitutional thing.
Ken Fritsch,
“I believe in the past few sessions the so-called House moderates in the Democrat party stuck to the party line usually 100%. The moderate tag is essentially for talking and getting elected in the House.”
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True. There are no moderates that I can see in the Democrat caucus, only strongly left and extremely left. They voted lock-step for every one of the insane spending bills of the past two years, bills that any true moderate would have voted against…. and forced a little sanity/compromise. Even when a “moderate” Democrat withheld their vote on a nutty bill (to be able to say they are “moderate”) they ONLY did so when they were sure there were enough Democrat votes to pass the crazy legislation. The only way to stop the madness is for Republicans to have 218 or more votes.
The debt ceiling will likely come up for a vote soon. I was wondering who wins by this periodic charade, as the bill never fails to pass. Certainly nobody in Congress seems to take this issue seriously enough to consider a budget in which the debt does not increase. (Which was, presumably, the original intent of requiring a vote to increase the debt limit.)
However, this article writes that “In 2011, a Republican Congress agreed to raise the debt ceiling only after a President Barack Obama, a Democrat, agreed to future spending cuts.” I don’t recall that particular time. Did it actually result in less spending?
Tom Scharf (Comment #216227): “As I recall my mail in ballot had an individualized bar code on it, so I think you can’t just fill in blank missing ballots.”
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That would stop people from xeroxing blank ballots but it would hardly stop people from filling out such ballots. Which is why mail-in ballots should be made somewhat difficult to obtain.
That there was a barcode on a ballot doesn’t mean the barcode was unique. Even if it was, it doesn’t mean it was tracked, or tied to anything useful / trackable.
It might have been there strictly to look good and to engender the sort of speculation that’s happening here.
Just sayin.
You know what I mean. Maybe people ‘meant well’. Maybe there was a plan to use the unique barcode and check against this and that. But like George Lucas said, we had no time and we had no budget, and we had a backlog of ballots, and we felt pressured to get [done], and anyways ‘Democracy!’ and every vote should count, and so on and so forth.
I could imagine it happening like that. I don’t think people openly and explicitly and deliberately made plans to put deceptive useless barcodes on ballots.
[Edit: Or maybe the ballot people thought the postal people were going to check the barcodes. Or maybe the postal people thought the ballot people were going to check the barcodes. There’s countless ways this could have gone sideways.
Or — maybe the barcodes were useful and unique and used as intended. That is also possible too.]
mark bofill,
There ought to be a bar code that is 1) unique and 2) tied to the voter to whom it was sent. Any mismatch or duplicates: invalid ballot. The need for anonymity could be met by having the bar code printed on the return envelope.
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There is still plenty of room for fraud, even with unique barcodes, since there is no way to verify the voter actually filled out the ballot (signature match is weak tea for security). But better than nothing. The returned (signed) envelopes could be retained if an investigation for fraud was needed; oh say, when people have come back from the dead to vote.
Steve,
I’ve reached the point where I think ballots should be trackable back to individual voters. I don’t think people’s votes should be made public, but I’ve come to believe that the information ought to be available to officials for audit and error checking purposes.
In my view, you nailed the problem in an earlier comment. Do we really want universal standardized rules for how voting is conducted? Sounds Federal to me. I can’t say I care for the thought of the Federal government being any more involved than it needs to be. So – I’m loath to bitch too loudly about the current system.
I don’t know the answer to this.
I’ve done mail-in ballots in FL, one can see if one’s ballot has been received by the county, and if it has been counted.
Real Clear politics has called the NV Senate race for the Democrat. There should be less pressure on the GA runoff.
Low information voting is the new name of the game. Once upon a time they probably wouldn’t bother. Now they get a chauffeured vote and a potential kickback. I guess things are going to have to get much worse before the decades long, somewhat deserved, propaganda wears off, and “you will own nothing and be happy” is waiting on the sidelines to pick up the pieces :/.
Apparently the barcode is for the post office, the primary security mechanism is signature verification. There isn’t much information available about mail in ballot integrity.
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They won’t let me vote twice, but nothing stops someone from getting a bunch of mail in ballots from people who don’t care and filling them out and returning them. You have to sign up for mail in voting and change your address as you move, etc.
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It’s still pretty hard to do this at scale. 10,000 people who gave away their ballots probably aren’t going to keep that secret.
HaroldW (Comment #216232)
November 13th, 2022 at 1:57 pm
HaroldW, I am currently too lazy to look up the details, but that deal with Obama limited spending for a number of years. The Republicans called Obama’s bluff. Obama had included defense spending limits which he thought the Republicans would not touch. Democrats and some Republicans complained about these limits. There was a name for this deal that was used for years.
Damnit, now I do have to look it up.
It was called Sequester. When I attempted to Google for the name given to the Republican and Obama deal all I got were links that more or less were saying government spending limits are bad. No wonder the public votes the way they do.
It reminds me that my daughter-in-law told me that a Democrat representative came to her school to talk to the students and when a student asked about the government debt he told him that it was covered by government assets and he gave a number. When my daughter-in-law gave me the number I told her it was the number for the total assets of the US which included mostly non government assets. I told her he is either confused or thinks the government owns all the US assets. The representative was re-elected this term.
I think that most absentee ballot fraud works by getting ballots for people who are on the rolls but won’t be voting because they are dead or senile or have moved to a different jurisdiction. And if they goof and that person does turn up at the polls, the authorities won’t be able to trace the fraudulent ballot to the criminal who filled it out.
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Now states like Nevada have considerately freed up the fraudsters from having to request the ballots. We can be certain there is significant vote fraud in such places.
Ken Fritsch, Obama’s ‘don’t call my bluff’ was prior to the deal. It was Obama asking Republicans not to see if he will veto a debt ceiling increase that had tough spending cuts in it. They later cut a deal that had huge defense cuts automatically included figuring Republicans would definitely not go for that. Then I think they had some bipartisan commission that would produce spending cuts etc.
Ken Fritsch, MikeN — Thanks for aiding my (very) fallible memory.
Len Fritsch,
“I told her he is either confused or thinks the government owns all the US assets.”
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Which is perfectly normal for most of the left. You might recall Obama loudly proclaimed (using his best fake Southern Baptist preacher accent) that entrepreneurs didn’t really “build” the companies they created and grew. So logically, their wealth actually belongs to the public. That has always been the view of the left. Try to get a true progressive to give an absolute upper bound for inheritance tax rates; you either won’t get one, or if you do, it will be closer to 100% than 80%. The left REALLY doesn’t believe you own what you think you own, no matter the circumstances.
Control of the House looks ever more likely to be by the Republicans. Vote totals in two races in Arizona look like the Republicans will likely win at least one (maybe both) the Oregon race and NY race look almost certain for the Republicans. The Boebert race in Colorado hasn’t been called, but she will almost certainly win after a recount, and there are three or four very strong Republican incumbents in California who will likely win. The Republicans will probably end up with 219 to 221, and it looks very improbable that Democrats can get to 218, no matter how long the vote tabulation takes.
Holy Spit! The Ukranians are crossing the Dnipro River [maybe].
“Combat operations by Ukrainian defenders on the Kinburn Spit are the subject of online hints and chatter.
We await official confirmation from the Armed Forces of Ukraine with particular interest as this would indicate a flanking manoeuvre to cross the Dnipro River.”
The videos are all of a small Special Forces flotilla, no heavy stuff. If it happened, this may just be a RIF or publicity stunt.
Mike M: “I think that most absentee ballot fraud works by getting ballots for people who are on the rolls but won’t be voting because they are dead or senile or have moved to a different jurisdiction.”
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For regain integrity we can simply retrace our steps backwards. Absentee voting can never be secure. If we value the right to move freely without being tracked the only way to securely vote is in-person using a secure identification. Registration should close at least 30 days in advance of the election to add another step of difficulty to cheat. (Many states incredibly have same day registration now.) Registration should require ID and remain a public record with the generation of a unique personal voter number that is and be available for third party authentication against a national database. Absentee voting should be allowed in extraordinary circumstances.
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Mechanical voting machines, like we used to have, are more secure and can be locked with the final tally for audit. I am not sure why we went away from them. Adding up the tallies of the machines at the election precinct can be reported to the county’s central headquarter and marked on a big board with observers easily watching both ends of the communication. Meanwhile absentee votes can be counted with observers at 8am that morning and be complete by 8pm. Ninety-nine percent of all results should be reported nationally be 11pm.
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We need to get this right. As Dems pointed out; our democracy is under threat.
The peninsula should be within artillery range of the UAF now that RAF have pulled back. UAF SF have been poking at the spit since Sept. Not a frontal attack by any means. I don’t think UAF has the transport capacity to get heavy equipment there to use it as a breakout area. I’d expect their next move to be further east.
It’s not known how many ballots are filled in for people, but Democrats are more aggressive about going door to door collecting absentee ballots. It’s not clear if Republicans are doing this better in California after losing all those seats in 2018.
Under California law, those responsible for counting ballots have up to 30 days to turn in their results to the Secretary of State. Since they must also, by law, accept any mail-in ballot received up to 7 days after the election (so long as post-marked by election day), some apparently refused to do much of anything until 7 days AFTER polls close. Which is why there are many districts in California which have only counted a relative handful of ballots. Of course the motivation to count appears to vary by a huge amount across California.
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It is almost unbelievable but true: there is zero urgency in California to determine winners and losers.
SteveF (Comment #216256): “It is almost unbelievable but true: there is zero urgency in California to determine winners and losers.”
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Oh, I think there is plenty of urgency to determine winners and losers. They just don’t want the voters to mess up the process. 🙂
It’s hard to fathom the amount of military equipment left behind in Kherson. The whole battlefield [1,500 sq mile] is strewn with abandoned and destroyed equipment. A sample video:
“Destroyed Russian equipment left behind at Chornobaivka airfield, Kherson Oblast” https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1591530638355857408?s=20&t=NmNJ4fKUpXme9p7y8OA0Ww
Probably hundreds and hundreds of pieces. In September and October the Ukraine army had been posting drone videos of russian vehicles blowing up. They had been touting the increased accuracy and range of their artillery and rockets. But I had no idea of the scale of destruction.
The russians had to evacuate their army; they had nothing left to fight with.
Where does Ukraine move this juggernaut to next? They have no need for them here. I say server putin’s land bridge to Crimea! [There are probably many military reasons why this is a bad idea.]
In the grand scheme it isn’t important whether the vote tallies are a week late … for a voting process with integrity. Allowing some districts to be really late and also be aware of the existing vote counts in other areas is an opportunity for fraud and corruption. The very late districts would be a prime target for people with corrupt motives. This needs to stop based solely on perceptions.
MSN Aug – “As the BRICS nations become more cohesive, cooperating on economic issues that affect food and oil supplies, other countries are taking notice. Argentina, for instance, has shown an interest in joining the BRICS coalition, and it isn’t the only one. Iran has also shown an interest in joining this conglomerate of countries, and China is open to several more joining a ‘BRICS Plus’ cooperation.
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Among those mentioned are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Saudi Arabia. Russian President Vladimir Put has also personally invited Iran and Turkey to join the BRICS coalition.”
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Richard Medhurst Nov 11 – “Over a dozen countries have now applied to join BRICS, including Algeria, Iran and Argentina. The multipolar order is taking shape before us.
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If expanded, BRICS would comprise over half the global population, 60% of global gas and 45% of global oil reserves.”
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Talk of an alternative BRICS reserve currency to the dollar is ongoing. Bolsonaro was sympathetic to western interests, Lula is not.
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I’m still not convinced Russia is as “isolated” as some people think and that it may have the last laugh when the dust settles as “western interests” try to fuel their bankrupt economies on virtuous words and fine sounding phrases.
NYT:
Republicans Appear on Track to Take the House
Democrats are falling short of their targets in key races in California and Arizona. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/upshot/tracking-election-house-results.html
“It might still be days until the major decision desks can project that Republicans have won the 218 seats necessary to win control. But over the weekend, Democrats fell short of their targets in the late count in critical battleground districts in Arizona and California.
The sometimes good — but not good enough — results for Democrats raised the bar for what the party needs in the votes yet be counted, while making a late surge seem even less likely.
Right now, Republicans would be on track to win 221 seats if the latest trends continued, though several of these races remain so close that they could easily go the other way.”
Taom Scharf,
“Allowing some districts to be really late and also be aware of the existing vote counts in other areas is an opportunity for fraud and corruption.”
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Whatever opportunity exists for fraud, I suspect it is the same no matter the time for counting votes. I think what changes with very late districts is a potential increase in motivation for corruption, or at a minimum, the appearance of greater motivation. Of course, it also makes people doubt what is going on for such a long time.
DaveJR,
“I’m still not convinced Russia is as “isolated” as some people think and that it may have the last laugh when the dust settles as “western interests” try to fuel their bankrupt economies on virtuous words and fine sounding phrases.”
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Russia has clearly suffered considerably from the war, but not so much as many people would like. Their businesses are unable to source products from Europe, Japan, and the States, and have lost sales in those places. There will be no meaningful political relationship with Europe or the USA for many years. And of course, they have suffered many casualties.
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But I expect most Russian companies will find alternative sources and customers outside Europe and the States, and will be extremely reluctant to ever return to those markets. The suggestion that ‘the world’ would unanimously adopt the USA and European stance toward Russia was always fanciful at best, and more accurately, plain silly. Many countries share neither the sensibilities of Europe and the States, nor the economic and political interests of Europe and the States. The Russians won’t be trusted in many of the BRICS+ countries, but neither will they be isolated, and besides, petroleum is fungible.
I should add that people who are willing to publicly spend $100M on a single Senate race will have some dark thoughts about spending a lot less to tilt a close election. This goes for both sides of course. Government bureaucrats aren’t exactly super well paid and have been hit with bribery charges since about the first ever tribal council started divvying up land near a well, so we can’t depend on their good graces. We need to have a transparent secure system in place.
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I’m still largely convinced elections are fair is true on the whole, but I worry a bit that the legacy media have declared it so by an emotional fiat, and aren’t curious enough to look into some dark corners unless their side is threatened.
Tom,
’m still largely convinced elections are fair is true on the whole,
Me too. I think elections are as fair as they’ve ever been, generally speaking. Probably not perfectly free of error and cheating, but substantially so. And nothing we haven’t been living with for the past two and a half centuries.
[Edit: I think what has happened is an election innovation. Elections have changed, with the mail in voting. Naturally, Dems have embraced the change and capitalized on it. Republicans have not as of yet by and large. We need to. I read an article on this someplace today; this isn’t really my idea.]
It appears to me that one could conjecture that mail-in voting and whatever maneuvers are used with it to leverage it to a political parties advantage would involve getting people who would not ordinarily vote or care to vote to vote. I strongly suspect that the Democrats know better who those people are, which ones will vote for their party and how to get them to vote. It is all probably legal even if not passing the Civics 101 smell test. I doubt that the Republicans can match those inclinations of the Democrats even with great effort. I also do not know how many votes have been in the harvested in the past or can be in the future.
I think the voter, no matter how they deliver their vote, who is without a clue or political interest makes a bigger sham of democracy than already exists with that system. An effort that would involve revealing how much people really know about an election or what they think they are voting for might have some shaming (and entertainment) value.
Younger people went overwhelmingly for the Democrats in this election cycle as did single mothers (think abortion issue) so before going Trump crazy on election fraud we should understand who used mail-in voting. I think it obviously was mostly Democrats and the two groups above were definitely mostly Democrat and I would judge more likely than most to mail-in their votes.
I have been mailing in my votes in IL even before the Covid-19 rules. I would think that more older people would take advantage of mailing-in, but I suspect not that many do. That might be a place for Republicans to look even though I think Democrats look at these efforts as a full time job while the Republicans look at it as a hobby that they are interested in for a few months.
I wouldn’t trust the unionized Post Office workers to not throw away/mangle ballots in Republican areas. They still whine about George Bush passing some reforms to keep their pension fully funded.
I read an article praising a group in Wisconsin that was funded by Mike Lindell and cleaned up the voter rolls in Wisconsin.
Omega4America used Fractal Technology to identify thousands of phantom voters.
Looking at the website, the whole thing looks fake, but I see that Ron Johnson won.
If the high information voters and those who want a dictatorship of experts cannot convince the low information voters to vote for their preferences then I think it is the very definition of democracy to allow them to toss out the governing class on their keisters in search of perceived better results.
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One can debate or assume whether a dictatorship of benevolent experts will result in better overall outcomes, but one must also guard against the self serving interests of the governing class which can then become the opposite of benevolent. There must be safeguards against this and that mechanism can mean a bunch of low information voters occasionally wreck the place for a time period.
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An example of this is the offshoring of low skill jobs and the degradation of the rust belt. Perhaps this is inevitable or cannot be fixed but the low skill people get to register their disapproval with the governing class and have them removed. It is up to the governing class to make a case for their actions.
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The governing class has nobody to blame but themselves if they cannot win the debate. When they get too lazy and arrogant this mechanism resets the field for the better.
MikeN: “I wouldn’t trust the unionized Post Office workers…”
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I think most mail-in systems give email or text acknowledgement of receipt by the election people. The bigger question is who are these people and what it would take to play games with a hoard of ballots sitting in their possession. This is what motivated the GOP voters in AZ and and NV to bring their mail-in ballots to the drop boxes on election day. But this is countered by the choice of those states to hold those ballots for days and count them last.
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What even smarts more to those GOP voters is the Dem break on those ballots. It’s plausible that Dem harvesting mules (legit or not) had an election day surge that overpowered all. So the widening of possible scenarios of plausibility (with lax rules) provides the added benefit of deniability.
Tom: “The governing class…”
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I hear that term getting a lot of use but I was taught the whole idea of America was to eliminate class barriers by allowing the piercing of those natural stratifications by individual merit and charisma. Anyone, particularly those with inspiring stories of struggle, could rise to leadership class.
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As far as offshoring of jobs I think that was an inevitable result of advancement of supply chain and communication technology, coupled with decades of unions being more successful against management than was healthy for their long-term interests.
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This was exacerbated by Clinton’s and the USIC’s strategy of making China oligarchs rich which was supposed to make them more democratic and globally responsible.
According to RealClear Politics, Republicans have won 216 seats — thus needing 2 more for control of the House — and lead in 4 CA districts and 1 CO district. So we will be spared political theater such as impeaching Trump in the next Congress. Instead our leaders will give us political theater such as impeaching Biden. Plus ça change…
HaroldW,
While it is clear that Biden is corrupt and has been selling influence (enriching himself and his family) for decades, we still might hope that Republicans instead focus on things that are far more important: weaponization of the FBI, CIA, Justice Dept, etc against political opponents, refusal to enforce immigration laws, refusal to lease land for petroleum production, and utterly lawless “emergency” acts like suspending both evictions and student loan payments and now the plan to give away $10,000 to $20,000 to each holder of student debt. Some said the Biden administration would be Obama 3.0. It is not, it is much worse: worse policies, and ever more lawlessness. The House can stop much of this by refusing to fund it.
In California, the Republicans will likely win three or four more seats, and Boebert in Colorado will almost certainly win, after a recount, so the final count will likely be 220:215 or 221:214. And the Wicked Witch of the West will be gone for good on January 2. I can almost hear the singing in Oz.
House count now 217 for Republicans; another incumbent’s seat in California. All over but the shouting. McCarthy seems to have a rebellion on his hands for speaker. Conservatives want two rules as a condition for making McCarthy speaker: 1) “regular order” on all bills, allowing floor debate and effectively blocking ‘back room deals’ with Democrats that give no time to analyze the resulting bills before votes and 2) the ability to remove McCarthy at any time if he makes the conservatives unhappy. If I were McCarthy, I would agree to the first, but not the second.
Ah yes, the old “barons reserve the right to overrule the king” clause. Didn’t go down very well back then either!
Here is Zelensky’s peace plan (AKA conditions for starting negotiations):
1. Radiation and nuclear security
2. Food security
3. Energy security
4. Release of all POWs and deportees
5. Restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, respect for UN Charter.
6. Total withdrawal of all Russian troops from all of Ukraine
7. Punishment for war crimes
8. Protection for the environment, stopping Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine
9. New security architecture and security guarantees for Ukraine
10. Signing of peace treaty.
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This list is not serious. ‘ecocide’ is even less serious. It is unclear if Zelensky actually believes Russia would agree to those conditions to start negotiations, but if so, then negotiations will not start for a long time.
The more power the “democratic” governments take from the individuals the more those governments depend on the low information voters. Those voters in my view are not relegated to any particular socio-economic class.
The deception of a power seeking democratic government is to put as many issues as possible beyond the reach of the voter in the form of the administrative state, executive orders, continuing emergency rule and third rail issues such as Social Security and Medicare.
The so-called ruling elite are merely the current caretakers in the process of making the government more powerful and less accountable to individuals while at the same time espousing the wonders of democracy and our living Constitution, with post election kumbayas that all is well in America.
Ron Graf (Comment #216272): “‘The governing class…’ I hear that term getting a lot of use but I was taught the whole idea of America was to eliminate class barriers by allowing the piercing of those natural stratifications by individual merit and charisma. Anyone, particularly those with inspiring stories of struggle, could rise to leadership class.”
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What we were taught was never the way it actually was. But the discrepancy is far worse now. Class stratification has increased and has much more serious consequences.
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Family connections have always mattered, but it used to be largely among the wealthy. It has now spread much more widely, such as in multi-generation political and Hollywood families. Connections via certain universities act as a force multiplier. ‘Merit’ used to mean individual achievement. Now it means the right credentials, the right connections, the right world view, and increasingly the right political opinions.
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There have always been differences in interest between the people and the ruling class (or elites, or whatever, there seems to be no really good term). But there used to also be a great deal of overlap. Both had similar basic values, both were patriotic, and they were linked economically. None of that is true anymore. The ruling class has very different values, object to the idea that the US is special (unless to claim that the US is uniquely bad), and they can thrive financially even when the domestic economy struggles.
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So the ruling class is now largely severed from the people and at odds with the people.
Ron Graf (Comment #216272): “As far as offshoring of jobs I think that was an inevitable result of advancement of supply chain and communication technology, coupled with decades of unions being more successful against management than was healthy for their long-term interests.”
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A certain amount of that was inevitable, but what went far beyond what was necessary or good. Free trade is supposed to be beneficial by allowing a society to distribute resources in the most productive manner possible. So low productivity jobs get replaced by higher productivity jobs. But that is not what happened. Productive jobs got replaced by less productive jobs or no jobs at all. “Free trade” was not, in fact, free trade. In effect, if not in intent, it was class warfare.
SteveF (Comment #216279),
Zelensky’s proposal sounds fine to me, other than the sops to silly western leftists. I do not think that such nonsense actually means anything. I assume that the exact meaning of “all of Ukraine” will be negotiable behind closed doors but not in public.
McCarthy will get to be speaker after making some concessions to the Freedom Caucus. The only clear alternative is Jim Jordan and McCarthy has Jordan’s support.
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Whether McConnell gets to keep his job will be more interesting.
The Biden administration’s college loan forgiveness as a Constitutional decision comes up against the standing issue which in many ways appears as merely an impediment in reversing unconstitutional actions by the government. In the loan forgiveness case the taxpayer who is most affected and damaged by the move cannot evidently ever have standing and thus other entities have to invent damages in order to get Constitutional redress. I suppose these shenanigans are covered by the polite term of judicial precedent, whereas in fact BS might be more descriptive.
Mike M,
“Productive jobs got replaced by less productive jobs or no jobs at all. “Free trade” was not, in fact, free trade. In effect, if not in intent, it was class warfare.”
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Donno that I would go so far as ‘class warfare’. What free trade did was expose companies that produce physical products to competition from suppliers with far lower total production costs. I mean, there is nothing that stops a US based company from producing flat screen TV’s or laptop computers, cell phones, or a thousand other products from producing in the USA, except it is simply not possible to compete cost-wise with production outside the States. Those companies either moved production to lower cost regions (Apple being a good example), mostly automated, or disappeared. They mostly choose the first option. Of course, many American production workers have suffered as a result.
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That said, I note that there have also been substantial shifts in production labor within the USA, mainly from business unfriendly states to more business friendly states. One example: I started work after college at a company owned by Firestone Tire and Rubber. Firestone was an old-time, mostly northern company, (based in Akron Ohio) with plants mainly in the industrial midwest, but also in the Northeast and Coastal West. As Firestone self-immolated due to competition from overseas, it sold all assets to Bridgestone (Japan). Here is where Bridgestone set up tire and related production plants in the USA:
Location Products
1 Des Moines, Iowa Agricultural Machinery Tires
2 Russellville, Arkansas Tubes and Flaps
3 Bloomington, Illinois Off-the-road Tires
4 La Vergne, Tennessee Tires
5 Wilson, North Carolina Tires
6 Warren, Tennessee Tires
7 Aiken, South Carolina Tires
8 Aiken, South Carolina Off-the-road Tires
9 Mayodan, N Carolina Retread Tires for Aircraft
10 Oxford, N Carolina Retreading Materials
11 Abilene, Texas Retreading Materials
12 Griffin, Georgia Retreading Materials
1 3Muscatine, Iowa Retreading Equipment
14 Muncie, Indiana Retreading Molds
Save for one facility in Illinois, all plants are in states that are controlled by Republicans, and less than very friendly to unions.
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So the loss of middle class production jobs is a complicated subject. Much was due to free trade and off-shoring, some from automation, and some from shifts within the States.
Mike M,
We’ll see when negotiations start what the Ukrainians demand before negotiations start. But IMHO, that list is nonsense, and designed to keep negotiations from starting. I hope Zelensky understands that, but I am not sure.
Mike M: “Whether McConnell gets to keep his job will be more interesting.”
Not that Senate leadership is a popularity contest (at least among the public), but McConnell gets the lowest approval/disapproval score among US political leaders (lower than Pelosi!) at RealClear Politics
HaroldW,
Yes, but consider that McConnell is a procedural knife-fighter who kept the execrable Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court, and agreed to support many Democrat spending/boondoggle bills that the conservative base absolutely loathed. Those together are enough to get 60% disapproval, no matter what else McConnell has done.
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Pelosi is much the same story: a promoter of both horrible, damaging legislation and pointless show trials of Trump, which the right loathes, but she never went 110% all-in on the nutty green new deal, leading her extreme base to dislike her…. so 20% under water.
I pretty much agree with Mike M’s take at #216282 and I would say my view on this has changed over the last 20 years. Like I have said before, every time I go back to WV it is still 1985 there.
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The fundamental problem with global free trade right now is we don’t have global free movement of labor. The low skill workers in the US cannot go to work in China’s factories. It might be the case they wouldn’t want to, but the point is that they can’t. So the US economy is increasingly moving towards service and lack of middle income jobs. The government may not have magic fixes for this technical progress, but they also don’t have to actively make it worse with their policies. At least unemployment has remained low lately.
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I think what basically everyone missed was what happens if this idea of merit works too well? An optimally sorted system puts the highest skill people in the highest skill jobs. What we missed was that the upper and lower classes stopped getting mixed nearly as much and the classes became increasingly stratified.
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It is arguable that the classes have become isolated and out of touch with each other (deplorables). The wealthy, elite, governing, credentialed, knowledge, etc. class has sometimes forgotten they govern at the will of the majority of deplorables. Then we end up with AOC, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, Sanders. I see this as democracy working in its imperfect way. These are unconscious warning shots by the electorate. Although these people are clowns, they somehow have more trust from their constituents. That is the fault of those who think they know better, a failure to communicate.
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People in higher classes have much more to fear in radical changes to the status quo, the lower classes have much less to lose. So we get bombarded with political messaging that some changes are “dangerous”. Dangerous to who? The people living in trailer parks?
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The merit system has also become corrupted, this should have been foreseen. A system of credentials is not necessarily the same as a system of merit. Harvard, MIT, Stanford are full of students from wealthy families. This is somewhat expected in a fair system but it is very disproportionate. One could accuse the people getting in to these schools know all the secret handshakes of holistic admissions. Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.
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Unions have been more of a problem than a solution.
With the NV win, the GA runoff will have suppressed turnout. If the Republicans can manage to win that race then we are back to 50/50 with Manchin as a somewhat unreliable but better than nothing gatekeeper on crazy. He has reelection in 2024. Obviously taking the House will give Republicans the ability to block large spending bills and end the investigations which the legacy media covers breathlessly as truth and justice.
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All in all, a split government and Trump got smacked down. Not a bad result. Looks like Trump will announce his 2024 run today. Ugh.
Tom Scharf,
“Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.”
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Sure, and as a former bright kid from a poor family who had to work from age 12 on to have a dollar in his pocket, it absolutely fries my ass to see what an offensive abomination competitive college admission has become. My wife taught advanced high school chemistry for 15 years. All her students were bright to exceptionally bright, as you might expect, but the few who got into very competitive colleges were either from a wealthy family (and could afford to pad their resume with lots of “socially conscious” volunteer work), or were some kind of identifiable minority (but not Asian!). The process is inherently unfair, and rewards or punishes kids for things that are both irrelevant and beyond their control.
Tom Scharf,
“Looks like Trump will announce his 2024 run today.”
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I keep hoping for a bolt from on high…
SteveF,
Mjolnir. Please do your stuff.
Tom Scharf,
“He has reelection in 2024.”
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I doubt Manchin will even try to run in 2024. He squeaked by in 2018 because it was a midterm, but he hadn’t yet voted for all the crap legislation he has voted for since 2020. With the House controlled by Republicans, Manchin seems to me irrelevant and likely un-electable in WV. I think he will soon recognize that and plan on playing more golf, maybe in Florida.
I will not be sad to see Pelosi leave, mostly because she was so effective at her job. It will take some real work to get somebody with her skills to replace her. The attack on her husband likely will send her packing, it’s not worth all that at this point.
Always been my concern…. “Two stray rockets fell in the town of Przewodów in Poland on the border with Ukraine. They hit the grain dryers. Two people died. Polish Air Force launched fighter jets from the airfield in Tomaszów Lubelski”
and the Poles seem to be itching to get at the russians.
Free trade has many facets in consideration of who is affected. It is more than simply looking at the workers who might be affected. Free trade is a democratic issue for the consumers of that trade who can vote with their dollars by spending on foreign products or withholding them for domestic product. When trade restrictions are on intermediate goods it can often hurt the businesses and workers who are further down the production line.
If a nation’s economy is to advance it has to adjust to new technologies whether the competition is from domestic or foreign sources. Certainly, the American farm and the consumers of its products have benefited from its efficiencies. Those efficiencies have the reduced the number of farm workers greatly over past decades, but I do not see any hesitancy of people from farm families making the transition to other occupations.
Small businesses are an obvious place for workers of failed businesses to go for employment and even ownership. A negative drag of those businesses is government regulations.
Large corporations and large unions are nearly always the organizations looking for trade restrictions on trade with foreign nations and at the expense of the American consumer. I have lived through the times that that situation finally took its toll on the American auto industry and its workers where the companies and the unions did well until the lack of foreign competition made their product too expensive and of poorer quality. Today when you look at the national source of the parts that go into American autos and trucks one finds that foreign owned companies with manufacturing facilities in the US are often more American made than those of American owned companies who use foreign parts.
Free trade, when warmongers do not interfere, has had a great tendency to promote peace and interactions amongst nations. Unfortunately, free trade today is supposed to come out of government agreements while a more complete definition of free trade should be individuals and their organizations trading with whoever they can make a deal satisfactory to the involved parties. Government free trade agreements are for the benefit of me and thee and against the guy behind the tree.
Restrictions on international trade have recently come by way of executive actions as in the case of the Trump imposed tariffs. That does not seem very democratic or free market to me, yet populist conservatives appear to love it.
Getting into the top colleges is not just for the wealthy and minorities. Chelsea Clinton got into Stanford and Oxford before her parents cashed in. The same is true for any number of the offspring of lesser politicians, prominent journalists, etc.
“Free trade” deals are not about free trade. If they were, they would not require thousands of pages of rules and regulations. They often intentionally disadvantage US producers in the naive belief that trade is a good in itself and that it will tie our trading partners to us. If that worked with China, it did so in reverse.
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Free movement of people makes it worse. Biden’s open southern border is very bad for the US.
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The reason US companies take their production elsewhere is because our government heaps huge burdens on any company that dares to actually make anything and because the US dollar is greatly inflated relative to other currencies.
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True free trade probably only really works between near-peer jurisdictions.
Mike M,
“The reason US companies take their production elsewhere is because our government heaps huge burdens on any company that dares to actually make anything and because the US dollar is greatly inflated relative to other currencies.”
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Real wages are much lower in many other places than in the States, and that is even when the artificially inflated value of the Dollar (safe investor haven, standard currency for international trade) is taken into account. Even if you were to stipulate that the USA currency is inflated by a factor of 2, US labor costs are still high compared to many other places. Yes, regulations (environmental, employment rules, OSHA, and many more) do add to the burden of operating a business in the USA, and other costs in the USA are also much higher (property taxes, land costs, construction costs, etc). But it seems to me the biggest factor driving production off shore is the relative cost of labor. That same factor is partially responsible for migration of domestic production from northern to southern states.
Mike M,
“Chelsea Clinton got into Stanford and Oxford before her parents cashed in.”
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Well, before they cashed in big-time. But sure, the kids of very famous and especially politically influential people ALWAYS get into colleges they are in no way qualified for academically.
SteveF (Comment #216279): “Here is Zelensky’s peace plan (AKA conditions for starting negotiations):”
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For anyone interested the full English text of Zelensky’s speech can be found here: https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-zavzhdi-bula-liderom-mirotvorchih-zusil-yaksho-rosi-79141
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He does not say they are preconditions for negotiations. But he does imply that he expects unilateral Russian action on at least some and says that one item is non-negotiable.
Mike M,
That one item is pretty much the whole tamale: return of all Ukrainian lands. “It is not up to negotiations.”
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OK, quibble if you want about what will be defined as “Ukrainian lands”, but there is no way the Crimea is going to be returned to the Ukraine, and probably not most of the Donbas region. The crazy thing is: there could have been negotiations that would have ended up pretty much in the same final place as where they will end up, and that could have happened even before the war started.
Mike M,
One more comment on Labor costs. I have had many business contacts in Brazil over the past 30 years. When I first traveled to Brazil and talked with people about their salaries, I thought the country should be killing international markets in high value manufactured goods. Their wages were much less than half the wages in the USA and Europe (25%? 20% Less?). It was only later that I understood why the Brazilian economy does not dominate: the Government taxes companies at almost exactly 100% of the wages that are paid to employees, mandates ruinously expensive “benefits” (which are mostly just more payments to the government for fictitious individual unemployment accounts), saddles the national economy with a mindbogglingly complicated value added tax system that doubles the domestic costs for all industrial products, and has a regulatory scheme which hog-ties businesses. It literally can take years to start any business that manufactures a product… and that is years of nothing but bureaucratic waste.
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There are also 100% (and more) import duties on most products to protect domestic manufacturers that are struggling under the nightmarish taxes and regulations from overseas competitors that are not so burdened. Those duties also make it prohibitively expensive to purchase needed (imported) capital equipment… effectively doubling capital costs for many industries. So the net is: the government strangles economic growth in every possible way, suppresses capital formation, inflates the currency through deficit spending, and uses confiscatory tax rates to impoverish everyone. Many politicians, including the newly elected president Lula, want to INCREASE government take from the economy. It is a formula for disaster, but a formula that the left in the USA seems to want to duplicate.
Yet another attempt to launch Artemis rocket tonight at 1 AM EST.
McConnell got judges through and some tax cuts.
Schumer got judges through, as well as lots of legislation that Democrats wanted, and blocking legislation that Democrats did not want and blocking lots of nominees.
SteveF (Comment #216305): “The crazy thing is: there could have been negotiations that would have ended up pretty much in the same final place as where they will end up, and that could have happened even before the war started.”
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I’m not buying. Putin thought he could have the whole tamale without very much effort. He was not going to settle for just a whiff. And I don’t believe that Putin will give up any significant territory unless Russia is forced out.
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Such a deal was nearly reached in late March. It is not clear how close it was to completion. One source says that it was all but finalized until NATO (i.e., Washington) decided to deep six it and sent Boris Johnson to Kiev to lay down the law. If true, that is tragic.
Tom Scharf,
I wonder, does ‘Artemis’ translate roughly to ‘boondoggle’? As best I can figure, SpaceX could have developed a cheaper rocket (and much cheaper to fly) in 1/4 the time and 1/4 the development cost.
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If Artemis ‘crashes and burns’ (so to speak), heads should roll at NASA.
SpaceX has Starship which they did develop much faster and much cheaper, we shall see if it successfully flies soon, the next year probably.
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Artemis is exactly what you would expect from a rocket funded by Congress. It’s still going to be one of the largest rockets ever launched and will orbit the moon if successful. Manned missions over the next three years with an eventual landing, but it is wildly expensive and wildly late. One would have thought the people in 1960 would have been at a disadvantage in this race, but one would be wrong. Sliderules rule.
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Apollo program $257B (2020 adjusted)
Artemis program $97B (if goes to plan, never does)
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They should have just skipped the moon and gone directly to Mars IMO, although I cannot defend manned programs versus robotic explorers with a lot of enthusiasm. I do love the spectacle of a big rocket launch. I lived about 40 miles south of Cape Canaveral during the Shuttle era and watched a bunch of them. Night launches are awesome. Thank you taxpayers.
This is the best documentary, made for the 50 year anniversary. Apollo 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc
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It doesn’t have any contemporary interviews and all that stuff. It is just archive (restored) film from the time with reporting as it was done at the time. No narration at all. See this one in IMAX theater if possible.
A Russian missile evidently has landed in Poland and killed two farmers.
Ken Fritsch,
The Poles really don’t like the Russians, something my Polish born daughter in law strenuously confirms (with a bit of anger mixed in). Still, an errant rocket that kills two civilians, while bad, is most certainly not an attack on Poland by Russia. They will sputter for a while, but this will soon be forgotten. The USA kills civilians unintentionally all the time (most recently in Afghanistan; we killed a bunch of kids). Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Well, it is official.
Let’s go Ron!
Beat the Don!
Also official: Republicans control the House.
Mike M “Also official: Republicans control the House.” Link please
WooHoo! That’s one big rocket. Made it to orbit. Hopefully the rest goes well.
Who has projected Republicans at 218? Haven’t seen it.
It wasn’t even a Russian rocket:
“Poland’s President Andrzej Duda says there are ‘many indications that it was an air defense missile that unfortunately fell on Polish territory'”
SteveF, can I come out of my bomb shelter now?
If the current House race leads hold up it would be 221 Republican and 214 Democrat.
The CA 3rd District shows only 57% of the vote counted. I would think all good citizens would want to know why the count is so slow. I doubt it is fraud but rather government incompetence in a simply process called counting and/or a process that is flawed or really does not care about delivering timely results.
The same state rules must apply for all voting in CA and thus the wonderment is why the wide range of percent of vote counted for the various districts at this many days after the election. In Pelosi’s district 93% of the vote is counted and where the final results where never in doubt. Of the 10 races not called 7 are in CA. The one district in Maine should be called for the Democrat based on 99% of the vote counted and the lead involved. The uncalled Colorado race is 99% reported but very close. Even Alaska has 90% of the vote counted. CA stands out like a sore thumb.
Ken Fritsch,
“CA stands out like a sore thumb.”
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Yes, and I would be 100% in support of California leaving the union and forming it’s own country…. much better for the rest of us. 😉
Laura Ingraham said that the Republicans were up to 218. I assumed it was a Fox News projection, but that does not seem to be the case.
Mike M,
Laura Ingraham pretty much always needs to calm down. This is no exception.
“Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.”
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The problem is that even a merit based society has positive feedback loops that cause stratifications.
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1) Wealthy individuals can help their offspring starting with mate selection and better child care.
2) Habits that lead to success can be more effectively modeled within the home.
3) Private schooling can group the children with better peer models, perhaps better teachers, and certainly a more academically competitive environment.
4) The resulting superior college admission test scores and other preparations provide a huge advantage in college selection.
5) The desirable colleges have their own positive feedback loop be creating doorways to success by creating networks of peers with all the attributes that led to admission.
6) Rinse and repeat.
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The cycle is partially countered by those who fall off the cycle due to the comfort of safety nets provided by being in a wealthy family. Trust fund kids are not always as successful as John Fetterman.
Ron Graf,
“The problem is that even a merit based society has positive feedback loops that cause stratifications.”
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Sure, but at least a truly merit based system gives people without a lot of financial/family advantages a chance. The current system (horse-shit ‘social awareness’ requirements and/or the right race/ethnicity) make the situation far worse than one based on merit.
Yes, you would expect there to be a disproportionate number of wealthy people at the upper end of a fair merit system for those reasons. A more efficient merit system closes those loops even more. It’s hard to separate the earned parts of the merit system in the wealthy from the unearned parts that they create to protect their progeny.
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Holistic admissions (intentionally) obscure this. I think that private institutions can admit who they like and if they also (intentionally) limit admissions to better market their product then that is their right. What galls me is that they are allowed to cover themselves with false virtue for their self serving efforts.
Tom
What galls me is we have systems to publicly subsidize certain private schools choices.
A more efficient merit system closes those loops even more.
I don’t think that’s true. There are always some meritorious in the out groups for lots of reasons. Part of those reasons are “s*it happens”. (War, disease, bad luck. . .) An efficient merit system detects these people.
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Will more from the in group be meritorious and get picked for merit? Yes. An efficient merit system detects merit. Meritorious parents tend to foster merit in their kids.
My brother went to a very small public country school from a farm family that was far from well off. He went to Harvard. He indicated to me that it might have helped with his first job as a lawyer, but nothing after that.
All this class labeling is so Marxist.
“All this class labeling is so Marxist.”
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Yes. So is race labeling. And a Marxist would do it for the same reason: to delegitimize a free order, which for the same reason those who believe in freedom promote a race and class blind society.
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The problem is how does one focus on promoting something that you want people to ignore? Real question.
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Edit: There is class corruption, however, which separates class from race which is immutable.
It seems the legacy media aren’t very enthusiastic about Trump’s 2024 run and aren’t afraid to express themselves. They are approx. 100.0000% against. They are also 100.0000% sure that Trump is finished … this time … for sure. They know this because they asked everyone they knew who all feel the exact same way. Exactly the same way.
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What a bunch of dolts. If Trump correctly figured out anything in politics, it is making sure the right people don’t like you, and then inviting them regularly to express their disdain to demonstrate their emotional entanglement.
A more efficient merit system closes the loops more over multiple generations. People self selecting mates and peers from their own merit level, then passing advantages / disadvantages to children.
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These advantages are both genetic and class related (environment). The question remains is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s good if you want the optimal outcome by some measurements. It’s bad if you are on the wrong end of that distribution.
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If you want the very best basketball team and are competing against external top teams for real benefits then this is a good thing. If you want the best median basketball team then it probably isn’t, you would want more mixing of skill sets in the hope a rising tide will lift all boats.
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Fill in the analogy of your choice to show maximizing the top isn’t always the correct answer. What is the correct goal is the question.
Class is often in the eyes of the beholder and used to make points that might well be in the eyes of the beholder.
There are mixes of classes for given individuals and those individuals are not rigidly in a given class forever.
I have known lots of individuals who I would never know how to classify unless I could invent multiple classifications.
Tom Scharf,
“A more efficient merit system closes the loops more over multiple generations. People self selecting mates and peers from their own merit level, then passing advantages / disadvantages to children.”
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There is always an effect from mate selection, of course. But I note that the most economically successful (‘the elites’) tend not to have many children… and often none at all. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/)
The USA is well below replacement rate (population grows via immigration, not births), so the above graphic shows that more wealthy people are far (far!) below replacement rates in births. If this were to continue over many generations, the offspring of the wealthy might be meritorious, but few in number.
There is a very strange correlation between increased wealth and having less children that seems to be almost universal across different cultures, not just the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
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I’m not sure anyone really understands this very well. This is not predicted by evolution, but we don’t kill off the bottom end of the curve via the “strongest will survive”.
Tom,
I think it is speculated that increased wealth means parents can be confident their kid is likely to survive to adulthood. That and increased wealth means that a parent doesn’t actually need the kids to do any work, to contribute to survival.
Think of the days of yore when kids helped on the farm and child mortality was significant. It makes sense to have more kids under this scenario. But this isn’t the scenario people with upper middle income and wealth really face in the USA today anymore.
[Edit: I phrased this in as passive a way as I could manage, because I don’t know that I actually believe this. But I do believe I have heard and read this idea expressed before and I am under the impression this is ‘the conventional thinking’ about this. Who thinks this, where, when do they say this? I can’t actually support my claim here so maybe I am full of it. Buyer beware.]
I have talked with several educated and reasonably well off people in their 30’s to 50’s about why they either don’t have kids or decided to have only one (in the USA, Japan, Europe, and South American countries). The replies are usually the same everywhere: ‘kids are too much work’, ‘kids are too expensive to raise’, and ‘kids interfere too much’ with the lifestyle they want to have. Sometimes the reason is ‘having kids is selfish’ and don’t think it is morally right to ‘burden Earth’ with even more people. I have always found these answers very troubling and difficult to understand.
Marriage and first birth ages have increased significantly over the past several decades. Those who wait too long will often decide not to have children or adopt them. My 3 kids were in their mid to late 30s before marrying. They had 0, 1 and 4 kids (3 births with one being twins).
Mark, I have heard the same and I would buy it. I would also add that the traditional matriarch of a rural family is a domestic engineer and not culturally attuned to field labor (or corporate office or retail occupations). Women’s liberation ended the baby boom.
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What else might curtail population is male infertility growing worldwide from straight line to an accelerating rate. https://www.yahoo.com/news/male-fertility-crash-accelerating-worldwide-222355509.html
It was not long after the publishing or Origin of Species that intellectuals and industrial barons observed that the upper class and cultures deemed more advanced were less fertile than the poor and backward. This is one of the points that folded into the promotion of the eugenics movement, led by the US by the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, funded by Andrew Carnegie.
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A similar movement sprung up in Britain. These two influenced German scientists to promote these ideas to a receptive audience that happened to be gaining power. Since the end of WWII these ideas were realized to be unacceptably morally hazardous.
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Yet if you identify with a self-proclaimed party of virtue then you have license to promote Planned Parenthood, an organization with a slightly Orwellian name and founded as a eugenics tool.
AP and others have called a California race for the republican…. putting Republicans at 218…. they will get two (or worst case one) more seat in California, plus the Boebert race in Colorado, so either 220 or 221 final tally to 214 or 215 for the Democrats.
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The Wicked Witch of the West is finally headed for the exit.
New marching orders for the media:
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Search: “resistance”
Replace: “obstruction”
SteveF, I’m seeing the same figure (218) at RealClear Politics, with sizeable leads in 2 CA districts, and narrow leads in 1 more CA district plus Boebert’s in CO. If all those hold up, Rs will end with a total of 222, gaining 9 seats.
Tom Scharf, too true!
Eugenics and versions of it come in many forms and, of course, always with the coercive power of government does it come to fruition.
Eugenics has haunted the social sciences for the better part of two centuries. Historically, as a social movement, its most ardent advocates were the progressives, while in economics its most famous champion was John Maynard Keynes. Recently, the history of the eugenics movement has been studied in detail in Thomas Leonard’s masterpiece, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (you can read a review here, and Leonard’s own survey of the topic here). Yet although the rhetoric of public policy has changed since the heyday of eugenics a century ago, economic policies with eugenic implications persist almost unnoticed in the 21st century.
A more direct route to the goals of eugenics in the Great Reset would be a form of transhumanism.
The Great Reset’s vision of transhumanism sees the replacement of humans by a man-machine hybrid. This will be achieved through the injection into the body of implantable wireless computing endpoints. The implants will connect the carriers’ brains directly to an internet of people; they will be like nodes in ubiquitous wireless networks. The purpose of the implants will be both to monitor and control the mind.
Thoughts that will improve the person’s social credit score will be suggested, something like the way that auto-complete prompts during a web search. If the implants work as expected, controlling the thoughts and beliefs of the recipients, then the humans will have become robots. Robots do not have a will of their own; they are extensions of the single mind of the AI central planner.
The source of the early call on Tuesday that Republicans had reached 218 was some outfit called Decision Desk HQ. They called CA-3 for Kiley. I think they are still the only ones making that call.
HaroldW (Comment #216344)
November 16th, 2022 at 10:24 pm
Harold, where does your 222nd Republican House seat come from? Alaska is the only district I can think of that was giving the Democrats a lead that could could change to Republican because of the unknow calculation of the ranked choice method.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #216345): “A more direct route to the goals of eugenics in the Great Reset would be a form of transhumanism.”
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I think that could only occur after by far the bloodiest war in human history. But I am something of a hopeless optimist.
HaroldW, I see now that Republicans have leads in 3 CA races and 1 in CO. If held that gets to 222 without Alaska. That means a race in CA changed from a Democrat lead to a Republican. That does not mean the Republican lead will hold but makes an interesting rare late vote counting lead change to a Republican. Probably needs an investigation and definitely a recount if the lead holds.
Actually the uncalled Alaska race which at Politico shows a lead for the Democrat actually has more votes for the 2 Republicans than for the one Democrat in the race. This is with 90% of the vote counted but with the great unknow of ranked choice deciding the ultimate outcome. A Republican win there would be a potential 223 for the Republicans.
MikeM wrote: “I think that could only occur after by far the bloodiest war in human history. But I am something of a hopeless optimist.”
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I don’t think so. There are plenty of intermediary stages that people will voluntarily apply. It’s really just an evolution of the smart phone. “Implants” for accessing data, messages etc are as much a staple of science fiction as the “tablet”.
A counter opinion, devil’s advocate view.
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Eugenics: The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
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Eugenics is basically a moral decision, engineering social outcomes this way (genetic engineering of babies, forced sterilization, etc.) is deemed abhorrent yet engineering social outcomes in other ways is deemed virtuous. I’m not sure there isn’t a lot more gray area here.
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Why is forced bussing and affirmative action OK but altering genetics to make somebody more intelligent somehow monstruous? Even when those people would agree to these actions?
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If I was to say that eugenics is commonly practiced by successful people selecting “desirable” mates then people would scoff, but that is exactly what is happening.
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Testing unborn babies for genetic disorders and aborting them are what? Look away! Not eugenics! Anyway, I see this more as a spectrum than a single clearly defined issue. The word eugenics is associated with cartoonish Nazi doctors in prison camps.
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If they had found a few genes that definitely improved social outcomes through intelligence, strength, speed, balance, immunity, leadership, beauty, blind acceptance of government control (ha ha) then this should be prohibited by law for individuals to choose? OK then, but let’s keep allowing the smart talented beautiful people to select and mate with the same.
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The losers in the genetic lottery have no way out here and being legally prohibited from doing so for their progeny also seems unfair.
Covid
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Australia:
“… the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (ATAGI) had recommended against a fifth dose, or third booster, after evidence from Singapore’s recent wave showed that severe illness and death were rare among the vaccinated and that a fifth shot had minimal impact on virus transmission.”
“In those who are eligible for a booster dose, ATAGI does not have a preference for bivalent mRNA vaccines over original mRNA vaccines.”
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CDC, 6 days ago:
“Bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster doses might improve protection against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron sublineages and, along with completion of a primary series in persons who remain unvaccinated, are important to protect against COVID-19, particularly among those persons who are at increased risk for severe illness and death.”
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“might improve”? Huh.
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The real news here is the * lack * of news. The efficacy of the bivalent booster has been memory holed in the media and the quick booster fading against hospitalization for omicron (40% at 9 months) is also never talked about except in academic papers.
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The good news is that protection against serious outcomes and death for healthy people has held up well for the vaccine and * do not appear to fade *, although it is a bit murky if that is primarily because omicron is less lethal or long term protection from the vaccine and/or natural immunity.
Tom,
Why is forced bussing and affirmative action OK but altering genetics to make somebody more intelligent somehow monstruous? Even when those people would agree to these actions?
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If I was to say that eugenics is commonly practiced by successful people selecting “desirable” mates then people would scoff, but that is exactly what is happening.
1. Forced bussing and affirmative action is not OK. But with respect to eugenics, my impression wasn’t that the goal was ‘to make somebody more intelligent somehow’ but rather to prevent the birth and survival of people deemed inferior. This is a much different proposition in my view.
2. People exercising their free choice vs government policy are completely different things. It is perfectly fine (and in fact inevitable) for people to discriminate in their personal lives. You discriminate to chose a mate, a profession, where to live, what to buy, how to worship, etc etc. It is completely unacceptable for government to dictate these things as a matter of policy.
[Edit: I should add, it is also perfectly fine if people discriminating in their private choices leads to unjust or unequal societal outcomes, as far as I am concerned.]
Covid, one more thing. If you want to fill your head with thoughts there is a conspiracy to suppress nonconforming narratives on the vaccine, here you go …
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The actual data shows vaccine two dose protection against infection is actual * negative * after 6 months. That is, vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated after 6 months. This is the second paper I have seen with this phenomenon. I have no explanation for this (vaccinated get tested more often?) and have noted the academics usually have a euphemism for this and call it “negligible” protection against infection.
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The Lancet, Sep 2022, see Figure 1, negative protection https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/878297b5-d849-4499-8553-c2f17ee7e6db-MECA.pdf?abstractid=4224504&mirid=1
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“Somewhat implausibly, we even observed a negative VE against Omicron infection from week 14, indicating that vaccinated individuals experienced a higher risk of infection than those unvaccinated. This may relate to harvesting bias in this analysis of the first event of a common outcome (as infection with Omicron is getting close to ubiquitous in many areas now). More unvaccinated individuals had already been infected, leaving a larger pool of vaccinated individuals susceptible to their first infection later by Omicron. As a result, a higher risk among vaccinated individuals might be observed for a limited time period.”
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Even if the above theory is correct it also shows natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine against infection. I have never once seen this reported in the media.
Although discrimination has become a very dirty word, it is actually the bedrock of civilization. The foundations of law and order require people be discriminated against for their choices to protect others. Progressives railing against discrimination have taken the opportunity that the negative connotation has afforded them to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and we can see where this is going: the breakdown of law and order and the promotion of unethical behavior. Of course, they simply want to replace existing discrimination with their own, usually by turning it on people who aren’t doing anything to anybody.
Tom Scharf,
“Why is forced bussing and affirmative action OK but altering genetics to make somebody more intelligent somehow monstruous?”
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The short answer is Lysenko. The long answer is that the left (including the progressive left in the States) refuses as a matter of divine dogma to ever even entertain that differences in intellect are in any way inherited. When you reject completely the possibility that identifiable groups have different average intellect, then all measured differences, indeed all differences in life outcomes, can only be due to the differences in environments people grew up in, and, of course, the ever present systemic racism. It is the purest of rubbish, of course. Native intellect, culture, and environment all influence life outcomes. The left will no more admit that East Asians are (on average) 4 IQ points smarter than caucasians than it will admit that Caucasians are (on average) 10 IQ points smarter than Africans. It is the ‘big lie’ of the left, and has been since the days of Lysenko.
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Since obvious racial discrimination by colleges is both illegal and unconstitutional, maybe the SC will hand Harvard a much deserved loss.
I was to say that eugenics is commonly practiced by successful people selecting “desirable” mates then people would scoff, but that is exactly what is happening.
Tom, the abhorrent part is when government tells you who you can and cannot mate.
If a fully aware individual chooses to be wired as trans-human that is their business. Although there would be a legal question whether that choice could be made just like voluntarily becoming a slave. A time limited contractual agreement might work under certain very special circumstances. I really doubt that more than a very few would choose to loss their autonomy in that way, although giving it up in exchange for promised security from the government might unfortunately be a different situation. But then again this only can occur when the government has made the individual dependent upon it.
I do not see any groups of people thinking about mating up or down when making mating choices or individuals giving consideration of the results or non-results of such a process. Your “desirable” may be the mating couples “compatible”.
mark bofill,
But the definition of eugenics is not forced genetics by the government, although it is conflated. Another definition is the study of how it might be done voluntarily. I just don’t see bright lines here beyond the forced implementation.
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If genetically superior groups can self select and produce superior children, then why can’t genetically inferior groups improve their children’s outcomes with genetic engineering (assuming we had the means)?
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If one believes this would be OK then we should be studying how it can be done. Group genetics studies are increasingly being banned in the academy. Men and women are no longer any different lately. It’s anathema to touch this subject, but I’m just not sure why. Seems more like a moral panic.
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There are real problems that are predictable if the technology was available. The first is that only wealthy people would have access to this technology at first and that would widen the gap even further. The second is that the government would step in to fix this by subsidizing the technology to allow other to have access … then … the government will only subsidize changes it deems desirable.
Tom,
If genetically superior groups can self select and produce superior children, then why can’t genetically inferior groups improve their children’s outcomes with genetic engineering (assuming we had the means)?
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It is totally not clear to me that ‘genetically inferior groups’ (whatever in heck that perilous loaded bomb term actually means) that they can’t. Why do you claim they can’t? It’s not at all clear to me that it would be wrong. I mean, prenatal vitamins are OK, lots of things that can positively affect fetal development are OK. What exactly are we talking about here (what option) that would be forbidden or wrong?
Is it just selective abortion?
Look, there’s another whole thing here. You appear to think that genetics are destiny. I don’t think that’s true. Genetics are a factor. Intelligence has some heritable components, but last I checked there wasn’t a ‘G factor’ gene – there’s a lot of genes that come into play. And intelligence isn’t the only selective factor, not by a long shot. If there is scientific evidence supporting the idea that smart women or conscientious hard working men are better looking than otherwise I am not aware of it and would welcome a link.
You also seem to think that there needs to be some sort of equalization of outcome for different groups of people based on group membership. I think you’re seriously barking up the wrong tree there.
One more comment and I’ll hush.
I think it’s something like this. It’s something like – we don’t know what gene combinations are optimal. We can never know that, it’s an intractable combinatorics problem like solving chess. Additionally, even if we could, we can’t predict what the future holds and what traits might eventually become more important.
People are free to participate in mutual selection.
Is it fair that you start with the genes you start with? It doesn’t matter! There isn’t anything anybody can or should do about that anyway. You start where you start. You look for the ‘best’ mate you can. You get to figure out what ‘best’ means for yourself. Nobody can know exactly what that means for each individual, or dictate that. Nor should they.
The Bell Curve was accused of being racist, but the section on race was a small section, and the author in future books focused only on whites.
The main focus of the book was that people are now more marrying college classmates or colleagues at work, and this is thru genetics creating a class divide.
“I do not see any groups of people thinking about mating up or down when making mating choices or individuals giving consideration of the results or non-results of such a process.”
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It’s perfectly fine to have this as a personal moral bearing, but in group preferences are a very real thing whether conscious or unconscious.
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35% of people graduate college, yet:
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College grads in U.S. tend to partner with each other – especially if their parents also graduated from college https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/07/college-grads-in-u-s-tend-to-partner-with-each-other-especially-if-their-parents-also-graduated-from-college/
“In 2019, 81% of household heads with a bachelor’s degree or more education had a spouse or partner who was also a college graduate.”
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The number is 86% if their parents went to college. I bet 99% of them will swear they have no prejudice against non-college graduates, they just don’t marry them and make sure and send their kids to college, and then praise junior highly when he brings home a college girl, invite her to dinner.
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This is just one line of evidence, there are many more. In this example these groups are segregated in colleges and college level jobs in their mating periods. So it happens. This is how class happens.
My 2 bits on this
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Breeding selects animal and plant stocks for inheritable traits.
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This is basic biology
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Mankind is an animal species
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Low intelligent humans breeding with other low intelligent humans will, in general, reinforce traits of low intelligence.
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On the intelligence difference between blacks and other population groups in the US, the difference seems to be a US issue, not a world wide issue.
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I would be very interested in a study looking at when US blacks started diverging from the overall world black population. My thoughts are this trend in lowering intelligence in the US black population started with the War on Poverty under President Johnson. US welfare strategy seems to acts as a biological sorting strategy.
Ed
My thoughts are this trend in lowering intelligence in the US black population started with the War on Poverty under President Johnson. US welfare strategy seems to acts as a biological sorting strategy.
Even if your theory of low intelligence in the US black population were true (and I doubt it), that time scale for the cause would be ridiculous.
Ed Forbes,
I have not the slightest clue what you are talking about: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
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Africa has among the lowest measured average IQ’s of any region. No doubt those low averages are confounded with poverty, poor nutrition, poor education, etc. But really, what would make you think USA blacks (average IQ of 85 – 90) are less intelligent than Africans?
I don’t know how women can select a sperm donor today but my guess is they are given some selection criteria and that donor pool is screened. Low grade genetic engineering. Should they be forced to take a random selection? I don’t think so. Shouldn’t they be looking at this? https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Heritability
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If society deems they do not want to allow the sorted business of overt genetic engineering that is fine by me, but it’s not a clean question and I don’t see obvious answers.
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Downs syndrome is about 1% heritable and is genetically testable before birth using amniocentesis. Cystic fibrosis, another genetic defect is also detectable, life expectancy of 20 years in 1980 but much higher now.
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Will these potential babies not experience joy and happiness and a life worth living? Will they not burden their parents, their siblings, or the state? These are very difficult questions and they become even harder as the technology progresses.
There is a Flynn effect of IQs increasing with each generation. Since the IQs average to 100 by definition, the scores are not comparable with time without renorming.
Pelosi is out as House leader, my heart breaks. Hopefully they will elect AOC as minority leader.
Tom,
Hehe. Not going to happen.
Tom,
Never fear, AOC is speaking up for the most oppressed group in the country, Taylor Swift fans.
My comment disappeared and I have been busy entertaining today so I will just say I am in total agreement with the defiant side of Markbofill with regard to the genetic issue. He has framed it well.
Thank you Kenneth.
Kenneth,
I don’t see your disappeared comment. Sorry.
Lots of comments
“You look for the ‘best’ mate you can.
If genetically superior groups can self select and produce superior children, then why can’t genetically inferior groups improve their children’s outcomes with genetic engineering (assuming we had the means)?
Class is often in the eyes of the beholder and used to make points that might well be in the eyes of the beholder.”
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There is an expression “batting above your weight” in Australia [and USA?] to describe finding a mate much better than one deserves.
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There is reversion to the mean.
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Intelligence, as a trait, like beauty, is a luck of the draw for all human beings.
Hence it can afflict anyone.
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Genetic superiority is a horrible concept usually used by people who think they have a wonderful set of genes.
Having met examples of most of the different racial groups in the world, including Canadians, I would say it is and always will be to assign intelligence and race as obligatory co factors.
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A variation on Ken’s apt comment would be Asimov’s.
Claiming genetic superiority is the last refuge of the intellectually insecure.
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Why is it that the older one gets the more simple younger people seem?
Or am I just being Agist?
I would say it is and always will be WRONG to assign intelligence and race as obligatory co factors.
Lucia, my missing comment was probably a very rare miscue on my part. Do not do emoticons. Sorry for my wasting your time.
angech,
Obligatory co-factors? No, there are plenty of pretty dumb Japanese people, and plenty of pretty smart Japanese people (I am sure, because I have met a few of both), but Japanese people do in fact score about 6 IQ points higher on average than, say, Australians. Recognizing that fact does not make me prejudiced against Australians. There are clear differences in average intelligence between identifiable groups. There are much larger differences in intelligence between individuals in any identified group. The width of the distribution in every identifiable group is always far greater than the differences in means between groups, and the distributions always have large overlaps.
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This matters not at all in how people should be treated: every individual should be fairly and honestly evaluated, independent of membership in any identifiable group. But refusing to accept differences in average intellect between identifiable groups can (and often does) lead to damaging policies, policies which are claimed to be opposing ‘racism’, but which in fact are explicitly based on racial selection, not selection based on the qualifications of the person. The relative handful of physics majors at CalTech ought not be admitted to guarantee there is the ‘correct’ proportional representation of each identifiable group, but rather on whether or not they are the most capable individuals. Candidates to be medical doctors, engineers, programmers, accountants, and everything else ought to be selected by how competent they will likely be, not their race, sex, national origin, or religious beliefs.
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Or as one US Supreme Court justice noted: the way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating based on race.
Steve, I agree with your point that there are different mean levels of intelligence among identifiable groups. But we can’t know accurately what those numbers are due to confounding by culture and by choice of definition of intelligence.
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It is much easier to see the differences in dog breeds. My mixed breed shepherd – collie was much smarter than my pug.
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There is also differences in types of intelligence, on average I believe, between men and women. But I know Lucia strongly disagrees. (I did say on average).
One interesting point about German eugenics is that their scientists promoted racial purity as a benefit when we see in practice that genetic diversity produces superior traits, at least in the short run. I am not sure why this is or why inbreeding is harmful beyond increasing chances of recessive gene type diseases.
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Edit: Answering my own question, it would make sense that bad dominant traits would be eliminated from the gene pool faster than bad recessive traits. Therefore bad dominant traits are scarcer. So genetic diversity makes more heterozygous alleles, which are controlled by the dominant one.
Ron
It is much easier to see the differences in dog breeds. My mixed breed shepherd – collie was much smarter than my pug.
Dogs have been intentionally bred for traits.
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There is also differences in types of intelligence, on average I believe, between men and women. But I know Lucia strongly disagrees. (I did say on average).
I don’t know what “types” you think are different. I think women and men on average have somewhat different interests and orientations. By adulthood that’s bound to affect what they are good at and what they know. It also affects what problems they’ve practiced applying their knowledge to.
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It’s very difficult for people to tease out the difference between application of knowledge and “innate intelligence”, much less tease out whether people have different “types” of intelligence.
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Another thought on the topic brings to mind that German eugenics saw Jews, Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses as genetically inferior. Their main beef was that they were too tribal, which makes one smile at the irony.
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There are echoes of this today. Every group sees other groups as too tribal.
Ron Graf
I am not sure why this is or why inbreeding is harmful beyond increasing chances of recessive gene type diseases.
In breeding over the long term results in a lack of variety in genes can result in the population not having genes that would be useful if conditions change slightly. And conditions always change slightly– for example new diseases arise. Consider Covid or the fungus that blighted the Irish potatoes. (Irish potatoes were one specific strain. Not all potatoes were as susceptible to the blight. The genes that made things blight resistant were identified in other potatoes and new commercial strains made.) Anyway, those are two potential down sides. But if the Irish potatoes had been the only strain of potatoe there was a risk potatoes could be wiped out. Otherwise, in the wild the potatoes with naturally existing resistance would carry on and out compete.
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Intentional inbreeding– for crops– tries to do things somewhat carefully to get a specific outcome. But you still often have other problems– German shepard’s have hip problems.
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I doubt the Germans under Hitler had anywhere near enough time to become inbred compared to other populations. Their populations was large enough to require a very large number of generations of in breeding to see problems. (Iceland doesn’t seem to exhibit problems as far as I am aware. My understanding is it’s hard for an icelander to meet another who isn’t at least as close as 5th cousin.)
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Of course, Hitler’s eugenic scientist didn’t even have tools to figure out who had “more” of the “correct” racial groups traits. Never mind that they didn’t have the tools to identify who or where the “correct” “master race” might have come from, what they looked like and so on. (The tools to obtain DNA from human remains and analyze them now exist. )
“It’s very difficult for people to tease out the difference between application of knowledge and “innate intelligence”, much less tease out whether people have different “types” of intelligence.”
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Agreed.
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I just believe there is based on your first point, which is that intelligence can be bread and thus different types of intelligence can be bread. And thus it makes sense that if for a million years before the last 50 men and women had different requirements in intelligence in providing for the propagation of the species.
Lucia wrote: “I think women and men on average have somewhat different interests and orientations.”
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While considering this issue in the past, I thought a good study might be to take a survey of YouTube channels and the subjects covered by men and women. Given these are largely voluntary, time consuming, extra-curricular activities, with a huge number of data points, it should give a pretty good picture of how these interests differ without the biases involved in asking the question.
Ron
I just believe there is based on your first point, which is that intelligence can be bread and thus different types of intelligence can be bread.
I think it is possible to breed it. It may have happened with Ashkenaz Jews who are thought to have gone through a bottleneck in the middle ages and who remain a distinct group due to strong intermarriage within the cultural-religious group. (The bottleneck seemed to be down to 350 breeding indviduals. https://www.nature.com/articles/5201156 )
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However, given the known movements of human peoples, the very large size of the breeding group, I think it highly unlikely there are strong correlations between IQ and race, and the strength of the evidence that it exists is poor and tends to be flawed by other factors we know affect IQ. (Nutrition, disease, and– like it or not– training/social exposure.)
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Since I have no idea what “type” of intelligence you think differ between men and women and I suspect your view is due to “just looking around”, I’m pretty dubious of your opinion on that. Identifying differences in “type” of intelligence would require truly teasing out what you consider a “type” then designing a test for that. “Size of visual working memory”? There is some evidence women have more of this “type” than men: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18982954/ (just googled working -memory, men women.)
There is some evidence women deal with brain damage better: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00139/full
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So I wouldn’t reject your idea outright.
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There are supposedly somewhere between 4-7 “factors” or “dimensions” of intelligence. I casually googled working memory– which happened to pop up results that show evidence women are better than men at those. I would guess men might be better at some of the other ones– not going to google.
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I tend to think by the time people pass 18, interests and choices affect how “intelligent” they are in different dimensions. So I suspect most peoples impression of what “types” of intelligence men and women have is due to what types of activities, education and socialization they have had.
DaveJR
While considering this issue in the past, I thought a good study might be to take a survey of YouTube channels and the subjects covered by men and women.
The more interesting good study is comparing job choices of women in very sex-egalitarian countries to less egalitarian countries with strong income distribution. Women in places like Sweden and Norway evidently pick more “female” type jobs relative to males than on other countries. In other countries women tend to pick things that get them jobs with better prospects. So higher proportions go into “male” jobs.
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The interpretation is that when there is no strong financial incentive to pick “male” jobs, women pick “female” jobs at an even higher rate.
DaveJR
Given these are largely voluntary, time consuming, extra-curricular activities, with a huge number of data points, it should give a pretty good picture of how these interests differ without the biases involved in asking the question.
Actually, a lot of youtube makes people who post a lot some $$. There is $$ in selling beauty products, gadgets, etc. The women posting about how to have “wonderful” nails often have storefronts. And etc.
Lucia,
“I think it highly unlikely there are strong correlations between IQ and race, and the strength of the evidence that it exists is poor and tends to be flawed by other factors we know affect IQ.”
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Could you define ‘strong’?
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What evidence do you think is poor?
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What is very clear from fraternal and identical twin studies (raised together and separated at birth) is that intelligence has a large genetic factor. Yes, of course nutrition, environment, and culture also have influence on adult intelligence (how could they not?), but the evidence for the basic heritability of intelligence seems to me strong, not poor.
SteveF
What evidence do you think is poor?
With respect to race: all that I have read. It’s almost as annoying as “education” evidence for most “evidence based education”. I’m not hunting it down to read more.
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What is very clear from fraternal and identical twin studies (raised together and separated at birth) is that intelligence has a large genetic factor.
I accept that there is a hereditary component. It’s also not evidence of actual existing strong distributions by race. So that is not counter evidence to what I wrote.
If someone points out that height, hair color, obesity, athletic ability, longevity, and many other characteristics are at least partially inherited, that is perfectly OK. But if someone points out that the ability to solve complex mathematical problems (or even comprehend the math necessary to understand those complex problems) is also at least partially inherited, that is not OK. I find it simply bizarre.
Ron Graf,
“But we can’t know accurately what those numbers are due to confounding by culture and by choice of definition of intelligence.”
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Definition of intelligence? Intelligence as measured by standardized tests of intelligence. I don’t know any other; perhaps you could point to other definitions, how the intelligence those definitions describe is measured, and how that measured intelligence correlates with academic and life outcomes.
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We can know, and do know (with reasonable accuracy) who is most likely to succeed based on their measured intelligence by standardized tests of intellectual capability. Standardized testing (eg SAT, ACT, various intelligence tests) are strong predictors of both academic and overall life outcomes. Perfect predictors? Of course not, there are lots of very smart people who fail for reasons other than their intellect, and lots of less smart people who do very well for reasons other than their intellect (like exceptional effort, responsibility, self-awareness, etc.). Please point to better predictors of outcomes than existing standardized tests.
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If we test high school athletes in how fast they can run 100 meters, we can predict which of them have a chance to succeed as defensive backs in the NFL…. and which do not. Nobody seems to object to measuring foot speed, but testing speed of mind to predict academic success seems verboten. As I said above, I find it bizarre.
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My objection to claims that identifiable groups can’t, or as Lucia claims, very likely don’t have different averages in intellect is that a) it is contrary to actual measured average intellects for large identifiable groups, and b) it is used as an excuse to explicitly discriminate against identifiable groups and favor others… like East Asians applying to selective colleges, and the whole of “affirmative action” in hiring and promotion based on sex, race, ethnicity, etc. Based on the plain words of existing Federal statutes, this is illegal. But more, it is immoral: people can’t control their race, ethnicity, or sex, and to punish (or promote) based on things they can’t control is simply wrong.
Jeff, the reason it is not OK to talk about intelligence being inherited, (unless you are talking to your offspring), is because it is so ripe for bias. Obviously the immediate thought turns to tribe seeing themselves as the chosen ones or master race. Thus it is not productive to discuss. That is unless we are forced to as in the case with Down’s syndrome.
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Besides sensitivities the other reason it is not productive to discuss is the moral hazard of thought of taking any pro-active measure to “improve” the gene pool.
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Edit: I agree, Jeff, that there should be no discrimination based on any measure except for demonstrated merit. And all individuals should retain equal rights except for those that have not been medically diagnosed mental disability and need a guardian.
Ron Graf,
Who is Jeff?
I do not think attempting to “improve” the gene pool based on trying to make people smarter is a wise choice. The genetic components which go into intellect are too poorly known and too varied to give any guidance. That does not mean that with greatly increased knowledge trying to make people smarter would be a bad idea.
Yep, somehow any discussion on genetics ends up here. I should have phrased my original comment more carefully. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
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There is strong evidence of statistically significant measured differences in IQ * tests * and race. Additionally almost every single standardized test from grade school to grad school shows the average differences. Other proxies for generalized intelligence including GPA’s, educational attainment, proficiency at high knowledge jobs, certain games, etc. all show it. IQ tests by employers were largely banned by the Supreme Court due to racial disparities (this is the legal precedent for disparate impact). Any one of these measurements can be argued, but the weight of all the evidence is that the tests are measuring something real. Intelligence is heritable, not as strong as things like eye color and height, but clearly heritable.
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The fact of the measurement results are not really controversial, but how to interpret them obviously is. How much of this difference is environmental versus genetic is unknown. One could assume it’s completely environmental until proven otherwise, or the opposite. Almost every attempt to normalize out known environmental factors results in a varying reduction of the gaps but the gaps still remain.
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They decoded the genome and cannot identify genes directly associated with intelligence. It is just a big messy soup for most heritable characteristics. I think they identified maybe 100 genes that correlated with 20% of intelligence differences. Not very convincing. That side of the proof isn’t coming anytime soon either.
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Instead of picking apart this test or that environmental variable try to think of the best test that would measure this fairly, and it is likely it has been done many times already because many people very much want to prove this gap is environmental. Studies of different races of parents/children in the same household for example reduces the gap but does not eliminate it. Studies of the children of interracial marriages shows the results are about the average of the races. AFAICT the current theory is that the invisible forces of systemic racism are responsible for the remaining gap and they don’t know how to measure them properly. Stereotype threat and other things. The dark energy of social sciences.
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So what? Clearly it’s best to table this specific aspect of the discussion as it is not productive and people get pretty sensitive. However when the education gap is completely blamed on systemic racism along with government policy then this along with differences in home culture, etc. are the counterargument which cannot be discussed in polite company. So be it.
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There may be a fundamental limit to how much the gaps can be closed, as there would be between any groups that have a 10 pt. difference in measured IQ. It doesn’t mean you give up trying to make education better.
Lucia,
“I accept that there is a hereditary component. It’s also not evidence of actual existing strong distributions by race.”
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I am still not sure what you mean by “strong”. Is 5 IQ points difference in mean “strong”? How about 10 or 15? It would help me understand what you are saying if you could explain.
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When blind auditions of prospective symphony orchestra musicians was instituted (judges heard only the sound, and could not see the person), the number of women who were hired increased quite dramatically, clear indication that there was ‘systemic’ prejudice against women in hiring musicians for symphony orchestras. But those same blind auditions DID NOT increase the number of black musicians hired for symphony orchestras. Recently, many symphony orchestras decided to no longer use blind auditions, because they insist blind auditions are ‘racist’. Do you think blind auditions of musicians are racist?
Tom Scharf,
“So what? Clearly it’s best to table this specific aspect of the discussion as it is not productive and people get pretty sensitive.”
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Yes, people get sensitive. I don’t agree that is a good enough reason to table a subject. Especially not when the prevailing politics (‘Differences in achievement are 100% due to ‘systemic racism’, and you are a racist if you ever suggest otherwise’) seem illogical and lead to unfair and unlawful policies.
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“The dark energy of social sciences.”
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The ‘dark matter’ of social sciences might be more accurate. Just wave your arms hard enough and you can explain away the observations, even while you have not a clue about understanding them.
Tom,
I agree much more strongly with what I read you saying above than what I thought you were getting at before. There must’ve been some misunderstanding there someplace, but it’s all good.
Except like Steve, I don’t know that I’d let it go at ‘so what .. so be it’, but whatever. 🙂
This guy wrote about global warming and Mann some time back.
No conversations should be forgone because of its sensitive nature and I know where people are coming from when they throw out statistic for various groups of people. It is not malicious in the conversation we have had here.
My point rather is that when grouping people based on something over which they do not have control is unproductive. Individuals are what they think, what they accomplish, how they deal with other people and their skill sets. In my life I have made decisions based mostly on
individuals and far less often on what group(s) to which they belonged and then only when the group had some common ideas and philosophies that I judged could be generalized based on strong existing evidence.
Also thought generalizations as a human tendency and weakness are far different than generalizations upon which one might act.
WSJ Today: Law School Accrediting Panel Votes to Make LSAT Optional
Legal education community has been divided over testing requirement and its impact on diversity in admissions https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730?st=9ri73cggd9iwcz7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“In one written comment, Fariha Amin, a full-time worker and mother to a 6-year-old son, said her LSAT scores remain a hurdle to getting into law school. She took tutoring courses, but her scores still weren’t high enough to be admitted, she told the ABA, urging them to eliminate the requirement.
“I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a family lawyer, just due to not being able to successfully handle this test,” Ms. Amin wrote.”
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That’s where things are increasingly headed, merit is being removed in order to make things more “fair”. Ironically merit was put in to make things more fair. I personally do not believe removing merit is a wise move, it invites hidden corruption and breeds resentment of a perceived rigged system.
Whether intelligence is genetic and is linked to race makes a big difference regardless of the intergroup range.
Assume IQ is a bell curve distribution with standard deviation 15. I think the real number might be 10, but the general principal applies.
About 15% are above mean + 1 SD, 2.5% above mean+2SD, .13% above mean+3SD.
With East Asians, you have a mean of 107-108, half a standard deviation above whites with mean 100.
This would mean 2.5% of whites above 130 IQ and 7% of East Asians. Also .13% vs .3% for 145+ IQ.
At higher levels the multiplier is much higher.
For a 15% difference as with blacks vs whites, this would mean only 15% of blacks are above average for whites, and 15% of whites are below the average for blacks.
An 8-1 ratio of whites to blacks above IQ 130, combined with a 6-1 population ratio, means about 50-1 ratio, and it gets higher at higher IQ levels.
Yeah. Well. Compassion and sympathy aren’t the greatest synonyms for fairness. I hate for people to give up their dreams too. I hate it even more when people refuse to give up dreams they can never realize, because their dreams are unrealistic. If Amin’s test scores aren’t high enough, it might be indicative that she doesn’t have what it takes to practice law. Now – maybe the test really is a BS requirement that has nothing to do with anything, I have no way of knowing that. But it’s also possible that the test is an appropriate criteria. Bottom line, if she really doesn’t have the capabilities, it’s *not* fair to let her into law school. Not for anybody.
SteveF
I would consider 1/2 a standard deviation on the average a big difference.
That would make about 8 IQ points a big difference.
SteveF
Do you think blind auditions of musicians are racist?
Nope.
SteveF,
I would also note that for me to believe that an difference of even 14 points between races was due to genetics related to race I would also need support from DNA guys finding specific evidence that the difference was related to specific genes. The reason is the Flynn effect from 1942-2008 was that large and I don’t think the Flynn effect is due to a major change out in the distributions of genes related to intelligence.
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I think 1/2 and SD is a material difference though– and would be big enough to be meaningful. It just doesn’t necessarily mean it’s related to the genes pool of a racial group.
The panel also questioned why law schools shouldn’t be aligned with other graduate programs that don’t require tests.
Well, I bet they aren’t going to make the Bar exam optional. Other degrees don’t require students to pass something like the Bar to fully use their degree after they finish.
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If lots of schools stop requiring the Bar then 10 years from now we’ll be observing an increase in the number of people graduate from Law school and fail the bar. Then people will be debating whether we really need a Bar exam. It’s just an artificial barrier in the way of hardworking people’s dreams. If we don’t really need a Bar exam, we should get rid of the Bar exam now.
SteveF
My objection to claims that identifiable groups can’t, or as Lucia claims, very likely don’t have different averages in intellect is
You are mischaracterizing what I said. My position is I doubt the differences in IQ observed between racial groups is mostly due to genetics.
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I’ve explained why I doubt that it is– and it is not because I don’t think IQ is heritable. I do think IQ has a decent heritable component.
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Lucia,
“You are mischaracterizing what I said.”
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Sorry, that was not my intent. I think it is more that I did not clearly understand what you said.
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I will comment again a bit later.
The Flynn effect change may be due to across the board upgrades in environment. Improved prenatal care, better childhood nutrition, less smoking during pregnancy, less lead in the environment, etc. It’s all speculation and about impossible to prove.
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Almost all heritable characteristics cannot be traced to specific genes except in rare cases. It’s all loose correlation now I think. They don’t know how this works yet, but the fact that DNA expresses itself in statistically significant and predictable ways is known, the mechanism is not. My guess is figuring this out is a long way off. It is not a Lego set with a step by step instruction book.
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If you start with the exact DNA of Elon Musk you will get a little Elon out the other side. If you smoke crack the whole pregnancy you will get something like Elon Musk trying to fix Twitter.
Tom,
My point in bringing up the Flynn effect isn’t to explain it. My point is you have to recognize it exists when interpreting differences in scores across groups is that it is an observed phenomena, it is pretty big (1 sigma) it happened in a time scale too short to be due to genetics and in some countries happened despite a demographic change that resulted in the population having a larger percentage of the “low scoring” group. So it is almost impossible to attribute to increase in “smart genes”.
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If the difference between us and our grandparents (two groups) is due to something other than genetics, we can’t jump to the conclusion that the difference between to other groups is due to genetics.
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This isn’t denying that differences between groups exist– they do. And it is not denying that IQ has a degree of heritability. It does. But — at least for me– unless you have some other evidence that the difference between the groups is genetic, I’m not going to be convinced it’s due to genes.
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DNA science is at the point where they might be able to pinpoint specific genes that are linked to genetics. (It might be dangerous to someone’s career to do it– but the science is approaching that.) But until they have the sort of additional evidence actual DNA can provide, all we have is “we can detect average difference between race” along with “we detect the same size (or larger!) differences between two fairly closely spaced generations.”
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What will DNA evidence find when we eventually have it (which we will)? I don’t know. But for now: I think it’s jumping to conclusions to think the differences between races is due to genetics and the Flynn effect gives strong evidence that that size of difference can be due to something else.
Comparing people on different qualities is a fraught issue.
Judging books by covers.
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Even those two concepts, comparing and judging, highlight the problem.
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We all make comparisons.
The problem is making judgements.
Comparisons involve objective assessments.
I.e with a ruler, a scale, a colour chart, a scales.
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Regardless of who does the comparison the outcome will be the same. You will be 5 foot, eight inches on that day, or not.
No argument.
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Then there is judgement.
Here the measurer, not the measure, comes into play.
No more objectivity.
If the measurer has a flaw, as in being colour blind, he will never notice that a flaw exists in his judgement.
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I doubt, very strongly, that most people here would do well in an intelligence test organised by scientists in any foreign language.
I do not think an intelligence test has any meaning outside the group it is organised by.
This is not to knock the idea of comparisons, just to make people aware that making judgements is an eye of the beholder problem.
The judgement is not measurable and may be objectively completely wrong.
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Levels of intelligence.
I am writing notes on a patient 40 years ago in pen on a patient on a small five by eight card.
The notes, not the patient, who is sitting at the side of my desk.
The patient, whom I have judged as ordinary, and needs the instructions repeated twice for clarity says something like
“ you should spell my name with an e on the end”
Or any other comment on my notes indicating that they are literate, have good eyesight and can read words that are upside down and back to front to them in doctor’s handwriting and have extremely good awareness.
I make a quick mental note that they are much brighter than the semi and more intelligent than I am.
I dig a little deeper into schooling and whom they are related to and I put a little reminder mark of three full stops at the end.
No need to advertise to people who are smarter than I that I am aware of it.
agech,
Comparing people on different qualities is a fraught issue.
Judging books by covers.
Comparing individuals isn’t necessary “judging books by covers”. It can actually be judging books by their contents!
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No one gives people intelligence tests in a foreign language. That’s ridiculous.
Lucia,
Thanks for the link to that review article. That article is now over 4 years old, and based on the progress the authors described as happening over a few years, it is likely there has been more progress since then. I will do a little searching for more recent work.
SteveF: “Who is Jeff?”
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Good point. (Multitasking is hazardous and lowers apparent IQ by one sigma, at least.) 😉
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I am half way between SteveF and Lucia on the issue of strength of evidence on group average IQ. One must remember all the factors that affect the group besides genes. I went to a 20% black junior high and I can attest that there was a marked difference in culture and upbringing between the blacks from the edge of the inner city and whites from the edge suburbs. I overheard my biology teacher to compare the difference between domesticated animals and not-so-domesticated. Many poor neighborhoods in inner cities with high crime and street gangs require their youth to attain certain toughness to survive. Part of that is the rejection of formal education and what one might call good citizenship. There were notable exceptions. And I saw some of that in a boy scout troop I joined. But there were strong social pressures that were unproductive to adaptation for successful education or scoring on IQ test.
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Culture is a major factor, perhaps the overwhelming one. But one still doesn’t know how IQ plays in culture formation. All we can do is try to support the positive and hope for improvement. Almost all government interventions are doomed to fail, IMO, just as they do in foreign nation building. I know that busing did not help the black students I went to school with.
From the same authors: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01348-y
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The authors seem to be mostly responding to criticism that their genetic analysis is rendered meaningless by confounding with things like mate selection. They don’t seem to be adding much new.
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One doubt I have is: There are SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in both coding and non-coding regions of DNA, and the frequency in non-coding regions is said to be much higher than in coding regions. Which makes sense, since non-coding regions, by definition, do not code for proteins. But then, the correlations they are searching for are mostly only markers for the genetic differences which actually lead to differences in intelligence (and many, many other traits). I wonder if narrowing the SNP analysis to include only SNPs from coding regions might be more informative.
Ron Graf,
“Almost all government interventions are doomed to fail, IMO, just as they do in foreign nation building.”
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So far that is true. Programs like Head Start showed some improvements at young ages, but these disappeared by high school. I agree that cultural issues are likely important and perhaps the most important factor in differences in educational achievement, but that remains unproven, and even if true, does not mean that genetic factors could not also be important. Culture, can (at least in theory) be changed, but genetic differences most certainly can’t be. The discouraging thing for me is that there are no obvious efforts to change counterproductive culture, efforts which might actually help narrow achievement gaps, but plenty of efforts to make outcomes equal based on sex, race, or ethnicity…. even if that means obvious discrimination against other people based on their sex, race or ethnicity.
lucia (Comment #216419)
No one gives people intelligence tests in a foreign language. That’s ridiculous.
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Tell these guys
Pintner, R., & Keller, R. (1922). Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children. Journal of Educational Psychology,
The Binet examination records of 674 foreign speaking children representing eighteen different nationalities showed a decidedly lower I. Q. than found in an English speaking group from the same schools, “whether because of actual lower intelligence, or because of a language handicap.” When the Pintner non language test was given to a group of these children, the I. Q.’s of both foreign and English speaking children were raised, but the increase was much greater for the foreign speaking.
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The ecfmg
ECFMG
Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.
is a test given in English for overseas medical students to enter the USA.
Being English speaking it was a breeze.
The much brighter Asian students in our year [to whom could be considered a foreign language test requiring intelligence failed and fail miserably.
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The implication or arrow I was drawing was that intelligence tests seem OK to those drawing them up but can seem to be in a foreign language to those people whose upbringings are and were not WASP.
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Ido not think other nationalities administering
angech,
So progressive matrices is an intelligence test only suitable for WASPs? Funny how those non-WASP Japanese do so well on it.
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Of course being tested in a foreign language is not going to generate an accurate estimate of intelligence. I don’t think anybody would ever suggest it would. But what has that to do with the entire thread above?
RonF,
I think a lot of the “solutions” people concoct are bound to fail whether or not IQ is genetic. Busing? The hoped for upside is integrating would work magic. An obvious downside: Being bused to a far away school is time consuming. Kids now end up sitting with other kids in a bus for some amount of time. Time that might be better spend doing extra curiculars, studying, being gainfully employed or even baby sitting younger kids. The magic of rubbing elbows with white kids was probably not going to make up for that wasted time.
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Even to the extent that some IQ is nurture, and certainly some skill building is, that doesn’t mean we know the precise actions that raise IQ. We have some general ideas about good and bad environments for infants, toddlers, preschoolers etc. But that doesn’t mean we can craft a formal program to raise IQ of preschoolers. So government can’t necessarily come up with a program that achieves raising IQs very much.
angech,
Your linked article was a study to specifically determine the effect having foreign speaking parents had on the IQ test. The gave kids two kids of test to ‘find out’ how much language matter. Yes– it shows the obvious, a language based test needs people to speak that language. (It’s also young kids.)
It’s not an example of people intending to use IQ tests in foreign languages to find out kids IQs! The full paper is here”
SteveF, RonG.
(I’ve got fake nails on from a competition. Typos are worse than usual.)
Lucia, after scanning the paper you linked where DNA was used in attempts to make associations with intelligence, the R squared value that kept coming up was 0.1 which was significant but only explains 10 percent of intelligence variability. Intelligence using very large samples was proxied by educational attainment- I think.
Statistical significance will get a paper published but that does not mean it has much practical importance. I would not use a DNA analysis in hiring anyone at any level.
November 18th, 2022 at 10:16 pm
angech, you will not get a quip past the Lucia test for meaning. You need to detail more and explain more.
Some changes have helped. Better pregnancy healthcare, Medicaid, food stamps, and free lunches to provide better childhood nutrition. I don’t remember exactly but I believe the gap had changed from around 15 points decades ago to around 10 points now. It depends on how you normalize out poverty and so forth. Living in poverty now is a lot different than it was 100 years ago to say the least.
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I support these type of programs more than I used to, they may be justified on multi-generational economics alone. These type of changes will hit a ceiling in effectiveness eventually when children are properly fed and cared for before and after pregnancy.
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I don’t think programs to “stop systemic racism” are particularly effective at this point. Just like above this type of program will hit a ceiling in effectiveness as we remove the last vestiges of that type of behavior. For example my large and populous county has had equalized school funding for many decades and a large gap remains. It’s not school funding here, but it could still be part of the problem in other places. Affirmative action was more justifiable with “separate but equal” schooling. That was a long time ago.
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A big problem from a social perspective is that groups still self select to live together and these groups form their own cultures that can enhance or detract from certain society wide goals. I say from a social perspective because I don’t think this should change other than some nudges of “it would be nice”. I highly prefer autonomy over social engineering, I don’t trust the engineers here.
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A big part of me still feels like “maybe if they just did their homework” then outcomes would improve. Verboten, but my guess a very common unspoken thought. There is a saying about horses and water. I think it is unfortunate that this is willfully beyond the scope of the social sciences at this point. I literally don’t believe I have ever seen a study reported about the link between doing your homework and educational success. How Asians succeed here and elsewhere isn’t a secret.
Intelligence tests have been tweaked in a lot of ways and there are different forms. Believing they haven’t been given a lot of thought to remove cultural biases is naïve. As I recall the difference between Asians and whites is fairly specific to performance on spatial awareness https://www.123test.com/spatial-reasoning-test/
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In general these tests can be accomplished with only a basic ability to read, can be given orally, etc. Brain teasers. Certainly things like dyslexia can be a hindrance, but it is more likely that IQ tests discovered people with dyslexia were fundamentally OK.
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I’d like to see Fetterman’s results before and after his stroke for example. If they were the same then I think people voting for him could feel fine with it (beyond communication being a big part of that job).
Ken-
Yes. That’s about the current state of looking at genetics. But it shows that people are starting to look at foundations in DNA. Of course they haven’t gotten very far. It will probably take a while.
SteveF (Comment #216430)
November 18th, 2022 at 10:12 pm
The YouTube clip might be funny, but what if the interviews were across all ages and with the same selection process probably used over a large number of interviews? How does it square with generational IQ increasing? The commentator might well be confused as being smart and being a smarta$$.
Is that a laugh track I hear?
Tom
A big problem from a social perspective is that groups still self select to live together and these groups form their own cultures that can enhance or detract from certain society wide goals.
Some. And it’s never going to go away entirely.
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There is also some economic pressure. When we were house shopping we did consider niceness of the neighborhood. It’s more pleasant to live in a more upscale neighborhood. But only people with money can afford bigger lots, bigger houses in convenient locations etc. So wealthier people live nearer wealthier people and poorer near poorer at least as a general rule.
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Having a big influx of south Asians (Indian mostly) also puts quite a bit of pressure on schools to be good. I don’t know if the tend to settle near each other on purpose or if it just has to do with where new development is happening during the time period they immigrated. But Naperville has been growing over the past 40 years and it’s a little bit of an “indian hub”.
Tom Scharf
A big part of me still feels like “maybe if they just did their homework” then outcomes would improve. Verboten, but my guess a very common unspoken thought.
Oh…. there are plenty of teachers on /r/Teachers at reddit verbalizing this. Seems like more recently.
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You can’t get unbiased samples from reddit.
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But there recently seems to be a lot of grousing about Administrators implementing policies that say something like “Never give a score less than 50% for anything.” Or “We’ll do standards based grading”, which can be made to sound good on paper but means keep giving ‘opportunities’ to retake test or do work until the absolute end of the semester. The consequence is kids will put off doing work or learning. And from an Industrial Engineering POV, the amount of work for teachers explodes. (Offering the test 3 times means writing 3 tests and grading 3 tests.)
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And then there is the demand to “differentiate”– which is offer what they don’t call a “smart”, “medium” “dumb” version of an assignment. (Like– some kids READ the a novel and some kids get books on tape. Because READING isn’t isn’t “in the standard” for the high school class. I mean… that’s a *previous* standard. So it’s done now…. right?)
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The interesting thing is — pretty much since Covid– there are more teacher complaining about not being allowed to hold kids to even the published current standard.(And also complain about kids arriving not knowing how to, you know, read. Etc.)
Ken Fritsch,
No laugh track. Bill Maher always has a live audience.
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Of course the clips of interviews they show are the most ridiculous. For what it is worth, I doubt the population on average is less intelligent (less able to learn). But I would not be surprised if the level of ‘general knowledge’ is lower among people who left high school in the last 15 years; there really has been some ‘dumbing down’ of content and obvious (everyone gets a blue ribbon!) grade inflation.
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On a brighter note, after suspending their use for a couple of years, MIT has gone back to requiring SAT or ACT scores for all applicants. Reason: too many flunk-outs (>10%?) among students admitted without SAT or ACT scores. I must admit I am shocked (shocked!). I am not shocked that no testing = worse students, but rather that any selective school would have the intestinal fortitude to go back to requiring standardized tests….. and accept the mountains of abuse they will get from ‘activists’ and other selective schools (it has already started). Now if only the SC would rule against Harvard and the University of North Carolina for racial prejudice in admissions, that would be real progress toward sanity.
SteveF (Comment #216442)
November 19th, 2022 at 1:26 pm
Schools can and do fail to teach the fundamentals but that does not mean that students do not gain information outside the school setting. I would suggest that the internet provides a substantial overall net benefit in this process. Higher IQs would mean that students are capable of learning more wherever that learning occurs or in what form.
Bill Maher is someone like Trump that I have never liked. If the audience is live as you say it is, and I believe you, then the laughs are close to what a track with do. Maher’s audiences are probably much like Trump’s in being great followers.
Being prompted to give passing grades happens – as my daughter-in-law tells me. From what she indicated to me that problem is worse at the junior high level than for high school.
Ken
From what she indicated to me that problem is worse at the junior high level than for high school.
This might depend on what courses she takes.
My wife taught pre-algebra in high school about 15 years ago for one year. She was basically told to pass anyone that made any effort at all. I helped her grade some tests. You would not believe the inability in a large segment of the class. Fractions were completely hopeless and basic math was hit or miss. I would say around 30% weren’t even in the vicinity of passing the class in a classical sense (scoring 50% on a test). They should have never been in that class. Some students just signed their name and left the test blank. There were official standards of learning, they were ignored.
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It was shocking.
The parents that cared about schools moved to Naperville seeing the high ratings. This brought in higher caliber kids, making the ratings even higher, bringing in more parents, etc.
Question is were the schools good to begin with to justify the high ratings?
Ken Fritsch,
Ya, Maher is a jerk. Not as big a jerk as Trump, but a jerk just the same. Way too certain, way too full of himself, way too selfish. But at least he can be funny…. a lot more funny than Trump. And he sees the nuttiness in the woke left cabal of loonies, and makes fun of them, which is a plus.
Not sure if anyone is following the FTX crypto fiasco. The WSJ has a pretty good breakdown. https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-alameda-bankruptcy-collapse-11668824201?st=d8mhrt6u99rqv69&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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Another article:
“FTX and Alameda sought protection from creditors after executives at both businesses revealed that FTX had lent billions of dollars worth of customer assets to Alameda to plug a funding gap”
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Ummm … no. They willfully * stole * customers money to gamble with themselves. Another angle here is FTX’s founder was the second biggest donor to Democrats this last election cycle. This company was a Bahamas corporation so criminal liability is uncertain. I would predict they are going to end up in the same cell as Elizabeth Holmes (see the excellent book Bad Blood).
Lucia, I am just going by the conversations I have had with her in passing, but I think she would agree that it depends on the course. During Covid-19 when she was teaching junior high she said a student would have to try real hard in order to fail. I also believe there was a difference in the administrations between her junior high and high school teaching experiences. She also said there was a big difference in the maturity of some of the students that affected the teaching experience.
She has had some major successes that I think keeps her teaching and particularly when the administration recognizes it – which usually comes through the student and their parents.
What I remember looking at prep books, the LSAT is the SAT with the math section replaced by logical reasoning questions.
Elon Musk posted a picture from an emergency meeting of the few remaining code engineers at Twitter yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593899029531803649?s=20&t=wam_ymqPHXrrZnJZsP9ZdA
No blonds, no neckties, no zoom, a disproportionate number of Asians and men, styrofoam coffee cups with their names written in pen. Looks like a dedicated bunch of engineers on a mission. Back when I was working I would have been proud to be on the team. Go Elon!
Tom Scharf,
Bankman-Fried will end up in jail for a while, as will others involved in the fraud. But investors won’t be getting back the billions that were stolen, not will Democrats be returning the $100+ million Bankman-Fried and his associates donated to them over the last few election cycles. Count on the Justice department to go very easy on Bankman-Fried and his associates, with some kind of not-too-punative plea bargain for Bankman-Fried before Biden leaves office. He’ll be back on the street trying to stealing money in a few years.
Does anybody understand the FTX numbers? I keep seeing that Sam the Scam Man was worth something like $25B, the firm had something like $8B in deposits, and $1B was stolen. And now both the scammers and marks are broke. Those numbers seem incongruent, even for crypto funny money.
Russel,
Looks like there are two women to me. 🙂
There is also at least one blond (by my standard of blond which is norther european. So actually blond.)
MikeM,
I’m not paying attention to the FTX scam. Just laughing. The sneaker scam is funnier. But . Still.
Mike M,
Scammers hide the real numbers, so there is still a lot of confusion. The actual numbers won’t be know untill they are prosecuted. What is not in doubt is that the scammers made huge contributions to Democrats over the last few elections.
Lucia,
Yup, and if not married, the two women get to choose from a huge collection of hard core nerds. 😉
Lucia,
“Looks like there are two women to me.”
Yes, and that is about right. I seem to recall the computer engineering field to be 90% male.
“There is also at least one blond (by my standard of blond which is norther european. So actually blond.)”
Well, that guy might be quasi-blond. The question is can one quasi-blond mess up the whole project.
Seriously though, they look eager to attack the challenge. I am biased, but I think a determined team of engineers can move mountains. [Literally!]
Of course they need to be provided the right tools… junk food and caffeine.
I suspect the big problems Musk will face at Twitter will not include not having code writers to maintain/change Twitter. It looks like the people who were fired (or quit) were mostly not code writers anyway. I think the biggest problems he will face are:
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1) Most advertisers have bailed (under pressure from woke activists, of course), and Musk has borrowed about $13 Billion to buy Twitter, so supporting Twitter’s debt looks problematic or even impossible with most advertising revenue gone.
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2) The Biden administration and State of California will go after Musk in multiple ways, limiting the changes Musk can make to Twitter, and perhaps even forcing it to stop operating.
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Musk has enough money to survive this by selling shares of Tesla and SpaceX to pay Twitter’s debt, but I doubt the establishment left is ever going to allow Twitter to stay in business if Musk refuses to censor tweets from people who challenge policies of the progressive left.
It looks like the crazy shooter at the gay nightclub (5 dead, 18 injured) in Colorado was from Texas, and had been arrested in Texas 17 months ago after threatening his mother:
On Friday, June 18, 2021, at approximately 1:56 PM, deputies with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a bomb threat in the 9800 block of Rubicon Drive.
The reporting party said her son was threatening to cause harm to her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition. The reporting party was not in the home at the time when she made the call and was not sure where her son was.
Deputies responded to the home and after further investigation realized the suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, DOB: 05/20/2000, was in the 6300 block of Pilgrimage Road (which is approximately 1 mile away from the address on Rubicon Drive). Our deputies contacted the suspect by phone and he refused to comply with orders to surrender.
Our Tactical Support Unit, which includes the Regional Explosives Unit, arrived, and took over the scene.
At approximately 4:15 PM, as a precaution, deputies began evacuating approximately 10 homes in the area.
At approximately 4:39 PM, an emergency text notification was also sent out to homes within a 1/4-mile radius of the address.
At approximately 5:46 PM, our Crisis Negotiations Unit was successful in getting the suspect to comply with orders. He walked out the front door of the home and was apprehended.
The Regional Explosives Unit cleared both homes and did not find any explosive devices.
He was booked into the El Paso County Jail on the following charges:
2 counts of Felony Menacing, and
3 counts of First-Degree Kidnapping.
A mugshot of Aldrich will be released at a later time.
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So, why wasn’t this crazy guy prosecuted and sent to prison or committed to an assylum? It beggars belief.
Elon did a massive loyalty purge. In general I think this is bad practice but given the preconditions he walked in with it might be a good move in the long term, but the short term is going to be chaos.
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Twitter isn’t a complicated technology. I’m sure massive global infrastructure is always hard but a chat app isn’t … errr … rocket science. It’s not a technology problem, Twitter’s product is the audience it has accumulated, not the app. If Musk alienates the audience too much they can easily go elsewhere.
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But … they probably won’t is my guess. Twitter is a global product and lighting the US’s Twitterati hair on fire isn’t likely to be a problem since they can’t focus on anything more than 10 minutes anyway.
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Twitter has been continuously losing money since the beginning and nobody has solved that problem yet.
Well, that guy might be quasi-blond. The question is can one quasi-blond mess up the whole project.
Uhmmm no. The blond I saw is real blond. Hair color maps to “Level 8 or 9” in the picture. 9 is pretty much considered the lightest ‘naturally occurring’. Though honest, I know people with level 10 naturally occurring. My mother’s step brother’s kids among them. But 10 is usually “bleached blonde” a-la Marilyn monroe. 8-9 is called blond by norther Europeans. (6 is called dark blond in t he ‘international scale. I call it “light to medium brown”.)’
Looking at more pictures there are at least 3 women. Sometimes you need to look for the top of a head hear shoulder level of the other people. 🙂
But if you mean it looks like a typical distribution of computer science majors– yes it does.
Heady stuff for programming nerds: you are talking code strategy with the world’s richest man, who ALSO happens to be one of the worlds biggest technical nerds. Must be inspirational.
Tom wrote: “If Musk alienates the audience too much they can easily go elsewhere.”
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As the right discovered, this is far easier said than done. Neither side wants to sit in their own public square talking to themselves. They want EVERYONE to hear what they have to say and dominate THE public square. That’s twitter and this inertia can’t be stopped just by one side. It requires both sides to “agree” on a successor.
Lucia: “Being bused to a far away school is time consuming.”
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Since the color line was a little over a mile from the school the result was they all took the bus, which may have been for other reasons too.
Us kids that lived less the 1.5 miles walked. It took be about 20 minutes each way. In nice weather it took 9 min on a bike. In sub-zero blizzards it took about 30 minutes. The bussed kids would have had a chance to review their notes before their first period test. That’s if they took notes and if they could do it without anyone noticing, which would have been practically suicidal. There was zero tolerance to anyone who showed the slightest respect for learning, which was “bending to the man.”
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Whites, OTOH, had groups that supported sports, academics and partying. None were completely exclusionary of the other, and thus, being studious was not a social negative unless it was to the exclusion of being social.
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My thought is that all education initiatives should be designed to somehow create social success or other immediate payoffs. Asking 12-year olds to be long-term investors is a lot to ask.
48 hours after going cold turkey, CBS news has decided to resume using twitter.
Ron Graf
When was a in 6th-8th grade, I lived just on the “not bussed” side of the busing line. There was a bridge across the DesPlaines that demarked the beginning of the bused zone. Most the based kids took longer to get home. The reason was the bus waited to load. That ate up 5-10 minutes. The bus would take less time to get to the river than we did, but then it turned down blocks….stopped… slow poke kid gets off… starts up… stops…
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I don’t remember actually walking home during a blizzard. After yes, but not during.
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I don’t know if anyone studied on the bus. I bet not. I don’t remember much homework in 6th-8th in anycase. Honestly, almost none.
FTX’s tale will make an entertaining Netflix series. (Although not amusing to those who lost $$.)
“48 hours after going cold turkey, CBS news has decided to resume using twitter.”
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Tends to bring a smile to ones face. But don’t worry, they are only returning to Twitter to “do battle” against the forces of evil (AKA anyone who believes in free speech).
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Idea for Musk: Large commercial operations like CBS should pay large monthly fees to be on Twitter.
Lucia, I realize there is this natural tendency to think one had it rougher when they were a child than children today. But we literally walked to school in 30 below wind chills in elementary school in the late 1960s. Snow storms were so normal that the municipality had snow plows mounted on every sanitation truck, road graders, leaf collection trucks, etc… The schools were only closed if teachers could not make it in. Going home was on them. The kids all walked on instantly formed paths they made on top of the snow banks. The safety crossing guards in from of the school were made up of the honored 5th graders to make safety patrol. One of my friends still has his badge.
How ever tough and “free range” we were as kids it was nothing compared to my mother and father’s generation growing up in the Great Depression and WWII.
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I think it is easy to underestimate the abilities of young people (and/or poor people) to manage for themselves if they saw a necessity. There is tremendous pride in accomplishment when one is exceeding their circumstances or contributing to the family in a significant way that was beyond expectation for age or disability. Poverty, drug abuse and homelessness are caused at root by a giving up on the game of trying to succeed.
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We need to keep children in that game and not let them get knocked off track by a setback or creation of a habit that can knock them off track (out of the game). The “great resignation” is a social policy disaster.
I lived relatively far from the schools (about 7 miles), and the school budgets did not allow for enough buses for every bused student to load up at once, so those who lived relatively far away had to wait for buses to first take the nearer students home, then return to the school for the second (longer) bus runs….. adding about 45 minutes wait time after classes ended. In the morning it was the opposite, the far students were bused very early, and we had to wait an extra 45 minutes at school before classes started. So from 3rd to 11th grade I was spending an extra hour and a half each day sitting in the school cafeteria, either waiting for a bus or waiting for classes to start. In high school I learned to make use of wait time in the cafeteria by doing homework, but it still made for a very long day. On the bus at 6:50 AM, and off the bus at about 3:20 PM; add a half mile walk from home to the bus stop and back, and it was a 9 hour school day. In 12th grade I pooled enough money with my younger brother to buy a (very old) car from my parents… I did a valve job on the engine to make it run more reliably… and we gained 2 hours each school day. It seemed at the time an almost unbelievable luxury.
With all these tales about transporting to school I was sure I would hear the one about walking uphill to and from school.
My brother and I drove to high school so that we could help our father with the chores on the farm and later to get home from sports practices.
We were often late for school which for us meant late for study hall. The principal’s secretary was an anal retentive type who thought we should be punished for our lateness and would report us to the principal every day and ask for how we should be punished as she had us waiting outside his office. He would always wave her off in a disgusted manner as put down the Chicago Tribune he was reading and tell her to record a tardy day. We had an all time record for tardiness but it did not affect our grades.
The principal was the coolest person I every ran into in an educational setting. He would do things that were against the bureaucratic rules back in the day (but made a lot of practical sense) and would have had him fired many times in today’s settings.
There was a large family on the border of the school district that had been going to our school when someone determined that they should be going to schools in the other district. When they came to the principal with their problem he told them to wait for the bus on our district’s side of the road and it would be kosher. They all graduated from our school.
Looking back at my childhood everything I did, whether work or play, was heavily completely influenced by modeling my older brother and his friends, including paper routes, shoveling snow for tips, little league, football, scouts, bike trips, getting grades.
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I can’t imagine what person I might be if I had grown up 1.5 miles east of my childhood neighborhood.
FTX had listed assets of billions of dollars in some crypto. This number was their own estimate. The actual total value of that particular ‘currency’ worldwide among all holders was under $100 million.
FTX also lent out investors’ money to another company, which then invested the money and lost it.
I don’t see the FTX collapse is all that unusual. All financial institutions are leveraged to some degree. It makes sense that some will get very greedy, irresponsible or unlucky. It does not have to be fraud (in their minds). They need to create facades, as all people and companies do, to create confidence and trust. When a huge embarrassment happens the natural tendency is to cover it up.
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When the embarrassment affects an institution it is easy to justify the coverup as a responsible move to save the reputation and value of the institution. J Edgar Hoover learned this long ago.
In the US there are legal firewalls between an investment firm’s money and any customer’s money they hold as a bank. This is to prevent the kind of fraud that happened with FTX where they “borrow” customer’s money for their own investments.
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It’s the oldest scam in the world, hold on to customer’s money as a bank telling them it’s safe, then invest it in risky ventures. If it pays off the customers never notice and you get rich. If it doesn’t you go bankrupt and only the customers lose out.
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Just like any semi-Ponzi scheme the danger is a bank run. FTX’s bank run was triggered by the release of some insider info (likely a short seller), a major investor and competitor then announced selling all his assets, everyone else panicked. It was over in a week.
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One would like to believe the legal protection in the US is virtuous and because it is not as corrupt but it is really because the US already learned that lesson the hard way. Big piles of other people’s money are like a mountain of crack cocaine to investment bankers who should be viewed as addicts. They are constantly scheming to invent “innovative” ways to get this done legally. I’m generally against excess regulatory oversight until it’s proven it is required. This industry requires it.
The laptop isn’t fake or tampered with! We now know, because CBS investigated.
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Hunter obviously has some problems. Yawn. The real story, as always, is the coverup. The media was complicit in this, a serious embarrassment. Twitter, Facebook. That CBS reports this now with zero explanation of why it took over 2 years to even look at it is beyond the pale.
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It’s obvious this original hard drive release was a dirty election trick that was politically timed, so was Trump’s video tapes. That doesn’t mean you don’t report on it.
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So, why report on it now? Probably because they think the DOJ may file charges. It’s even worse to never report on this to later have the DOJ announce it’s real.
Tom Scharf,
“They are constantly scheming to invent “innovative” ways to get this done legally. I’m generally against excess regulatory oversight until it’s proven it is required. This industry requires it.”
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Indeed. The 2008 financial crisis, the savings and loan collapse, and many other smaller collapses were all the result of lack of effective controls on risky use of other people’s money. The temptation to become wealthy via misuse of funds is obviously irresistible, as experience has proven many times over. I am reminded of “foxes guarding the hen house”. While there is no 100% foolproof solution, certain steps can be and should be taken: dramatically reduce the fraction of assets any institution can put at risk, have regulators torment the financial industry continuously and never relent, and send all financial malefactors to prison for very, very long times…. say, start with 10 years minimum, per count, and go up from there. Really big violators (like the ones who lose hundreds of millions or billions of other people’s money) should be in prison for life. That punishment is actually pretty mild: in Saudi Arabia, these folks would be beheaded in the city center after a quick trial.
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WRT Hunter Biden and the Biden family corruption:
“…why it took over 2 years to even look at…”. I imagine there were two factors: 1) They have been told Hunter is about to get a wrist slap from the DOJ via a plea bargain (a fine, with no prison time, of course), and 2) Catherine Herridge probably threatened to quit and go public with all the CBS dishonesty, and cause CBS a lot of PR damage.
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CBS News is shameless, and nothing more than another of the many propaganda arms of the Democrats.
It appears that the Republican leads in CA 3, 13, and 22 are holding. I have no idea how it is that so few votes have been counted, especially in CA 22. Boebert’s opponent has conceded; I am not sure if the recount will go ahead anyway. It does look like 222 Republican seats might be better than even money.
It does look like FTX really was just a Ponzi scheme and that Sam the Scam Man’s fortune was based on assets and profits that never existed. That could explain how quickly that fortune evaporated.
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A hacker (presumably someone inside FTX) stole over $600M in tokens from FTX as it was collapsing and turned them into nearly $300M in ether, then moved about $50M of that into bitcoin. It seems that steps are being taken to block further exchanges. https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/ftx-hacker-starts-dumping-massive-haul-ether-tokens
MikeM: “I am not sure if the recount will go ahead anyway.”
It will, it is a state mandate to recount for very close elections (<0.5% perhaps?). Not something that a candidate needs to request.
Mike M,
Yes, it will be 221 or 222. But on current pace, it will be well into December when the last race in California is called. Every race where the Republican is ahead has been slow walked. Maybe there is some reasonable explanation, but then again, maybe not. It is absurd that it takes this long. A big part of the problem is very lax state regulation: individual districts have 30 days after polls close to finalize results…. so December 8.
The chances of that FTX hack being an inside job is just north of 99.9% IMO.
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These large financial frauds need to result in serious jail time. If you knock off a 7-11 for $400 using a weapon you get decades of jail time. If you steal billions using computers ??? The high bar of proving intent when the perpetrators own a building full of lawyers is letting most of these crimes go effectively unpunished.
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All that said, crypto is high risk gambling. Nobody putting their money in FTX should have felt secure.
Does that 30 days to finalize include recounts, meaning you could “run out the clock” so there is no time for a recount?
SteveF (Comment #216491): “Every race where the Republican is ahead has been slow walked.”
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Not quite true. CA-41 and CA-45 have Republicans winning by 5 points or less and are nearly complete. And there are a bunch of districts with the Dem ahead, or a Dem vs Dem race, with less than 2/3 of votes counted. But it is ridiculous and makes me wonder along with DaveJR if they are running out the clock.
Mike M,
I followed the counting in those races. They too were slow walked.
They were called when it became clear the Republican would win, and then (surprise!) the counting accelerated. Maybe there is a good explanation, but it seems nobody is even offering one.
I glanced at Willis’s blog this morning (rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com). He has purposely double voted in each on the last three California elections: first by mail, then in person. Never even been questioned. They could prosecute him under state law (up to 9 years) but so far: crickets. Anybody who thinks mail-in ballots are secure hasn’t been paying attention.
I also saw Willis’s post. It is not at all clear that he double voted. It might be that they don’t start to count absentee ballots until after election day (it is not like they are in a hurry) and don’t count ones from people who show up as having voted in person. I am pretty sure that at least some states do that, but I don’t know what California does.
So the Bohemian government was given access to secure FTX’s wallet by SBF and Wang. But at the same time that was happening there was a hacker moving money out of FTX in Dai (another cryptocurrency). Since then their hacked $288 MM was turned into Ethereum and now being slowly converted to Bitcoin as capacity allows, like a snake that swallowed a large meal.
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Etherium lost 10% from the selling in one day. If this causes a panic we could see a run on all crypto currencies. I think that is around $300B, mostly in Bitcoin and Etherium. There are literally hundreds of new spawning currencies this year alone. I assume most will evaporate with mini-SBFs enjoying early retirement like the Enron execs that got out before the fall.
“Bohemian government”
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Now that is funny. 😉 (Bohemia is: A person with artistic or literary interests who disregards conventional standards of behavior, or the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic.)
Mike M,
“I am pretty sure that at least some states do that, but I don’t know what California does.”
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Worth asking Willis.
I became interested in the effect of the Immigration Court and their judges on the outcome of the asylum decisions when members of my family became involved in the process (not as migrants) and I was informed that asylum acceptance was very court, judge and nationality influenced. I have long been interested in the arbitrariness of how US laws are adjudicated.
There are comprehensive filtered data on court and judge immigration asylum cases at the Syracuse TRAC website https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/ . Unfortunately, the data are in the form that requires scrapping the website to extract the data efficiently and in good form. I used RSelenium and associated R programs to do that after familiarizing myself with html.
I looked at eight independent variables selected from the variable data at TRAC in constructing a multivariable model with denial rate being the response variable. The analysis was limited to the 37 US immigration courts that had sufficient numbers of cases over the time period(s) of interest. The period 2001 to 2022 was initially analyzed whereupon it was found that the data from 2011 to 2022 was very different than that from 2001-2010 and further modeling used those two time periods separately. To make an otherwise long story short, regression for the 2001 to 2010 period found the optimum model explaining 45% of the denial rate using 2 variables which were (1) the portion of migrants not having a lawyer representing them and (2) the nationality of the migrant. For the 2011 to 2022 period there were 3 variables explaining 75% of the denial rate which were (1) nationality of the migrant, (2) the percentage Democrat vote in the city where the immigration court was located and (3) the standard deviation of the denial rate of judges in a given immigration court.
In further explanation of the second and third variables above: the denial rate is lower the higher the Democrat percentage of the vote in the Biden/Trump 2020 election and the higher the court standard deviation the lower the court denial rate. Immigration court judges are not judges in a conventional sense since they are lawyers assigned to the courts by the justice department and serve at the pleasure of that political department. It has been established that judges tend to decide causes depending on the current administration with more leniency under Democrat presidents. That can be seen in the TRAC data, but I did not do a detailed analysis. I do not have a definitive argument for the Democrat vote dependency besides judges(lawyers) being selected locally and/or attuned to the local political environment. The standard deviation dependency could be explained by assuming that in a court environment where some judges (lawyers) are more lenient with the standards of the law, the degree of leniency is manifested in a higher standard deviation whereas with a higher denial rate court judges(lawyers) are sticking closer to the letter of the law.
It appears that the courts became more politicized in the Obama administrations and have stayed that way to current time. That would appear to coincide with the change to more immigration leniency in general under Obama around that time. I found it most interesting that papers published on the immigration courts tended to view the most lenient decisions that resulted in lower denial rates as the benchmark and higher rates as being abnormal and politicized. A number of papers with this viewpoint occurred when Trump was president.
Of course, with Sam Bankman-Fried saying and doing all the right things with which the progressive media would agree, the critical attention needed to reveal this fraud was greatly delayed – with the exception of the-easy-to-look-at Austrian school economist, Caitlin Long.
Ken, the key to immigration is bringing back Trump. He is the only one that doesn’t care what he is called by leftists news media.
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The only way a Republican can win the presidency in 2024 is if election integrity laws are passed and enforced. Georgia and Nevada may be able to do that now.
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But Arizona is very important. If there was election stealing that was the place the Dems would have put all their eggs. Kari Lake was promising to reform their election and was demonized beyond belief by the AZ media and still is, though she was leading in the polls on election day. America may hang in the balance on a decision to place on hold the AZ gubernatorial certification.
Without AZ in 2024 the GOP will need PA or both VA and NH to win the electoral college. With AZ they will still need one of them or Maine’s first district to get to 270.
Ron Graf,
If the candidate is not Trump (and assuming Trump doesn’t throw a hissy fit and run as third party spoiler), I suspect Arizona, Wisconsin, and PA are all states the Republicans can win. But with Trump as the candidate, there is zero chance for the presidency. Which just about makes me vomit. Trump may be able to win the nomination, and if not, he certainly could (and likely would) choose to be a spoiler and destroy the Republicans as a third party candidate.
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But what Trump can’t do is be a rational person, and either bow out now or accept if he loses in the primaries, and so give the Republican’s a chance in 2024. I just loathe the man; he is truly horrible.
Perhaps the distance the court is from the border is a factor. Jurisdictions where immigration is a bigger problem locally may have higher denial rates.
MIkeM
When I worked the polls in Illinois, we opened and scanned the mail in ballots after the polls closed. The first step was to see if the voter had voted. If they had, you tossed the mail in vote away. There was nothing illegal about going in and voting in person after mailing in and you didn’t vote twice. The vote cast on election day counted.
Reality trumps satire once again.
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NYT: Chaos on Twitter Leads a Group of Journalists to Start an Alternative
Journa.host promises to be a new “reliable home for journalists.” What happens when they move in? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/style/mastodon-twitter-adam-davidson.html
“On Nov. 18, the journalist Mike Pesca, who hosts the popular news podcast “The Gist,” posted a link to a Times story about health concerns associated with the puberty-blocking drugs sometimes prescribed to transgender youths, writing, “This seemed like careful, thorough reporting.”
In response, Parker Molloy, a journalist who writes the Substack newsletter “The Present Age,” accused Mr. Pesca of anti-trans bigotry, and then posted angrily at Mr. Davidson for not removing the post.”
“On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca, who was informed via a text message from Mr. Davidson, a longtime friend. (The two are currently writing an exchange of letters hosted on Substack, about the nature of cancel culture.) According to Mr. Pesca, Mr. Davidson told him he had been suspended for referring to Ms. Molloy as an “activist,” which was dismissive.”
“We want to be a place for passionate engaged discussion,” said Mr. Davidson, who recused himself from the decision because of his relationship with Mr. Pesca. “But we don’t want to be a place where people insult each other.”
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It would all be so much easier if they just told everyone what to think up front.
Jeff Sessions took a direct interest in the immigration courts and was dictating denials. Now the Biden administration is removing immigration judges if they don’t grant admission.
“It would all be so much easier if they just told everyone what to think up front.”
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That is exactly what the left ALWAYS does. Under the left you are not allowed to disagree. Which is why the left has always been and and continues to be a real threat to liberty.
I just noticed 2 major word errors in my immigration post.
(1) scrapping should have been scraping as in to scrape.
(2) in the last paragraph dependent should be independent.
The edit option at Lucia’s website is available for a lengthy period of time making my errors more egregious.
Ken Fritsch,
Editing text is a bit like the theory of an effective lecture:
1) tell them what you are going to tell them,
2) tell them,
3) tell them what you told them
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In editing:
1) proof read as you are writing
2) proof read after you have written
3) proof read (slowly!) before you send the text anywhere
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This usually (not always) works for me. 😉
Tom, distance from the border could be a contributing factor but there were immigration courts within the border area that tended towards leniency and had a higher Democrat vote percentage for the city where the court was located. The courts in my analysis were located mostly in larger cities where even if located in red states voted overwhelmingly or at least in majority for the Democrat, Biden. There was only one city and court located therein that had a percentage vote for Biden less than 50 and it was close to 50.
MikeN, you are correct about the activism of the administrations of the Trump and Biden. I found lots of papers on the Trump administration activism with negative slants, but nothing yet on the Biden administration’s activism or much about the change occurring in the Obama administration.
Tom, I see Trump in a different light on immigration and other key issues. His obvious character flaws are used by those opposed to his policies to use the flaws as wedges and excuses to start with the premise that any policy he supports must also be flawed.
Trump is so full of himself that the discussion never gets beyond himself. Those policies need a better spokeperson. Plus there are issues/problems related to government that will not be addressed by politicians of either party and need attention from outside government which unfortunately will not be forthcoming from the current intelligentsia and the MSM part of it.
SteveF, your advice on proofreading is well taken and better applied to the patient person. On the other hand, I will never be mistaken for Job and I too often pay the price.
Interesting that I easily follow the meaning of Lucia’s posts even when her dancing finger nails get in the way of her spelling, but my errors tend to change the whole meaning of what I want to say.
I wanted to ask Lucia if ballroom dancing with long nails might be considered carrying a near lethal weapon. Making the rapid and exaggerated movements of that kind of dancing with a misstep could put the partner in peril. But again that just might be my exaggerated view of ballroom dancing.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216508
As it turns out the Molloy lady was also finally suspended and agreed that it was appropriate and apologized to Pesca. I would have thought, given the information from the NYT article and the sensitivities of the participants, that Molloy would have been suspended initially.
If a bunch of silly people with good intentions start a blog what is to say that silliness will not creep in and overtake.
Yes, is was funny that the first person to be suspended was for calling someone an “activist” while levying an accusation of “anti-trans bigotry” for posting a NYT article was given a pass. I had no idea who Mike Pesca even was, but looked him up. He was going to be persona non grata in that forum. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/media/slate-mike-pesca-suspended.html
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It was just ironic that a bunch of journalists thought moderation was going to be easy once they limited membership to their righteous tribe, but immediately fell into the same trap. Over zealous activist starts cry-bullying people, yawn. The answer is of course suspend everyone who doesn’t think along a very narrow path.
Peace and harmony achieved. Journalists are used to having the microphone all to themselves, they will be terrible at moderation.
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The most regretted college major by far? Journalism. 87%. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/the-top-10-most-regretted-college-majors.html
Reported today:
“The US is sending $4.5 billion in aid to the government of Ukraine to bolster economic stability and support core government services, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The grant, which brings the total of US direct government support to Ukraine to $13 billion, includes “wages for hospital workers, government employees, and teachers as well as social assistance for the elderly and vulnerable,” Yellen said.”
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$13 billion in cash, given to the government of a country fighting a war and with a long history of corruption (just ask Hunter!). Humm… I’ll bet every penny of that $13 billion is accounted for.
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The Biden administration has asked the lame duck congress to pass legislation for another $37 billion aid to Ukraine (before Republicans can start asking questions), bringing total US aid since late February to $105 billion. Our allies in Europe and elsewhere have spent only a combined $30 billion… even though their combined economies are far, far larger than the USA’s. No matter, our allies always take advantage of us financially.
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So the USA has allocated or spent ~$328 for each resident of the USA… and $2,500 spent for each citizen of the Ukraine. Which, to put it in perspective, is ~52% of what the per capita GDP for the Ukraine was in 2021.
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IMHO, with no clear, plausible goal stated, nor any clear path to ever reach that unstated goal, this expenditure is bordering on crazy. It simply can’t continue indefinitely. I suspect the next request for the Ukraine in early 2023 will not be granted without answers for some awkward questions the Biden administration has not so far been asked by Congress.
Tom Scharf,
There really was no need to publish that survey… most people already understand that fluff-head college courses lead to poor employment prospects. Surprisingly enough, if you actually know something useful, it helps you get a better paying job.
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I tried to explain this to my kids… some listened.
CDC releases data on effectiveness of bivalent vaccine against infection. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7148e1.htm?s_cid=mm7148e1_w
“For adults 50 to 64, the new shot increased protection by 31% among those who were recently boosted and by 48% among those whose last dose was at least eight months earlier. For seniors 65 and up, the figures were 28% and 43%, according to the report.” ***
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It’s some protection, better than nothing, but only 40% and quickly fading no doubt. May be worth doing if you are going toward a high risk situation or worry about infecting someone vulnerable.
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*** = The fine print says they only included immunocompetent people in this analysis which I find a bit hand wavy. Almost all these people will have mild illnesses anyway. One can argue this is misleading.
After hurricane Ian here was some discussion here about not allowing rebuild of houses that lie in danger of future hurricane damage. I explained that FEMA has rules about such cases. Well, we are having that problem here locally now as people start to repair their homes. It’s actually more restrictive than I thought:
“One of those guidelines requires building departments to not issue building permits to homes in special flood zones when repair costs exceed 50% of a home’s market value until the property owners raise their homes so that flood waters are less likely to cause damage in the future.”
Florida properties could be more impacted by the FEMA 50% rule because the rule only looks at a structure’s value. In Florida, he said, much of a property’s value is in the land. So, if someone bought a house for $300,000, but the home is valued at just $100,000, that means any repair work would need to be less than $50,000.”
The only recourse is teardown and rebuild at a higher elevation.
Link, Sarasota Herald tribune.
“FEMA rule could mean many can’t afford to rebuild after Hurricane Ian” https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/weather/hurricane/2022/11/22/fema-rule-impacting-thousands-across-southwest-florida/10711118002/
Russell,
That’s how you force buildings to new code over time. Those that were damaged heavily by weather are probably prone to being … damaged heavily by weather.
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There’s a good chance that many of those homes would be almost uninsurable if repaired in place which will have the same net effect for many people. It is definitely going to put some people in a bad situation where they will need to sell their damaged homes as is. There are already rules in place that you can’t extensively renovate a home like this without bringing it up to code, many people run into this with some work arounds available.
Tom Scharf,
I found that underwhelming for three reasons:
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1) It did not compare the bivalent vaccine effectiveness to an extra dose of the original vaccine, which seems to make the report meaningless save for that getting another booster (of any kind) probably reduces your chance of illness.
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2) It did not compare the effectiveness of the bivalent booster to the protection afforded by actually being infected (and surviving) the more recent omicron variants. Excluding the most important questions from a study doesn’t help make the study useful. Heck there are many MILLIONS of people who have had omicron illness; it shouldn’t be hard to compare the risk of repeat infection in that group to those who received the bivalent vaccine.
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3) There was no discussion of severity of illness. If you were triply or quadruply vaccinated with the original vaccine, did the increase risk for illness for not getting the bivalent booster amount to more risk of serious illness, or were all cases after 3 or 4 vaccinations mild? They don’t even pose that question.
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Seems to me a silly report with little practical meaning.
Apparently the data is from questionnaires filled out before people were tested at pharmacies. So they had no info on ongoing severity of illness.
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The unvaccinated / infected data is in the tables (History of self-reported SARS-CoV-2 positive test result) so they collected it. However it does not appear they collated how many of them got a positive test result. That was not the goal of this study but they could have easily reported it.
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They also did not break out hybrid immunity separately (vaccinated + infected).
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About 10% of people in the US are unvaccinated and maybe 80% of them have been infected. About 28M people. I obviously agree this data continues to be willfully ignored. I would expect though that effectiveness against infection to be pretty low here too if it has been >4 months since infection. They could just tell us though.
The CDC test results give my vaccination status with the bivalent shot plus 3 previous monvalent shots with the period between last monovalent and the bivalent at 5 months an effectiveness of 21% with the 95% interval of 6% to 29%. I think that I will probably have to survive some form of Covid-19 even with vaccinations.
My daughter-in-law’s parents aged 84 and 88 survived a recent Covid-19 infection without hospitalization. Both were immunocompromised. I saw them last week and they appeared in good shape.
Ken,
“Both were immunocompromised. I saw them last week and they appeared in good shape.”
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I am betting they both got Paxlovid…. miracle medicine. My personal experience may be unusual, but every person I talked to who took Paxlovid said they got much better immediately (less than 24 hours) with Paxlovid. Those who didn’t mostly suffered many days.
Looking more and more like it will be 222:213 Republicans in the House. One more race called in California, making it 219, and two races looking more and more like they will go Republican. Add Boebert’s seat in Colorado (the Democrat already conceded) and its 222.
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9 votes is a thin margin, but enough to stop most all the crazy stuff.
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Now if a bolt from on high got Trump…..
SteveF,
Which race was called and by whom? CA-3 (called by one outlet a week ago) or CA-13? RCP is not showing either as called.
I don’t think Trump can win the Republican nomination. There are many Republicans who never supported him, far more who won’t support him again, and a whole lot who are still OK with Trump but think it is time to move on. So I don’t see Trump getting close to a majority and I think his opponents will quickly close ranks.
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Of course, they will need someone to close ranks behind. So if something happens to DeSantis, then Trump might have a chance.
Mike M,
We must be looking ar different RCP pages: what I see says 219 (I think RCP uses the AP calls). NBC news also has the republicans at 219.
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WRT Trump: I agree his support is a lot more enthusiastic than broad. The only problems I see with defeating Trump in the primaries are:
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1) There are a lot of Republicans who would like to be president. If they divide up the majority anti-Trump voters, he could still get the nomination. Republicans with no chance to get the nomination (and that includes most all who have been mentioned by politicos and media types) need to stay out of the race so Trump goes down early.
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2) Even if Trump loses the nomination (which I think he will), he is very likely to hand the presidency to yet another woke lefty Democrat by running as a third party candidate.
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Did I mention that I loathe the man and think he is an utter a$$hole? I keep waiting for a bold from on high.
Mike M,
The AP called California district 22 for the Republican… he was up by 3.5% with ~3% of votes outstanding. I was mistaken: NBC news has still not called that race; lefty journalists aren’t very good at arithmetic I guess.
AP now has Republicans at 220.
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The Republicans are leading in the other two CA races by small margins.
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Alaska is interesting. They are using ranked choice voting and have 2 Republicans splitting the vote against a Democrat. If I understand this correctly then one Republican will get eliminated and the remaining one (Palin) has a chance to win if she gets all the other Republican votes.
Apparently they aren’t expecting the Republican vote to stay in party when it gets distributed in Alaska:
“While the combined totals of Palin and Begich would surpass Peltola’s tally, a special election in August showed the number of Begich voters willing to support Palin with second-choice votes was too small for her to overtake Peltola. Pre-election opinion polling showed little change in opinions since August.”
The Flynn effect: IMO, it’s mainly an artifact of the education and testing process, not an actual increase in general intelligence over time. The Bell Curve has a couple of pages on it (pp307-309 in my copy). Also IMO, The Bell Curve is most useful as a review of the history of studies of general intelligence and its relationship to IQ scores. The statistical stuff in the later chapters is totally bogus.
There is evidence that the rise in scores may be due to a contraction in the distribution of test scores in the population at large, with most of the shrinkage in the bottom half of the distribution. In large-scale studies, of the Danish population, virtually all of the upward drift in intelligence test scores is accounted for by the rising performances of the lower half of the distribution.
There are references cited, but it’s something of a PITA to copy them. The page notes refer to a shorthand version. The first sentence is referenced to Lynn and Hampson 1986a and the second to Teasdale and Owens 1989.
No one is suggesting, for example, that the IQ of the average American in 1776 was 30 or that it will be 150 a century from now.
If the Republicans bicker among themselves while Trump romps to the nomination with 30% support, then they deserve to loose.
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I doubt Trump will run third party. If he does, he will likely get single digit support. And Trump is not a madman.
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The Dem in Alaska has just under 49% in the first round. She can probably win the second round without a single addition vote from the 3rd place candidate since some people won’t list a second choice.
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I though that the Republicans have been at 219 for a number of days.
Mike M,
“And Trump is not a madman.”
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I’m not so sure. The guy has done some really crazy things. But even if you stipulate he is not literally a madman, his egotistical personality leads to lots of foolish snap decisions, which his hyper-inflated pride then keeps from ever changing. If in a fit of anger (oh say, after losing a couple of early primaries) he blurts out that he will run as a third party candidate, I doubt he could ever walk that back, no matter how destructive it would be for the country.
Tom Scharf,
One of the two CA house races is very close, but in the other the Republican is up by more than 4%. That race should be called within a few days. No telling when the close race will be called, but probably before the Dec 8 legal deadline.
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Alaska is a perfect example of what Trump should *not* do if he doesn’t win the nomination: run as an independent. A coin toss between the two strong Republicans, with the loser dropping out, should have happened the day after the Jungle primary. It didn’t, so Alaska is stuck with a Democrat, in spite ofRepublicans having a big registration advantage. Doesn’t help much that both Republicans were weak candidates.
I would not trust polls at all this cycle. Historically the polls have had error but it bounces back and forth both ways cycle to cycle. We had had 3 cycles in a row now that point to a left bias in polling. Some pollsters have responded by trying to adjust their polling voodoo to account for that (non-response bias adjustment, etc.). It’s very possible they will overcorrect.
The FBI has obviously gone off the rails. What happened? In a word: Mueller.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/24/how-robert-mueller-empowered-the-fbi-to-take-out-presidents-protesters-and-pro-life-dads/
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In doing that, he centralized the Bureau, greatly undermined the influence of people who came up through the ranks, and brought in outsiders to run things. That set the stage for the rampant politicization under his hand picked successor, Comey.
What went wrong with the FBI is the same thing that went wrong with many other institurions: A self reinforcing, politically biased, echo chamber that believes its own BS. Each level of BS is justified by the last, everyone with the clout to say no has been purged and demonized. It has never been clearer in recent times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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If you look at polling demographics, “educated” people vote democrat, and it shows in their attitude. While the “religious right” do it to save you from hell, the “cult left” do it to create heaven on earth, which is only kept at bay by the common person’s crippling ignorance and selfishness, otherwise known as freedom. They are determined to save you from yourself and you and everyone else from your bad decisions and choices. They just need to rid themselves of the shackles which bind them and reforge them for you.
The educated being captured by the Democrats is a relatively new phenomenon, as is the appeal of the working class to the Republicans. It’s a new sorting out of the parties, which is to say that both parties are a bit fluid in their belief systems on the edges.
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The biggest problem with successfully capturing a targeted demographic is the belief that you can then exploit that capture to newfound riches and power. What happened with academia is that people no longer trust academia for politically controversial subjects.
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This particular example is bad for society, and academia should have resisted being captured by a political party at all costs. But what is the academy full of? Humans with the same faults as everyone else.
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We see things like the NEJM coming out with political statements outside of their expertise, this is just misguided and needs to stop.
Tom Scharf,
The evolution of party positions is an interesting subject. I had dinner about a week ago with a life-long union member and consistent Democrat voter (retired a couple years ago). While he still strongly supports unions, and things like “fair taxes” (AKA soak the rich) he is adamantly opposed to all the woke nonsense the Democrats focus on, uncontrolled illegal immigration, and refusal to prosecute crimes. There truly is room for Republicans to get the votes of people who have historically voted for Democrats.
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IMHO, Democrats are lost in a wilderness of crazy woke faculty lounge rhetoric, and it is going to cost them at the ballot box until they pivot back toward something resembling common sense. Many former ‘liberals’ have said: I didn’t leave the Democrats, they left me. And that is truly the case.
NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.’ The economy is second and probably not statistically significantly different. About 80% of both Democrats and Republicans think there is a threat. Of course each thinks the other is the source of the threat. Obviously the Democrats are deluded and the Republicans are correct (/sarc). But then again, they both may be correct.
DeWitt,
“NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.”
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As usual, NBC news is in fact delusional, and they will be shocked (shocked!) when Republicans gain control of both houses of congress, add to their control of state legislatures, and gain a few governorships Dems expected to hold. Progressive policies are damaging in both the short and long term (and profoundly stupid to boot). That is why progressives will lose power come January.
DeWitt,
“NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.”
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Amazing how voters having the right to make decisions democratically by voting can be a threat to voters.
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Still the winds are blowing in all directions and will hopefully coalesce as the time for urgent action draws shorter.
angech,
What urgent action is that?
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Seems to me there are half a dozen policies that desperately need to be reversed.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #215662): “NBC news at noon said that the leading issue among voters is ‘the threat to democracy.’ The economy is second and probably not statistically significantly different.”
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Such results are sensitive to how things are lumped. So “threats to Democracy” lump together “Voter suppression”, “Republicans”, “Election fraud”, and “Government control” along with many other things to get a total of 20%. But they split “Cost of living” (18%) from “Jobs and the economy” (16%). So economic issue combined are 34%.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/parties-split-defining-threats-democracy-rcna48466
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The “Threats to democracy” graphics at the link above are quite interesting.
Election deniers being voted into office is a threat to democracy say election deniers.
russian missile attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure have dwindled to almost nothing over the last three days. Whether this is a temporary lull or a lasting change is anybody’s guess.
My proof is that the FIRMS fire map has shown fires no more frequent in Ukraine than its neighboring countries for three 24 hour periods running.
In addition, ISW concurs: “Russian forces conducted air, missile, and drone strikes against targets in Ukraine at a markedly slower tempo than in previous days. “
Perhaps the OSINT reports of russia running out of long range guided munitions are true, but some bloggers just think that the increased Ukrainian air defense capabilities have made the attacks uneconomic for russia. Either way, it’s a good thing, let’s hope it lasts.
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-10-24..2022-10-25,2022-10-24;@37.5,47.3,5z
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-24
“Running out of missiles” would mean they might be getting to 50% or so. They aren’t literally going to run out. They have to maintain thousands for their nuclear arsenal and/or a future engagement should the war escalate outside of Ukraine. These glory weapons need to be looked at in context. These are being used as much for intimidation and propaganda here as anything IMO.
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Bullets might as well be infinite.
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A large artillery shell has about 25 lbs of explosives. 10,000’s of those a day can be fired.
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A F-35 can carry ~18,000 lbs of payload.
A B-2 can carry ~40,000 lbs.
The Predator/Reaper drone can carry ~3,000 lbs.
A Tomahawk cruise missile has a 1,000 lb payload and you lose the entire thing, but you don’t risk a pilot.
Note that there is a tradeoff between payload and fuel load.
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Loitering jets spent all day circling in Syria and Iraq with multiple 500 lb GPS guided/laser guided bombs for targets of opportunity. That’s what you want. It is still mysterious why Moscow never got to this point, perhaps they made a strategic decision to not risk their air force.
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It’s a great advantage, but the opposition adapts. ISIS dug extensive tunnel networks in their cities. They never group up.
What you prevent is things like the opposition coming at you with an armored convoy and you can keep their artillery out of range. This only works if you can suppress the opposition’s air defense. This is very difficult.
The FBI has a SCIF at Perkins Coie. Looks like Obama gave Democrats a way to spy on Republican opponents.
Political polling in the US yields crap predictions. I put no stock in it.
That having been said, I do approve of the presentation METHOD of FiveThirtyEight. It presents forecasts in graphic form and the map is LIVE. Just hover over the races to see their predictions. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” Yogi Berra
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/house/?cid=rrpromo
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/governor/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/senate/?cid=rrpromo
My comment disappeared in the last thread, but regarding vaccine mandates, I would expect them to take effect next summer.
I think many states and jurisdictions automatically accept the CDC recommendations, and action would have to be taken to remove covid-19 from the list. For example in Virginia, the mask mandates were considered part of CDC recommendations, and many school districts used this to resist the governor’s executive order banning them, until the legislature passed a new law.
One check would be whether flu vaccines are part of the same CDC schedule, as these are generally not mandated in schools.
SteveF (Comment #215666)
” What urgent action is that?
Seems to me there are half a dozen policies that desperately need to be reversed.”
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I agree that there there are a number of policies that need to be reversed but the government having made it’s bed for 2 years now has to lie in it.
Any reverses at this stage will just reinforce a sense of despair and be counterproductive.
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The urgent action is the voting process.
The time frame is now very short.
Ethics, ideals and wallets.
Both sides have their own versions of the first two.
Only one has a decent view of the third.
Not a single fire in Eastern Ukraine on the FIRMS map. Also more air defense gear is en route from the US. Maybe this phase is ending. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-10-25..2022-10-26,2022-10-25;@31.4,49.7,5z
“Shoot and Scoot”. Fastest artillery system in the world. Twelve of these Swedish Archer Artillery Systems on the way to Ukraine. Runs down the road at 60 mph, stops, fires three rounds and is back on the road in one minute and 15 seconds.
https://youtu.be/d8x8ITwd4Vg
I see where Ukraine is requesting monthly funds from the West and the US and requesting additional funds for rebuilding war damage while the damaging is in progress. The war in Ukraine is still obtaining strong support from the US and the West – as most wars do in the initial phase – but one has to wonder how much oversight is exerted in determining where these funds are going and particularly in light of Ukraine’s past record on corruption.
I see Liz Cheney calling out fellow Republicans for not giving unquestioned support for the war. She appears to be following in the footsteps of her father who did not see a war he did not want to become engaged with and as an auxiliary held that government deficits did not matter.
I have a question about abortion legislation.
My understanding is that the Roe decision imputed a constitutional right to an abortion (at least within the first trimester) and hence invalidated a state law banning (or restricting) abortion. Dobbs reversed that interpretation, which (it seems to me) returns the issue to each state’s legislature.
However, Biden has proposed that if the Democrats retain control of Congress he will push for national legislation, and various political ads airing locally suggest that Republicans will seek legislation outlawing abortion (in full or in part). So both parties seem to agree that this topic falls within Congressional powers. My question is, what grounds does Congress have for legislating on this issue? [Understanding of course that e.g. the Commerce Clause has been stretched to cover subjects which do not seem to fall into the category of interstate commerce.]
Russell Klier,
The unblinking eye in the sky can counter the shoot and scoot artillery systems. Whether it is drone based or satellite based, the artillery fire can be triangulated and then the reconnaissance follows the mobile system back to where it is parked, then, end of system. You need to have fast reacting systems in order to do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9z8FbJ589s
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Spies on the ground can also do this in the low tech way. If you have air dominance then these systems just aren’t going to last very long. The Russian “mall attack” early in the war appears to be where Ukraine was parking S-300 systems. If you can drive them back to fortified tunnels then that works better.
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You can bet HIMARS are high priority targets for the Russians. I’ve heard almost nothing about how many of these have been taken out, but I imagine some of them have. However sometimes the launchers aren’t even that valuable if most of the tech is in the rocket.
I’m probably the only person who likes Dick Cheney, ha ha. He was definitely a war monger, no doubt. I just liked the way he spoke very directly and concisely, very little patience for political correctness or winning hearts and minds. I get that most people dislike him but if you are in a war then you want him on your side.
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The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with Liz Cheney. As I have said I do not mind politicians bucking the preferred narrative, but she miscalculated in a profound way how this was going to end up for her. She could have said everything she has said without overtly being disloyal to the tribe, so she was cast out more for disloyalty than saying Trump has some profound character flaws.
HaroldW (Comment #215681): various political ads airing locally suggest that Republicans will seek legislation outlawing abortion (in full or in part)”
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Who is running those ads? Democrats? The local Republican candidate for Congress? I am pretty sure it is not the RNC or the PAC’s controlled by McConnell and McCarthy.
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HaroldW: “So both parties seem to agree that this topic falls within Congressional powers.”
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I doubt that you have much basis for that claim. I don’t think that is the position of the Republican Party or Republican leadership. Of course there are some individuals who seem to disagree, such as the Republican Idiot-in-Chief, Lindsey Graham.
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HaroldW: “My question is, what grounds does Congress have for legislating on this issue?”
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IMO, there are no such grounds. I think that most Republicans agree, but I can’t be sure. Democrats seem to think that Congress has the power to do anything that Democrats want to do.
If either party passes national abortion legislation then the law will be challenged on constitutional grounds. I’m not sure anyone knows how that will end up.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/does-congress-have-the-constitutional-authority-to-codify-roe
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I don’t think we are near the point where Congress will be able to pass a law on this anytime soon. The extremes are dominating the argument and will never sign up to a compromise, this leaves the middles of both parties to agree and the recent history of that on culture war subjects is dismal.
Tom Scharf, I read a lot about how the HARM missiles made a big difference on the russian counter battery and anti aircraft fire. Shortly after we sent them the russian radars went silent… either they were dead or too afraid to fire up.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/09/11/what-are-harm-the-air-to-surface-missiles-destroying-russian-air-defence-radar
Tom Scharf,
Yes, and in addition, the need for 60 votes in the Senate puts extreme laws of any kind on abortion out of reach. Even if Republicans gain control this year, and even with a very favorable electoral map for the Senate in 2024, it is unlikely they will reach 60 votes in 2024. The Dems chances of 60 in the Senate are even slimmer. So for the next decade or more, it seems very unlikely there will be any laws passed except at the state level.
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Even if a compromise law with some restrictions were to pass Congress, I think it very unlikely the SC would let it stand. There would be the three liberal votes against any restrictions, plus probably five or all six conservatives who will stand by the revocation of Roe, giving authority to the states. I think abortion is over as a national issue. And good riddance.
Mike M:”Who is running those ads? Democrats? The local Republican candidate for Congress? ”
Good question. Most of the ones which come to mind are from “3rd party” attack ads, not explicitly the Democratic candidate but obviously aired on their behalf. That said, this article provides some examples of candidates’ comments which can be quoted.
SteveF,
The problem is that the sixty vote restriction can be removed by a simple majority vote. That appears to be one thing that Manchin is standing firm for. So at present, the Democrats can’t muster a simple majority, or likely they would have canned the filibuster by now. Democrats do things like remove the filibuster for judges because they apparently assume they will always be in power. Harry Reid was warned that removing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees would end up biting the Democrats, but he didn’t listen and it did.
Some interesting things going on at Yale Law School. A federal judge (James C. Ho) got so fed up with activism there and shouting down of speakers that he now refuses to hire any graduates from Yale Law School.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gQkiD6eZyunLYwGaWKKk-ZS3r8v6wif3/view
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It’s an interesting read, nothing particularly new, just his decision to take action. About 12 others have joined him (anonymously, ha) and a couple others. Not a big movement yet, but enough that Yale has asked the judges to come for a talk.
https://davidlat.substack.com/p/is-yale-law-school-turning-over-a
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Particularly entertaining was a student who was told that mentioning the Federalist Society in an email was triggering to some students by a disciplinary board and that he might get cut some slack because he isn’t white. They drafted an apology letter for him, he refused. How do we know this? Because somebody secretly recorded the proceedings. Yale responded by making surreptitious recording a major violation to “protect free speech”. Hilarious.
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A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but this is probably a thousand mile journey. Cancelling cancel culture is a bit of a self eating snake, but see the judge’s Bill Buckley analogy of the old lady and the bus.
Ramesh Ponnuru is senior editor at National Review, and a leading conservative writer on abortion who wrote the book Party of Death.
He has advocated for a 15 or 20 week national abortion ban, and didn’t seem to think there were any constitutional issues. He also advocates for using the 14th amendment to argue that the unborn are citizens and thus can be protected by Congress under civil rights law. He points to a federal partial birth abortion ban that is already on the books.
I think the federal law should not have been passed, and this should be handled by states.
Note that Roe v Wade had a companion case Doe v Bolton that got rid of the trimester scheme in Roe and eliminated almost all restrictions on abortion. Also, I think Casey has already overruled the holding in Roe v Wade.
DeWitt,
Based on the election map for 2024, it is very unlikely Dems will have even a 1 vote majority until 2026 or 2028, so they will not have the votes to eliminate the filibuster until then, if ever. Assuming Republicans pick up at least 1 seat this year, they will likely have the majority until 2028 (or later), and unlike Dems, they recognize the damage eliminating the filibuster would do. So I think it is very unlikely the filibuster will be eliminated, and even more unlikely that any kind of national abortion legislation will pass. As I said, abortion seems over as a national issue, and good riddance. California can allow the unborn to be killed during labor, while taking pains to improve the living conditions for pregnant sows; other states will do differently.
“We’re lucky the Russians are so f*cking stupid” …said by a grizzled Ukrainian soldier in the front lines on a newsreel.
This time it actually was the Chechens…. They posted a video of their new headquarters in the village of Kairy, in the southern Kherson Region. HIMARS arrived the next day.
“According to news and official reports from both Ukrainian news and official sources, as well as RF-controlled information platforms, at least 150 and probably more “Kadyrovtsi”, Chechen nationals recruited to fight in Ukraine by Moscow, were in the building when it was struck.”
[Caution, as always this needs to be independently verified. The Ukrainians have mastered PSYOPS.]
https://twitter.com/TuliosportsINC/status/1585280062785552386?s=20&t=I3ScllhGH-0gl5j5mRpzKQ
https://www.kyivpost.com/russias-war/chechen-strongman-kadyrov-calls-for-jihad-but-heavy-ukraine-casualties-a-problem.html
https://twitter.com/TuliosportsINC/status/1585257956249309185?s=20&t=I3ScllhGH-0gl5j5mRpzKQ
https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1568541118991581185?s=20&t=rKkp3hVvgc8UliXudvzXOQ
If the Republicans manage to win the Senate they should hold a vote to eliminate the filibuster the next day. Let’s see how many Democrats support it then.
In today’s WSJ, columnist, Greg Ip, writes about the current price inflation and various measures of it without once noting the Federal Reserve’s role in the money printing process and buying assets in the cause of price inflation. Never to be mentioned is that money inflation is no doubt and no denying a product of the Federal Reserve which in and of itself conjures up the idea that the Federal Reserve’s past actions are benign to price inflation and further that there is no limit from price inflation on the expansion of the money supply. I call this magical thinking. This thinking is very much in the purvey of Modern Monetary Theorists whether those holding these views are willing to call it that. Ig is, of course, not alone in the current intelligentsia on how he looks at price inflation and ignores asset price inflation entirely. I see only two reasons we see this view: 1. These people intellectually have their heads up their a$$es and/or 2. They feel compelled to defend the state even when the state has failed miserably. I see both of these reasons prevailing but with much emphasis on reason 2.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215695)
October 27th, 2022 at 8:49 am
The filibuster will surely be eliminated when the Democrats next get a small majority in the Senate. The Republicans might well do it in anticipation of the Democrats doing it. The filibuster is in its death bed.
The filibuster is a good thing IMO, a low pass filter to whiplash legislation. Super active governments are likely to cause more problems than they solve. The Democrats had at least two outspoken holdouts and I suspect some others who wouldn’t vote for it when pressed. Another answer is to start moving back to bipartisan cooperation, it doesn’t always have to move towards the direction we are going now. Perhaps wishful thinking.
The Fetterman debate was a legitimate disaster. I’m not sure it will end up changing things much, but Fetterman should never have taken the stage. The media covering for him previously looks rather bad in hindsight. Perhaps his brain still functions OK beyond hearing and speech, but it really didn’t look like it, and he can’t really drag along closed captioning systems everywhere he goes in DC. The Democrats should have replaced him but I don’t think the timing worked for that.
Tom Scharf, when Republicans won the Senate in 1994 elections, some Democrats put up proposals to get rid of or weaken the filibuster. I think Tom Harkin was one of them.
Tom, it has been my recollection that bipartisan works something like: If you vote for my (massive) spending or regulation bill I’ll vote for yours. In essence what is agreed is that fiscal responsibility and less regulation is out the door. The hoped for benefits of bipartisanship will be ephemeral.
Biden and Fetterman are examples of perhaps a new wave of electing and using the impaired to robotically vote the party line.
The 2020 Presidential election of Biden and his policies certainly show that the election and robotic part can succeed. The polls for Fetterman indicate an even more impaired candidate than Biden has an opportunity to be elected. I would guess if elected he would stick closely to the party dictates.
Those who say Fetterman should not have debated seem to me to be saying it is better to hide these impediments from the public. Politically it worked for Biden by his basement residence, but there has to be a moral issue here – even though I think debating abilities are not a good indication of candidate worthiness, it can show obvious mental deficiencies.
Yes, he should never have taken the stage for his and his party’s prospects. It didn’t help, those images don’t get forgotten immediately like most debates. Obviously the public should be aware of his actual condition. It was bad enough that even the usual suspects couldn’t defend it.
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He can sit in his office and do email and vote the party line successfully enough. This will be enough for most of the voters, but people sitting on the fence will likely not support him and it could suppress voter turnout. Lots of crazy people get elected, the electorate isn’t voting by demonstrated competency.
Perhaps Fetterman should have followed the old advice that it is better to remain silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. But refusing to debate would have led many people to conclude that he was, in fact, incapable. That likely would have been enough to ensure his defeat. If so, then his only hope may have been to take the chance and hope that either he could pull it off (like Biden two years ago) or that Oz would act like such an ass that it would neutralize the damage.
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Note that Oz has been steadily gaining and that RCP gives him a 3 point lead after adjusting for prior polling bias in PA. That is based on pre-debate polls.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/senate/pa/pennsylvania_senate_oz_vs_fetterman-7695.html
I will be surprised if Fetterman wins. He is obviously debilitated and unable to understand a spoken sentence or generate a coherent sentence of his own. I am surprised he did not withdraw back in May when the severity of his stroke became obvious to his doctors. Hiding his condition suggests a level of dishonesty for him and those around him that is extreme, even for politicians.
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The history of Pennsylvania polling (always prejudiced against Republicans) and the trends in polling numbers suggest Fetterman is going to lose; after the debate it is more likely the election won’t be that close. I’ll guess Oz by 3% or more.
It’s been rumored that counting is already delayed in PA.
We all know there is no such thing as election fraud, especially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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June, 2022
Former U.S. Congressman and Philadelphia Political Operative Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Charges
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/former-us-congressman-and-philadelphia-political-operative-pleads-guilty-election-fraud
“Myers admitted to bribing Demuro to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay Demuro and others to tamper with election results.
After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine – also known as “ringing up” votes – for Myers’ clients and preferred candidates, thereby diluting the value of ballots cast by actual voters. At Myers’ direction, Demuro would add these fraudulent votes to the totals during Election Day, and then would later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate. Myers is also accused of directing Demuro to lie to investigators about the circumstances of the bribes and the ballot-stuffing scheme.”
“Democrat blows whistle on alleged ballot harvesting scheme, Florida opens criminal probe” John Solomon
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit has recommended state police open a full criminal investigation into a Democrat whistleblower’s detailed complaint of a long-running, widespread ballot harvesting operation in the African-American communities in politically important central Florida.
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Former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris filed a sworn affidavit in late August with the Secretary of State’s office alleging that illegal operations to collect third-party ballots have been going on for years in the Orlando area where voting activists are paid $10 for each ballot they collect.
She described an intricate system funded by liberal leaning organizations that dispatch ballot brokers into black communities to pressure voters to turn over their ballots. The $10 fee per ballot is divvied up among the parties who help complete the harvesting.”
Fraud schmaud. “Widespread fraud” is all you should be worrying about and there is no evidence of this, regardless of how many individual cases you bring forth, therefore, everything is ticketyboo and any action to secure elections is “voter suppression”.
SteveF (Comment #215705): “I am surprised he did not withdraw back in May when the severity of his stroke became obvious to his doctors. Hiding his condition suggests a level of dishonesty for him and those around him that is extreme, even for politicians.”
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The stroke was just a day or two before the primary. At the time, the extent to which he would recover might not have been clear. But I would think that by August it would have been clear that he should not continue.
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SteveF: “I’ll guess Oz by 3% or more.”
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I’ll be surprised if it not at least 5 points. I won’t be surprised if Oz wins by 10 points.
Under Florida law third party vote harvesting is clearly unlawful (third degree felony?). I am seeing jail time in the future for those involved.
DaveJR (Comment #215706): “It’s been rumored that counting is already delayed in PA.”
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Not a rumor. An official announcement that vote counting won’t be complete until at least least several days after election day.
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I really hope that Mastriano wins the race for Governor. That is much dicier than Oz winning the Senate race. PA badly needs a major overhaul of election laws. That won’t happen with a Democrat in the Governor’s office.
I still maintain that changing a statewide election is very hard. This would require many districts to cooperate and I speculate/hope/believe/pray/claim without evidence there are enough people who care about election integrity that it would not be feasible to pull off. The election would need to be very narrow to start with. I’m not saying it is impossible, just that it is going to require some proof. There are real safeguards in the system. The guys above got caught because the voting machine counts were higher than the people who voted.
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I wish there was a way to confirm my actual votes were counted as I expected. If only we had a globally connected information exchange system that everyone had access to, and votes were tallied by mystical devices called computers. This proposed system here would have some serious privacy concerns (hackers) but could be overcome.
I think I said this before, but for my county (and I think all of FL) I can get my mail in vote status via a county website. It says mine has been “counted”. I have no clue why it is so hard to count votes in PA but I think they have some screwy rules.
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Voter fraud can of course go both directions. You can “accidentally” lose a lot of mail in ballots in districts not favorable to you. I believe they do numerical checks based on neighboring counties and previous year’s votes to look for any large anomalies.
Tom,
Widespread fraud is much easier than you think. The key is mail in ballots. Some states have no real safeguards on those; many others have very weak safeguards. It may be that extensive fraud is very difficult in Florida. That is not true everywhere.
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The most basic safeguards are accurate voter rolls and verification that a ballot is being cast by the person entitled to cast it. The Democrat party is violently opposed to both.
Clearly, if you wanted to engage in “proper” fraud, you would target marginal districts, close races. Places where a slight tipping of the scales is all that’s required and your meddling would be far less likelyto be spotted. This is certainly aided by polling showing that your side probably should have won anyway, a lot of money, and dedicated fanatics with no jobs. How easy it would be to pull off? Well the WP claimed that Trump won in 2016 through 80,000 votes cast in 3 states. That certainly doesn’t sound like an insurmountable task for the motivated.
Each states processes are different.. My guess is PA is a state that only opens and runs the absentee ballots after verification of no in person votes. That is last vote wins. That means they need to wait for all precincts to report who voted and any provisional ballots. Then go through the absentee ballots to prune any that voted at the polls before running the remaining absentee ones through the machines. When you combine that with increasing percentages of mail in ballots the chances are you’re going to have to wait longer before being able to verify elections.
Deep fake political ads are a thing now:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/10/a-deep-fake-political-ad.php
I’m curious what people think will come of this. I’m still forming my opinions.
[Edit: I can think of a dozen things that may happen as a consequence. I haven’t arrived at things I think will happen yet.]
I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi, yet I will say it’s horrific to think somebody attacked her husband with a hammer. I cannot even imagine how an 82 year old survives an attack where somebody severely beats them in the head and body with a hammer, but I’m pleased to read he is doing well and expected to make a full recovery.
Good thing the San Francisco police came to his rescue. I hope they don’t perpetuate much racial injustice in taking care of this matter.
I think taking someone’s lifelike image, especially with good voice replication, and making it say things they wouldn’t, even with a disclaimer, is a step too far. It strikes me as akin to being made to falsely implicate yourself if it’s done with your face and your voice. I feel this possibly carries more weight than a disclaimer that it’s fake.
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Additionally, such things could easily be edited and presented as true and the truth could easily be edited and dismissed as fake.
DaveJR,
Do you think this sort of thing will be outlawed? I’m not sure how one would phrase the desired restriction precisely. What part of this is the step too far?
Personally, I suspect it has to do with the consent of the person faked. If a person or actor agrees with the message and the use of their image and voice, it’s not clear to me why there should be any issue. When the person in question does not agree or when it’s unknown what that person thinks about the use — that’s the problem.
It’s identity theft, fundamentally, I think. And even with the disclaimers, people tend to believe their eyes and ears even when their higher reasoning tells them that they are being tricked by an illusion.
“Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lying eyes?”
Have to believe that they have grounds on using their name and likeness without permission. This isn’t using carefully edited publicly available recorded videos of the candidate but creating new ones using their image and voice. Not going to help much in realtime, but they should have grounds for injunction and possibly a blanket ruling against them in the future.
Mark, I think you hit the nail on the head with “consent” and “identity theft” as an accurate description.
Political violence is just ridiculous. I assume this was the motivation but it’s not certain yet. The guy who showed up at Kavanagh’s house is similar. Using a hammer is a signal it is likely related to mental illness, there are more effective weapons. You see some hard to explain levels of venom in political discussions everywhere nowadays and people on the edges of sanity get pushed off the cliff.
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This is just a sorry tale that nobody needs to go through, and the media is going to jump immediately into “how do I spin this to benefit my side and demonize my opponents”. Very tiring.
You should own and control you own image and likeness. This type of thing should be illegal without the expressed written consent…
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People can’t legally sell athlete’s jerseys and names unless they license them. There’s a line here somewhere though, parodies such as SNL or South Park should be able to use a known obviously fake likeness of public figures. I don’t know exactly where that line is.
“Obviously fake” is my line for using someone’s likeness. There is no reason that the two should be able to be confused. That’s never really been a problem until now. Even Hollywood only produced superficial passing likenesses of real people they are trying to portray when they could probably go much further and have, so far, only resorted to deep fakes to bring fictional characters back to life.
DaveJR,
““Obviously fake” is my line for using someone’s likeness. ”
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I agree. If the image is obviously not actually the person being represented, then parody (for public figures) ought to be perfectly OK….. newspaper cartoonists have lambasted public figures for centuries in this way.
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OTOH, if the image is close enough to be mistaken for real (even by the most naive of viewers) then it should be prohibited without the subject’s approval. Disclaimers do no good, because the disclaimer can always be stripped and the synthesized video then distributed with no disclaimer.
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It is a bit like the well known “uncanny valley” in robotics, where a robot that nobody could possibly mistake for a real person (think Star-Wars robots) is usually viewed as positive, while one that starts to look too much like a real person (an ‘uncanny resemblance’ to a human) more often generates a strong negative reaction (or a ‘valley’ of acceptance in the plot of acceptance versus human-like realism).
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on affirmative action on Monday. That should be very interesting. Polls on the matter shows that clear majorities favor eliminating it, but it is a legal matter. One would have a hard time knowing people aren’t in favor because our venerable thought leaders in the legacy media are united in their support. Here is one random example of the profound thinking from US news:
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2022-10-28/supreme-court-takes-on-affirmative-action-in-education
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“But given the court’s 6-3 conservative majority – a majority that many anticipate will overturn the longstanding civil right – an unusual coalition of higher education administrators, civil rights groups, former top-ranking officials from all branches of the military, faith groups, business leaders and the corporate community find themselves on the same side of an issue, arguing that eliminating race-conscious admissions policies would threaten the ability of the U.S. to remain an academic, economic and military powerhouse in a rapidly diversifying world.
“One thing is clear,” says Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund. “The future of our multiracial democracy is at stake. We must protect this vital tool for ensuring equal opportunity because we know college campuses that reflect the diversity of who we are as Americans make us stronger.””
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Wow, the stakes are much higher than I thought! I wasn’t previously aware that affirmative action was a civil right, it kind of seemed the exact opposite to me, a violation of civil rights and equality under the law.
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Calling Mr. Orwell, calling Mr. Orwell:
“Race-conscious admissions do not discriminate on the basis of race and merely level the playing field and allow people and applicants to talk about their full identity and their full selves.”
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Seriously though, I’ve read a lot these stories and they are all the same. They virtuously proclaim they are helping people based on race and willfully and intentionally ignore the fact that they are also punishing people based on race.
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My view is that the Supreme Court previously ruled more or less that using race as a tie breaker given nearly equally qualified applicants was acceptable, race conscious admissions. That’s not what actually happened, the latest lawsuits showed there are effective quotas in place and race is much more than a tie breaker, it is worth several hundred SAT points on average.
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Because this has been shown unequivocally now, the goalposts were moved and the new argument is race must be a major factor due to historic inequities. I foresee the Supreme Court is not going to fall for a bait and switch argument again, and this new argument is not going to be persuasive.
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Affirmative action will likely be removed and a legally justifiable economic/class based bias will replace it which they could have used all along.
Tom Scharf,
“…the latest lawsuits showed there are effective quotas in place and race is much more than a tie breaker, it is worth several hundred SAT points on average.”
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Sure, and it has been that way since I was entering college in 1969 (in very progressive Massachusetts). As a SC justice has said: “The way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating! I trust this SC will not allow racial discrimination to continue.
This amicus brief was not filed by the Babylon Bee.
(The did file one in favor of the comedian, and did The Onion. But the one in favor of the police- not filed– is even more hilarious.)
https://babylonbee.com/amicus-brief
~grins~
Do you suppose the Justices will spend any time discussing the Onion and Babylon Bee briefs? I bet they appreciate them anyway!
That was pretty funny. I think the links are absolutely priceless.
The justices have been warned what they are in for if they rule in favor of the cops and against the comedians.
Lucia,
I hope the SC reverses the lower courts and the cops are held personally liable, but the whole qualified immunity concept seems muddled enough that the SC may let the outrageous behavior of the cops stand with no personal consequences. IMHO, obvious criminal behavior, especially when perpetrated by cops (or FBI agents), should always be punished. I hope the SC looks at it as a blatant first amendment violation and puts cops everywhere on notice that this kind of behavior will have severe negative personal consequences. Alas, It is not clear that will happen in this case.
SteveF,
Yes. Qualified immunity is something people have been talking about needing to be overruled (or at least drastically modified) by Scotus.
This case might be the one to make them at least curb it. Recently, even judge Ho, wrote
“n an opinion that quoted IJ’s amicus brief in the case, Judge James Ho wrote that because it should have been obvious to any reasonable police officer that the First Amendment protects the right of people, in particular journalists, to ask government officials questions, it should likewise have been obvious that arresting a journalist based for asking questions is a blatant violation of the Constitution. ”
https://ij.org/case/novak-v-parma/
Ho is an advocate of qualified immunity for cops. But he’s now qualifying that with “for split second” decisions.
There are circuit splits on this.
There are varying levels of punishment, from work discipline, to being fired, to being held criminally liable. Clearly whoever decided to arrest this guy should be fired. On the face this appears to be another “the process is the punishment” type of thing. I would agree with Ho that in my mind qualified immunity is there because cops are intentionally inserted into volatile situations where some decisions are going to be poor in hindsight.
Most people who were to be given a series of these things over a decade would likely eventually make a mistake.
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Something like a screaming wife saying her husband attacked her, the cops try to arrest him, he resists, he gets tased, he dies. Turns out the mentally unstable wife was the attacker all along. Cops get sued.
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This case doesn’t fall into that category. There was plenty of time for sound and reasonable decision making. It doesn’t mean that the legal decision was wrong depending on the way the law was written (no doubt favorable to police). Over at Reason they complain about qualified immunity all the time. There are many cases of injustice related to this law.
https://reason.com/search/%22qualified%20immunity%22/
Precisely. Not only was there plenty of time for reasonable decision making, there was even plenty of time for cops to say something like “How can I get this guy?”
My impression is a lot of qualified immunity law is based on interpretation of precedents. And as someone somewhere said: This level of first amendment violation is huge compared to the idea of protecting cops from mistakes.
And honestly, quite often when 1A comes into tension cop action, the cops are just wrong. Not absolutely always, but someone calling a cop a jerk– expressing an opinion– is not putting his life in danger. The cop doesn’t think his life is endanger. He doesn’t need to make any split second decision. He’s just pissed and arrests someone.
The 1A bad-cop situations are rarely decisions like chasing someone down, excessive roughness and so on where you can see that a split second decision had to be made to avoid getting killed or injured.
I’m sure the judges will read the amicus curiae decisions that are filed. Whether they will read the even funnier one that is not filed… dunno. I don’t think they are required to sequester themselves from news though. So I bet they will. I found that on a law blog. 🙂
Qualified immunity is, in my view, just another case of the so-called compelling state interest rationalization whereby judicial decisions are made in favor of making governments jobs easier to perform at the great sacrifice of individual freedoms that are otherwise supposedly protected. Once individual freedoms are compromised, we are on the path to losing those freedoms.
If a law enforcement person can be prosecuted for his actions, even in cases where quick decisions have to made and human error comes into play, those persons get their day in court just as the ordinary citizen does. No one should be above the law and particularly when it comes to protecting individual rights from government infringement.
For anyone else who might have been curious like me how Paul Pelosi survived an attacker beating him with a hammer, apparently it went down like this:
link here.
I’m sure he didn’t get a lot of good whacks in with the police standing there. Still, I think Paul is lucky to be alive.
Ken,
The difficulty lies in issue related to civil rights. Occasionally, for various and sundry reasons no one knows whether something is “a right” or “not a right”. The reason could have to do with technology being new, a right being on the borderline of what is established and so on and so on. So a police officer has to make a quick decision and trample’s something that is later decreed a right.
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And they are in a position where they must make a decision. Some degree of protection is warranted there.
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The problem is that the qualified immunity is then over-extended to other cases. So someone argues that there has merely been no supreme court case. Well… yeah. I think there are no cases where SCOTUS has ruled about a situation where the military quartered soldiers in private houses. (Not sure….) But if there are no cases it’s because the amendment is so clear that no one is going to claim to misinterpret it. There shouldn’t be a “gimme” when, in fact, it’s so darn clear that the local military can’t just knock on my door and tell me I will now be housing private joe blow.
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The “pro-qualified” immunity lawyers always try to slice and dice cases to the point where it appears nothing has been decided because no past cases were absolutely, completely 100% ‘this’ case.
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The due to the stupendous “uniqueness” of the case, the police argue that the right was not “clearly established”. It’s the huge leeway given on “clearly established” that is rather eyepopping.
lucia (Comment #215743
Lucia, all that should be sorted out in a court of law with the protection of individual rights given more emphasis than making a general exemption for the actions of police officers. With the power that law enforcement has over individuals it is the area that should be most scrutinized.
Back in the day when Miranda rights were put into effect, I always thought that a police officer should be legally held responsible for failure to follow the law in this matter rather than the punishment being solely against the process.
We all at some point in our lives have to make snap decisions and most of us are not trained in handling such situations as police officers are, yet we can be held accountable for those decisions. Catching bad guys does not excuse bad cops or cops who violate individual rights.
mark bofill (Comment #215742)
It sounds like the offender grabbed the hammer and beat Paul Pelosi while the cops were in the same room witnessing the violence. Law enforcement was given the usual accolades for their timely presence, but it did not appear to save Pelosi from a violent beating.
I wonder how long it will take to get the timing of events in this case. It certainly took awhile in the recent Texas school shooting.
Ken Fritsch,
“With the power that law enforcement has over individuals it is the area that should be most scrutinized.”
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Yes, that is what makes qualified immunity so problematic. The public empowers cops to use force and arrest people to protect the public’s interests. With that power comes a clear obligation not to use that power except in the public’s interest, and certainly not to hammer some private citizen who criticizes the police. It is the betrayal of public trust by police which makes qualified immunity so troubling and so often offensive. Had there been no cell phones recording the last minutes of George Floyd’s life, a sociopath cop like Chauvin would likely have suffered few consequences; that Chauvin will likely spend all (or nearly all) the remaining years of his life in prison is a testament to how strongly the public reacts to the betrayal of trust by police.
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The only appropriate response to the police arresting someone for criticizing the police is every police officer involved be immediately fired and face personal legal liability for making an unlawful arrest. Their actions were motivated by self interest; the consequences should be similarly personal.
“We all at some point in our lives have to make snap decisions and most of us are not trained in handling such situations as police officers are, yet we can be held accountable for those decisions.”
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Police are working in government sanctioned jobs which intentionally inserts them into potentially violent confrontations that they cannot simply walk away from in many cases. This is a significant discriminator. Soldiers in war zones are not held to the same level of behavior as civilians.
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There are teams of people who serve warrants. They go around and round up violent felons with outstanding warrants to take them to jail. This is dangerous work. Society isn’t particularly sympathetic to claims of assault in these cases. There is a process to file complaints but I don’t have a problem with different standards of evidence for people whose job it is to take people to jail. I completely support mandatory bodycams to sort out the evidence though.
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Prisoners weren’t previously able to file lawsuits for mistreatment in prisons. The Supreme Court overruled this. What followed was an avalanche of frivolous lawsuits. Prisoners got a day out of prison to go to court, etc. Eventually they put courts in prison just to hear these cases and/or remote testimony. Along the way some problems in prisons probably got better. Both things can be true simultaneously. You can hold police accountable for excessively bad behavior and you can still give them a longer leash than the common citizen.
I don’t think you discipline someone who goes out to arrest a person with an active warrant. The person who decided to file a charge against this guy for a parody site should be disciplined. To me this is a termination offense, a gross misuse of power. District attorney? I don’t really know the details.
DaveJR (Comment #215709)
Fraud schmaud. “Widespread fraud” is all you should be worrying about and there is no evidence of this, regardless.
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When fraud works Dave there would be no evidence of it if well done
How can you detect widespread well organised fraud?
When a lot of people complain the no smoke without fire adage is worth remembering
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Lucia,
I need some quatloos.
How about a prediction on the Rep seats?
2.9% swing to Republicans times Biden times turnout times momentum minus Roe equals 66 seat majority?
angech,
Quatloos?
SteveF’s crystal ball says Republicans will have ~40 seat majority in the house, and 52/48 in the Senate.
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So there will be two years of gridlock with most every law the Republicans pass vetoed by President Brandon Alzheimer. There will be plenty of Congressional investigations which the Alzheimer administration will refused to cooperate with.
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Republicans will probably end up cutting funding for non-cooperative agencies (virtually all of them), which the Alzheimer administration will also veto. Then a budget crisis…. it will be an endless stalemate.
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There are two very different and mutually exclusive visions for the future of the USA. The last two years of all-Democrat control in Washington DC have shown some of what one of those visions means for the country, and the voters don’t like what they see. Whether that will translate into all-Republican control in January 2025, and reversal of much of what has happened in the last 21 months, is the crucial question. If Trump does not run in 2024, DeSantis will win easily and that reversal of damaging policies will likely happen. If Trump does run, then I expect he will lose to an unhinged Democrat, leading to more stalemate and four more years of lawless executive actions by a Democrat president.
Steve,
That’s pretty much the way I see it too.
Legally police are not bound to insert themselves in violent confrontations.
“Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a professor and associate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government has only a duty to protect persons who are “in custody,” he pointed out.
https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again
Police officers are 14th on the list of the 25 highest death rate occupations.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001/
Ken,
Protecting you isn’t the only situation that is potentially violent.
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Apprehending a violent hammer wielding criminal is a violent situation. Even stopping and ticketing a speeder is potentially violent if it turns out they don’t want to be ticketed. Police get called to crime scenes. It’s their job. It can become dangerous much more frequently than most jobs.
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We do want violent hammer wielding criminals to be apprehended when encountered. We do want warrants served. We do want police to do certain things that are dangerous and not just so, “Oh. That looks dangerous. I’ll go home now.”
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Some sort of protections make sense. The problem is they’ve gone too far. Ridiculously too far. In the Parma cop situation, evidently getting a couple phone calls to the police switch board was deemed as “disruptive”. I mean… come on.
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The reality is the cops and justice system went after this guy because they didn’t like being made fun of.
SteveF
Is there a way of overriding a presidential veto if the house and senate majorities are great enough?
Mind you it would have to be bigger than achievable this term I guess.
Say 2/3?.
Trouble is that you still may have a President of Kamal or Nancy.
Unless you impeach all 3
angech: “Is there a way of overriding a presidential veto if the house and senate majorities are great enough?
Mind you it would have to be bigger than achievable this term I guess.
Say 2/3?.”
Yes, if 2/3 of both House & Senate are in favor, they can override a Presidential veto. Hasn’t happened too often in history, e.g. only once during Trump’s term, and once during Obama’s two terms. See this list if interested in more detail.
[To explain the “pocket veto”: if a bill is passed in the last few (10?) days before a Congressional adjournment, the President doesn’t need to veto the bill explicitly, merely not sign it into law. The President figuratively puts the bill in his/her pocket, neither signing nor vetoing it. No override vote is possible in such circumstances.]
angech,
What HaroldW said. It is very rare.
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There is almost no chance of an override of presidential vetos with strong political divisions. It is only when there is overwhelming agreement that an override happens. The single one for Obama was when Congress prohibited by law the closing of the prison for islamic terrorists at Guantanimo Bay in Cuba and bringing the terrorists to the USA for ‘normal’ criminal prosecution. Obama vetoed the bill, but there was a very strong national consensus that the terrorists should not be given access to the domestic criminal justice system, so Congress overrode the veto and Obama was forced to keep the terrorists at Guantanimo. The confused Obama insisted Islam was ‘a religion of peace’, and the islamic terrorists were no different from your average street criminal. He was so far out in the weeds on that issue that he was smacked down by Congress. The violent, cruel nature of fundamentalist Islam and its clear conflict with western culture and values was one of Obama’s few political blind spots.
angech,
One other point on overrides: There are enough “safe” seats in both houses of Congress (overwhelmingly progressive or overwhelmingly conservative) that reaching 2/3 majorities to override presidential vetos on a routine basis (Congress effectively takes control of the Federal government from the executive) is almost an impossibility. If any president were so far out of step that his vetos were being routinely overridden, he would likely be impeached and removed from office.
HaroldW (Comment #215757),
Cool list.
So the champ in having vetoes overridden was Andrew Johnson, with 15 in just under 4 years. I think I knew that. But Ford also has a claim to the title, with 12 in just 2.5 years. Reagan and FDR had 9 each. So 57 from those 5 and a total of 55 from all the rest of the Presidents, an average of about 1 per term.
I have attempted to make three points in this discussion of qualified immunity: (1) The first being that qualified immunity derives from the more general upheld judicial notion of compelling state interest which sacrifices individual rights for making it easier for the state to carry out its duties. In my view these situations compromise individual rights without bound, i.e. how easy do we want to make it for the state, (2) Law enforcement is given a most powerful position in their interaction with individuals and can readily compromise their rights and be unrestricted in the process. Given these powers policing the police becomes a process that cannot be minimized by reference to the dangers that some police officers in some areas and in some infrequent occurrences face and (3) The pubic view of the dangers of police work are very much influenced by the instances portrayed by the media and even televisions series whereby the more mundane duties of police work are overwhelmed by the more rare occasions of violent intervention – and even those instances are not portrayed as they occur in the real world. I would question the portrayals we see on television, where immediately after a violent crime has occurred, we have government officials congratulating one another on their reactions to the occurrence – which often afterwards we find did not go down as initially indicated.
I suspect that those individuals doing police work in the US are probably much the same in demeanor and behavior as the ordinary citizen for whom they work with some differences due to the qualifying process for police work. I see numbers as high as 90% of officers who have never fired their guns in the line of duty. I could not find online a good comparison of the dangers of being a policeperson in the inner city of the US versus other areas of the country, but it becomes rather obvious to me that being a policeperson in the inner city of Chicago, IL is much more dangerous than being one in Wheaton, IL.
Making police work less dangerous should hold the politicians in charge of the cities with high crime rates the most responsible. Yet that does not appear to be the case as those officials are certainly not held accountable at the ballot box or by the media or even by the populations of the cities who are the victims of these crimes.
I find more interesting the link below which SteveF linked and which accounts for the number of vetoes by US Presidents and the number overridden. If a President never vetoes a bill he would never have been overridden. If a President vetoes hundreds of bills he could have a few overridden that becomes a lot when absolute numbers are compared.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/vetoes/vetoCounts.htm
HaroldW provided that link.
I would agree that it is likely legal that we can construct an “anarchist” version of the police as Ken describes, but it is also legal to construct an interventionist version of the police with policies for engagement in violent confrontations. Society has chosen the interventionist model. Crazy man in a public park with a big knife is an example where society basically instructs police to intervene for public safety. A lot of these crazy people are off their meds and end up dead, and it is possible a majority of them would have harmed nobody if left alone. Society does not want to take that chance. The point here is that society gets to choose.
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There is some local experimentation with the model, recently a lot of places have decriminalized some bad behavior, or no longer pursue stolen vehicles in most cases. The result has been more criminal behavior in many places and it has become a leading election issue to reel that back in.
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Personally I am agnostic, my neighborhood is safe and I don’t like locking up non-violent people based on economics alone. If my neighborhood was not safe I would almost certainly be calling for more intervention.
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My understanding is that police unions have pushed through qualified immunity laws in many places that are way too protective of bad behavior. That is expected in the same way teacher’s unions are highly self serving lately. The police unions aren’t fundamentally interested in protecting society.
One of the proposals for Musk’s Twitter is a rating system and the ability to choose your own censorship (oops, I mean “moderation”) option. It was always a bit weird to me that this was never discussed previously, on top of an already ability to not listen to anyone you didn’t want to. The one-size-fits-all censoring (oops I mean “safety”) system before reeked of authoritarian control of speech.
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Note that I have never had a Twitter account so count me as a non-expert. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Tom, if there are no Constitutional articles or amendments or laws that reference that law enforcement has to intervene I am not very sure that society has explicitly chosen the interventionist version. They merely say that they can intervene. Human nature could easily determine when and where law enforcement intervenes.
Alternatively, if the situation you describe occurs on private property, a private security force representing the private property owner would be within its legal rights to remove such a menacing person.
I judge that a reasonable approach to inner city crime is to get the neighborhoods there involved with some autonomy and the exclusion of the city politicians who have over time amply demonstrated that their interventionist approach has been a dismal failure and not about to be remedied any time soon through the ballot box. That autonomy would have to look more like a private property issue than something in the public domain.
Thanks, Harold, for providing the link that I credited to SteveF. Over time you have been a fount of informative links.
Tom Scharf,
“It will be interesting to see how this plays out.”
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I suspect the Alzheimer administration will start hammering all of Musk’s businesses with ‘investigations of violations’ of one regulation or another. I would not be surprised if SpaceX rocket use by NASA and the DOD is suddenly found to “not be the best option”, despite being much lower cost. Twitter itself will get hammered by the regulators in Brussels over lack of moderation of ‘dangerous’ tweets, and they are not limited by the First Amendment. If they have the power to do so, the left simply will not allow opposing views to be presented to the voting public…. never have and never will. They are not interested in an honest, open debate. They want only power. I suspect Musk is in for a lot of headaches if he actually allows free speech on Twitter. If Republicans control Congress, that may help a little, but the Alzheimer administration can still torment Musk via a ‘process is the punishment’ approach….. at least until Jan 2025.
Thanks for that list of vetoes, HW.
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The next 2 weeks is a perfect firestorm.
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So many things going on in the world on all levels.
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Turns out the intruder was not a Republican.
Did he bring a hammer or did Paul have one to defend himself?
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Not that it is that important but might be if he was not armed, only delusional and had not intended attacking anyone.
The Democrats and some in the media are trying to blame Republicans for the attack on Paul Pelosi.
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The whole thing seems very weird. I am puzzled by how the kook got to the back door, let alone broke in, without triggering the security system. The police say there were at least three people in the house. Given that, not much else that we have been told makes sense.
Looks like the Russians are now more interested in negotiations (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-would-agree-to-talks-to-end-ukraine-war-on-these-conditions-kremlin/ar-AA13y012).
But I am guessing the USA/Nato are not at all interested.
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I suspect only objections in Congress to continued unlimited support for the Ukraine will motivate negotiations. Unlikely to be any time soon.
Mike M,
Apparently the guy is part of a ‘radical nudist’ group and is Canadian by birth. Everything known about the suspect suggests he is totally bonkers.
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The police statement says Pelosi’s husband called 911 then grabbed the hammer, but the intruder took it away from him and started beating on him with the hammer as the police arrived.
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Unlike the shooting of Rep Scalise several years ago, which was politically motivated, this attack sounds more like a crazy-man gone completely out of control. But I am sure it will somehow turn out Ron DeSantis caused the attack.
SteveF,
I agree this sounds like total crazy-man.
I don’t want to get wrapped around the axle on David DePape’s ideology, because the dude was indeed apparently crazy. Crazy trancends ideological boundaries.
This said, the guy was a leftist.
But yeah. The Washington Post paints him as a Republican and a Trump supporter. Because lots of Republican Trump supporters are nudist activists who live in Berkeley communes with BLM flags outside. Obviously.
It’s a little silly.
New
CNN
The hammer that was used to assault Paul Pelosi was brought by DePape, according to a law enforcement source and a senior congressional aide briefed on the assault.
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Should be body cam and security cam footage of all the events.
But?
They do go missing at convenient times.
Police were not very helpful with details of his car crash either.
This pretty well sums it up:
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/pelosi-and-kavanaugh-murder-plots
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Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster; this guy seems even nuttier than Hinkley. If there is any lesson to be learned here, it is that having people who suffer long term psychosis untreated and roaming the streets is a bad idea… as those pushed by crazies to their deaths on subway tracks have learned. Mental health is yet another of the issues where the left has adopted policies which are terrible for society and for public safety. That they blame Republicans for the consequences of their idiotic mental health policies is almost too rich to believe.
I think there is a need for new legislation to ensure that all homeowners (a) take a mandatory course in hammer safety, and (b) have a locked hammer safe in their houses. Even one hammer attack is too many.
In unrelated news, I’m opening a school to teach responsible hammer usage, and another company to manufacture lockable hammer cabinets.
With Lula da Silva’s victory over Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil there has been a sweep of all Latin American nations having far left administrations. If the current US and Canadian admistrations are included there are leftwing administrations in all the North and South America nations.
It is my view that this situation arises out of the leftwing bent of the current intelligentsia and their influence on the voting public. For example, the news section of the WSJ had an article concerning the Brazilian presidential election whereby they had nice things to say about the socialist Silva who had been previously convicted of fraud and nothing good to say about Bolsonaro. Even when the news is unfavorable to one’s political philosophy it is good to know where things stand. The non-left is swimming against a strong current.
In another WSJ piece, it quotes Randi Weingarten, the AFT teacher union president, in lecturing the Supreme Court in the case of universities using racial preferences, “ensuring equal access to educational opportunities is a compelling state interest”. Meaning that compelling state interests can be used to override supposedly Constitutionally protected individual rights.
SteveF,
As I remember, the movement to deinstitutionalize mental patients was bipartisan. But the community support that was supposed to take over never happened. And without legal committment to an institution, there is no way to force people to stay on their meds. So the question is whether it’s better to warehouse people drugged to the gills with thorazine or let them wander loose on the streets. There should be a better choice, but I don’t see anyone actually doing anything about it.
The left decided to fix the problem by redefining normal people as the ones with the mental issues.
I would hope that your school and company are receiving grants
from a Public Safety agency, but I fear that we need stricter measures than what you evidently are prescribing.
Hammer owners could be registered or better in light of the advent of nail and staple guns why should anybody need a hammer – except to be used as an assault weapon. You can search far and wide in the US and state constitutions but you will not find any protection of hammer ownership. I see compelling state interest written all over this necessary move.
It was motivated, in my view, by the miserable job governments were doing in running, controlling and/or financing these institutions. In IL we had state operated developmental centers that were doing such a bad job that they are being shut down to be replaced by state funded non-profit run residences. There are still problems but at least the state can find agencies to review the nonprofits whereas the state centers appear to be review proof – except when the media decides to investigate.
I worked at a mental institution when I was in high school, I spent a lot of time in “closed ward”. Involuntary admission. For the most part these people were just having periodic mental breakdowns and their families couldn’t handle it or feared for their safety. 99% harmless. There was another state institution that housed the violent offenders. They came in, got back on their meds, and left usually within two weeks. We had a few frequent fliers. Probably 80% of the facility was voluntary admission. There was a children’s section as well, some very sad cases there. I saw some electroshock therapy, it was medieval as it sounds, but produced some amazing results that were unfortunately temporary. You can’t always just fix mental illness and the side effects of the meds are serious. They may control the patient better but the patient obviously doesn’t always see it that way.
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The place I worked at was closed decades ago.
I’m in the middle, I support hammer ownership except for military hammers. We need to ban any hammer that has scary looking black pieces.
Ken Fritsch,
I know quite a lot about Brazil. I was in Brazil last week (in the days leading up to the run-off), and I have two dual citizen children who live there. You should not draw too many parallels with the leftism in the USA and Canada and the leftism in Brazil.
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Most of the middle and upper classes (generally more educated and with higher average income) in Brazil supported Bolsonaro, while Lula was mostly supported by poorer/less educated people. Geographically, the less economically developed states in the north and northeast of the country (with he highest proportion of very poor) supported Lula, while the more economically developed south supported Bolsonaro. Lula gets the votes of the poor because he directly promises to give them greater material wealth via direct government benefits and changes in the law (dramatically increasing the minimum wage, for example).
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One thing which is mostly downplayed in US coverage by the MSM is that Lula is in fact corrupt; he and his family pocketed many, many millions of Brazilian Reis from kickbacks and influence pedaling while he was in office the first time. I have had discussions with Brazilians who have *personal* knowledge that Lula was accepting large cash bribes from companies when he was a labor leader (before becoming a politician). He spent nearly two years in prison following conviction for corruption, and was freed by the Brazilian supreme court on a pure technicality (bribery charges filed against him were claimed to have been filed in the wrong legal district). The Brazilians I have talked to (in Portuguese) say his release from prison was 100% politically motivated (the SC members are mostly aligned with Lula’s party), and that everyone understands he and his government were profoundly corrupt.
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Of course, lots of lefty politicians (and especially Brazilian lefty politicians) are corrupt, but in Brazil, poor people seem mostly to vote for whoever promises they will receive more benefits, even if they know that politician is corrupt.
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The odd comparisons with Trump (‘Trump of the tropics’, etc) are garbage; Bolsonaro has held elective office for a long time, and he is nothing like Trump in his personal behavior. A better comparison might be Josh Hawley, were he 20 years older.
Ken Fritsch: “Hammer owners could be registered…”
Yes, a hammer registry is an excellent idea. We should also have a ban on “assault hammers”, defined as any hammer weighing over 16 oz. There will no doubt be some resistance from builders, but it’s all about framing the issue properly.
We need to take steps to get automatic repeating hammers such as hydraulic jackhammers out of people’s hands as quickly as possible. Nobody needs that kind of destructive power, it’s just common sense hammer control.
They can have my hammer when they claw it out of my cold dead fingers!
When is a private company, not a private company?
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“Truth Cops: Leaked documents outline DHS’s plans to police disinformation”
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https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/
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There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live.
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Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020. Meeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to “process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.” In practice, this often meant state election officials sent examples of potential forms of disinformation to CISA, which would then forward them on to social media companies for a response.
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In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote more flexibility to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one CISA official quoted in the IG report, “counters all types of disinformation, to be responsive to current events.”
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Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.
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CISA has defended its burgeoning social media monitoring authorities, stating that “once CISA notified a social media platform of disinformation, the social media platform could independently decide whether to remove or modify the post.” But, as documents revealed by the Missouri lawsuit show, CISA’s goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions.
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In June, the same DHS advisory committee of CISA — which includes Twitter head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird — drafted a report to the CISA director calling for an expansive role for the agency in shaping the “information ecosystem.” The report called on the agency to closely monitor “social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.” They argued that the agency needed to take steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information,” with a focus on information that undermines “key democratic institutions, such as the courts, or by other sectors such as the financial system, or public health measures.”
Good work by The Intercept.
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Shocked! Shocked I say! That the government misinformation control bureaucracy has grown like a malignant tumor inside a nuclear reactor.
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In some countries the platforms must legally adhere to government takedown requests. The US government should not be getting this kind of service except in some extreme circumstances and then it needs to be transparent what they are censoring. The worst part of all these censorship committees is their lack of transparency, an open invitation to corruption both soft and hard.
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One can argue that the government should get the ability to request takedowns like normal citizens but they should not get special privileges or leverage. Any request from government that even comes within a mile of legally protected speech should be dismissed out of hand and given lower priority than a citizen, and made public. My view is the entire effort should be disbanded and defunded.
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I find it hilarious that the “government” who are made up of the same exact people who are sending me the most outrageous disinformation about their political opponents every single day in the mail for the past month deem themselves a respectable arbiter of the truth.
If you have been following Glenn Greenwald you will know he left The intercept because they refused to print his story on the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop. This part of the new story (starting on about paragraph 99) is going to give him a stroke, ha ha.
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“In retrospect, the New York Post reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election provides an elucidating case study of how this works in an increasingly partisan environment.
Much of the public ignored the reporting or assumed it was false, as over 50 former intelligence officials charged that the laptop story was a creation of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. The mainstream media was primed by allegations of election interference in 2016 — and, to be sure, Trump did attempt to use the laptop to disrupt the Biden campaign. Twitter ended up banning links to the New York Post’s report on the contents of the laptop during the crucial weeks leading up to the election. Facebook also throttled users’ ability to view the story.
In recent months, a clearer picture of the government’s influence has emerged.
In an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook had limited sharing of the New York Post’s reporting after a conversation with the FBI. “The background here is that the FBI came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan. The FBI told them, Zuckerberg said, that “‘We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump.’” When the Post’s story came out in October 2020, Facebook thought it “fit that pattern” the FBI had told them to look out for.
Zuckerberg said he regretted the decision, as did Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter at the time. Despite claims that the laptop’s contents were forged, the Washington Post confirmed that at least some of the emails on the laptop were authentic. The New York Times authenticated emails from the laptop — many of which were cited in the original New York Post reporting from October 2020 — that prosecutors have examined as part of the Justice Department’s probe into whether the president’s son violated the law on a range of issues, including money laundering, tax-related offenses, and foreign lobbying registration.
Documents filed in federal court as part of a lawsuit by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana add a layer of new detail to Zuckerberg’s anecdote, revealing that officials leading the push to expand the government’s reach into disinformation also played a quiet role in shaping the decisions of social media giants around the New York Post story.
According to records filed in federal court, two previously unnamed FBI agents — Elvis Chan, an FBI special agent in the San Francisco field office, and Dehmlow, the section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force — were involved in high-level communications that allegedly “led to Facebook’s suppression” of the Post’s reporting.
The Hunter Biden laptop story was only the most high-profile example of law enforcement agencies pressuring technology firms. In many cases, the Facebook and Twitter accounts flagged by DHS or its partners as dangerous forms of disinformation or potential foreign influence were clearly parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence.”
A bit less generous take on the Paul Pelosi attack: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/10/31/everyone-is-laughing-at-the-ridiculous-pelosi-big-lie-n2615222?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=28435348
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Will be interesting to see the official Police report. My guess: it will never be released. In any case, it might be hard to find another violent, hammer-wielding semi-fascist ultra-MAGA Trump supporter who is also a radical nudist and lives in a San Franscisco nudist commune that supports BLM. Just sayin’.
Tom Scharf,
“‘We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump.’”
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They long had the Hunter Biden laptop, and they long knew it was 100% authentic…. a laptop which proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, an obscene level of influence pedaling and personal corruption in the Biden family. The FBI lied for political gain and to influence the 2020 election.
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The only real solution to FBI’s appalling corruption is cutting the FBI budget by 75%, leading to giant lay-offs, followed by firing every single remaining person not protected by civil service rules. The FBI is 100% corrupt and 100% evil. For the good of the country, the FBI has to basically disappear.
Pelosi and DePape were in their underwear?!
It seems that the police are now saying that Pelosi opened the door while struggling with the crazy guy for control of the hammer. I, for one, find that very hard to believe. Then the crazy guy got control of the hammer and started to beat on Pelosi. I have not heard the explanation of how he got more than one blow in with the cops standing within a step or to.
I suppose we will never learn what actually happened.
Interesting factoid: The Paul Pelosi attacker was also an illegal resident with a very long overstay of his allowed time in the USA. Hummmm…. maybe it would be better to send illegal aliens back to where they came from. If so, Paul Pelosi would have less of a headache today.
Some of the earliest reporting indicated that DePape was in his underwear. Here is one from three days ago that has not yet been changed.
I read that this is currently believed to be a mistake in early reporting. It is unclear what Paul Pelosi was wearing, but having reportedly been awakened by the intruder, I don’t see that it much matters.
DePape was nuts and a nudist activist besides, so I don’t see vast grounds for astonishment or even strong evidence of intimate activity even if he truly was arrested in his skivvies. Further, even supposing Paul Pelosi had been … trysting … with DePape, well. So what. I don’t see what real difference any of it makes.
This is why the bofill rating agency gives this story one shrug:
shrug.
Stuff like how people were dressed easily gets garbled and deserves a shrug.
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But the claim that the crazy guy got in without setting off an alarm seems more than passing strange. Enough to make one (or at least me) wonder how much of the truth we are being told.
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We are told that Pelosi got the guy to let him use the bathroom and called 911 from there. So the bathroom door doesn’t have a lock?
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We are now told that there were just two people in the house and that one of them opened the door for the cops. I don’t see how to square that with alleged struggle over the hammer and subsequent beat down.
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Such things rate more than a shrug.
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Well actually, I might have just given the whole thing a shrug if Democrats did not immediately start politicizing it.
Mike,
Yes. Some of the details are odd and in my opinion are worthy of further investigation and review. The underwear angle isn’t one of them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
mark bofill,
“Some of the details are odd and in my opinion are worthy of further investigation and review”
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The local authorities are not explaining what actually happened….. maybe they will be more forthcoming after formal charges are filed, but then again, maybe not.
Steve, yep.
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I sort of take exception to what in my view is an excessive and inappropriate use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to describe people’s theories about exactly what went down.
Theorizing that Paul Pelosi might have been having a sexual encounter with Depape isn’t a conspiracy theory. The only part that might qualify is the idea that the police might cover something up at Paul or Nancy’s request. And – while that might technically satisfy the criteria for conspiracy theory, I don’t think there is anything particularly far fetched about that. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the USA is about as well connected politically as they come. It is downright naive in my view to think the Pelosi’s have no pull with local law enforcement. So I wish people would quit with the conspiracy theory BS. I know they won’t, but I wish they would anyway.
On the other hand, whatever pull they might have didn’t get Paul Pelosi off the hook for DUI recently. So maybe local law enforcement doesn’t much care.
Well, surprisingly enough, it sounds like multiple agencies (state and federal) are investigating Tesla. Political payback is nigh.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-than-50-tesla-engineers-into-twitter.html
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The reporting by cnbc could not be more biased against Musk.
Yeah. The Twitter guys have to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for a week, or maybe a week and a few days. Cry me a river. I don’t know the software developer / software engineer who hasn’t been in that situation. I’ve endured long shifts for longer periods of time than that on more than a few occasions over the years. It happens.
Listened to 5 hours of affirmative action arguments. Sotomayor has a habit of arguing from the bench constantly. “What you are are really saying is (fill in argument), right?”. Overtly leading the witness. She constantly seems frustrated the lawyers aren’t answering the questions the best way. She is pretty pi**ed off about this case. Alito is her nemesis on this argument, he was incredulous at times (“It’s family lore that one of my ancestors was an American Indian”, ha ha).
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The conservatives ask questions, sometimes very difficult. “How do you know when you have reached your diversity goal?” They re-asked that 4 or more times without any answer. They cornered the lawyers on their arguments that “race matters, but we aren’t discriminating by race”. “race is a plus for admissions, but there are no minuses”. A lot of incoherent circular logic because using actual numbers to measure the goals of “diversity” ends up clearly unconstitutional due to racial leveling being impermissible.
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So they allegedly use multi-factor holistic admissions to be blind to the quotas, but race is part of this. They won’t define what diversity actually is, and most importantly when it would end because they are boxed in legally. The conservatives were very critical about this. It seems the failure to put forth any explanation of when this would end really hurt their case.
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There are arguments that “checking the race box” is meaningless because it can’t be * proven * that holistic admissions makes that determinative in any individual case, although statistically it obviously does. Then they turn around and praise how important race is for admissions and education. They finally admit 1% of decisions at UNC are determined by race (the real number is likely higher), then are asked why they need race if they are already mostly achieving diversity without the checkbox.
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Alito and Thomas was were very hostile to letting this continue. Chief Justice Roberts seemed rather skeptical. Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett were also openly skeptical.
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It’s almost certain something is going to change here by listening to these arguments. It can be multiple levels of redress but declaring use of race unconstitutional seems very possible. It was brought up many times 9 states have already done this.
Tom Scharf,
Thanks for the summary. If memory serves, admissions of black and latinos to the most selective schools is expected to drop by 2/3 or more if admissions were actually race/ethnicity neutral. Of course, even if race were bared as illegal and unconstitutional as a factor for admission, the most selective schools will continue to admit based on race/ethnicity, even though they will deny they do. I would be shocked if schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT ever allowed their admission of blacks and latinos to drop by even 1/3 from where they are today. In California the drop in black and latino admissions to the most selective public schools has not been as large as expected, so it is clear those schools are STILL favoring certain racial and ethnic groups.
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I have heard some commentary that favoring people from poor backgrounds, which would be defensible under the law, could be used to increase black and latino admissions, but I doubt it. There are far, far too many intellectually capable poor whites, Vietnamese, Chinese, and others who would compete for spots with blacks and latinos if admissions favored kids from poor backgrounds.
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I think admissions to the most selective schools will remain indefinitely tilted toward favored groups, as they have since the late 1960s, no matter what the SC says. The discrimination after the SC rules may not be as blatant as today, and may not have quite so large an impact on admissions, but it will continue to be substantial. The left never accepts laws it disagrees with, and always violates and works to subvert those laws. The left never relents in its pursuit of ‘equity’ by any means available.
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If Harvard were honest, it would simply stop taking Federal funds and continue to discriminate based on race. I would be perfectly OK with that and would applaud their principled position. But they won’t stop discriminating, and they will continue to receive Federal funds. The mendacity of the left is without limit.
SteveF
State schools could do that. But Harvard, Yale etc want the later donations that come from admitting rich kids. And the non-rich kids are partly attracted by the hope of rubbing shoulders with rich kids and making connections with rich parents.
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One of the reasons the kids from Ivy’s make money is they had more connections before they went there. If your parents own a huge company, and their friends own companies, successful networking tends to be easier.
If Harvard et. al. really wanted diversity, then they wouldn’t allow segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies, among other things. My guess would be that the interaction between rich and non-rich isn’t very large either.
The hammer puns above were indeed suitably awful.
Harvard pulled in 800 million in research grants last year which makes up 17% of their income. 70% of that came directly from the federal government. Tuition was 21% and endowment proceeds 36%. The even bigger issue would be their students not being being able to use federal grants or student loans. There’re very few institutions if any that can even consider going total free of federal funds. Even Harvard with their huge endowment and yearly budget surpluses isn’t one of them. That’s what gives the department of education power over education even though it’s not a power vested with it in the constitution.
Andrew P,
But in addition, some of the tuition funds are via Federally sponsored student loans.
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Harvard’s return on invested endowment plus a bit of the principle would allow them swear off all Federal funding and to discriminate undisturbed for many decades, if not forever. Besides, kindred political spirit CCP (China) would probably be happy to fund Harvard’s blatant racial discrimination. Harvard won’t sear off Federal funds, but they will continue to discriminate.
Lucia,
Sure. The admission of legacy applicants is the most blatant example of selective schools protecting their long term financial interests. Another is ‘special admits’ of the children of the extremely wealthy and/or politically influential (Chelsey Clinton: Stanford, Oxford, Colombia. I saw her efforts at TV journalism…. she didn’t get in on her intellect.
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I know one of these admits to Harvard, the son of an incredibly wealthy Brazilian family. Nice guy, and reasonably smart, but really, it was the money not his incandescent intellect that got him in. He owns a small to mid-size company in Brazil today, which I suspect is as much a hobby for him as a way to make a living.
Tom Scharf,
“It seems the failure to put forth any explanation of when this would end really hurt their case.”
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The honest answer is NEVER. That is what really hurts their case.
We were in it up to our eyeballs! The Ukrainian drone attack of the russian ships in the Black Sea had our help.
[Forbes] “Russian sources [Pravda] also claim a large U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawk long-endurance surveillance drone taken off from Italy likely conducted pre-strike reconnaissance on Ukraine’s behalf that morning.”
It was our old friend FORTE10, a plane I have noted here several times. I watched this event in real time.
Maybe more importantly but not reported, the US had a RC-135V/W Rivet Joint spy plane nearby. This plane has onboard mainframe computers that analyze data from all relevant sources [air, ground and satellite] and produce 3D battle maps that are sent to ground commanders for targeting.
The Urasian Times has a description and screen shot of the actual track:
“As a leading Russian publication, Pravda said an American RQ-4B-40 Global Hawk reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea could have controlled the Ukrainian attack.
It quoted data from Flightradar24 that showed an unmanned strategic reconnaissance aircraft with the tail number 11-2046, call sign FORTE10 and belonging to the Pentagon, taking off from a NATO airbase near Catania in Sicily.” https://eurasiantimes.com/us-rq-4b-global-hawk-drone-coordinated-ukrainian-strike-on-russia/
Heather Mac Donald beats up on a richly deserving Harvard: https://www.city-journal.org/harvard-president-defends-racial-preferences-in-open-letter
A gem:
“If Harvard admitted students on a colorblind basis, it would be 43 percent Asian, 38.4 percent white, 0.7 percent black, and 2.4 percent Hispanic, according to a 2013 study by the university itself. Instead, Harvard’s undergraduates in 2013 were 43.2 percent white, 18.7 percent Asian, 10.5 percent black, and 9.5 percent Hispanic.”
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Mac Donald concludes, as I do, that Harvard and similarly selective schools will NEVER stop discriminating, no matter what the constitution and existing laws say. Their smug moral superiority over the 70% of Americans (basket of deplorables?) who oppose racial preferences, puts them permanently above the law.
In a truly free market without government strings attached, a private school like Harvard could have any admittance policy it might choose. I would certainly approve of that situation.
Harvard is a brand that denotes connections for furthering a graduates career. The brand does not always give the promised results, but at a rate, and particularly for those in high positions, that it remains a good marketing tool. That brand is held up for Harvard and other like universities by the current intelligentsia as their agendas are much the same. Practiced in the real world those agendas would eventually be exposed for the general public to see the inherent weaknesses and outright wrongheadedness of these policies, if it were not for the existing situation whereby the intelligentsia gets to say what is working and what is not and totally ignoring problems and failures.
Harvard will not (have to) change until the approach we have for evaluating changes.
There was open and frank discussions of what would replace affirmative action. The conservative justices were honestly interested in race neutral alternatives, they really don’t want to zero this out. Top 10% in your high school class, socioeconomic plus points, first in your family to college, reducing legacy admissions, allowing discussions of overcoming prejudice or cultural barriers in essays were all seen as legal and would likely pass muster.
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The Students for Fair Admission kept talking about “Simulation D” (which Sotomayer kept referring to as “Stimulation D”, ha) that implemented 50/50 socioeconomic diversity at Harvard and expanded overall racial and other diversity (although Blacks fell from 14% to 10%). Harvard demurred to comment much on this, except to say their “important” diversity metrics would suffer greatly. More mysterious hand waving.
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So the net effect here will not be great, everyone who is in a disadvantaged minority will say so in their essays, and Asians will continue to pretend they aren’t Asian. The people at Harvard are clever and I think the justices didn’t get good answers that Harvard would be incapable of implementing race neutral alternatives. However the legal distinctions are important from my point of view. Overt racial leveling will be harder to implement and impossible to justify. But actual diversity beyond race will improve, poor white people will not be left out, etc. Conservatives make up 7% of Harvard’s incoming class, this bias is permissible at Harvard (almost all bias is permissible at private institutions, federal funding being a complication).
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One interesting point which Thomas talked about is why the burden of proof for racial bias is one way in disparate impact cases and now the opposite in admissions cases. This is not legally the reality in my understanding, but is the reality in practice from Thomas’s view.
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The personalities of the lawyers is not very determinative, but I thought the Harvard lawyer came off as evasive, smug, and elitist, he kept sighing as if he was explaining obvious legal concepts to 5 year olds. That’s probably my bias though. The Students for Fair Admissions lawyer was strong as was the other side’s lawyer who represented the military academies. She was on point constantly and directly answered direct questions.
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They spent much longer talking about sunsetting affirmative action than eliminating it than I thought (the 25 years debate from Grutter). Apparently the Grutter precedent specifically talked about this and more or less let affirmative action continue in 2003 but with a written legal expectation it would be eliminated. It was put on probation. This angle is such that the conservatives are not going to see themselves as overturning a precedent but eliminating affirmative action “on schedule”, Alito referred to next year’s class graduating at the 25 year mark. The media has been silent on this concept.
“In California the drop in black and latino admissions to the most selective public schools has not been as large as expected, so it is clear those schools are STILL favoring certain racial and ethnic groups.”
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It is very clear the courts are not going to micromanage admissions and tell schools to admit by test scores. They accept that universities have a “compelling” interest in a “diverse” student body and that universities are best suited to decide that for themselves. That is not going to go away and it is likely appropriate if you assume good faith admissions. They are the experts in their domain and the court is very hesitant to tell them how to do their jobs.
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Obviously one worries about the cultural effects of a liberal slant in admissions and the running of universities. This stigma hurts them now, and will continue to hurt them if they increase their bias.
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UF has been going through a spasm trying to affirm an ex Republican Senator as UF’s next president. This opposition is expected, but I’m amazed this guy is even on the hire list at all.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/us/ben-sasse-university-of-florida-president-no-confidence-vote
I’m seeing questions raised as to whether the websites claimed to be DePape’s, actually were. These are the only evidence that he is a “far right” conspiracy theorist. Godisloving.wordpress.com and http://www.frenlyfrens.com/blog only appeared on archive.org on the 28th Oct. 2022. An opportune Peter Gleick by proxy?
Tom Scharf,
” They accept that universities have a “compelling” interest in a “diverse” student body and that universities are best suited to decide that for themselves. That is not going to go away and it is likely appropriate if you assume good faith admissions.”
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That is certainly the situation now, but if the SC blocks explicit use of race to create a “diverse” student body, then other means to reach similar ends will be needed. Harvard specifically wants middle class and wealthy black admissions, so they are never going to be able to adopt the “top x% in all public schools” like the state schools can. Assuming good faith admissions? Not sure what that might include.
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Besides, assuming Harvard acts in “good faith” on anything is a leap of faith I am not willing to make. I saw what they did to Larry Summers, and it was anything but good faith.
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I do agree that one way or another, selective schools will in fact continue to discriminate by race for the indefinite future; they will just have to be a lot less blatant about it.
On the subject of Gleick, I thought I’d see what wikipedia had to say about his little incident. I thought perhaps it would have been erased, but I guess vindication is a better alternative:
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“Gleick was reinstated following an investigation, in which the institute found no evidence to support charges of forgery and “supported what Dr. Gleick has stated publicly regarding his interaction with the Heartland Institute.”
DaveJR,
The first craw of the site was about 3 PM on October 28. The guy was arrested some 12 hours earlier. It is not unusual for rarely visited websites to not be crawled, and I expect this one was crawled based on the guy’s arrest. That does not mean the site did not exist before the 28th.
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I spent a few minutes looking at the archived pages on the wayback machine. The site has dozens of pages of content, with lots of disturbing images and lots of text expressing hatred for jews, women, homosexuals, transvestites, and many, many others. While some of his pages suggest ‘conservative’ POV, mostly they all scream “crazy and disconnected from reality”.
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According to the Whois service, the site was created on August 9 of 2022; the first blog entries were dated a couple of days later. There is no possibility that the website is a spoof created between 3:00 AM and 3:00 PM on the 28th of October.
Their classes would be filled with all poor and middle class people. Their diversity metrics probably need more rich people.
On a different topic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/
There is something fundamentally wrong with the argument that people should be excused for doing evil because they were ignorant. I feel like this embodies an important difference between progressive and conservative, but maybe it’s just me. In my view, it is irresponsible to infringe on people’s freedoms when you are ignorant. The possibility of necessity is not justification for trampling people’s rights. I feel like responsible adults ought to know that already going into such situations.
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At the very least, don’t ask me for forgiveness or amnesty afterwards. Ignorance is a completely unacceptable excuse. Next time kindly leave us the heck alone.
If one is not ready to accept responsibility for being wrong, one is not ready to exercise power, is the simplest expression of what I’m trying to get at here.
mark bofill,
Yeah I read that one too. Found it a bit predictable and self serving.
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Here is one in a similar vane, Tim Robbins opining on changing his attitude from vaccine scold. A bit more compelling writing but much the same end result.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tim-robbins-and-the-lost-art-of-finding
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I think this is mostly people dealing with the cognitive dissonance of having demonized their out group for their previous behavior, but now they are behaving exactly the same. Everyone is currently on the irresponsible Republican death cult plan (no lockdowns, no masks, no mandates, open schools, not taking boosters, etc.).
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Admitting the Republicans were right is not on the possibility list, but they might forgive Republicans for being right, maybe, ha ha. Everyone was stumbling around in the dark to some extent, the proper behavior was to be a bit more humble from the beginning.
lucia,
I suspect that the most important diversity metric to Harvard is legacy admissions. If they start admitting a lot more Asians, then they will be more pressure down the line to admit fewer whites and more Asians. Given all this hoorah, I seriously doubt that all that many Asian alumni will be big donors. OTOH, maybe they will want to see large donations from legacy alumni before admitting their offspring.
I should probably link the WSJ article on the arbitrariness of racial classifications.
Here it is:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/affirmative-action-diversity-students-for-fair-admissions-harvard-university-north-carolina-discrimination-dei-equity-anti-racism-11666982997?st=e7s8ggq0p2cqhdc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Madness.
mark bofill,
“Next time kindly leave us the heck alone.”
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Hear, hear!
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“We were afraid and that made us do bad things” is a crap excuse.
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Better to stop acting like a frightened 4 year old and accept that life has risks. To insist we, as a society, trade individual liberty for a very uncertain hope of “social safety” is idiotic and dangerous. The world was much impoverished by covid, but sadly, the most important impoverishment was the precedent that personal liberty is secondary to a very uncertain hope for safety. May it never happen again in the USA.
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“Those that give up freedom for safety deserve neither.”
DeWitt,
“I suspect that the most important diversity metric to Harvard is legacy admissions.”
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Sure, they will fight to protect legacies, along with “special” admissions for the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful, to their last breath… too damned much money involved to not admit them.
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What I suspect will happen is they will get rid of most (white) athletic admissions, cut admissions for blacks and Latinos by maybe 15%-20%, and increase Asian admissions with those freed spaces. So mercenary, so unprincipled, so dishonest…… so, well… so very Harvard.
Lucia,
“Their diversity metrics probably need more rich people.”
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Ouch! 😉
Nationally, Covid deaths are now in the high 100’s per day, and falling. Covid is a non-issue, save for the long term damage idiotic public policies did to the country, the economy, and especially to school age children.
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With just a bit of luck, the most Covid unhinged, like Whitmer of Michigan, will be tossed from office next week. There is absolutely nobody more deserving of unemployment than the Covid unhinged.
Real Clear Politics now projects 4 Senate seats will go from Democrats to Republicans next week. If that happens, a filibuster-proof majority for Republicans will be in reach in 2024, when Dems are very likely to lose at least 4 seats in states where Dem policies are wildly unpopular.
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DeSantis as president… check
House majority…. check
Filibuster-proof Senate majority…. check.
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All the really bad Dem policies since Obama took office could be quickly reversed.
Reasonable mistakes can be forgiven, especially when the perpetrators admit they were wrong. Perverse actions taken just because they could are not.
Closing down schools in the spring of 2020 is forgivable. Keeping them closed through the 2020-2021 school year is not.
Advocating vaccines that turned out to be far less effective than advertised is forgivable. Mandating an experimental vaccine even after it is clear that it does not prevent transmission is not forgivable.
MB
“There is something fundamentally wrong with the argument that people should be excused for doing evil because they were ignorant. I feel like this embodies an important difference between progressive and conservative. In my view, it is irresponsible to infringe on people’s freedoms when you are ignorant. The possibility of necessity is not justification for trampling people’s rights. I feel like responsible adults ought to know that already going into such situations.”
Too harsh.
Have you ever stepped on an ant by accident.
More pertinent is the comment responsible adults.
Being responsible implies awareness or a duty to be aware.
They seem to be more uncaring than ignorant?
SteveF Polls are amazingly variable.
What do people really feel?
Due to bias I expect a bigger swing in one direction but in reality any swing one way could equally go the other way.
Due to too much right wing reading I have to go to the Hill and CNN to restore my balance.
1 week left!
angech,
“What do people really feel?”
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My sense is that voters really feel Dems are incompetent to govern, and will vote for Republicans. These people should be nowhere near the helm of the ship of state. The key issues voters care about: inflation, open boarders, crime, education. But most of all, Dems care about issues voters never pay any attention to: abortion, climate change, no voter ID requirements, beating up on Russia, etc.
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Of course, only the final tally matters, but I think you should count on a red wave.
I do not see ignorance as the problem with misguided Covid-19 policies and mandates, but rather the inclination of a goodly portion of the population, the media and politicians to favor strong government responses to “emergencies” and without consideration to any unintended consequences. It was just do something and the more stringent and dramatic the better – will sort it out all later and attempt to instill guilt in those who point to misguided policies.
Mike M,
“Mandating an experimental vaccine even after it is clear that it does not prevent transmission is not forgivable.”
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It is an interesting example. I have to believe a sensible democrat like Clinton would have recognized that difference and quickly recalibrated. But Biden has dementia, and he has surrounded himself with people who are disconnected from reality, so his policies were worse than just factually wrong, they were destructive for no potential gain. History will not be kind.
Re Covid Related School Shutdowns
There has been a lot of discussion here about the effect of Covid school shutdowns on students, and most of this discussion has been lacking in data. In Australia (and yes Australia is not USA …) we are starting to get some data, NAPLAN tests are nation wide standard tests for 9, 12 and 15 year olds. Many experts predicted that shutdowns would lead to a fall off in results … well the numbers are in and the answer is no:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/31/naplan-tests-show-australian-students-literacy-numeracy-mostly-resilient-despite-covid
One of things people like about a paternalistic government or religious entity is it gives them comfort. That is probably worth something to them. We never tell our young kids anything other than everything will be all right. “Hey junior, an uncertain global pandemic just started and it may kill your parents, have a nice day at school”. In theory we grow out of that, and we know that everything may not be all right and that the government or selected deity isn’t always going to protect us.
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Some people imagine government as a responsible loving parent, others imagine government as a financially irresponsible overly strict parent prone to abuse.
Andrew,
Standardized tests of 4th and 8th graders in the USA show large drops in reading ability and record drops in math ability. Australia is not the USA; it is far more homogeneous in the demand for educational excellence, even while the Australian populace is becoming more diverse via the import of people from elsewhere. Unfortunately, in the USA, the biggest drops in educational achievement were among those already behind the average in education, and who could least afford to fall further behind.
Steve, Ken, [Edit: Mike,] thanks for your responses.
Ken, yes. There were many problems with the idea the article put forward and I thought that was one of them as well.
Angech,
1) AFAICT, there is no reasonable comparison whatsoever to be made between accidentally stepping on an ant and the poorly reasoned / often draconian policies put into effect during COVID over the past few years.
2) Regarding ignorance vs caring, well. I didn’t write the article, I’m just responding to it. The article appeared to me to be full of the idea that people should be excused because they were ignorant. (I.E. from the article, But the thing is: We didn’t know. and so on).
Using diversity to rationalize actions which can very well be counterproductive and doing it by making it a righteous mission appears in my view to be a worst case of virtue signaling.
First of all admitting students for the cause of diversity that might not be ready to handle the education rigor can have lasting negative effects on the student admitted under these conditions.
Second students admitted by way of racial or any other quotas can be considered second rate student-wise by themselves and others.
Third such admissions can color those quota eligible admitted who would have been admitted without a quota.
Fourth the problem of the education systems and other critical factors that lead to college and university, where a disparity in readiness can be seen in the quota eligible groups, gets thrown under the rug. Why is not the focus further down the line if these diversity parties are really interested in helping the quota eligible? Maybe they do not want to upset the teachers unions, or the politicians who control the urban schools that do a very poor job of educating, or even placing some responsibility on the parents in those areas. Maybe Harvard and other like universities could provide entry on submission by an unprepared student after the student attains preparedness in an intermediate educational setting provided by Harvard, but without any quota eligible considerations.
Fifth, special favors can be taken as a form of condescension from a class above to a lower class. I have heard progressives say that there should not be a time limit on affirmative actions and quotas which makes me wonder whether they truly want to see change or maybe just do not want to give up the cause that makes them feel better.
SteveF (Comment #215842): the difference in outcomes between Aust and USA is very interesting and should make a useful natural experiment especially as Aust ‘claims’ to have had the most rigorous and long lasting Covid lockdowns outside of China (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/melbourne-readies-exit-worlds-longest-covid-19-lockdowns-2021-10-20/).
Your comment “Australia is not the USA; it is far more homogeneous in the demand for educational excellence” is also very interesting, do you have any data in support of this because my impression in Aust was that demand for educational excellence was very low — Australia has been ranked 39 out of 41 high and middle-income countries in achieving quality education, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), I suppose you could mean the demand was homogeneously low.
NYT: “While nonresponse bias is challenging to prove, there was one possible marker of it in the New York Times/Siena College data in 2020: White registered Democrats were more than 20 percent likelier to respond to our surveys than white registered Republicans.
In our final wave of Senate and House polls in the last few days, that hallmark of nonresponse bias looks as if it’s back. Overall, white registered Democrats were 28 percent likelier to respond to our Senate polls than Republicans — a disparity exceeding that from our pre-election polling in 2020.”
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I’m not particularly interested in polling beyond some post election discovery of why people voted the way they did. I’m not even sure what purpose pre-election polling really serves?
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“First of all admitting students for the cause of diversity that might not be ready to handle the education rigor can have lasting negative effects on the student admitted under these conditions.”
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They are solving that by lowering standards so everyone can pass. It’s becoming pathological. Merit has a negative connotation now.
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Affirmative action has been ongoing for 50 years so they have had a couple generations to attempt to fix the education pipeline problem and have made only minimal progress. They have essentially thrown in the towel, declared unsolvable systemic racism, and resorted to crude handouts as a replacement for actual progress. It sure is easier.
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It is a very hard social problem, and anyone tasked to make progress here quickly discovers this is a lifetime project. Politicians and pundits have little choice but to start saying crazy things like “math tests are racist and are only measures of wealth” because fixing it is beyond their skillset and professional timelines. Blaming the victim gets them fired.
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If we want to fix our rugby and cricket deficiencies here in the US then it’s going to take a long time. Can’t we at least be as good as Sri Lanka? We just don’t care about cricket culturally, that’s why we are bad at it. We did actually get better at (mens) soccer but the gap between elite countries still looks a long way out of reach.
Andrew Kennett (Comment #215840),
That report sounds to me like a government official cherry picking data to keep the government from looking bad. Reading between the lines (all that is possible without the data) it sounds like the impact on Australian students is much the same as in the States. The better students did OK, the weaker students got crushed, and the weakest students disappeared and probably no longer have much of a future.
mark bofill (Comment #215844): “1) AFAICT, there is no reasonable comparison whatsoever to be made between accidentally stepping on an ant and the poorly reasoned / often draconian policies put into effect during COVID over the past few years.”
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Indeed. I have stepped on ants both intentionally and, I am sure, unintentionally. But I have NEVER stepped on ants while proclaiming to the ants “This is for your own good”.
Mike M. (Comment #215849): Here is a link to the full report
https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal/naplan-national-report
My eyeball of the numbers and graphs supports the report.
Tom Scharf,
“They have essentially thrown in the towel, declared unsolvable systemic racism, and resorted to crude handouts as a replacement for actual progress. It sure is easier.”
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There has been no progress because there has been no effort to address the fixable problems, which are almost 100% cultural. The political consequences of “blaming the victim” (as Daniel Moynahan learned) are so severe that politicians are unwilling to even describe the actual problems, never mind try to actually fix them. They haven’t thrown in the towel after trying to fix the problem…. they never tried.
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The year my wife completed her PhD in chemistry one of the grad students in her group, a young black woman, also finished her PhD. She was smart, dedicated, and responsible, and I believe 1 of the only 4 or 5 black female PhD’s in chemistry that graduated that year….. in the whole country. We went to her wedding (she married a fellow grad student, who was white). To say she was culturally out of place in her own family is something of an understatement.
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Culture is destiny. If the culture can’t be changed, neither can the outcomes…. except via the insanity of racial preferences and the dumbing-down of courses and grading, which do nothing but create more problems…. like incompetent professionals.
The Dems are going to suffer at the polls next week: https://emilyburns.substack.com/p/with-whom-does-emily-oster-want-an?r=kutjh
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She’s mad as hell and not going to take it any more. She says: “My new f-word is Federal.” Ouch!
OMG. This:
Andrew Kennett (Comment #215851): “My eyeball of the numbers and graphs supports the report.”
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The scores do indicated that, with the exception of grade 9 boys and indigenous students, who took it on the chin. The real issue is what is hidden in the increased rate of non-participation.
What is most incomprehensible is that while a few on the covid-panicked left acknowledge they made ‘innocent mistakes’ in the ‘fog of war’, not a single one says that steps have to be taken to ensure the same panic driven madness is impossible in the future. The damage was both too costly and too unnecessary to simply ask forgiveness ‘on all sides’ and not change laws to make sure it can’t ever happen again. Learning requires first admitting and understanding mistakes, but ALSO changing how you do things so the mistakes don’t happen again. I see zero evidence of any learning on the part of the Brownshirts that caused most of the damage from Covid. That means many of the Covid Brownshirts will be tossed from positions power. Fauci obviously understands this, and I expect others will follow his departure rather than face the pubic exposure of their incompetence.
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Plenty of Covid lunatic politicians will get tossed from office next week, of course, but it will take longer for the consequences of all the mendacity and 100% politically driven choices to reach incompetent bureaucrats.
Yup. That’s the dishonest element behind the ‘forgive and forget’ BS. They don’t really think there is anything to forgive. “We didn’t know any better, we did what we thought we needed to do.” This is not an admission of error or an apology, but rather a justification. What they are really asking, in my view, is for us to accept that they acted correctly and reasonably.
It’s not going to happen.
I don’t know, at least somebody is admitting it wasn’t a great plan. One person having some humility, even if it is self serving, is better than zero.
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The impulse is to claim you were right in spite of the facts, and just endlessly justify your past actions. The science changed! The virus changed! We could have beaten the virus if not for those irresponsible anti-vaxxers! etc. So I consider this progress that anybody was able to get that article past the editors at The Atlantic. What I find is that the usual behavior is to just memory-hole the topic and never talk about it again (Trump Russia Collusion). After you claimed your Pulitzer Prizes of course.
mark bofill,
“What they are really asking, in my view, is for us to accept that they acted correctly and reasonably. It’s not going to happen.”
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No, it is not going to happen. And I note here that the USA is still officially operating under a “covid emergency” which allows the Alzheimer administration to ignore a bunch of laws that would otherwise limit what they can do. It is all so transparently dishonest, so transparently political, and so transparently wrong.
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Last week when I returned from Brazil, I was informed by the airline company (in Brazil) that I should fill out and sign a US form that declares (under penalty of perjury) that I have been vaccinated against covid. I took the form and tossed it in the trash. I was never asked for it nor for my silly yellow covid vaccination card (which I could forge in 20 minutes if I wanted to) when I arrived in Miami. Not a single one of the ~350 passengers and crew on the plane wore a face mask. But the crew was forced by regulation to re-iterate in Portuguese and English that the CDC recommends all travelers wear masks, and especially any in poor health. The madness will not completely end until Brandon Alzheimer is out of office.
SteveF (Comment #215856):
Brilliant. We “forgive and move on” only after suitable reforms have been made.
If they won’t agree to reforms, then they are not actually interested in forgiveness. They only want us to forget so that they are free to do it again in future.
Tom Scharf,
“So I consider this progress that anybody was able to get that article past the editors at The Atlantic.”
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I think even the editors of The Atlantic understand that there are going to be political consequences for many ‘progressive’ politicians who did so much damage to the country for no good reason, and hope that a ‘mea culpa’ (which is not really a mea culpa at all!) will help defuse the righteous anger of those who suffered the consequences of ‘progressives’ irrational fear, incredible stupidity, and endless mendacity. As mark bofill says, it is not going to work.
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I will see progress when Democrat politicians start agreeing to laws that demand broad consensus (like 2/3 majorities in state legislatures and in Congress) for any ‘declared emergency’ to last more than a few weeks. I doubt it will happen until Dem politicians see lots of other Dem politicians tossed from office.
Improving the plight of those people of color who were historically marginalized is a worthy goal that is implied as the rationale behind affirmative action. That colleges for the most part have only considered diversity through the simplistic lenses of color or sexual orientation is the tragedy. By doing so they limit the impact of the change they make on society by focusing on those only slightly marginalized and ignored those whose families are truly stuck in the poverty cycle.
They could have filtered by color and income, by neighborhood, by firstgen etc and actually made a difference.
Doing so though would have come at a greater cost. Like Lucia said development runs on wealthy alumni. It’s a much better risk to select students already high up on the curve than to select from poverty. There’s more support needed also for first Gen. More remediation. It’s much easier to take the easy path and pretend you are making a huge difference when you are really not.
Covid, like climate change, just screams over adherence to the precautionary principal. Where things are done without reference to cost, risk, and benefit. The biggest crime was ignoring all together any consideration of natural immunity. That was just illogical.
The people who took part in the outright demonization of those who didn’t toe the exact “right” policy line are now in an untenable position. I suspect a lot of Twitter comments are being purged. I would reserve most of most contempt for here.
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Those people don’t deserve much forgiveness and their spite will not be forgotten. DeSantis (oops, DeathSantis) also got lucky because a lot was unknown, but his instincts proved correct. Who can forget the outright worshipping of Cuomo who had by far the highest death rates of any state at the time? The prioritization of vaccines by race? The justification of protests based on ideology? The meticulous tracking of motorcycle “super spreader” conventions while giving huge White House journalism dinners a complete pass? It got weird.
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For me the most unforgivable part was the misuse of the authority of science to force preferred policy. It wasn’t science driven policy in many cases, it was policy driven science. It damaged their credibility and that helps nobody in the future. Science cannot allow themselves to be captured by the left, they need to visibly fight this perception, perhaps The Atlantic article is a first step, perhaps not.
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Make no mistake though, anytime a large bureaucracy stumbles into something unprecedented like a global pandemic it just isn’t going to go well. We need the CDC to do better.
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Do masks work? I still don’t really know.
The forgiveness pieces are examples of the intelligentsia getting to evaluate the policies that they favored. Sure there are those of us who see those policies as failures and saw the general approach of saving a single life no matter the cost as being obviously wrong, but unfortunately we do not have the influence on the public that the intelligentsia has. If you think it is lessons learned wait until the next “emergency” occurs. If we have an outbreak of Covid-19 cases this winter it will essentially be the same old same old – unless a citizen revolt can survive an aggressive shaming onslaught.
The intelligentsia likes that emergencies can rationalize great government power and for long periods of time.
I think we should kick them while they are down. The Ukraine war has devastated the russian military machine. Their conventional military might is at a level not seen since the 1960s. Their production of modern weapons has been all but halted. It will take a generation or more to rebuild.
In addition, the russian prestige and political clout throughout much of the world is also in the toilet.
We should take full advantage of this situation. I have some ideas..…
-Press for the removal of russia from the UN security council.
-Kick them out of all world economic forums.
-Deny their outrageous territorial claims in the Arctic ocean and make strong territorial claims of our own, in consort with Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Denmark.
-Probe russian air defences with strategic bombers. [like they did to us for decades]
-Foment discord in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Much of current day russia is made up of ethnic peoples previously conquered.
I expect there are many more examples.
I think it is important to also state that the medical establishment did a stellar job. They took the most risk on the front lines and did the least complaining. Nobody had it harder than those guys.
[Edit: Russell,]
Don’t poke the nuclear missile bear for kicks.
mark bofill (Comment #215867)
“Don’t poke the nuclear missile bear for kicks.”
I bet the bear’s nuclear arsenal is as inadequate as his conventional arsenal.
But my proposals aren’t just for kicks. We are in a long term existential struggle with russia. Now is the time to take strategic advantage.
Russell,
Russia will ultimately use tactical nukes to save face in Ukraine. The trick here is to allow Russia to save face and be effectively ground down to not be a future threat to NATO. Spiking the football after WWI with Germany ended up with WWII as some read the history.
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We don’t have a viable defense against a Russian nuclear attack. We don’t.
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The real trick is to never enter these wars because they end up forcing these kind of decisions to be made. Putin is not in a good position. It’s really threading a needle here, we want Ukraine to win, but can’t risk Ukraine winning.
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NYT today:
Russian Military Leaders Discussed Use of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Officials Say
The conversations alarmed the Biden administration because they showed how frustrated Moscow had become over its battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.
Andrew P,
“ignored those whose families are truly stuck in the poverty cycle”.
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My (reasonably selective) science/engineering college did admit about 10% of the freshman class from that specific group (full scholarship plus room, board, and books) and hired 3rd and 4th year students with good grades to tutor those students so they could catch up.
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I tried, with 0% success to tutor several of these students in math. The issue was that they were not just unprepared for introductory calculus, which was the class they were in, they were unprepared for almost any kind of math. Some, but not all, could do long division and multiplication and get the right answer. As far as I could tell, none had the slightest clue about algebra, geometry, or trig. Even if they had been highly motivated (and most were not), and even if they had reasonable capacity to learn math (and most did not appear to have that capacity), it would have taken years for them to catch up. They were admitted to a rigorous science and engineering program with, at best, 5th/6th grade math skills….. and those were the more capable ones. It was hopeless: 100% flunked out. The waste of money was appalling. I think the “special admissions” program went on for two years before the school administration gave up on it.
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My school continued to admit a few (very few) minority candidates through the regular admissions program, where being black gave a candidate a boost over comparable white candidates for admission. Most of these kids did graduate, but not with high class rank.
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If kids go through their first 12 years of education learning almost nothing, then they will never have success in college except maybe in a field of study that makes no demands upon them. For the most disadvantaged, the problem begins when they are still in diapers, and from there to 12th grade is were things have to change if these kids are going to succeed in college…. and in life.
Tom Scharf,
“DeSantis (oops, DeathSantis) also got lucky because a lot was unknown, but his instincts proved correct.”
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I don’t think it was luck or instinct. DeSantis’ first instinct was much like many other governors. In mid April 2020 I was stopped by Florida state police as I entered Florida from Alabama on Interstate 10. All my personal information collected, and I was told I would be subjected to arrest and prosecution if I left my house during a “required” 14 day quarantine period. Lots of other states did similar things.
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The difference in Florida was that unlike most politicians, DeSantis is actually pretty damned smart. He began reading original literature on the spread of viruses, along with all the earliest literature on Covid, and quickly concluded that covid was only a significant threat to those in very poor health, those over 65, and especially to those over 75. DeSantis recognized early on that turning the state inside out over covid was stupid and destructive for no good reason, because a large majority of the population, and especially kids, were at very low risk from covid. So by the end of April he had opened the beaches, and began emphasizing that those at high risk should do their best to avoid the virus. The stay-at-home and quarantine rules were very short lived. The “social distancing” and mask rules were soon dropped.
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He was vilified by the MSM, of course. But he was right because he recognized the reality of the covid age/risk profile early on, and responded rationally with policies consistent with that risk profile. Same with masks: he knew there was zero data supporting the use for masks, and especially not silly cloth masks, and instituted policies consistent with that lack of data. More vilification in the MSM. Same with school openings, same with prohibiting mandates for vaccinations (it was clear the vaccines did not stop people from becoming infected). Same with school mask mandates. Always more and more vilification.
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But DeSantis was consistently right, because unlike the hysterical MSM, and those motivated by fear, he was acting based on facts and reason, not fear. And not instinct.
The original vaccine against the original strain did a pretty good job of preventing spread. It shutdown symptomatic infection.
That changed with the variants. There was a general failure to reconsider policies given the change in virus behavior.
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The failure to quickly recognize aerosol spread was perplexing, I must say I expected science to be able to determine this much faster than they did. We still don’t know the relative risks of aerosol vs surface spread. They are still guessing here today. I hear things like “maybe the flu is mostly aerosol spread too”. What? We don’t know that either in 2022?
SteveF (Comment #215872): “The difference in Florida was that unlike most politicians, DeSantis is actually pretty damned smart. He began reading original literature on the spread of viruses, along with all the earliest literature on Covid”.
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Also unlike Fauci and Birks who were *not* reading the literature, if Scott Atlas is to be believed. FWIW, I think Atlas is to be believed.
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DeSantis is truly impressive. Some Republican governors, notably Noem in South Dakota, took strong consistent stands based on ideology. The results were better than most Dems, but one could argue that was at least partly luck. Some governors, like Abbott in Texas, tried to balance things but were wishy-washy, responding to whoever was pushiest. But DeSantis was open minded, collected info, made good decisions, and stuck by them. Awesome.
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I really hope that DeSantis has only two more years as Governor of Florida. 🙂
Tom Scharf (Comment #215873): “The original vaccine against the original strain did a pretty good job of preventing spread. It shutdown symptomatic infection.”
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I don’t think that is true. It produced a temporary reduction in spread and symptoms that faded in just a few months. Boosters have a similar bust faster fading effect. Variants, other than the lab engineered omicron, have nothing to do with it.
I was looking at the 4 and 6 year graduation rates from Harvard for all categories of race – which were many. I was surprised to see that those rates over all groups are very much the same and very high for the 6 year rate at around 98%.
If graduation rates were correlated with preparedness for education at Harvard, those rates would indicate very near equal rates for preparedness . If that is the case why should race be used in determining admissions? I would have to dig deeper to determine why the rates are so very close for all races and very near 100%.
Different courses? Remedial courses?
https://www.scholarships.com/colleges/harvard-university/graduation-rates/
Mike M,
“I really hope that DeSantis has only two more years as Governor of Florida.”
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Me too, but there is a certain ex-president who lives in Palm Beach who may keep that from happening.
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BTW, it is completely true that the ability of the vaccines to stop symptomatic infection and spread dropped to low levels within a few months. But what the vaccines continued to do (and still do) was to reduce the incidence of severe illness (hospitalization and death), as New Zealand and Austrailia show clearly. We should also remember that more easily spread strains (delta to omicron) probably reduced the effectiveness of the vaccines against infection/spread, complicating the analysis of how long the vaccinations reduced infection/spread.
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The most offensive abomination of the Alzheimer administration was/is the refusal to admit that previous infection was/is multiple times more effective than vaccination at preventing re-infection, spread. The mandated vaccination of people who were already infected was a policy that could be justified by nothing except a need to show absolute power of government over the individual. There are times I wished I believed in things like Hell, so that I could at least hope those responsible for the covid cluster-f*ck would spend an eternity suffering for their evil. Alas, I don’t.
Kenneth,
Up thread I think there is a link explaining that the academically unprepared who are initially interested in challenging studies in STEM and economics mostly shift to fluff courses where little is demanded of them. Easy to pass when your course work is on ‘lesbian-gay-transgender-studies’, ‘the history of homosexual inspired art since 1650’, ‘the history of systemic racism against native Americans in Wisconsin’, and the like.
The Australian experience with educational results during the Covid-19 restriction period points to looking at the counterfactual – even though we will never know it. Consider that performance was trending upward in Australian and that it might have trended higher without the restrictions. The same could be said for the case where performance was trending downward.
The article under discussion as I read it was lacking details in data and what might have been different in the actual school environment to obtain no negative effects from the Covid-19 restrictions.
I would think that the analyses of the Covid-19 effects nationally on education should be looking at the actual education process changes that occurred during the Covid-19 crisis and making deductions from that. From the anecdotal evidence I have from teachers who experienced the process changes in the US, I could easily deduce that the restrictions would have a negative effect on learning and much more on the already lesser performing students.
It is much like the empirical studies of the effect of raising the minimum wage on youth unemployment whereby those who favor the raises can find local areas where the raising increased youth employment but often times by ignoring all the factors of employment. Deductively, with everything else being equal, raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment and particularly for the younger employed.
A reasonable answer is that if you are smart enough to get into Harvard, then you should be able to graduate. They probably don’t grade on a curve because they are already getting the top 0.1% of students. Showing up and making an effort will get it done. Failing the bottom 15% of this group doesn’t really make sense. I’m sure reality is bit more complicated though.
I’d have to look it up, but as I recall the initial mRNA protection against infection with omicron is around 30%, but the protection against infection from the original strain was near 95%. You can see this also in antibody levels (20x lower with omicron). They both fade, but they fade from different baselines so the original strain protected longer.
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Suffice it to say the vaccines are poor against infection protection now and are ineffective against stopping spread.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, new strains have reduced the effectiveness of the vaccines against spread. But previous infection was always more effective against spread than vaccination, and that is still very likely true. Any argument that vaccines should be mandated for everyone was always weak technically, and especially for those at very near zero risk. Arguing that those already recovered from covid should be forced to receive the vaccines was always idiotic, and still is idiotic. The Alzheimer administration continues to insist on this, because well, the Alzheimer administration is obviously run by idiots.
WH gets fact checked:
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WH: seniors are getting the biggest increase in their SS checks in 10 years through president Biden’s leadership”
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Reader added context: seniors will receive a large SS benefit increase due to the annual cost of living adjustment [ ]…
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WH deletes tweet..
My polling place was much busier than I have ever seen it. One of the volunteers told me that has been the case every day. If so, then maybe the polls don’t mean anything.
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But is it that people are turning out in droves to throw the bums out? Or is it that they have fallen for the Demagogue Party’s scare tactic that Republicans are a threat to democracy? We shall see.
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I know which one I am hoping for. 🙂
The vaccine protected better against reinfection with the original strain. This changed with delta, after that natural immunity protected better, the crossover is in July. See 4th column of Table 2 of this CDC study from Jan 2022:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7104e1-H.pdf
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All the usual questions and caveats on timing, etc. apply.
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From what I have seen natural immunity protects better against severe disease than vaccination with omicron, but I’m not sure about reinfection. It probably does, but natural immunity still wanes pretty fast for reinfection. I think it was on the order of 4 months(?).
Here is some data from Qatar:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2203965
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Effectiveness against symptomatic omicron infection
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Previous infection: 46.1%
2 dose mRNA: 0% (all participant > 6 months out)
3 dose mRNA: 52.2% (probably less time here)
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“No discernable differences in protection against symptomatic BA.1 and BA.2 infection were seen with previous infection, vaccination, and hybrid immunity.”
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One would need to do a better analysis involving days since infection and vaccine dose.
Tom
Well… no. “We” didn’t know. Because, honestly, the medical community is sometimes content with “lore”. This is a situation where the reality is “you know, that hasn’t really been studied. But there was a manuscript written at some time that decreed X and now we all decree X and the origin of that decree is lost in the mists of time.”
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Influenza had dimmed as a big problem and no one was really studying it’s transport as a “science” issue.
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Then engineers got involved in analyzing data on particulate transport during Covid. 🙂
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Specifically, Lindsey Marr at VPI dug into the medical literature on influenza. The idea that it was not transported by aerosols was based on… well… no Mechanics of particulate transport.
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A fair number of computational modeling types also got involved.
Also: from an engineering (i.e. particulate science ) point of view, there isn’t a bright line distinction between “aerosol” and “particulate”. So the spread isn’t either/or. It can be both. But it’s clear that it’s “both” for Covid and for Influenza. Which dominates? I’m guessing it depends.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215885)
“From what I have seen natural immunity protects better against severe disease than vaccination with omicron, but I’m not sure about reinfection. It probably does, but natural immunity still wanes pretty fast for reinfection. I think it was on the order of 4 months(?)”
Being pedantic, sorry Tom, the fact is that natural immunity,generally, does not wane.
I know this sounds wrong.
Consider your Chicken Pox vaccine, virtual immunity for life.
Along with many others, Whooping Cough being an exception.
The immune response, natural immunity with antibodies is to a group of specific antigens.
The memory cells keep the blue print almost forever and start production when needed almost instantly.
The immunity does not wane, it is there forever.
The problem is the concept of re infection.
With Covid and cools in general you may encounter the original virus or something close enough to it to activate that always present immune code and response.
Or you meet a variant which has the same name but is no longer the same virus in terms of its changes antigens.
The immunity has not failed, the virus is different.
How quickly can the virus mutate to a new virus?
I think you gave us the answer.
4 months.
It is not a matter of natural immunity waning but of the virus evolving, a totally different rationale.
I think you can get reinfected with omicron, but perhaps more often with sub variants of omicron. There certainly have been cases of multiple reinfections reported but no clue how common that is.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfection.html
“After recovering from COVID-19, most individuals will have some protection from repeat infections. However, reinfections do occur after COVID-19. We are still learning more about these reinfections.”
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They have measured declining antibody response over months and this correlates with the incidence of reinfection going up after an infection with time. My limited understanding is that the first line antibody defense is strong right after infection but wanes, and the second line T-cell immunity remains (forever?) but takes longer to activate, thus allowing enough time for symptomatic reinfection but protecting you against severe disease.
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I would agree that they rarely discriminate between variants with reinfection data in the media, sometimes I see it in reports but it is hard to parse.
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I also tried to find if the severity of the illness is lower after multiple infections but couldn’t find anything. Cross variant immunity is a throw of the dice, but one would expect that the cross variant exists because it has some immunity escape from the previous version.
That was kind of my first thought on the graduation rate. But smart does not always get you graduated if you do not put in the effort or you become disinterested in the course work. I was surprised to see the 98% graduation rate even if it took 6 years. (What happens to a scholarship after 4 years?) I was also surprised to see essentially no difference in the graduation rate by racial grouping – but if everyone or almost everyone graduates than there will be very little opportunity for differences to show.
I was at a blog where there were differences of opinion from Harvard grads about how difficult it is the graduate from Harvard. One commented that it would be difficult not to graduate and another said it was hard – he was a physics major.
There was also a discussion about what is best for the Harvard brand: a high graduation rate or one that indicates more rigor.
Ideally one could think that being admitted to Harvard makes those admitted much more serious students and being lackadaisical would not be an issue – even for the rich kids. Or better that there is seriousness simply in applying to Harvard.
I am now curious. My brother graduated from Harvard but that was so long ago he probably does not have any insights into the current situation. He gets and reads The Harvard Crimson so he might have some insights, although they might be tinged by generational gaps.
I did find this factoid that might have significant bearing on graduation rates.
TS the antibody level does drop over time but only because the cells shut down production when not needed.
That is different to the fact that the cells that detect a new infection activate the antibody producing cells to produce new antibodies very quickly when needed.
I draw your attention to chicken pox again..
Very few people get a second attack ever.
Those that do usually have an illness effecting their immune system ie it is unable to manufacture enough new antibody.
The chicken pox virus does not mutate like the cold viruses
angech (Comment #215893): “I draw your attention to chicken pox again..
Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Not a great example, since a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.
Mike M.,
I agree that chickenpox is not a good example here. You don’t get shingles by external exposure to varicella zoster virus. It’s a flare-up from dormant virus in the body. And it isn’t contagious, i.e. someone with an active case of shingles will not give someone else chickenpox or shingles. The original shingles vaccine had a limited effective lifetime as well.
lucia,
From what I read, I don’t think the medical community knew much of anything about aerosols. And they had been somewhat misled by tuberculosis. TB only infects cells deep within the lungs, which means the particle size has to be 5 microns or less. Anything larger will get screened out. So 5 microns or less became the definition in the medical community for an aerosol. The fact that particles between 5 and 100 microns can travel for distances longer than six feet and persist in the air for more than a few seconds was either unknown in the medical community or ignored.
Everything I’ve read says that surface transmission, fomites, is a very small fraction of COVID infections. So all the handwashing and surface decontamination was probably a waste of time and effort. I seriously doubt that we actually know this information for influenza or even the common cold.
Mike M,
“..a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.”
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I had shingles. They suck.
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As best I can figure, the lifetime risk for shingles is on the order of 35-40%. If you have never had shingles, two doses of the vaccine reduces that risk by a factor or ~4-5. So for people who have never had shingles, the vaccination likely makes sense.
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The reduction in lifetime risk of recurrent shingles from the vaccination among those who already had shingles is not data I can find. OTOH, if you have already had shingles, then your lifetime risk of recurrence (with no vaccination) is on the order of 6-7%. Balanced against that is the substantial likelihood of having side effects from the shots…. arm soreness, fever, headache, body aches, malaise, etc. The general recommendation is to plan on being out of commission for a couple of days after the shot.
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Don’t know about you, but accepting a high chance of several days of felling ill against some (unknown) reduction of lifetime risk of recurrence of shingles (from 6-7% to some presumably lower level), doesn’t seem to me a very good bet. I haven’t gotten the shots, and I won’t.
YMMV.
I agree with SteveF that shingles suck. I have had some painful experiences but shingles was the worst. I was vaccinated for shingles with the earlier vaccine.
When I had shingles my grandson was living with us and thinking he had been vaccinated for chicken pox (he wasn’t) I was not cautious about contact. He came down with chicken pox. There were no known cases of chicken pox in his immediate contact exposures.
Ken Fritsch,
“I was vaccinated for shingles with the earlier vaccine.”
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Before or after you got shingles?
Shingles suck !
Shingles was responsible for a very bad 3 months of my life. I took the single shot variant after infection and just took the 2 shot variant as a booster as recommended by my doctor. Low odds of reoccurrence, but reduced risk of reinfection is a worth taking the shots to my mind.
FYI…no symptoms at all to either variety of shots for my part.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/3/barton-grade-inflation/#:~:text=There's%20still%20a%20lot%20of,grades%20have%20risen%20over%20time.
The link above is to an article from The Harvard Crimson that discusses and shows the rate of historical grade inflation over time. It is a steep trend upward. The main point covered in the article concerns grade compression where the very high current mean GPA has a small variation.
That situation could, in my view, explain the very high graduation rate with a very small variation among racial groups. So maybe the current Harvard brand is not scholarly achievement but rather a favorable networking arrangement and the near certain outcome of a degree from prestigious Harvard.
I did not take the time on my tablet to remove the search path from the link.
Ken,
I think one way would be to look at class rank by group if that could be found. Unfortunately I think this information is now closely guarded because of past controversies.
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A Penn Law teacher claimed in 2018 that:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the [Penn Law School] class and rarely, rarely in the top half”
This was met with the the expected criticisms. What never happened as far as I know is Penn Law releasing data to refute or confirm this statement. They did state:
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“”[B]lack students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process,” the email read. “And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers”
https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/penn-law-dean-ted-ruger-professor-amy-wax-removed-racial-conservative-graduate-upenn-philadelphia
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I would expect results to show the same trends seen through the rest of the education pipeline. Statistically significant group differences with a lot of variance in each group. The differences at the extremes tend to be even more pronounced. Men are more represented at the very highest levels of IQ tests for whatever reason. If Harvard is giving help to academically inferior groups then you would expect them to be disproportionately grouped near the bottom.
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This is expected unless Harvard does something special to improve group performance at their institution, and if they are successful here then they would likely share that information publicly and tell everyone else how to do it.
I got a two shot shingles vaccine this year. No side effects.
One of the reasons for the very high graduation rates at 4 years now (compared to decades ago) is that almost all high performers enter college with a large number of college credits from AP / IB college courses in high school. Both of my daughters were able to graduate averaging only 12 to 15 credits a semester.
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Also, most scholarships are good for 5 years or more nowadays, at least the Florida state sponsored ones are. This kind of makes sense for economically distressed students who also happen to show up behind in academics. Cutting them off at year 4 can be a huge burden.
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It gets a bit weird where if you use up your scholarship getting the job done early they will not pay for graduate level courses in the 4th or 5th year. YMMV.
This might be a big deal:
From NLwartracker, @NLwartracker,
“Kherson update, people driving around Kherson city, are reporting all roadblocks, and soldiers are gone. Flags are taken down from governement buildings. Defensive positions north of the city are abbandoned”
It hasn’t been verified by a conventional news source, but I trust this site. I have also seen hints at it from other sources.
I was vaccinated with the outdated shingles vaccine before I was infected with shingles.
When I first had the shingles symptoms and before it broke through the skin I had a pain in my back that prevented me from sleeping for 2 nights. I went to immediate care where they were setting up for a full array of tests. They made 2 failed attempts to quell the pain until a doctor arrived and asks if I wanted to completely relieve the pain upon which I said hell yes. After about 5 minutes I was sound asleep and the staff let me sleep for 2 hours before resuming the tests. They could not find the source of the pain until 2 days later when I arrived at the clinic with a massive skin break though on my backside. The doctor after a quick look said you have shingles and I said but doc I was vaccinated. The doctor repeated slowly and loudly YOU HAVE SHINGLES.
I had nerve damage and continue the feel the affects years later, but nothing that requires medication or compromises my quality of life. My father had shingles later in life and took nerve medication for 30 years until he died at 94.
Tom, when I was in college my minimal load was 18 credits per semester even when I was playing baseball. It allowed me to have sufficient credits to graduate early, but I loved the college social life and had not decided what I wanted to do next. I decided to take a load of courses out of my comfort zone and cared little about my GPA. It was probably my most successful learning semester and definitely the best socially.
My Harvard brother told me that he did not understand why I did not graduate early like he did. I told him it was the social life.
Ken,
“….before I was infected with shingles.”
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Thanks for that clarification. Nitpick: you weren’t infected with shingles, you had the virus in your nervous system since you recovered from chickenpox, probably as a child.
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My experience was similar. Extreme pain in my front right upper abdomen/chest, that kept me from sleeping for two nights. Based on the location it seemed like possibly a liver problem (abscess?), so I was loath to take any over-the-counter pain medication. At the hospital they found a slight rash on my back along the same rib as the pain in front, and they said “you have shingles”. Said the ER doctor: “Have you been taking pain medication?” When I said no, he said: “Too bad, it would have reduced your pain a lot.” I got the antiviral, and along with ibuprofen, the pain was reduced significantly within 18 hours. Complete recovery was about 10-12 days.
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All very unpleasant.
Tom, I agree about getting college credits in high school is a much larger issue today than it has been it the past. My twin granddaughters have gotten loads of college credits in high school and in tough courses. I wonder though with grade inflation (and compression) in high school and college how well we can compare the past and the present. Maybe it is something like professional sports although it is readily obvious that today’s participants are better athletes. I suspect that younger people today are more intelligent and better informed, but I am not at all certain that translates directly to better scholarship.
My children took more than 4 years to graduate college. My daughter took 5 years and my oldest son who dropped out of college his senior year to trade commodities went back to get his degree on the urging of his wife several years later. He got all As and was on the Dean’s list.
This was just reported by the russian Ministry of Defense regarding the activity in Kherson: “Russian troops retreat victoriously. Ukrainian army runs after them in panic.” It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river. Senior officers and military equipment seems to be gone from the West side. They left the untrained and ill-equipped new conscripts behind to fend for themselves. I expect large numbers of KIA and POWs will result.
Grade inflation is really bad now, the past in no longer comparable on that metric. Different high schools and colleges have a different amount of inflation so they aren’t comparable. One of the reasons for using the SAT and ACT was to normalize GPA’s across schools. Equity activists want to dump these tests because of that reason. The debate on this stuff has become so disingenuous as to not be worth having anymore. Everyone graduates, everyone gets a trophy. Meanwhile I still have panicky dreams about being at college and not being ready for a test.
Tom Scharf,
“Everyone graduates, everyone gets a trophy.”
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When my kids were in grade school, I was horrified to see the schools refuse to allow excellence to shine….. everybody gets a blue ribbon, even if their work sucks. We now reap the harvest from that very misguided planting. Everyone is NOT the same, and there are people who excel at certain things and other people who do not. To deny this is to deny reality, which damages kids by making them unable to recognize and appreciate excellence.
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Or as Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Russell Klier (Comment #215914),
ISW has been saying for some time that the Russians have been withdrawing from Kherson city. It is difficult without usable bridges. Ukraine does not seem to be pushing their advantage. Napoleon advised that one should never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake. So it might be that Ukraine is waiting for the right moment to strike.
Russell, I tend to doubt the Russian Ministry of Defense made any such statement unless they have more of a sense of humor than has been shown previously. Now I would believe that this statement came from the UKRAINE MoD.
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General Autumn is in full force and will be for a number of weeks yet. The entire front will be in muddy condition and little will move fast or far until the freeze.
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Russia is continuing to reinforce along the entire front, including Kherson. No withdrawal from Kherson is happening.
Ed Forbes,
Looks to me like a long winter of sitting in your existing position is setting in. People who think they have access to the full ‘faith and power’ of the US government tend to be a bit unrealistic in thier actions.
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Could change, of course, but I kinda doubt it. Maybe this winter will lead to negotiations, but you never know.
Steve, I agree on both sides wanting to sit in their positions. Both sides want the other to be the first to go to a full on attack so they can then counter attack a now weakened force.
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I still see this as working better for Russia than Ukraine as Ukraine is losing mobility with the electric power grid being demolished and the west running out of heavy artillery ammunition to send to Ukraine.
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But it will make for a long war similar to WWI where everything was mostly static until one side collapsed.
Ed Forbes,
Well, perhaps negotiations will start. Both sides have nothing much better to do until March. Which is not to say negotiations will happen. But I sure hope they do. The situation strikes me as just about crazy; closely related people, closely related languages, complicated territorial history over the last 600 years, no strategic interests for one side in the conflict (NATO/USA), yet a 100% refusal of that side to negotiate. It is bizarre.
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History will not be kind.
Tom Scharf,
Me too, or at least something similar.
Taking AP credit in math was a major error for me. I was able to skip the first two quarters of calculus and was totally lost when I started the third quarter.
Russia & Ukraine had a deal pretty much worked out in March/April but the UK and the US stepped in to pressure Ukraine to kill any deal at all.
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After the west and Ukraine bragged about not implementing the signed Minisk accord to deal with the east Ukraine problem, I am not sure Russia will now trust any signed agreement as Ukraine and the west have blown off prior signed agreements. I don’t see Russia trusting these parties. If their is no trust, where does this go? Trust is the capital that is spent facilitating diplomacy, and as far as Russia is concerned, that capital has all been expended.
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Russia may have reached the point of requiring a major dismembering of Ukraine that fully dissolves Ukraine ability to both be a threat to Russia and to provide NATO an additional foothold on the Russian border. As such, I do not see any agreement from either side to end the war that does not see one of the parties in complete collapse.
DeWitt
My evaluation of AP Physics “credit”.
If your school gives you credit
(a) If the course is NOT a prereq to anything else, take the AP credit.
(b) If it IS a pre-req seriously consider not taking it.
Under (b)– If you got 5s on BOTH AP Physics EM and ME, then it might be fine to take it. Especially if you think your “5” would be a “7” if they ever reported 7. (The cut off for 5 would, in my opinion, be at best a “C” in any meaningful course leading to an engineering degree. Do you really only want to know physics at “C” level and move into later classes? When you are potentially an A student. I mean, it’s fine to take a “C” if your potential is C. Yes, you’ll struggle all the way through– which is fine. That’s a victory. But… why move on with “C” understanding from high school and then have trouble getting even B’s in the next class? Cuz your entry level was “C”? This is not smart.
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Of cousre, do you know if your grade would have been “7”? Nope. College board’s highest score is “5”– which corresponds to “C”. (They call it their assessement of “well prepared”. But “well prepared”, for what?
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State legislatures have mandated giving “credit”. Schools are figuring this out and make up what amount to remedial courses and give kids with 3s and 4s in stem classes credit to Physics 1xx. (And by xx, I mean literally ‘xx’.) These do not count toward your required physics class.
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This was not the case a few years ago– but schools don’t wants kids coming in, getting “credit”, not knowing as much as they should an moving on. So they made a work around legislatures forcing them to give “credit” when the kids did not achieve as much as they need to achieve to meet prerequisites.
Two comments in reply to some seeming misunderstanding on my postings.
“angech (Comment #215893)
TS the antibody level does drop over time but only because the cells shut down production when not needed.
That is different to the fact that the cells that detect a new infection activate the antibody producing cells to produce new antibodies very quickly when needed.
I draw your attention to chicken pox again.
Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Exact words are very important [that Willis fellow]
Particularly in relation to understanding medical events and terminology.
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Chicken Pox is the term usually used to describe a [usually initial] infection with the Herpes Varicella virus.
Varicella (chickenpox) and herpes zoster (shingles) are distinct clinical entities caused by a single member of the herpes virus family, varicella-zoster virus (VZV).
Herpes zoster is characterized by unilateral dermatomal pain and rash that results from reactivation and multiplication of latent VZV that persisted within neurons following varicella.
Multiple viruses persist in our bodies or years or life after infection.
Chicken Pox is not unique in that happening.
This statement is absolutely accurate
“Very few people get a second attack ever.”
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Hence I was talking about a viral infection called Chicken pox, not the other entity called shingles [same virus, different modus operandi]
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“Mike M. (Comment #215894) November 2nd, 2022 at 8:36 pm
Not a great example, since a lot of people will get shingles if not vaccinated for it.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #215897)
Mike M., I agree that chickenpox is not a good example here.
You don’t get shingles by external exposure to varicella zoster virus.”
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This comment also needs clarification
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DeWitt Payne (Comment #215897)
It’s a flare-up from dormant virus in the body. And it isn’t contagious, i.e. someone with an active case of shingles will not give someone else chickenpox or shingles.”
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is unfortunately not correct DeWitt.
The second most common way of acquiring Chicken Pox is from the lesions of someone with shingles.
The first of course is to have contact with an actual case of current Chicken Pox.
I think this is a very important message to anyone with Shingles is that they are infective probably until the rash settles, possibly longer.
O-my
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North Korea secretly shipped munitions to Russia through the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. says.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/world/europe/russia-ukraine-north-korea-ammunition.html
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The national security spokesman, John Kirby, Is either lying or is very stupid. Russia and North Korea share a border and their rail is connected. Why would Russia ship artillery ammunition, which is both bulky and heavy, other than directly by the existing rail system?
https://www.rt.com/business/russia-north-korea-railway-241/
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No comment on the truth of the sale, but considering the rest of the NYT article, I would not give it much credibility.
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Story originally by
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
Looks like another major victory for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are meeting almost no resistance as they roll through Kherson City. [Ukrainian commanders are warning their units that this may be a trap.] Kherson was the largest city captured by the russians when they attacked in February. My guess is that the russians have finally learned how to retreat like an army. Lord knows they have had a lot of practice.
“One of the main checkpoints in Kherson, just across the roadbridge toward the harbour area. Has been deserted by russian forces, this was the access road toward the area where alot of russian activity was noted. This roadblock normally consisted of 2 BTR’s and at least 15-20 soldiers.” https://twitter.com/NLwartracker/status/1588248875764416512?s=20&t=SWnw62P9ypmSwiIz_BHpAg
I have been out of the game professionally for about 5 years but could tell a hundred stories about missed shingles diagnoses and shingles pain which [post herpetic neuralgia] can go on in some people causing continual discomfort for the rest of their lives.
Hence the episodes already told here back up those experiences.
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I am an anti vaxxer when it comes to freedom of choice.
If a person does not want to take an action that is very beneficial to them that is their choice.
I am an anti vaxxer with vaccines that offer little or no help to the majority of the people being vaccinated. [only a few]
I happily gave vaccines to people who requested them and advised those who needed them to have them all my working life and still would.
I hated the actual having vaccines myself because of needle phobia,
always preferred being on the other side but jumped in to have hepatitis shots and pneumovax when they became available.
Gardasil for HPV , even gave it to my boys to reduce the chance of them either catching or passing on the virus to a a partner.
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The original shingles vaccine was one I did not take.
A live vaccine it had the admittedly small potential to give chicken pox and later shingles to anyone who had missed out on the disease and could theoretically activate the latent shingles most of us have in some cases.
Reading the list of side effects [Ho Hum no different to all other medications] benefits and success rate I was struck by the effect that the immunity, such as it was, was said to wane over several years meaning paying a large sum of money for something not that effective and needing continual top up.
Safe to say the Australian Government was not paying for it, always a sign that there is not much benefit to the politicians because…
The new vaccine, correct me if I am wrong, in USA is not live disposing of one of my main concerns and may be a partial antigenic sequence[?] so less risk overall and a longer period of effectiveness.
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Think of it this way.
The virus is in your system always.
It is always trying to produce some virus and putting it into your system.
Hence you are possibly giving yourself a self vaccination of your own virus every day of your life.
When you get tired and run down, and your immune system is under working you get a small outbreak of sub clinical shingles. When it does not work or you have chemotherapy or cancer, out comes the Shingles attack.
Why pay to do something your own body is already doing for you every day?
My views are my own , not advice.
If you do not take the vaccine you will undoubtedly get shingles, Murphy’s Law.
angech,
“This statement is absolutely accurate
“Very few people get a second attack ever.””
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Which is why I have never gotten the vaccination after the first shingles episode.
In a video I expect to see a lot of in the coming days… Ukrainian soldier climbing up a building in the Kherson region to raise the Ukrainian flag.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1588269626588372994?s=20&t=SWnw62P9ypmSwiIz_BHpAg
In a related post the russians have removed their flags in advance of the Ukrainian advance. https://twitter.com/FATCAed/status/1588308679421747201?s=20&t=SWnw62P9ypmSwiIz_BHpAg
…but Kyiv is still saying it’s a trap.
https://twitter.com/FATCAed/status/1588308679421747201?s=20&t=SWnw62P9ypmSwiIz_BHpAg
At UF they gave us a chart which showed the AP/IB test score with what people who ended up taking the class got in a letter grade. This way it was easier to judge whether it was worth it. When you wanted to skip increasingly advanced classes the letter grades started to drop quickly.
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There was some other details, skipping a class doesn’t get you an easy A which counts toward your GPA, for whatever that is worth.
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They also didn’t let you out of some humanities classes if you were a STEM major. Not sure if this was purely an economics call for them or what.
AFAICT the live shingles virus (Zostavax) is no longer available since 2020. The new shingles virus is called Shingrix. This was free when I got it. They are telling people who got Zostavax to still get Shingrix.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html
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“More than 99% of Americans born on or before 1980 have had chickenpox”
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“In adults 50 to 69 years old with healthy immune systems, Shingrix was 97% effective in preventing shingles; in adults 70 years and older, Shingrix was 91% effective.
In adults 50 years and older, Shingrix was 91% effective in preventing PHN; in adults 70 years and older, Shingrix was 89% effective.
In adults with weakened immune systems, Shingrix was between 68% and 91% effective in preventing shingles, depending on their underlying immunocompromising condition.
In people 70 years and older who had healthy immune systems, Shingrix immunity remained high throughout 7 years following vaccination.”
Tom Scharf (Comment #215934): “The new shingles virus is called Shingrix. This was free when I got it.”
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Not “free”. Sounds like your insurance paid for it. Mine cost about $45. For each shot. From everything I hear about shingles, money well spent.
I think I took a test to get credit for Physics 2 in college, after getting a 4 on the AP Physics C. I don’t remember what I scored, but I got the credit and was probably C level for physics after that.
Russell, not even ISW believe this fluff on Kherson falling anytime soon. It’s clickbait, pure and simple.
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“.. ISW has observed that Russian forces are continuing to prepare fallback positions on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River while continuing to set up defensive positions northwest of Kherson City and transporting additional mobilized forces there….”
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-3
It has been written on these pages that russia will use tactical nuclear weapons if Ukraine continues to dominate the battlefield. I do not speculate as to what a brutal dictator like Putin may do; I do contemplate what our reaction should be if he does go rogue. It’s complicated because there is a senile man in the White House. The US reaction [or overreaction!] may be irrational.
There are many possible reactions but I classify them in five categories:
1. Throw in the towel and sue for peace.
2. Stay the course. Change nothing.
3. Give Ukraine longer range, more lethal conventional weapons capable of countering the russians.
4. Fire off a few cruise missiles of our own targeted to reduce russia’s ability to deliver tactical nuclear devices.
5. Start a nuclear war.
I vote for numbers 3 and 4.
Ed Forbes (Comment #215938)
I agree on the fallback position of the russian retreat. I said this in Comment #215914:
“It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river.”
How much if any of the Western side they may try to hold is undetermined. The Ukrainians have blown almost all of the bridges so russian resupply to the East is by ferry, and many of those have been sunk.
With the territory taken so far, it’s a major victory for the Ukrainians already.
Right now there are more spy planes near Ukraine than I have ever seen at one time before, including an RAF Rivet Joint in the Black Sea. The RAF plane is escorted by fighter jets. Perhaps something is stirring.
USAF, https://www.flightradar24.com/JAKE11/2e17fad8
US Army, https://www.flightradar24.com/CL60/2e177c67
Italian AF, https://www.flightradar24.com/PERSEO71/2e17ce8d
RAF, https://www.flightradar24.com/RRR7204/2e17a1cc
Luxembourg AF, [NATO] https://www.flightradar24.com/NATO01/2e180aa8
Ed Forbes (Comment #215938): “not even ISW believe this fluff on Kherson falling anytime soon.”
ISW: “Russian forces are continuing to prepare fallback positions on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River”.
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So it seems that the *Russians* are expecting Kherson city (on the left bank) to fall sometime soon.
MikeN,
On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with getting Cs. But it’s a shame to set smart hard working kids up for having a very hard time doing better because you let them skip!
Also: we as a society and universities as academies should want a graduating class to include true “A” level kids. If all the kids with potential to truly master are given credit based on achieve “C” level in high school and only the remaining take the actual freshman level course, universities sort of do have to lower standards. And then what? Should they admit that Freshman year in college has become what we used to call senior year level in high school?
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This is sort of the problem with the push toward AP. Legislatures have wanted to take the college boards word that a 5 is “well prepared” and a 3 is “adequate” and force schools to give “credit” even for 3s.
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The universities are able to detect that at least in STEM a 5 on the AP test is not what academics consider “well prepared” for a subsequent class that needs that class as a prerequisite. It’s more like “just adequate to let someone who struggled through move on”. You do want to let kids actually enrolled in college graduate if they achieve “adequate”. But you really do want to have most people graduate with better than “just adequate”.
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Honestly, I like that AP classes do encourage high school’s to offer a certain amount of rigor. But I dislike that lots of kids take AP Physics 1 (especially) as their first physics class. High school physics at the traditional high school level was never some sort of bozo, easy class. In the past it was almost a defacto pre-req for any college physics class required for most STEM majors. (Colleges tended to not admit you if you had no high school physics.)
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Luring high school kids into a “college level” physics class as their first physics class isn’t entirely fair. And based on the distribution of scores on the test, not successful. (Fewer than 50% even get a 3.) And given that school are all figuring out to only give “real” credit if you get a , really not successful.
My speculation is that there is an unofficial and unspoken agreement in place now: Ukraine doesn’t touch the Russian homeland and Russia doesn’t use WMD’s. From a strategy perspective it makes zero sense that Ukraine wouldn’t force Russia to defend it’s long border or make sure Russia citizens feels some pain … except nukes.
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If Russia uses WMD’s then at a minimum conventional weapons will probably start crossing the border.
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Also, any country looking at this is going to rationally come to the conclusion that they need nukes too. The incentives toward a more peaceful world are not enhanced with this type of war.
Who would you guess would say something like the above about the mid term elections if the Republicans gain control? A far-left politician or a left wing media type? The answer is historian(?) ,Michael Beschloss. It is actually good to have statements like the above that better allow gauging a historian’s depiction of history.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/03/historian-beschloss-blasted-on-twitter-for-comments-about-biden-maga-speech/
After doing some research on Harvard University’s evaluation of student educational performance, I think Harvard is reaching the level of statistically defying evaluations similar to those of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”.
Yes, the hysteria on “danger to democracy” is reaching its peak predictably before the election. Biden was at it again the other day. Yawn. I have a hard time determining if they actually believe this lunacy or it’s just typical blather. I don’t think it is very effective because they consistently leave it undefined with a hand waving menace.
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The people handing out constitutions are at right wing rallies. The simplest explanation I have of all relevant behavior here is danger to democracy = governing class voted out of power … ironically by democracy.
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On its face they worry about people doubting the outcomes of elections which is more prevalent now but hardly new or one sided. The over playing of Jan 6th into a national emergency of general menace isn’t very persuasive. People wearing tactical gear are monitoring election drop off boxes! Aaaaaggghh!
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I’m beginning to wonder if we wouldn’t be better off if the Viking King had seized power. Just another clown show.
I have noticed that the Left tends to tell the truth in a fun house mirror sort of way. What they accuse their opponents of is what they are doing or plan to do.
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So I think it is likely true that “democracy is on the ballot”. We have a choice between democracy and Democrats.
What would happen if we randomly selected citizens for the House? Would performance really be any worse?
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I’m not very convinced that our current process produces better outcomes than Random Joes, but I’m willing to concede that should be the null model. If only we had alternate timelines to test that theory.
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Random Joes would definitely not be a good model for President, but 435 of them have a normalizing effect.
Whether the people spouting this nonsense believe it or not, there are those they convince of it, and they’re increasingly resorting to violence and murder. As far as “dangerous rhetoric” and “dog whistling” goes, they are quite open about it. There are plenty of examples which don’t require linguistic torture to interpret. Just the other day, The View called “white” women voting for republicans “cockroaches”. The results are quickly tossed into a media memory hole or face a thinly veiled “they had it coming” justification.
I see that comments on how Kherson has fallen has changed to Kherson will fall “soon”.
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“Soon” is so very ambiguous. It can mean later today, next month, next year, or sometime after the heat death of the universe.
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As there’s video out showing convoys of prefab concrete pillboxes and mechanized reinforcements moving to Kherson front lines, I see all the fluff on the imminent Russian withdrawal as more Ukraine hopes than fact. Russia has doubled its forces on the west bank over the last couple of months and the Russian buildup continues.
Reason has a new 30 minute video on the history of the lab leak theory.
https://reason.com/video/2022/11/03/the-lab-leak-deception/
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A lot of evidence their public messaging didn’t match their private suspicions. Nothing new here, just a summary.
The black students at Harvard come from higher income families that are mainly of direct African and Caribbean ancestry. Diversity at Harvard appears to be mainly a matter of skin color. I wonder if this subject has been touched upon by the Supreme Court.
https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.html#:~:text
Kenneth Fritsch,
“The black students at Harvard come from higher income families that are mainly of direct African and Caribbean ancestry.”
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It is a shock to some I know, but if you are raised in a destructive culture that tolerates violence, dishonesty, and crime, then you will normally perform poorly in school, and in life. If you are raised in a culture that encourages hard work, responsibility, and excellence, you usually do well in school…. and in life.
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Obama was the son of an African immigrant and a white American woman; he was raised for much of his childhood by middle class white grandparents. That Obama got special admission to selective schools as a minority applicant is, IMHO, an abomination; indeed as is most of “affirmative action”.
Tom Scharf,
Of course it was likely from the lab in Wuhan.
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As Occam might have observed: 1) The illness broke out in a city that has one of the few labs in the whole world that works on closely related bat coronaviruses. 2) That lab was hard at work on making those bat viruses attack ‘humanized mice’ via genetic manipulation. 3) That lab had known (reported) very sloppy containment protocols. 4) Workers at the lab came down with a mysterious illness. 5) The repository of virus genetic sequences for that lab suddenly ‘disappeared’ after the virus started killing people.
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We will likely never have 100% proof, but my guess is there is a ~90% chance it was a lab leak. The tragic thing is that if that kind of dangerous genetic manipulation is not 100% stopped, there is a very good chance there will be another lab leak and another viral pandemic…. and the next could be a lot worse for humanity than covid.
Ed Forbes,
The first casualty of war is accurate information. It is impossible to know (without daily military satellite photos) what is happening between the Dnipro and the front. Are the Russians pulling back? Are the Russians reinforcing their front? Are the Russians going to abandon Kherson?
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The answer is the same to all: unknown and unknowable.
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To which I would add: really, who cares? The Dnipro is a natural defensive frontier, and I was a bit surprised the Russians ever went beyond it to capture Kherson. None of this fundamentally changes the situation: Russia will continue to hold a land corridor between the Crimea and the Donbas, whether that includes Kherson or not. It is far too important for them not to. They might (might!) abandon that land corridor in a negotiated settlement, but that is a long way off…. and maybe not until the end of the Alzheimer administration.
Russell,
You know how those planes you track sometimes seem to follow hard to explain flight paths? I read this story and realized I needed to share it here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11386753/US-Air-Force-tanker-appears-draw-sky-penis-near-Russias-Syrian-naval-base.html
This might be a more common practice than we realize. All those nonsensical flight paths — they might could be military pilots just doodling obscenities in the sky…
mark bofill… I saw that in real time, cracked me up. Flyboys will be flyboys!
The situation in Kherson is still murky. My usual underground sources are silent [I suspect they know what’s happening and have dummied up]. The russians have retreated across the river…or not!
Oh and regarding the other thing – regarding Russia’s nuclear missile capability – it looks like they have that in working order, at least the missile and warhead delivery portion of it:
https://eurasiantimes.com/new-russian-nuclear-submarine-successfully-test-fires-bulava-ballistic/
I have to believe that’s the hardest way to do it – submerged submarine launch. It’s probably simpler to fire missiles from land, and probably much simpler to deliver nuclear bombs via bomber. If the submarine launched ballistic missiles are in order, I tend to think the Russian nuclear war capability is probably healthy and ready to go.
[Edit: Cross posted: 🙂 ]
mark bofill (Comment #215963)
Source: Russian Defense Ministry said ”Russian Nuclear Submarine Successfully Test-Fires Bulava Ballistic Missile Amid Tensions With NATO”
I haven’t been able to find an independent confirmation of this.
I see. Thanks Russell.
The Russians have had submarine launched ballistic missiles since 1961 and submarine launched cruise missiles since the 1970’s as I recall. These people know how to build a rocket and put a nuke on it. They have great expertise in these areas. They detonated the largest ever nuclear bomb, 50 Megatons, the Tsar bomb.
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Assuming no delivery system whatsoever the Russians can smuggle warheads across the Mexican border or use a rubber dingy to deliver them to Miami. They can probably FedEx them to the US in a container ship.
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A wildly optimistic best case scenario would be we could stop half of bombers, ballistic, and cruise missiles with the aid of some unseen top secret technology. Great, only >1000 nukes make it through. There is no viable defense. A viable defense would give one side a first strike capability, and this was why Reagan’s Star Wars system was so controversial and threatening. They can’t stop ours either. MAD is still the game.
New details on the Pelosi attack from NBC reporter Miguel Almaguer. But it seems NBC has pulled it without explanation.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/nbc-pulls-report-that-raised-new-questions-about-pelosi-attack
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Curiouser and curiouser.
Tom,
Yes that’s the way I see it too. The Russians got the other half of the German rocket scientists, and they’ve been doing nukes a looong time. Plenty good enough to put everyone in their graves, just like ours. As you say, MAD still rules.
If you really want to lose sleep at night, just be aware that nuclear weapons are used in exercises at various times, and planes have accidents. At least 6 US warheads have been lost and never found.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032
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Planes have wrecked during takeoff with nuclear weapons on board, not to mention an active nuclear missile exploding in its silo in Arkansas.
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Who knows how many the Russians have lost. Did the USSR really account for all their warheads during their breakup? I would suggest they are just as paranoid about this as we are.
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The good news is that these things just don’t go off by themselves very easily, and one assumes that it is nontrivial to detonate one if you found one laying around, although exactly how this is prevented is undisclosed. Let’s hope it is more sophisticated than “don’t cut the red wire first”.
Tom Scharf,
All modern nuclear weapons are plutonium implosion type, at least the trigger. The implosion requires that an array of high explosive ‘focused charges’ surrounding a cast plutonium ‘pit’ be set off at exactly the same instant (with sub-microsecond accuracy), compressing the pit from all directions, and taking it supercritical. Accidental detonation (say from fire or impact) is unlikely to achieve the required timing accuracy, so would produce a dud. Maybe why accidents haven’t caused explosions. OTOH, the original ‘gun-type’ bomb made with U235 requires only that a slug of U235 be driven down a channel at high speed by a single explosive charge, so those might be more subject to accidental explosion, assuming no ‘disarming’ mechanism (like physically blocking the channel) is used to make unintentional explosion impossible.
Mike M,
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
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Yup, seems there is more here than meets the eye. How could an 80 YO man hold off a much younger attacker for 30 minutes, then not flee when police arrived? If he opened the door for the police, why would he not have escaped his attacker long before they arrived? Makes zero sense. Maybe the police and prosecutors will clarify what happened, but I am beginning to doubt it. More likely they will offer the accused reduced charges in exchange for a guilty plea, so the case never goes to trial, and they can continue to blame ‘MAGA Republicans’ and Ron DeSantis for Pelosi’s injuries.
Interestingly, the arrest affidavit which was released was by an FBI agent who was not present at the time of the arrest, rather than local police officers who actually arrived at the Pelosi house and have first hand knowledge of what happened. Police body cam footage would be even more informative.
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Sounds like maybe Pelosi tried to take the hammer away from the crazy guy after the police arrived, and that’s when the crazy guy hit Pelosi on the head.
My bet is DePape wanted to talk policy with Nancy and turned on Paul when he found out he’d been “betrayed”. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d sent hundreds of emails to Nancy and been “ignored”.
Steve “who cares?”
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Not sure if thats a request for more detail or not.
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Its a bit like “inside baseball”. My x could go on for hours on the building and play of her preferred baseball teem. The subject bored me to death.
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I could go on for pages on why the positions on the west bank matters to both Russia and Ukraine, but lets just for the moment leave it at “it matters”. Would be happy to expand on this if you are interested.
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The part of the “Russian withdrawal” I find most amusing is that the current flap started with someone seeing the pulling down of a Russian flag from an abandoned building and extrapolated that action to “the Russians are withdrawing!!”.
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This was compounded by the normal internet feeding frenzy posting that flags were coming down from all the government buildings ( they weren’t), checkpoints were being abandoned (they weren’t), and Russian forces were fleeing for their lives (they weren’t).
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Ukraine MoD posted statements that this was all a Russian trap to entice Ukraine into attacking strong Russian positions. I chock it up to normal internet hysteria.
Why Ukraine is not pressing its advantage in the Kherson region. Thoughts from a military genius (or maybe random thoughts from an armchair general.)
One, Ukraine may not have sufficient forces or the right kind of forces to mount an attack in a major city. Remember the original Southern offensive was just a ruse before the attack in the North.
Two, Ukraine has become very adept at using its superiority in artillery and rockets in this region. They have severely bloodied the russians here. They have blown the bridges and have them pinned down and short of ammunition. The status quo favors Ukraine.
Three, Ukraine may be hesitant to destroy one of its largest cities.
… and maybe all three!
Russell,
Ukraine first has to get through strong and in-depth Russian entrenchments, backed by superior Russian air and artillery support, and with having to advance in mud over open ground before it has to worry about taking the city.
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Nothing happing on this front until the freeze, and maybe not even then.
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Russia has been conducting an attritional campaign and is quite content to sit on the defense using its short supply lines and massive artillery ammunition stockpiles to attrit Ukraine forces with minimal casualties to itself.
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One just has to review what the west, mainly the US, is sending as support to Ukraine to see that Ukraine will be quickly running out of heavy artillery ammunition and heavy tanks. The western stockpiles have never been extensive and are now almost nonexistent.
Ed Forbes,
By ‘who cares’, I mean: the strategic defensive position that matters is the river, not the west bank area. No matter if Russia tries to vigorously defend Kherson or not, it is not a strategic decision, because it does not materially change the situation: Russia controls a broad ‘land bridge’ about 200 Km wide from the Russian border to Crimea, and they are very unlikely to give that up except (maybe) in a negotiated settlement of the war…. no matter who controls Kherson in the mean time.
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The tendency I think is for some people (and certainly the MSM) to look at the day-to-day details (“The Ukraine captured 8 square miles that were once in Russian hands!!!”), ignore the more important strategic realities, and most of all ignore how the war can plausibly come to an end….. and at what costs to the USA. Are we willing to spend $500 billion to help the Ukraine? $1 trillion? $3 trillion? Nobody seems to be asking the hard questions. Sadly, the warmongers at the State Department seem to be of the same empty-headed mindset.
Bill Maher is usually able to see Dem craziness a little more clearly than most progressives. Not now: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bill-maher-goes-apocalyptic-over-181031413.html
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Unhinged, delusional, and disconnected from reality. All of the things he claims the GOP will do are EXACTLY what the Alzheimer administration, the ‘intelligence’ agencies, and the Dem controlled Congress have in fact been doing for nearly two years. The guy has a serious projection problem.
Trying to take a heavily defended urban area is going to be costly. The Russians were faced with this early in the war with Kyiv and decided not to continue.
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The Russians replaced commanders recently due to poor performance so one would expect tactics will change, he surely is not going to continue the same thing.
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Both sides are likely pretty exhausted at this point. From the quantity of videos I see on Reddit there is a heck of a lot of dying going on in the past several weeks. It is a meat grinder.
Steve,
Strangely that one irritated me too, more than normal. Probably because I’d hoped for better from Maher, given that he has been gently calling out some leftist BS for awhile now.
[Sarcasm begins here: ]
Well, this too will pass. In a few more days I guess the Third Reich revision 2.0 will take over, and all the progressive kids will be locked up and killed just like Beschloss suggested, and our Republic will come to an end. But on the upside, the world was heading off a cliff anyway because of runaway global warming, so maybe it’s not such a huge loss. At least the transphobic bigoted racist white supremacists won’t laugh for very long.
[End of Sarcasm]
Yeah.
Steve, Addressing the strategic reason for not withdrawing to the east bank.
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“War is politics by other means”. A famous quote that reverberates as true down the ages.
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Withdrawal from the west bank without a major effort to defend would be an internal political disaster for Russia now that the area is part of the Federation. Giving up homeland can not be taken lightly. While perhaps tactically prudent, political consideration forecloses this option.
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Strategically, the west side is a jewel of a position for Russia. It allows a pathway to Odessa and affectively cuts the Ukraine army in two. Ukraine is finding it much harder to move forces back and forth between the east and the west with the destruction of the power grid that so much of Ukraine rail depends upon. Withdrawal to the west bank would allow Ukraine to consolidate their forces.
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Supply to the west bank is becoming much easier with the withdrawal of the civilian population and their removal makes fortification of the city much easier.
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Russian control of this portion of the west bank acts like waving a red cape in front of a fighting bull. As long as Ukraine is willing to use its limited numbers of highly expensive HIMAR missiles trying to cut supply to the west bank, Russia is more than willing to let them. Having Ukraine make assaults across open ground results in heavy casualties for Ukraine, which is the strategic posture for Russia currently, and is also to Russian advantage.
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Russia has a large number of river barges to move supply and putting engines or rope & pulleys on pontoon sections if needed to improvise river barges is both cheep and effective. Ferrying supply by helicopter across the river is also easy. As such, supplying the west bank after removal of the civilian population is not a problem.
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With over 300k additional troops called up, Russian issues with a lack of manpower has ended. Numbers were Ukraines major advantage and they have now lost it.
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I could go on but will stop here.
“The only reason we are losing is because the opposition doesn’t believe in democracy” is pretty weak tea. They could actually ask people why they are voting. They did. “I want to end democracy” didn’t make the top 10. Some pundits don’t seem interested in looking. This is the scream and pound the table argument when the facts aren’t on your side.
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People don’t listen to the media and pundits because they are no longer trusted messengers. The vast majority of the fault is their own.
Ya mark, it’s strange. I mean, everything Biden and the Dems in Congress have been doing is very bad for the country, incites social strife, and exacerbates the already existing deep political divide. I am pretty sure the suburban women who are going to vote for Republicans and toss Dems out of office are not going to go along with Tump as dictator….. they loath him for the most part.
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If Maher is till around, I hope someone plays that silly rant for him after there is a peaceful transition in 2032, with some mealy-mouthed Dem elected president after 8 years of executive sanity under DeSantis.
From the NYT, a recent analysis of the artillery and rocket duel taking place in Kherson:
“With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War”
In the southern Kherson region, Ukraine now has the advantage in range and precision guidance of artillery, rockets and drones, erasing what had been a critical Russian asset.
And:
Ukraine now has artillery superiority in the area, commanders and military analysts say.
In Kherson now, Ukrainian commanders say the sides are firing about equal numbers of shells, but Ukraine’s strikes are not only longer range but more precise because of the satellite-guided rockets and artillery rounds provided by the West.
“We can reach them and they cannot reach us,” American-provided M777 howitzers firing precision-guided shells and striking up to 20 miles behind Russian lines.
And:
The city [Kherson] lies on the west bank of the Dnipro River, making its defenders reliant on bridges to Russian territory on the eastern bank that now lie within easy range of Ukrainian rocket artillery and, for the most part, are now unusable. President Putin has reportedly overruled his generals’ recommendations of a retreat to safer and more easily defended ground on the east bank.
And finally:
“Russia is unable to maintain logistics supplies” to the west bank of the Dnipro, said Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst and the director of Rochan Consulting, based in Gdansk, Poland.
Free link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-artillery.html?smid=url-share
Ukraine is no longer on fire. For a few days after the embarrassing Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea fleet, russia had stepped up its missile launches towards civilian targets. But during the last few 24 hour periods the fires in Ukraine are no more frequent [outside of the battle zone] than in neighboring countries. In the previous 24 hours there have been only four fires, and these probably are natural wildfires or agricultural burns.
NASA FIRMS NASA | LANCE | Fire Information for Resource Management System link:
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-11-05..2022-11-06,2022-11-05;@36.1,53.4,5z
For those of you having difficulty loading the NASA GIS system I have a screenshot here:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1589124639053451265?s=20&t=eVf9nzI5-BsTUu8RUzRsWg
With the great influx of NATO air defense systems Ukraine claims to have been shooting down 75% of the incoming russian stuff, but I cannot confirm that number independently. I was seeing about twenty fires a day after the Black Sea fiasco, but I don’t know how many of those were shoot downs.
I wonder if the numbers of fires seen this summer are reduced by the current rain and muddy conditions? 🙂
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If supply to Kherson has been reduced to critical levels, why is secondary items still being shipped across the river?
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https://www.txtreport.com/news/2022-11-02-screen-exposure!-russian-military-convoy-transports-concrete-blockhouse-to-unan-kherson-area—international.rkL-zjkHi.html
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Water, gas, ammo, food first…then items that are useful, but not required. Ukraine interdiction of Russian supply into Kherson is a failure.
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Ed Forbes (Comment #215987)
“If supply to Kherson has been reduced to critical levels, why is secondary items still being shipped across the river?”
Ed, you got it all wrong [again!]
The russian defensive line is being constructed EAST of the Dnieper river. Those concrete boxes have been installed in Nova Kakhovka, on the EAST bank of the river. None of this stuff is crossing the river, it is coming from the East. russian material crossing the river is under Ukrainian artillery and rocket fire. It is a shambles.
That reference you quoted is useless. Here is a detailed description of the new fortifications, including maps and aerial photographs.
https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1588924419002740736?s=20&t=vqEb88NkzNfZrksoseAgNQ
Looks like another bloody battle is in progress…. battle of Pavlovka in Donetsk Oblast, south of Donetsk. The information is a fog right now.
Some recent posts:
“Pavlovka turning into a killing field, with Russians continuing frontal assaults & Ukrainians pouring in more and more reinforcements. Terrible fighting & high casualties all around. Very grim indeed.”
“Pavlovka is a strange battle. Both sides report severe difficulties on TG channels, and both sides have complained to their superiors that it’s not worth fighting for”
“From what I understand, most of the fighting is occurring in this small area between Yegorovka to the south and Pavlovka to the north, with both sides having difficulties moving through the fields (that have turned into deep mud) & desperate skirmishes for the woods.”
https://twitter.com/failure1991/status/1589317988108292096?s=20&t=1KpDhK0UYsrMgdAPug68Tg
https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1589299268551995392?s=20&t=r5nR4_chjtcb4jReuoRiWg
https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1589301225891463169?s=20&t=r5nR4_chjtcb4jReuoRiWg
There is talk among conservatives about stopping US aid to Ukraine. I have formulated my thoughts on this.
Long term, I think we save a lot of US dollars by funding Ukraine’s dismantling of the russian war machine. From April, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” … Austin said Russia had “already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”
Ukraine has had great success in destroying everything russia sends its way. The OSINT organization ORYX keeps a detailed record of documented [by photo] russian equipment losses. This is considered a very conservative list:
Tanks (1420, of which destroyed: 814, damaged: 61, abandoned: 53, captured: 492)
Armoured Fighting Vehicles (684, of which destroyed: 422, damaged: 9, abandoned: 24, captured: 228)
Infantry Fighting Vehicles (1626, of which destroyed: 1005, damaged: 33, abandoned: 77, captured: 511)
And many more categories: “Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine” https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
The US is committed by treaty [NATO] to defend Western Europe should russia attack. For the past 70 years, we have maintained, at exorbitant cost, a military capable of countering russian aggression in Europe. Combine the huge russian losses with sanctions that cripple russia’s ability to manufacture new, high tech war machines and we look forward to a generation of a crippled russia and we can put our military dollars toward countering China.
Nothing has really changed here, Ukraine and the US are friends of convenience. There is no lasting mutual heritage here that would bind us together through tough times, such as for example the UK. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is certainly an old saw that is meaningful in this situation. We used to be friends with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and started fighting them a decade later. A commonality? The Russians.
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Unfortunately our very public and open debate shows the cracks in unity that the Russians will exploit for their own propaganda. There is a real advantage to the tightly controlled media of the Russians and China, propaganda is still around because it works to keep the public in line.
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You can almost set a stopwatch to how quickly certain sectors of the public will start growing weary of ever escalating costs and death during wars. The Twitter generation has a focus time of about 12 minutes. If the opposition can’t be canceled in that time then move on to the next target. If I was the Russians I would keep this going for at least 6 more months to see if public support gets exhausted, this will lead to more favorable settlement terms.
Tom Scharf (Comment #215991)
Tom, I think you have probably captured here how political figures in war time think. It is rather matter-of-fact political decisions about reactions of populations to killing, maiming and destruction and without much attention to any moral or emotional content of killing, maiming and destruction.
In other times these same politicians would be (over)reacting to much less difficult situations for governed populations – not that they were doing anything about it but rather reacting for political points.
I have to consider that Russia are also fighting a shadow proxy war, whose aim has the same goal as yours, Russell. The US, and west in general, have gleefully thrown away self-sufficiency and economic might at all levels. It would take considerable time to recover that. Meanwhile, China have been busy using the money we send them to economically colonize everywhere they can, to the extent they set up police stations in other countries. Should “crippling sanctions” be thrown our way instead, there may be no “military dollars” available to put towards countering China.
Remember when the All Star game was moved because of the “voter suppression” laws and “Jim Crow 2.0”? All sorts of corporate genuflecting was occurring. We have record early turnout (including GA) and my guess is this will be very high turnout for a midterm.
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They were wrong and their rhetoric was excessive. This is so common as to not even be the least bit surprising. It is just another reminder why there is little trust to activist initiatives that are perceived to be parroted by far too many who have confirmation bias as a way of life. How can you tell a legitimate initiative apart from cultural propaganda today? I don’t know.
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Corporations need to be a bit wiser here, and the media needs to engage less with credulous apocalyptic future outcomes that serve a preferred narrative. Stop handing a microphone to these people.
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What happens here is all the false and self serving predictions are memory holed only to be repeated in the next cycle. Zero accountability undermines trust. People become very cynical and that leaves an opening a mile wide for Trump, who correctly calls this stuff out and then fills in his own psycho version of reality.
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Example: NBC (of all people) runs an article today documenting the endless “election denial” from the 2016 election.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trumps-denial-second-big-lie-ask-hillary-clinton-rcna55764
“It’s no wonder that this year, a Rasmussen survey found 47% of likely U.S. voters believed it’s likely Russia changed the outcome of the 2016 election.”
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The media has mainstreamed the term “election denier” for their opposition but cannot look inward, but the voters can and do.
Russell,
The Russians are building on the east side in addition to the west side of the river. Very much a layered defense. The fortifications on the east side makes sense as the US and the UK are sending large numbers of river craft to Ukraine and this defensive line protects against a river crossing by Ukraine to try and cut supply coming from the eastern side.
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Reports of layered concrete Russian defensive lines on the west bank below
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“ The Ukrainian army has been gearing up for a new assault to retake the urban centre, but on Wednesday officials told Al Jazeera their counteroffensive had slowed in recent days, partly because Russian troops were heavily dug into fortified positions.
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“The fortified positions that the enemy has established are concrete and they have a minimum of three lines of defence,” a Ukrainian army commander who identified himself as Mykola said.
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“We are in high spirits, but we are lacking in equipment to move forward. So we are accumulating the hardware from our international partners [and] then we will advance because we are trying to protect our soldiers and they are prepared for us,” he added.”
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/20/in-kherson-spirits-high-for-ukrainians-but-arms-supplies-low
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Also, Russian supply is not dependent the main bridges as the article you posted stated. Supply is dependent on multiple pontoon bridges and river barges. This is a port city, so accommodates roll on roll off barges on both sides of the river.
Russell Klier (Comment #215990): “There is talk among conservatives about stopping US aid to Ukraine.”
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I am glad that conservatives can talk about that. It seems that Democrats can not question the war without getting stomped on, like Tulsi Gabbard.
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Russell Klier: “Long term, I think we save a lot of US dollars by funding Ukraine’s dismantling of the russian war machine.”
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If that were our only reason, I would support getting out. The administration has given little reason to believe that their objective is not to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. That is unacceptable. Their failure to make a good case for supporting Ukraine makes it easy for people to oppose that support.
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We have given Ukraine security guarantees on multiple occasions, most significantly to get them to give up their nukes. It sends a very bad message to walk away from such commitments. We have dangled NATO membership in front of them, knowing that is a red flag to Russia. The Biden administration restricted our energy production, thus ensuring that the world would need Russia’s supply. The Biden administration consistently displayed weakness, thus tempting Russia to be aggressive.
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Ukraine is a democracy; in general, the more democracies there are the better for us and the worse for Russia and China. It is in our interest to deter 19th century style aggression since such aggression is destabilizing. Failing to stand up to Russia would tempt China to believe that we won’t stand up for Taiwan.
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We have many interests in supporting Ukraine. Sticking a finger in Putin’s eye should be the least of them. Sadly, we don’t really know what the Biden administration’s objectives are.
Mike M. (Comment #215996)
“The administration has given little reason to believe that their objective is not to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”
The resolve of the Ukrainian people to wage war is a decision to be made by the Ukrainian people. Right now the people and their leaders are committed to waging war. It is not Joe Biden’s decision [or yours].
“We have many interests in supporting Ukraine. Sticking a finger in Putin’s eye should be the least of them.” I agree. But in a world where the likes of Kim and XI lead countries it might be therapeutic to have Putin get a bloody nose as a result of his aggression.
The russian missile attack on civilian targets has taken another day’s hiatus. In the previous 24 hours I see only four fires outside of the war zone and those were in very rural agricultural locations. I think a lot of the current hype is coming from President Zelenskyy He keeps yelling for more air defense weapons and NATO keeps delivering. These same weapons can be used in the battle for air superiority in the war zone.
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-11-06..2022-11-07,2022-11-06;@34.1,50.0,14z
Russell Klier
“Looks like another bloody battle is in progress…”
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Will we have another stolen election is the question.
Bet the DOJ will not be doing any supervising in California.
Getting control of the Senate would require a 5 seat majority to eliminate the RINO power hidden veto of Republican issues.
24 Hours, except for Pennsylvania, to find out.
angech,
5 seats in the Senate is almost certainly out of reach for the GOP. More likely 1 to 4, most likely 2 or 3.
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Pennsylvania looks closer in the polls than I think is actually true in the Senate race. Fetterman is mentally debilitated from a stroke (difficulty talking and understanding spoken language, confusion, inappropriate word usage and unfathomable ‘sentences’ which don’t actually have the structure of a sentence). I expect voters are loath to tell pollsters that they won’t vote for him because of his disability. Dems have been counting on Fetterman capturing the currently Republican seat in Pennsylvania to balance one likely loss elsewhere, but it looks to me unlikely he will. Unfortunately, that may not be known for some days after the election.
Two things:
1) Republicans aren’t going to pass anything Biden doesn’t want passed. Setting aside executive orders, one of his only remaining effective powers will be his veto.
2) Do Republicans actually have a legislative agenda?
https://babylonbee.com/news/republicans-seen-googling-what-to-do-after-winning-an-election
angech,
BTW, the greatest significance of control of the Senate for the next two years is blocking the very worst/least competent/dedicated socialist judges from the Federal bench. Not much legislation will pass that Biden will not veto, even if Republicans control both houses. The Biden administration has been appointing lots of absolute nut-cakes to the Federal judiciary, and there has been nothing the Republicans could do to stop them. Democrats screamed when Trump appointed judges they didn’t like, but the pace of Biden appointments of the most extreme judges has been significantly greater than Trump’s pace. That will change if Republicans take control in January.
mark….
cross posted.
No worries Steve. Your answer was better. Of course you are correct about the appointments.
Given that government never really agrees to limit its own power voluntarily, a split government that stops it at least temporarily from functioning in the other direction is a win.
I am shocked (shocked!) that public health officials delayed Pfizer’s announcement of its vaccine trial results until after the election: https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/nate-silver-liberal-elites-pressured-pfizer-to-delay-covid-vaccine/
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OK, I’m joking. It was obvious at the time (and I wrote that on this blog) that hurting Trump was the only plausible explanation after Pfizer met with FDA regulators and decided to change their long planned protocol and delay release of results…… until after the election.
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It’s hard to say what effect a positive announcement from Pfizer would have had a week before the 2020 election, but it seems it could only have improved Trump’s chances significantly. I remain (truly) shocked that this was not immediately investigated by Congress. That delay probably cost some lives, but it was also blatant interference in an election by Federal bureaucrats, which is unlawful and grounds for termination if not prosecution. Maybe the new Republican majority will call those responsible to task, but it is by no means certain they will. My guess: everyone involved would take the 5th, and (surprise!) all documents, transcripts, and emails relating to that meeting will, amazingly enough, have been forever lost. The left is inherently dishonest and unprincipled.
I’m a little surprised it’s Nate Silver saying it.
Shrug.
We really have no idea what will happen tomorrow. It is not like the polls can be believed. RCP has recently gone back from +4 to +3 for the GOP in the Senate. That could be off by 3 or even 4 seats either way.
Many of the covid rules that allowed vote fraud are still in place. Nevada codified them into law, while in other places the courts undid some of them. There is too much absentee balloting.
It’s not like Pfizer didn’t know what the results were at that point. It was an accumulating database that they can track in real time. They do have real rules to keep results confidential and not disclose this stuff before a final report, probably for stopping insider trading as much as anything. Results of big pharmaceutical trials are huge deals for stock value, and this was an even huger trial to say the least.
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The change in the protocol to get more information was always a bit strange. Looking back it is suspect because the final report was all rainbows and butterflies for mRNA. However the other vaccines had some real problems in their protocols as I recall.
This is an interesting new tool [toy] I found….. NASA Worldview. It is nighttime satellite pictures of the Earth. It allows you to see the world’s electrical grid. I have been comparing Ukraine’s electrical grid now versus prewar. Two things stick out… A lot of Ukraine was dark before the war, not North Korea dark, but much of the area outside the city hubs was dark. Second, by November 2, 2022 most of the lights were back on [outside of the areas that were combat zones].
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=27.14549948113136,48.53771103171427,32.96628028131761,51.161609876798224&i=1&l=Reference_Labels_15m,Reference_Features_15m,Coastlines_15m,VIIRS_SNPP_DayNightBand_At_Sensor_Radiance(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_DayNightBand_AtSensor_M15,VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden)&lg=false&t=2022-11-02-T22%3A00%3A00Z
Russell,
I have no idea how to “see the electrical grid” at that link.
Mark
Though an unpopular point of view I think the Republicans should do what they failed to do last time, support Republicans being abused by the DOJ and FBI.
What a difference a bit if guys back then would have made.
Policy wise can they do anything like reopening oil pipelines or does the Biden veto outweigh them?
Hunter Biden will get a run but again no DOJ support.
A SCOTUS block on new Democrat appointments would be handy.
If De Santos was to look after Trump I would be happy to see him run yet he is just another untrustworthy swamp critter until he proves otherwise.
I have never been good at having elections go the way I want but like horse riding having momentum, good jockeys and form is a good start not to be taken lightly.
angech,
“If De Santos was to look after Trump I would be happy to see him run yet he is just another untrustworthy swamp critter until he proves otherwise.”
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DeSantis is anything but a swamp critter. He is loathed by the MSM and Dems (but I repeat myself). He has consistently stood up to the very worst of the covid mania in Florida, and prohibited teachers from talking about gay and lesbian sex with 6 year old kids. He has tried to stop the on-line canceling of voices the left doesn’t want heard (that one is currently blocked by Federal courts and will likely end up at the Supreme Court). There are plenty of RINOs around; DeSantis isn’t one of them.
mark bofill,
“I’m a little surprised it’s Nate Silver saying it.”
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Silver has seen the woke mob in action (eg, when he tried to hire Roger Pielke to write about climate), and plenty of the people who work for him are the worst of woke Karens, and just about insufferable. Maybe like some other ‘classic liberals’ (like Johnathan Turley) Silver is realizing that the dishonest left is consistently a force for harm: the ends don’t always justify the means.
angech
Sounds like you support the RITO’s (Republican in Trump Only.).
DeSantis is clearly not a “swamp critter”. Trump has only decided to dislikely him because DeSantis is his major competition for the nomination for president. Major. Trump is definitely only a Republican in Trump only. He only cares about Trump.
Mike M.
“Russell,I have no idea how to “see the electrical grid” at that link.”
Sorry, I had a lot of ‘Bells and Whistles’ turned on and they may not work on your system. Below is the home page, click on ‘Black Marble’ and you should get the basic version.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
angech,
I don’t disagree, but I’m not really sure what support they can offer.
So generally speaking, Congress passes laws (subject to Presidential veto) and the President executes the laws using his administration. A recurring problem (in my opinion) with our system these days is that the executive and supporting bureaucracy have a great deal of de facto freedom to ignore the letter of the law handed to them by Congress and do as they please. Sometimes the problem is that Congress was vague in passing a law and the bureaucracy takes advantage of this to seize power Congress never really intended the bureaucracy to have. All of this is a long winded way of saying — no not really. There isn’t a whole heck of a lot Congress can effectively do in a timely manner to impact Biden’s executive energy policy decisions.
There are those who speculate that the left is about to turn on Biden and Harris. If so, Hunter could be an easy avenue by which Biden could be effectively removed from running for office again. Democrats have largely realized that Biden must be replaced in the next election cycle, and it’s not at all clear Biden and Harris agree. But I mostly don’t care about Biden corruption. This doesn’t really even rank for me on the top 10 problems facing our country.
SCOTUS is the pinnacle. But I think all federal judge appointments are probably important. I don’t really know much about this though (federal judges), just my impression.
angech,
Federal judges are important for reasons like this:
Federal Judge Rules Federal Oil And Gas Lease Moratorium Exceeded Biden’s Power
Here is an example of the mechanism by which the abuse of executive authority on energy policy is checked. It’s slow and difficult and not very effective, to fight in federal court. If it takes a year and a half or more to get a decision, well. That’s a substantial portion of the four year window of a Presidential administration.
Thanks Steve.
I never knew Silver wanted to hire Roger Pielke. Neat.
Pielke Jr. got cancelled by the officially approved know-it-alls after Silver tried to hire him. It was vicious and fact free (as always). Pielke found the situation so distasteful that he stopped writing about climate almost completely for a number of years and has only recently started back again on Substack.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/
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I came across RPJ over a decade ago when first researching climate change affects on hurricanes (or the lack thereof).
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about
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He had all the data and wrote extensively on the effect of climate on disasters and disaster costs. Many of his opinions were unwanted and quite unpopular with the climate illuminati (e.g. disaster costs have only gone up because more stuff is at risk). He was only one of many given this treatment, but it formed the foundation of my view that this is a fundamentally unserious sector of science controlled by rampant activism and dogma.
Tom,
I’d read the seemingly endless criticisms of his ‘The Honest Broker’ and I knew about his unpopularity with the climate elect. It’s just the bit about Silver that I didn’t know. Or I’d thoroughly forgotten if I ever did know.
I would expect the DOJ decisions on charging Trump and Hunter Biden will occur during the lame duck period before the next Congress is seated.
I like this take on the current state of American politics. Summed up by quoting a man who intended to kill Justice Kavanaugh:
Yes, Trump will likely be arrested on multiple felonies, each threatening several years in prison, probably in a pre-dawn raid by armed FBI agents in bullet-proof vests, and perp-walked in his PJs for CNN outside Mar a Largo. It is a political necessity for the DOJ.
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Hunter will never be arrested; he will either face no charges or plea guilty to a trivial charge, pay a fine, and get a short parole…. and the DOJ will never talk about it again. Another political necessity for the DOJ.
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Merrick Garland is a profoundly corrupt, mendacious scumbag. He should be impeached and removed from office.
Maricopa County:
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“So what happens is we have two tabulators. One tabulator isn’t working. The other tabulator is taking about 75% successful, so about 25% of them are being misread. So it could be a printer issue or it could be in the tabulator itself. So when it’s misread, you have an option to put it in what’s called “box 3″, and it gets read whether it goes downtown and gets read manually, or whether it gets re-fed into our tabulator.”
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I would have thought a printing issue would be obvious, and if it isn’t a printing issue, optical recognition shouldn’t be having huge issues unless dirt was introduced. What a shit show.
NYT Today: Hillary Clinton Accepted Her Loss, but a Lot Has Changed Since 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/opinion/midterms-election-denial-winners-losers.html
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What a howler. At least I will credit the normally liberal commenters at the NYT for having none of that revisionism. Ultimately Trump never conceding and going batsh** crazy will make him unelectable in 2024. That’s the lesson to learn from this madness, you are hurting yourself.
For optical scanners the ballots should be preprinted and use an optical scanner after filled out. When I voted this way the ballot was scanned in front of me before I left. If it failed it was read again. The filled out ballot is saved.
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The ballots are put in boxes and can be rescanned at a later time. In my county there was an “anomaly” during the infamous 2000 recount where a box of ballots was accidentally scanned twice during the recount. The mismatch at a specific polling precinct was noted and the problem was identified. AFAICT recounts on optical ballots almost never amount to anything beyond a few votes.
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The media could have done everyone a service by documenting how voting really works and the security and checks in place. Instead they concentrated on drama and condescension for 4 straight years. The government should invite skeptics to view the process, not treat them like they are roving menaces. The reality is that it is drab and boring.
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Count the people who walk in the door, make sure the vote tallies match that. Allow no single point of corruption (like Philadelphia). Monitors from both parties. Look for statistical differences from past elections and recount or investigate them. Make sure the ballots are secure until the election is certified.
Tom wrote: “For optical scanners the ballots should be preprinted and use an optical scanner after filled out.”
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This is what it appears they are doing. One wonders how you can get 25% rejection of predetermined content from a printed source. Dirt on the scanner is the only reasonable explanation I can think of.
Maricopa was giving out sharpies in 2020.
Ron DeSantis is hated by NeverTrumpers because he got elected after pursuing Trump’s support, with an ad of him reading a story to his son about Trump, and building a wall with blocks.
Nevertheless, the swamp is supporting DeSantis, with one big donor expecting globalism again. Scott Walker backtracked on his immigration positions after being talked to by a donor, I think it was Stanley Hubbard.
I voted (FL) with a paper ballot. I noticed that the reader had two slots, one marked “insert ballot here” and another marked “insert card here”. I asked about the card, and the poll worker pointed at a machine which allows touchscreen selection, and prints out your selections to be fed into the vote-counting machine. She said that one should check what gets printed.
Only one machine, vs. 7 or 8 booths for paper ballots. But it sounds like a good system, I will try it next time.
MikeN: “Maricopa was giving out sharpies in 2020.”
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The election official said it could be a problem with the printer, so I go with printed source. I discount this possibility because it would be evident quickly that the ballots from a certain printer were being rejected, never mind that a cursory examiniation of a rejected ballot should show a visible defect.
Roger Pielke Jr. points out that the latest National Climate Assessment is politically slanted.
Having the White House be in charge creates an obvious conflict of interest. But frankly I don’t know how to get an unbiased assessment. Red team / blue team will likely provide 2 oppositely-biased views. Which is probably adequate if one has enough incentive and knowledge to balance them. But politicians will just cite the one they are prejudiced toward.
Expanding on prior comments on Ukraine air defense
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Can the United States Do More for Ukrainian Air Defense?
https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-united-states-do-more-ukrainian-air-defense
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“.. Unfortunately, turning good intentions into battlefield realities will be difficult. The United States has already provided many air defense systems, including Stingers, the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), and S-300s, but is nearly out of equipment to provide. Recent DOD statements on air defense recognize the problem but do not announce any new U.S. actions. Austin pointed to the Europeans as the primary source of help in this area.
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The Europeans are stepping up, but they can provide only small numbers of systems in the near term. In the longer term, the United States and Europe will provide systems from new production, but those will take years to arrive..”
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Western Air Defense Arrives in Ukraine: Too Little, Too Late
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wuf8ir3Fro
I’m just thinking out loud here. Pretend I have Tourette Syndrome. Tabulation machines in various places aren’t working well. Mail in voting favors Democrats, and ballots that are ‘exception processed’ through the system may well be more vulnerable to ‘accidental’ errors. Additionally, the longer the tallying takes, the more mail in ballots can arrive to be processed. If rules are violated and ballots are accepted which should not be accepted, well. This is only making sure that every vote counts after all and that technicalities that may tend to disenfranchise minorities more than white males don’t interfere with Democracy.
This is on purpose. Not an accident. Not saying the machines were sabotaged necessarily. Maybe maintenance wasn’t scheduled and performed, or routine cleaning, or whatever.
It strikes me that requiring people to vote is voter suppression. What we need is an electoral version of a climate model to determine the “will of the people” without such burdensome requirements.
Long lines between getting the ballot and getting to a voting station. It’s partly just busy, and partly a poor choice of pens. It took a long time to just fill in the little rectangle.
MikeN
I’m not sure who classifies as a “never trumper”. I hate Trump. I don’t hate DeSantis.
I don’t mind that an aspiring politician got support from someone who could get votes. DeSantis didn’t sell his soul to Trump– as is readily apparent. I have no problem with him being supported by Trump earlier on.
Well…. I guess I don’t know who “the swamp” is at this point. SteveF seems to support DeSantis. He doesn’t seem to be what those who use the term “the swamp” used to think it means. I’m guessing some are now calling “the swamp” anyone who doesn’t support Trump. Well… ok.
Certainly mechanical systems such as printers and page feed scanners break all the time, especially if they have been sitting around for a year almost never used. I’m sure they would be tested before use, but I haven’t met one of these things I didn’t want to throw out a window within a year of using. I’m not entirely confident rigorous testing by our government bureaucrats who can’t figure out an ATM machine is up to the task. They probably have spares available that can be shipped out to precincts, and for larger ones redundancy on site.
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There is enough paranoia (especially this year) that I doubt any clumsy scheme could be successful at any large scale. Transparency on counts with multiple people watching should be enough. I’m sure there will be accusations and assertions, I will wait to see how the evidence pans out.
The ISW has come to two conclusions similar to mine… The russian attacks on civilian infrastructure have nearly stopped and the lights are coming back on:
“Russian forces have greatly depleted their arsenal of high-precision weapons systems and have suffered significant aviation losses and will likely struggle to maintain the current pace of the Russian military’s coordinated campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure.”
“Ukrainian sources reported on November 7 that Ukrainian officials and engineers could restore power supplies to normal levels in a few weeks if the pace of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure dramatically slowed.”
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-7
Today’s FIRMS fire maps show about a dozen fires in the last 24 hours, all but two were in rural agricultural settings. The two in urban areas could be russian attacks or could be something else.
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@0.0,0.0,3z
Personally, I think the the DeSantis/Trump feud is just the kind of news that, if it didn’t exist, the media would have to invent. Great for clicks and ratings! Fortunately, they are far too principled to do any such thing. I’m also sure DeSantis and Trump wouldn’t consider taking digs at one another to encourage such a thing for free publicity. Neither are particularly well known for media baiting.
Ed Forbes (Comment #216036)
HAH! That CSIS report you cited undermines your position. The russian campaign to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure is a failure! The article ends with this conclusion:
“However, Russia no longer has enough missiles for a sustained campaign. That means periodic suffering for the Ukrainian people but no prolonged attacks and no change to the course of the war.”
Tom,
Probably. Never assume evil intent where incompetence is sufficient. Thanks.
Just saw Matt Taibbi’s game. It sounds like fun for those who dare.
Drink EVERY TIME:
Anyone, from a candidate to a TV anchor, mentions that “democracy is on the ballot.” Double-shot for use of the phrase democracy itself, e,g, “democracy itself is on the ballot.”
You’re told this is the most important election of our lifetime, or the most critical moment of our lives, etc. You may drink an additional shot if you’re certain today is not any of those things.
Steve Kornacki draws a frenzied geometric shape around Pennsylvania.
John Fetterman’s shorts are visible in a video report.
Nate Silver reminds you he doesn’t do predictions, but rather publishes percentage-chance forecasts.
Liz Cheney is mentioned (i.e. as if mattering).
Elon Musk is blamed for something. Double-shot if the bad thing is “in the name of” or “under the guise of” free speech.
Anyone mentions “over a hundred election deniers on the ballot.” Also drink for permutations on the theme, e.g. “60% of Americans will have an election-denier on the ballot,” or “Over half of GOP candidates are election-deniers,” “election-denier JD Vance wants to ban books,” etc.
Anyone mentions the “specter of violence” or “conditions ripe for violence,” or reports votes are being counted “amid threats of violence.” Do an exclamation shot at the end of the night if no violence is ultimately observed.
A politician or a pundit warns that everything might come down to the “wild card” in Georgia, and with suspicious gleefulness reminds you we might all be waiting until December 6th to find out who’ll control the Senate. Call it the “No Sleep Till Georgia” rule.
SPECIAL MSNBC “DECISION 2022” ELECTION NIGHT RULES:
Tune in at 8 p.m. Guess which of Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle or the aforementioned Kornacki will be first to blame any Republican victory on disobedient or insufficiently centrist Democrats and/or third party “spoilers.” Drink the first time this happens anyway, and drink a double if you guess correctly.
Guess which contributor will be the first to make a cringe sports-related joke about Herschel Walker. Drink the first time this happens, and drink a double if you guess correctly or the person botches the terminology (e.g. “For once, Herschel Walker can’t pile the move”).
Guess which contributor will be first to convey warnings from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, US Capitol Police, or National Counterterrorism Center about threats, misinformation, or the impending end of civilization. Drink the first time this happens, and drink a double if you guess correctly or the contributor happens also to be a former government official.
Guess which contributor will be the first to invoke Nazis, fascists, or white supremacy, or suggests without irony that tonight might be the last time we ever have elections. Drink the first time this happens, drink a double if you guess correctly.
OPTIONAL: Keep a running count of how many times the word “Trump” is mentioned on the broadcast versus all mentions of all other issues (health care, education, the economy/inflation, etc.). If at the end of the night you have a “hot deck,” i.e. the number is +4 for Trump, you may drink that many times. If the deck is cold, drink coffee. Or whatever.
DRINK ONLY THE FIRST TIME YOU HEAR:
“Red wave.”
“Red mirage.”
“Russians/Putin want you to vote Republican” (e.g. “a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort”).
Lucia, it was not a matter of Trump supporting DeSantis, but that DeSantis was supporting Trump in such a way.
I am thinking of NeverTrumpers like Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and the like who are allegedly conservative but then didn’t like DeSantis either, and the main reason seemed to be that he won his primary by being all in for Trump.
Anyone who doesn’t support Trump is of course not equal to the swamp. I am saying that certain establishment folks are getting into DeSantis’s orbit. I read he has a new campaign team now.
The Karl Rove types, are now supporting DeSantis as a means of stopping Trump. It is not clear if they are doing this because they want him to win the nomination, or just to split the conservative vote so someone like Romney or Larry Hogan or Liz Cheney can win. Jeb Bush has endorsed DeSantis, which previously I would have thought unlikely. In 2020, the swamp was trying to get Jeb Bush to be the nominee, spending tens of millions attacking Rubio to clear the anti-Trump lane.
Lucia
“Well…. I guess I don’t know who “the swamp” is at this point.”
–
Whom or what?
–
The swamp is a term for an ever shifting conglomerate of people and organisations who bend the rules we all live by to advantage themselves outside professed ethics and rules.
–
You can have smaller swamps existing independently inside the bigger swamp like a PTA or social or sporting club.
–
If you are in the swamp or a swamp you definitely know what it is.
–
If you don’t know then the probability is that you are one of the nicer normal people not in the swamp.
–
De Santis is a politician.
Most politicians are or become swamp creatures naturally.
The proof that they are not part of the swamp is when the swamp destroys them or tries to destroy them.
–
On a lighter note I used to read Pogo 40 years ago.
De Santis would be Albert Alligator.
The three new Supreme Court justices could be the three bat boys.
The whole crew has reassembled under new names.
Might be fun to identify a few of the others?
The Deacon would have to be the Attorney General, I guess.
MikeN,
DeSantis is going to win Florida in a landslide, because he is very capable governor. He is NOTHING like Jeb!
.
It is true that lots of people prefer DeSantis over Trump (I am one of them), but comparing a potential DeSantis candidacy to Jeb!’s candidacy in 2016 is kind of weird. Jeb! was the ultimate swamp nominee for the Republicans. Not a democrat, but really not much different policy-wise. DeSantis is anything but part of the swamp. .
I hope that as DeSantis becomes better known outside Florida in the next year, he will get past Trump’s voter recognition advantage and start winning primaries over Trump. DeSantis is better at policy and implementing it than Trump, smarter than Trump, infinitely more self aware and self controlled, and handles the press better than Trump.
angech,
“The proof that they are not part of the swamp is when the swamp destroys them or tries to destroy them.”
.
Ummmm… the MSM and the Democrats have be reviling DeSantis since before he took over as governor in Florida; the willful lies, slanders and misleading statements have been ever growing.
.
He fought ‘the swamp’ on school openings during covid, beach openings during covid (in Florida, the sunshine state!), public social distancing rules, limitations on parties, businesses, and workplaces, mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates everywhere in Florida, gay/lesbian education/training in public schools for 5 to 10 year olds, critical race theory in public schools, the censoring of conservative voices on line….. and more. He has resisted every single one of the nutty, woke-Karen policies the swamp has tried to institute…. and won most of the battles, both legal and political.
.
He is so far from being part of the swamp that to even suggest it tells me you are lacking information about DeSantis.
angech
So… that would make Trump and Trump supporters part of the swamp.
I would thing given the definition you could have entirely different swamps side by side. (That’s what you can have in real life too.)
That can’t possibly be the proof. Because it’s obvious people in the swamp try to kill people in the swamp all the time.
it’s obvious people in the swamp try to kill people in the swamp all the time.
The swamp is not one organisation.
that would make Trump and Trump supporters part of the swamp
No by that logic we are all part of the swamp
If I try to talk about election results before like 9 or 10, somebody slap me and tell me to wait.
I am still working with the NASA “Black Marble” and the Ukraine electrical grid. Because the NASA gis files are difficult to work with I have posted two screenshots that everyone can load:
3NOV2021, before the war. Ukraine is very sparsely lit compared to its neighbors to the East [Poland eg]. It is an agriculture community with vast expenses of darkness.
3NOV2022, after 10 months of war AND Putin’s attempt at taking down the grid. Ukraine is still sparsely lit but not a lot different than 12 months prior.
3NOV2021 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134143345897473?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
3NOV2022
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134373529317379?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
Those of you with the ability to work with the NASA gis files please check my work, I’m still learning this system:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
angech,
I’m just looking at the definition you gave. By that definition, Trump is part of the swamp.
.
I get you are backing off your definition because you don’t want the swamp to include Trump. But then you’ll need to define it if you want to use it and mean anything.
mark
I’m being saved that fate by my tutoring schedule. Ciao for now!
OOohphfff. I haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time all the way yet and I am done for the day. I was hoping to have a better feel for the results, but I’m gonna have to wait till morning looks like. My impression so far is that Republicans might or might not win the Senate. So – just don’t know yet. Georgia might end up in a run off.
Night all.
Yeah, it sure looks like no red tsunami. Maybe even not a red wave. Disappointing.
SteveF, I think Jeb Bush had a good record as governor of Florida too. Did school choice get implemented when with Jeb?
I agree DeSantis has been a good governor. However, there appears to be a chance he will become like Scott Walker and surrender to the donor class.
Yep. No red Tsunami. Maybe no wave.
MikeN
Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
.
Criticizing someone because you predict he might do something in the future? Not very fair. Nor wise.
Donald Trump, the gift that keeps on giving. Btw, did you know that ‘das Gift’ in German means poison?
Wow! Republicans underperformed everywhere except in the south. If they gain control of the House, it will likely be by not more than 2 to 5 seats, and there remains some chance Pelosi will remain speaker, which would be a catastrophe for the country. The Senate looks to go 50:50 again. The biggest Republican disappointments across the entire country were Trump endorsed candidates, who almost all came up well short of their pre-election poll numbers…. in some cases 6 to 8% below expected results. Truly terrible. IMHO, Trump is toxic. He needs to retire from politics, for the sake of the country.
DeWitt,
Poison indeed…. or toxic.
MikeN,
My memory of Jeb! was that he refused to act decisively on any issue. He was the anti-DeSantis. Of course, part of that may have been that Florida was a lot more closely divided when he was governor.
There were two problems with the Trump endorsed candidates.
(a) they were poor candidates with dis-likable features and
(b) they were associated with Trump who — whether RITO’s like it or not– in not popular.
H.L Mencken quote for the day:
Lucia,
Yes those were both problems, but they really are the same problem: Trump stepped into key primary races and elevated weak candidates because they parroted the worst of Trump’s rants about the 2020 election. Several Senate candidates more likely to win were kept out of the general election by Trump. Same with the House, although there were plenty of poor Republican House candidates who won the primary on their own. If Trump doesn’t get out of politics, the Republicans (and the country!) are screwed in 2024.
SteveF: “Several Senate candidates more likely to win were kept out of the general election by Trump. ” Agreed, but also there was a lot of Democratic $$ spent on promoting these less-electable persons in the Republican primaries. (Among many sources: this)
Senate control may well come down to a GA runoff, as it did in 2020. I blame Trump’s rants for causing both of those 2020 races to end in Democratic wins. I hope that Trump stays the heck away from GA in the next month.
lucia (Comment #216070): “There were two problems with the Trump endorsed candidates.
(a) they were poor candidates with dis-likable features and
(b) they were associated with Trump who — whether RITO’s like it or not– in not popular.”
.
That theory does not fit the data. Vance was strongly associated with Trump and beat a strong opponent by a comfortable margin. Oz was clearly a much better candidate than Fetterman, was no more strongly associated with Trump than, say, Youngkin, and seems to have lost anyway. O’Dea in Colorado was attacked by Trump and got creamed by a weak incumbent. DeSantis has been strongly associated with Trump and destroyed hi opponent. Smiley and Dixon were strong candidates with no particular connection to Trump who got beat badly.
.
“Trump” does not explain what happened.
I, for one, overlooked the obvious. Wedge issues have a track record of working. Republicans ran on issues that matter to the average person. Democrats ran on wedge issues.
Silver lining: Even if “Trump” does not explain what happened yesterday, it was a bad day for Trump and a great day for DeSantis.
Vance was considered a never Trumper before he was a candidate. The democrats did Vance a favor by running ads in heavy rotation pointing this out. The voters that cared about that issue were not likely to vote for Ryan. On the abortion he has also stated on record he was in favor of ban after 15 weeks not a total ban so that allowed him to dodge that wedge.
In the end I think he’ll end up a quasi-moderate republican which fits the swing nature of Ohio. His danger has been getting through his first primary which is when he tacked right towards Trump. His familial and educational interest with the white underclass makes him dangerous to democrats so they dumped quite a bit of money into defeating him.
Unfortunately Walker doesn’t need Trump to fail here. He’s one of those candidates that probably shouldn’t have won the primary. The amount of resources from the democrats and the media that is going to go into detailing each and every one of his skeletons and missteps to the public over the next few weeks is going to be pretty ugly for his campaign.
Mike M,
“Smiley and Dixon were strong candidates with no particular connection to Trump who got beat badly.”
.
Smiley was not a strong candidate: she got under 34% in the “jungle primary” while the incumbent got 53%. Smiley was also too cute by half about her positions on the 2020 election and abortion, seeming to flip-flop based on what she figured would work in the general instead of the primary.
.
Dixon holds some pretty standard Republican positions, but her stand on abortion (absolutely prohibited except to save a mother’s life) is so out of step with Michigan that she may have been unelectable even before Trump endorsed her. When asked in a debate “do you believe Donald Trump legitimately won the 2020 election in Michigan?”, she answered “Yes”. Kiss of death in Michigan. The Republican’s had a gaggle of candidates in their primary, and Dixon took the nomination with just under 40% when three more moderate Republicans split the other 60%. She was anything but a strong candidate.
.
Oz was a poor candidate because he 1) wasn’t really from Pennsylvania, AND 2) only won the primary (with 31%!) because he was endorsed by Trump, which gave him a razor thin win. Once again, two more electable candidates, who were actually resident in PA, split most of the remainder of the votes. Hint to Trump: endorse candidates who actually are residents where they are running. Other hint to Trump: please get out of politics.
Y’all have said everything I had to say.
Andrew P,
“The amount of resources from the democrats and the media that is going to go into detailing each and every one of his skeletons and missteps to the public over the next few weeks is going to be pretty ugly for his campaign.”
.
Yes, it is going to be ugly, and even uglier if Trump gets involved. I expect hundreds of millions of Dem money to be spend making sure Walker doesn’t win…. except in the unlikely even Masters beats Kelly in Arizona, which would make Warnoc’s re-election much less important.
Andrew P (Comment #216077): “Vance was considered a never Trumper before he was a candidate.”
.
In 2016, Vance was a Trump skeptic. But he became a strong Trump supporter once he saw what Trump was actually doing in office.
———
Andrew P: “The democrats did Vance a favor by running ads in heavy rotation pointing this out.”
.
That is an astonishing claim that I will not accept without strong evidence. SOP for Dems is to depict all Republicans as extremists. I seriously doubt they did the opposite in Ohio.
.
In the *primary*, some of the other candidates spent money depicting Vance as a never Trumper. That strategy collapsed when Trump endorsed Vance.
————
Andrew P: “On the abortion he has also stated on record he was in favor of ban after 15 weeks not a total ban so that allowed him to dodge that wedge.”
.
Quite a few Republicans did that. It did not help them.
———-
Andrew P: “In the end I think he’ll end up a quasi-moderate republican which fits the swing nature of Ohio. His danger has been getting through his first primary which is when he tacked right towards Trump.”
.
Nonsense.
.
Vance was depicted as weak candidate who only got nominated because of Trump until he actually pulled ahead.
.
I don’t think that Vance tacked to the middle at all; but I don’t know that for sure. So far as I know, a bunch of successful and not-yet-eliminated Republicans (Johnson, Budd, DeSantis, Walker) did not tack to the middle at all. I do know that Oz, Ronchetti, and O’Day all tacked to the middle to no effect. Some others who stood their ground (Bolduc, Dixon, Smiley) got slapped down. There does not seem to be a consistent pattern.
Andrew P (Comment #216078): “Unfortunately Walker doesn’t need Trump to fail here. He’s one of those candidates that probably shouldn’t have won the primary.”
.
In the primary, Walker got over 5 times the vote of his nearest competitor. It would have been nice if Georgia Republicans found someone better, but he seems to have been the best they had.
SteveF (Comment #216079),
I did not know about Smiley flip-flopping. So she lost because she flip-flopped and Dixon lost because she didn’t. Huh.
——–
SteveF: “Once again, two more electable candidates, who were actually resident in PA, split most of the remainder of the votes.”
.
Two? I am not sure there was even one. I was intrigued by Barnette, but she went in as a nobody. Had she won with Trump’s endorsement, she would have been depicted as the ultimate unqualified Trump candidate. But there is a chance she could have caught fire.
.
McCormick is an ESG and China supporting hedge fund manager. He would have been the perfect foil for Fetterman with no appeal to either Trump Democrats or MAGA Republicans. It is not Trump’s fault that PA could not find a candidate who was actually good.
All is well in Florida! What happened to the rest of you chumps?
Ha ha. DeSantis won easily and actually carried Miami-Dade county. If you knew Florida’s voting history you would know how amazing that stat is. Rubio also easily won the Senate race.
.
It doesn’t take Carnac the Magnificent to predict this might get a little messy, especially in the Senate. I hear both parties are flying in plane loads of conspiracy theorists for possible recounts. Let’s hope the psycho-pundits don’t start burning down buildings.
.
Hopefully the Republicans can win the house.
I should also add that many on the left should better understand how Trump got elected after Fetterman won his race.
.
My speculation without evidence is 3 problems for the Republicans:
1. Trump
2. Trump
3. Abortion
Tom Scharf,
I agree with the first two problems. On the third, that was the candidates themselves, not Trump or the SC. No moderate positions in states where a moderate position on abortion is the most popular.
..
.
Mike M,
“Dixon lost because she didn’t. Huh.”
.
Dixon lost because she was way out of touch with popular sentiment on abortion, AND because she embraced Trump’s “big steal in 2020” position. She was NOT a good fit for Michigan, but was the candidate because more electable candidates split the more moderate votes.
I believe the midterms were a victory for big government. We had negative GDP growth for first half of the year and now have price inflation at rates not seen in decades. That economic bad news has obviously not produced anything close to a red wave. A good statist can ignore bad economic news as long as the state is in control and gaining more power. The partisan approach is to blame the candidates which in this case would be the Republicans. The Democrats put up equally bad candidates and candidates that were further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right.
I have always found it best to look at situations as honestly and realistically as possible even when the results are not to my liking. The electorate is moving to left and being influenced ever more completely by the media and academia. That particularly goes for the younger part of the electorate and makes me curious about how their votes effected the midterms. I also believe that there were hints of the change to favoring more security from big government during the pandemic.
In IL I noticed that the Democrat candidates who have won close races in the Western suburbs for the first time over the past couple of cycles are winning currently by larger margins. My US House district is a redistricting effort to obtain two Hispanic districts in IL with a shape that screams gerrymander. It elected Delia Rameriz 67% to 33% over her Republican opponent. There has been talk of her joining AOC’s gang of four. She is certainly qualified. In IL we also had a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would greatly favor public unions. It requires a 3/5 majority and is very close to that in recent counting.
Tom wrote: “I should also add that many on the left should better understand how Trump got elected after Fetterman won his race.”
.
I thought Trump got elected because, like DeSantis, he didn’t do the mealy mouthed, wishy washy, routine of talking around the issues and surrendering to his establishment critics. Fetterman won, like Biden, because he’s not a republican and is one of those people who fails through life being virtuous and can get away with it because of his family’s money. ISTM as mayor of Braddock, he set himself up as lord of the manor. Using the position to work on his image and feel good pet projects, but largely excusing himself from any actual work. He strikes me as a lazier version of AOC.
“MikeN
However, there appears to be a chance he will become like Scott Walker and surrender to the donor class
Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
.
Criticizing someone because you predict he might do something in the future? Not very fair. Nor wise.
”
That is unfair. However, I am not criticizing DeSantis other than the Ron is God ad they put out, which may have been the reason for DeSanctimonious quip.
However, I do worry he will fall under influence of these establishment folks who will push him away from what he’s been doing and have him run a more standard campaign.
SteveF (Comment #216087): “She was NOT a good fit for Michigan, but was the candidate because more electable candidates split the more moderate votes.”
.
That is not true (the part about the primary). There were no other decent Republican candidates. Dixon got more votes than the 2nd and 3rd place finishers combined.
.
One could speculate that things might have been different had the Democrat-turned-Republican Craig not screwed up. But polling showed him slowly but steadily losing support, then rapidly losing support as voters got a better feel for him.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #216088):
Lots of truth in Kenneth’s comment.
With regard to Michigan, maybe Whitmer outspending Dixon 13:1 was also a factor.
https://www.transparencyusa.org/mi/race/governor-of-michigan
Oz is associated with Trump. Oz has independent name ID, but he won the primary because he was endorsed by Trump. He ran a good race and did not do badly like some of these other Trump endorsed candidates. Oz is also likely a liberal Democrat, but not as liberal as Fetterman.
Trump has several other endorsed candidates who won. Adam Laxalt is leading for now. He half endorsed Eric Schmitt in Missouri. Budd in NC won the primary because of Trump’s endorsement, and won narrowly. It is the one Republican win that is smaller than I expected.
Katie Britt in Alabama is likely a NeverTrumper who got his endorsement by saying the right things in person. I would prefer Mo Brooks be the Senator. Mitch McConnell ran ads against him in an earlier race that ended up with Mitch’s candidate and Brooks losing in the primary and a Democrat beating Roy Moore. Trump had endorsed Brooks this time but switched to Britt when it looked like Brooks would lose, and Brooks wasn’t willing to talk about 2020 election.
Trump is now trashing several of his endorsed candidates who lost.
Mike M,
“With regard to Michigan, maybe Whitmer outspending Dixon 13:1 was also a factor.”
.
Sure, that huge difference in spending would hurt any candidate. But why such a huge discrepancy? I think in large part because the RNC and Republicans in the Senate concluded she didn’t have much of a chance, so they didn’t fund her except at the very last minute. It is notable that most of Whitmer’s funding came from out-of-state… Dems are desperate for potential presidential candidates for 2024. Of course, Whitmer being one of the world’s most irritating and obnoxious Karens is a negative for 2024.
Democrats knocked off three Republican incumbents in the House.
Two of them are associated with Trump, Lauren Boebert and Bo Hines who switched the district he was running in after the campaign started when Budd ran for Senate. The third is Steve Chabot who I assume was overconfident and didn’t campaign.
My bad, there have been 5 Dem pickups to date. The Latina who won a special election this year in Texas was beaten in the rematch. Doyle in PA lost.
Democrats have gained seats nationally if you exclude Florida.
Will Democrats reward Sean Maloney? Republicans spend about ten million to beat him while he was running the Dems House campaign arm.
I did a quick nose count on all outstanding House races. Making a few assumptions, it looks like the Republicans will net +5 to +8, just barely gaining control of the House. But the uncertainty is probably +/- 2 seats, so we may still have Pelosi around. After thinking about that, I am inclined to vomit.
MikeN,
Probably Maloney gets a job in the Biden administration or maybe an ambassadorship to a European country…. where he can go on vacation for a couple of years.
Russian forces commander Surovikin just announced another victorious retreat:
“Kherson and settlements around cannot be supplied and function. It is proposed to take up defense along the left bank of the Dnieper River.”
Remember where you first heard that prediction?
Comment 215914, Nov 3:
“It actually looks like the russians may be trying to retreat to the East side of the Dnipro river.”
Comment 215941, Nov 4:
“The Ukrainians have blown almost all of the bridges so russian resupply to the East is by ferry, and many of those have been sunk.”
Careful! Bit of confusion: The right bank or side is always on the right side of the direction in which the water is flowing ie facing downstream, and the left bank is always the left hand side facing downsteam. The Dnipro river flows North to South so the Left bank is the East side. [on maps where North is up]
Mo’ Brooks was a weasel. Just saying. I’m sure Katie is just as bad if not worse, but the fact remains.
Redistricting did Chabot in. In the last election the Ohio went 12-4 to republicans and we lost a house seat. The new map leaves the possibility for 13-2 but several of those districts are really competitive. Those went blue including Chabots District 1.
In SW Ohio the previous map split the urban core of Cincinnati with suburban and rural areas. Western Hamilton county, western parts of the city, and warren county to the north made up Chabots District 1. The Eastern side of hamilton county was combined with five rural/suburban counties east to form district 2. In the 2022 map those two districts were split into three. Western part of Hamilton County and city was combined with the 3 rural counties north in district 8 that Enoch won. Chabot’s base was in that western part. The eastern part of Hamilton county that he received was in Wenstrup’s district last time so Chabot had lttle existing connection to them. It doesn’t help that there is a real East-West animosity historically in the City.
This is I think the reason Trump said Ron DeSanctimonious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8jz7Cwjo3c
It looks like the people who voted for Libertarian Chase Oliver in Georgia (a bit over 2%) will get to choose whether Warnock or Walker is elected on December 3, and probably which party controls the Senate. I’ll be surprised if those voters support Walker, but you never know. Most likely but sad outcome: Biden gets to appoint crazy-left judges for the next 2+ years.
MikeN,
Whoever came up with that crazy idea for an ad should be fired immediately and never allowed to work in politics again. Badly done, really offensive, and stupid. Good grief.
SteveF and MikeN have excellent analysis but Mike M right is on the money that there was no pro-Trump or Anti-trump pattern. Trumps fearlessness and leadership in policy is balanced by his lack of self-awareness and easiness to lampoon.
Most agree that DeSantis is a much better politician who can step in to take Trump’s mantle — if Trump will have the good sense to pass (which he likely won’t).
The pattern that I see is states with mail-in balloting that are controlled by Democrat governors or secretaries of state. Every registered Dem can be given concierge service to provide them weekly mailings of ballot applications months before the election, praise for applying, alerts when the ballot is coming, daily text and email reminders to send it in, praise for voting with their acknowledgment that it is received, all 30-60 days before election day, usually before the first debate.
Oh and voter registration is automatic when one moves into the state and gets a driver’s license. No proof of citizenship is necessary. Nor is there a need to show residency for the required time, usually a year but sometimes 6 months. It’s all honor system now in Dem states.
It won’t be the Libertarians who decide the Georgia runoff. The outcome will be dictated by turnout.
.
Following on from Ron Graf: I wonder if there might be a correlation between Republican under performance and poor control of voting integrity.
Key states for Ron’s thesis would be Wisconsin, California, Nevada. I’m not sure how much of their previous covid rules that Wisconsin eliminated. Nevada passed everything into law. California is super lax and right now the Republican takeover of the House is in races in California and a few in New York where they have small leads.
A North Carolina race in 2018 was overturned because of absentee ballot violations, suspicion that someone was changing votes after collecting ballots. This would never be noticed in California.
Florida has mail in ballots and it was a GOP rout all the way up and down the ticket. Probably mostly related to DeSantis coattails is my guess. FL flipped 3 house seats, and it is 20-8 in a nearly 50/50 state. Gerrymandering? FL has been turning red over the past 10 years for sure.
.
DeSantis margin in 2018 = 0.4%
DeSantis margin in 2022 = 19.4%
.
We can probably depend on Trump bringing a wrecking ball to GA again, ha ha, groan. I just wish he would go away at this point, but it’s a free country. Kind of.
I doubt Trump will have any further effect in Georgia. Demagogue Party messaging will continue to be “All Republicans are equivalent to Trump” and “Walker is Trump’s water boy”. Or some such. I don’t see what Trump can do about that.
Interesting comment from John Hinderaker:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/author/john
——
Maybe the best case for the Republic in 2024 would be for Trump to run and lose the nomination to DeSantis.
Mike M.
I disagree. Oz is much more strongly associated with Trump. Oz’s entire political credential is “Trump backing”. Youngkin is a sitting governor and has a record. No matter what Trump, nor what the situation might have been in the past, he now has a record. So Youngkin is not a “purely-Trump” candidate.
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Oz is precisely the sort apurely-Trump Republican candidates. THe failed to win a seat that should have been next to impossible to lose. . A candidate with some positive would have beat Fetterman. But being only-Trump-endorsed resulted in him losing an otherwise winnable seat.
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You are using past tense. DeSantis is absolutely, positively no longer a “Trump” candidate. Trump was attacking him shorter before polling! Trying to use his election as evidence in favor of Trump backing is absurd.
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Trump has shut up on that now because he probably realizes it’s not working. But DeSantis is not a Trump candidate.
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That some non-Trump candidates lost is irrelevant. Trump backed poor unappealing candidates — like Oz. And those candidates lost.
Mike M,
“I don’t see what Trump can do about that.”
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He could:
1) not got to Georgia to campaign
2) issue a carefully worded public statement urging Republicans, Libertarians, and independents in Georgia to vote for Walker, noting that Republican control of the Senate is needed to block the appointment of judges who ought not serve on the Federal bench
3) not say a damned word about 2020
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OTOH, the above is about equivalent to asking him to sprout wings and take his 250 pounds to the air.
Russell
Not sure what to think on the Russian announcement to withdraw from the west bank, but I tend to agree with the Ukraine position.
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“..Actions speak louder than words. We see no signs that Russia is leaving Kherson without a fight. A part of the ru-group is preserved in the city, and additional reserves are charged to the region. ???????? is liberating territories based on intelligence data, not staged TV statements…” Nov 9
https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1590379076464041984
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No Russian movement off the front lines as yet and I find it unusual that Russia would give Ukraine a heads up on its strategic plans.
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I can well believe a slow leap frog back to continuously pound the Ukraine troops moving up in the open and out of their entrenchments. This would be consistent with Russian tactics of an attrition strategy and Russia can always say its changed its mind about a full withdrawal from the west bank later. Mud season is here and I foresee little movement over the next several weeks until the freeze
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I am also confused about your comments on my last post about the problems regarding Ukraine ability to replace Ukraine air defenses. I did not address infrastructure. Or were you responding to a different post? I do find your comment that Russia has failed to destroy a good bit of Ukraine infrastructure to be at odds with even Ukraine statements on this subject.
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I don’t think it’s been established that Trump support or non-support was irrelevant. He definitely backed some bad candidates. For awhile it looked like some of those bad candidates might win, but they were still not good decisions by Trump. He endorsed Romney in 2018, and learned nothing from it in picking some NeverTrumpers again. Wray was his pick for head of FBI. One of the people involved in framing him as a Russian spy, he chose to be head of the CIA.
Not sure why Russia would announce a withdrawal, it’s not their style. I would treat their intentions with skepticism. Perhaps the new commander knows he can get away with it now and blame it on the old commander.
Mike M: “Maybe the best case for the Republic in 2024 would be for Trump to run and lose the nomination to DeSantis.”
I agree. The Republicans can then adopt a true platform, and run on something other than “let’s have 4 more years of Trump.” Perhaps after a few primaries, all the other candidates will line up behind DeSantis, to avoid nominating Trump. (As Dems did in 2020, supporting Biden rather than Sanders, whom many considered unelectable.)
DeSantis had the largest margin of victory in FL since 1868, Not a single major newspaper in Florida endorsed him, which went unnoticed by the voters. Humorously this is now a badge of honor for Republicans.
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WSJ: “In a victory speech in Tampa, Mr. DeSantis proclaimed that his state is where “woke goes to die””
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As HaroldW states the establishment lining up behind DeSantis in 2024 isn’t necessarily going to help much against Trump. The only thing they can really do is clear the field so it is DeSantis vs Trump.
Trump backed some weak candidates, but I don’t see that he was responsible for those candidates. Mostly he backed candidates who were likely to win anyway, then took the credit.
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At the time Trump endorsed Oz, about a month before the primary, Oz had a slim lead over McCormick. With Trump’s endorsement, Oz managed a very narrow victory over McCormick. A lot of voters made up their minds in that month, so maybe few of them would have gone for Oz without Trump. We can’t know. But I don’t know of much evidence that says Trump made much difference.
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Trump’s endorsement seemed to provide a big lift for Vance. That was partly because Vance’s opponents tried to convince voters that Vance was a never Trumper. And Vance went on to handily beat a very strong Democrat candidate.
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One place where Trump really went in for underdogs was in a couple of Georgia races. His guys lost; badly as I recall.
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Trump is an important figure. He is not some sort of magical demon.
The kerfuffle here over the Republican candidate lack of quality loses sight of the Democrat candidate lack of quality and being much further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right. Ben Shapiro today was commenting on the lack of quality Republican candidates and just as I was about to yell what about the Democrats he did a vocal hand wave with something like low quality candidates are accepted on the Democrat side.
I see a bit of contradiction here with when the potential for winning an election big seemed possible and it was the all-knowing voting public would throw the bums out and when that did not materialize it appears that the voting public was fooled by appearances and messaging.
In my view most of the voting public does not have the time or desire and sometimes the intellect to make informed decisions when it comes to voting and thus depend on the media and other members of the intelligentsia for that information. The public is more informed about their cell phone, house, car, food, clothes and sundry other items than they are about their political candidates ideas (or lack thereof) and the implications. I will take the free market over the democratic process when it comes to being or becoming informed.
NY was curiously a disaster for Democrats in the house. It looks like the Republicans may flip 5 seats there. This story evolved over the past year.
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NY passed a state amendment to prevent gerrymandering. A new map could not be agreed upon by an independent commission (big surprise) and the NY state assembly and governor summarily made their own ultra-gerrymandered map. The state’s Supreme Court rejected it, and ultimately had to draw the maps themselves.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/27/1095100208/new-york-redistricting-rejected
Apr 2022: “The legal fight over New York’s redistricting process could be a factor in the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the U.S. House.”
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #216120): “The kerfuffle here over the Republican candidate lack of quality loses sight of the Democrat candidate lack of quality and being much further to the left than the Republican candidates were to the right.”
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Exactly right. A bunch of the Democrat Senate incumbents (Hassan, Wernock, Bennet, Murray, Kelly, Cortez Masto) are a pretty lackluster lot. But they did have the advantage of incumbency. Fetterman was a joke even before his stroke. Hochul is both inept and a lousy candidate. etc.
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Virtually every Democrat supports abortion up to the moment of birth. I don’t think that any Republican is that extreme.
Of course it is the candidate’s quality. It must be!!! It certainly couldn’t be the voters rejecting your righteous policy platform, that only happens to the other guys who are immoral and only tricking people into voting for them with slick subversive ads.
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Abortion, Jan 6th, supporting dubious claims of election fraud. No actual economic plan. No separation on how to handle Ukraine, China. Etc. Not helpful in close races.
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All in all, a mediocre unfocused race run by both sides IMO. The Republicans should have done better given the environment, but they didn’t. If they hold on to the house the net effect of a split government will still be accomplished. A narrow win but the polls were apparently within 1% this time. Only people’s expectations were off.
Personally, I’m not sure most democrats know what democrats support. The overwheming theme on democrats who walked away was an “awakening” that what they believed was true, about democrats and republicans, actually wasn’t.
It is just barely possible that control of the Senate won’t come down to Georgia. Counting ballots in Arizona is taking forever. It seems that the early ballots have been counted; the delays are with ballots counted on election day. Quite likely mostly Republican. Kari Lake claims the biggest delays have been in strongly Republican areas. Of course, she might be biased.
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That said, it does seem that Masters has an awful lot of ground to make up to beat Kelly.
Mike M,
Election officials in Arizona have been congratulating themselves on being able to have ‘nearly all’ ballots counted by Friday afternoon. There is something very wrong with your system if 3 days to count most ballots is considered ‘good’.
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I think Ms Lake may be mistaken. My understanding was that the uncounted ballots were mostly from the Phoenix area, and even as vote totals have increased (very slowly!) the differences between Dems and Republicans does not seem to have moved much. My guess: Lake has a modest chance of winning, but Masters is very unlikely to win. Which means another Warnock runoff for control of the Senate, where Dems will pour a hundred million dollars in to make it very unlikely Walker wins.
Florida may be where woke goes to die, but if so, then California is where woke tries to kill you.
They already spent $27 for each Georgia citizen in that race. They may double that if control of the Senate is on the line. Crazy.
Ed Forbes (Comment #216114) “I do find your comment that Russia has failed to destroy a good bit of Ukraine infrastructure to be at odds with even Ukraine statements on this subject.”
Yes, I think the Ukrainian are hyping the grid destruction far beyond its actual destruction. They are trying [successfully] to get newer and better NATO air defense systems. I say they will move these to the war zone to increase their battlefield advantage.
My analysis I posted in Comment #216057:
“I am still working with the NASA “Black Marble” and the Ukraine electrical grid. Because the NASA gis files are difficult to work with I have posted two screenshots that everyone can load:
3NOV2021, before the war. Ukraine is very sparsely lit compared to its neighbors to the East [Poland eg]. It is an agriculture community with vast expenses of darkness.
3NOV2022, after 10 months of war AND Putin’s attempt at taking down the grid. Ukraine is still sparsely lit but not a lot different than 12 months prior.
3NOV2021 https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134143345897473?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA
3NOV2022
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1590134373529317379?s=20&t=NnmsAGMpCcib76PMPg-qEA”
Source:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
I don’t think it’s going to come down to this, but the RNCC/DNCC lawyers’ wet dream is a 217-217 House, to be decided by Boebert’s district in CO, currently with a margin of fewer than 100 votes. Can you imagine how many ballots one can challenge out of 300K? It’ll keep them busy for weeks!
The real election lawyer enrichment plan may be Arizona. People went to a polling place, checked in, but the workers could not print the ballot. So the officials told the voters they could just go to a different polling place. When they tried to check in at the other polling place, they were not allowed to on the grounds that they had already voted.
MikeN: “Key states for Ron’s thesis would be Wisconsin, California, Nevada.”
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Add PA, GA and AZ. All of the key swing states that there have been questionable statistical anomalies changed their voting administration for 2020. In PA the legislature objected to the changes as being in violation of the state’s constitution but they were overruled by the PA Supreme Court, who according to the US constitution has no power over election laws. The legislature appealed to the US Supreme Court who declined to get involved. Eight other states sued PA in the Supreme Court after the election but the SCOTUS said they were too late (Latches).
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Either everyone should vote by mail or limit it to those unable to vote in person. This is Kari Lake’s issue and it looks like AZ voters agree with her, at least the ones who stood in line to vote.
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The WaPo is projecting she is favored to win.
“According to our model, Lake is behind in the vote count, but slightly favored to win after all votes are counted. Hobbs still has a chance.”
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I think Blake Masters lost. A lot of the Dem vote was already in before his strong showing in the polls. I will credit that they had their debate before mail in voting started, unlike PA, which had it ~30 days after ballots were mailed.
Ken Fritsch,
“I was about to yell what about the Democrats he did a vocal hand wave with something like low quality candidates are accepted on the Democrat side.”
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I think it is very clear that there are plenty of politicians who are unlikely to blind us with their brilliance. It is also true that there are many hopelessly dumb politicians (Maxine Waters, Mazie Hirono, Rick Perry, and Kamala Harris are but a few well known examples from a huge population). But even if voters recognize a politician is pretty dumb…. or suffers from obvious dementia or even brain damage…. a politician will continue to win elections if they consistently act to protect the interests of their constituents and continue to reflect their constituents values.
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One of the reasons Congress seems always willing to defer to ‘experts’ in the bureaucracy on critical choices is that they are woefully short (on average) of their own expertise. I find it distressing, but I doubt it will ever change.
Tom Scharf,
“They already spent $27 for each Georgia citizen in that race. They may double that if control of the Senate is on the line.”
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Sure, and it has already started. There have long been complains about contributions from the wealthy to Republican politicians, but the reality today is that lots of people with astronomical personal wealth, many from the tech sector in California, are spending untold millions to support ‘progressive’ causes and politicians. Has there even been a level of personal political expenditure like the $400 million “zuckerbucks” program to get out democrat votes in 2020? I doubt it. The level of personal wealth that the tech sector has generated is unprecedented in the country’s history, and so is the level of political influence those very wealthy people now exercise.
I counted up outstanding votes in each county in Nevada and calculated (based on votes for each candidate tabulated so far in each county) how many more votes Laxalt and Cortez-Masto are likely to get. Results: Laxalt is likely end up with close to 442,000 votes, while Cortez-Masto will get close to 426,000 votes in the final tally. So Laxalt will almost certainly win….. and the Georgia runoff will determine control of the Senate.
There is some real chance Manchin will switch to an independent before his next election if he chooses to run for Senate again in 2024. Although he is very well liked in WV he may not be able to overcome knee jerk anti-Democrat vibes there this time. Switching will guarantee his reelection. If the Democrats don’t come through with his promised permitting reform then he may leave the party.
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This weeks election in WV had Republican US House reps winning by >30%.
WV Senate is 29/4 Republican
WV House is 87/11 Republican
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Banning and limiting abortion also has a lot of support in WV.
I predict Hershel Walker loses the runoff.
Tom Scharf,
If Joe Manchin wants to have real influence AND get re-elected in 2024 (for certain), all he has to do is declare himself an independent and then caucus with the Republicans, a la Bernie Sanders with the Democrats…. giving control of the Senate to the Republicans. I doubt he will, but I think he should.
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Lucia,
I agree, Walker will likely lose the run-off; not certain, but likely. Three factors will work against him:
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1) many millions of dollars worth of negative ads the Dems will run
2) the bad vibe of being associated with Trump (which may be why he didn’t win on Tuesday)
3) the people who voted for the Libertarian are more likely aligned with the Democrats than the Republicans
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But as you say, predictions are hard.
“I predict Hershel Walker loses the runoff.”
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If so, would it be because Warnock would have won in a rank choice voting once the liberatarian was removed or are you just feeling past is prologue in a GA senate runoff?
Russell,
There are a number of explanations for the Russian announcement and their current moves to withdraw from Kherson. One that seems interesting is that the US and Russia have made a deal requiring several steps by both sides, to be implemented one step at a time. May likely be internet fever dreams, but still an interesting idea.
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The US to lean on Ukraine to accept. As their budget is completely underwritten by the US, I do not see how they could not follow the US lead on this. Neither side may admit to a deal, but actions speak for themselves.
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Withdrawal across the river to be without Ukraine pushing the line and no attacks on Russian convoys during the withdrawal.
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Ukraine to withdraw from artillery range of Donetsk city and from other areas of Donbas.
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The US signs a treaty for no NATO membership for Ukraine.
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The US to lift economic sanctions and unfreeze assets.
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Basically what could have achieved last April. We will see over the next week or so if this is just internet fever dreams or not.
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I’m not enthusiastic for Walker’s chances. He was a great running back for UGA though.
Walker was not as good a running back as OJ Simpson…. but definitely a better person. 😉
SteveF,
There’s a fourth factor: absentee dad stories about Walker will hurt with the demographic he has to pick up.
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Yeah, he’s not as bad as OJ. Murdering your wife puts you in a different category from other things. But Walker isn’t running against OJ.
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I’m feeling Walker specifically will be unattractive to the voters who didn’t vote for either of the run-off candidates.
Ed Forbes,
Yes, just fever dreams. The Ukraine is clear: they will not begin to negotiate until they get 100% of what they want before negotiations start….. it almost seems they are not interested in negotiation. I speculate that is because they are not interested in negotiations. Having your country funded at $100+ billion a year with no obligations whatsoever may have something to do with that.
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That the USA is going into debt to the tune of about $2,500 per year for each Ukrainian citizen seems to have been forgotten by everyone involved. This is not sustainable. You may have read what Herbert Stein said about things that can’t go on forever; it certainly applies here. We just have to wait for the numbskulls in Washington to understand that.
Turnout in the runoff will surely be lower. Whether Walker of Warnock wins will likely be decided by who votes and who does not. Over 200K Georgians voted for Kemp but not Walker. If they normally lean Republican, they may not see much point in bothering to vote again for Warnock. That would work to Walker’s advantage. Ditto for the 50K+ who voted Libertarian for Senate but not Governor. Of course, there are other groupings that might go the other way. I see no basis better than a coin flip to make a prediction.
SteveF (Comment #216145): “The Ukraine is clear: they will not begin to negotiate until they get 100% of what they want before negotiations start”.
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No, they are just not going to make concessions until negotiations start. Perfectly reasonable.
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What concessions are being offered by Russia? None.
Lucia,
Maybe that will hurt him, but here is what Walker said:
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Maybe his motives are not so bad as his opponents suggest.
Mike M,
“No, they are just not going to make concessions until negotiations start. Perfectly reasonable.”
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Not sure what you have been reading, but here is what Zelenskyy said on November 10:
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How is that not demanding 100% of what you want before you agree to start negotiations? The Russians have made no demands to start negotiations that I am aware of. Do you have a list of Russian demands to start negotiations?
Real negotiations have to be held privately. A bunch of public posturing strutting around like peacocks is counterproductive.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, pubic bluster is counterproductive if you want negotiations….. another reason to believe neither the USA nor the Ukraine actually want negotiations.
Maybe the red wave happened, just not where expected. This says that Republicans won the popular vote for the House, 52.8% to 47.2%.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-midterms-2022/results/house
Not final, but it should not change much. If the numbers hold up, it is roughly WHAT WAS EXPECTED from the generic ballot polling assuming a 3 pt Democrat bias.
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In 2020, the Dems won the popular vote, 50.8% to 47.7%. So Republicans went from -3.1% to +5.6%. Nearly a nine point shift. From 2016 to 2018 there was a shift of 9.7%; that produced a swing of 41 seats. But this time the swing in popular vote did not translate into seats.
Mike M,
I think you have to look at the vote totals state by state to evaluate the total vote difference. Could be that Democrats in uncompetitive states just didn’t bother with voting, so no impact on the house or senate outcomes, but a big shift toward Republicans in share of total votes. There are so many non-competitive districts (and even whole states) that vote totals may not mean what they did in the past. Look at Massachusetts: not a single Republican elected to any state-wide or national office (and not many to local offices). A Republican might just figure voting in Massachusetts won’t make much difference.
The Russian withdrawal has several reasons floating around the internet. A couple of the main ones
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Russia and the US nave made a deal. This is generally thought to be a reasonable solution, so not thought likely.
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Russia is withdrawing the forces on the west bank as they heavily consist of paratroopers, their best troops, and want to put them back in strategic reserve. Russia feels they can get Kherson back later. Russia then destroys all the bridges over the Niper river, cutting supply to a major portion of the Ukraine army fighting in the far east of Ukraine . This is followed up with attacks using the 300k reserves called up.
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Russia defense is collapsing and they are running to safety on the east bank of the river.
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Ed,
The east side of the river is the sensible defensive position. Seems odd that you are searching for other reasons, some far fetched, and ignoring the obvious. Ever heard of Occam? The simplest explanation is usually the right one. The Russians don’t give a hoot about Kherson, they care about their land corridor and the canal delivering water to the Crimea.
SteveF,
I think you are right about Russia moving to a more easily defended position. It is significant that they *have* to that because they are losing. They certainly care about keeping Kherson, but they have to prioritize. They need to shore up defenses elsewhere with troops freed up from Kherson.
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The interesting part will come when Ukraine redeploys their troops from the right bank. They won’t need to make a contested crossing of the Dnieper to do that.
Perhaps Republicans overperformed in districts that don’t matter, where they usually get 20-30%.
I have been following the OSINT reports on the Kherson retreat. These are sources I have come to trust over the months. They are anecdotal reports from soldiers, media and civilians. It’s a complicated situation. Here are some samples.
On the Ukrainian advance:
“Dozens of settlements have been liberated in the last 24 hours, most notably Snihurivka, a russian stronghold north of Kherson city for the past 8 months.”
“The following animated map is a best guess of Ukrainian troop advances in the past couple of days. Noteworthy that it’s only a few miles deep but it’s along a 75 mile long front”,
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1590859897469833216?s=20&t=nygHAE08kig7RfnXlPC9eg
On the Russian retreat:
“Several ferries and barges crossing the Dnipro river are visible in satellite imagery from today as Russian forces withdraw from the river’s right (west) bank.”
“Ukrainian forces continue to conduct constant pinpoint artillery strikes on Russian crossing points over the Dnipro.”
“Russian column of military equipment was hit in Antonivka as they tried to retreat.”
“Russian sources are now also reporting a large amount of Russian forces are still stuck on East side of the Dnipro.”
“There is reports of large amounts of Russian personnel at the crossing areas.”
“If you Ukranians don’t start negotiations soon all the russians are going to be gone.” …. seems to be what the “Negotiation Nuts” are saying to the Ukranians.
From Radio Free Europe:
“Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region have since September 6 reclaimed more than 300 settlements and areas home to around 150,000 people”
“Ukraine had retaken 6,000 square kilometers in its recent counteroffensive in the northeast, where dozens of areas, including the cities of Izyum, Kupyansk, and Balaklia have been retaken.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-battlefield-advances-zelenskiy/32029337.html
…and now there’s Kherson in the South.
“Perhaps Republicans overperformed in districts that don’t matter…”
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Precisely. Dems have shown a superior ability to concentrate their resources on close races. Mail-in balloting has allowed them to have many ways to influence the election besides media blitz and TV ads.
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I would concur with Lucia’s prediction on GA runoff except for that I think libertarian are not casual voters and mostly identify with GOP. And Dems already gave it all they had for Warnock.
I think Georgia result depends on the other results. If it is 50D-49R, then some voters might be more likely to vote Republican who don’t like Walker. This was how Trump got elected with the Supreme Court.
Pollster expect Republicans to eventually lose in Nevada. 538:
“In Nevada, Laxalt leads Cortez Masto 49 percent to 48 percent — a margin of 15,867 votes. However, there are roughly 100,000 ballots left to count, and they’re mostly mail-in ballots, which favor Democrats. So we think Cortez Masto will probably take the lead once they’re counted.”
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Amazingly all the slow counting states get just enough votes to let Democrats win. This may be reality but it’s not going to be accepted graciously by the skeptical and needs to be fixed.
Flag raisings galore!…Pictures, also dancing exuberant Ukrainian civilians. It’s heartwarming.
Beryslav, Kherson region
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1591041723949797381?s=20&t=OveJZVx7Z1LCPf3Bso_5OQ
??????
https://twitter.com/GraniTweet/status/1591043091372261376?s=20&t=OveJZVx7Z1LCPf3Bso_5OQ
…and the big one:
“Ukrainian Army have entered the western area of Kherson city, Shumensky district!” https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1591023484859482112?s=20&t=OveJZVx7Z1LCPf3Bso_5OQ
P’yatykhatky and Kuchers’ke
https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1590755482133680129?s=20&t=OveJZVx7Z1LCPf3Bso_5OQ
Tom Scharf,
If Laxalt loses in NV, then nobody is going to spend a fortune on the runoff in Georgia….. it just won’t matter as much.
Ron Graf (Comment #216160): “I think libertarian are not casual voters and mostly identify with GOP.”
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I have no idea if libertarian are casual voters or nor or if they tend to prefer one party. But all the evidence I have seen (such as exit polls) is that Libertarian candidates in competitive races have very little impact. I think the reason is that the people who *vote* for them are “a pox on both your houses” types. So they don’t much care whether the Republican or Democrat wins.
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There is no reason to believe that libertarians and the people who vote for Libertarians are the same people, although there is overlap.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216162): “Amazingly all the slow counting states get just enough votes to let Democrats win. This may be reality but it’s not going to be accepted graciously by the skeptical and needs to be fixed.”
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Indeed.
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Laxalt says that most of the ballots to be counted are not actually mail-in. They are mail-out ballots that were returned by hand to polling places on election day. He claims they are mostly Republican, unlike traditional mail-in ballots. We shall see.
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Congress sets election day. They should specify that “election day” means the last day for receipt of valid votes.
Mike M: “There is no reason to believe that libertarians and the people who vote for Libertarians…”
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Great point. I never thought of it; I wonder if Libertarian candidates realized this.
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The people that wish a pox on both of your houses are not liking Biden more than not liking Trump right now because Trump is out of power and already being pursued by all sorts of people with guns and warrants.
Mike M,
“Laxalt says that most of the ballots to be counted are not actually mail-in.”
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Maybe, but here is reality: Yesterday at this time Laxalt was ahead by ~15,000 votes, it is now ~9,000 votes, with “12%” remaining to be counted. Based on where the outstanding votes are, I would guess that lead will narrow by at least 5,000 votes.
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If Laxalt manages to win, it is going to be by a few thousand votes, and nothing like the pre-election polling suggested.
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The situation is much worse for Lake and Masters in Arizona: the vast majority of outstanding votes are in the two counties that went strongly for the Democrats. I put Lake and Masters chances of winning at close to 0%.
“Congress sets election day. They should specify that “election day” means the last day for receipt of valid votes.”
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That sounds nice, but it is not what Congress would likely do if they ever got involved in state voting rules. More like: 100% mail-in voting, with votes counted if received within 14 days after “election day”, no requirement for voter ID or signature match, ballot harvesting everywhere without limits, and no guarantee a voter is even a citizen. Which was pretty much the bill Democrats wanted to pass this year. Be careful what you wish for.
SteveF (Comment #216169): “If Laxalt manages to win, it is going to be by a few thousand votes, and nothing like the pre-election polling suggested.”
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RCP’s final rating on that race was “toss up” with Laxalt projected to win by 0.6%. That would be 6000 votes.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/senate/nv/nevada_senate_laxalt_vs_cortez_masto-7392.html
The final RCP average had Laxalt up, but polls in Nevada historically underestimate Democrat support. My guess is that is due to effective ballot harvesting.
SteveF (Comment #216170): “Be careful what you wish for.”
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I am being careful. I am not advocating any expansion of federal power. Congress already sets election day, they have done so for Presidential elections since 1845, more recently for other federal offices.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/7
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Note that “the day for the election” is undefined. It used to be that there was no need to define that term; now there is a need.
Gosh, have I become Republican establishment? From this article
I couldn’t agree more.
Mike M,
My main point about Laxalt was that his claim of most outstanding votes being Republican is nonsense, and the clear trend over the past 48 hours shows this. His lead three days ago suggested he would likely win, but that now is not at all certain. He may squeak by, but there is at least a reasonable chance he will lose by a thousand or so votes. If I were Laxalt, I wouldn’t be making dubious public statements.
HaroldW,
“Gosh, have I become Republican establishment? ”
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Not unless I have too…. and I doubt that I have. Trump’s behavior is just so destructive (to Republicans!), so idiotic, and so selfish that I simply can’t support the guy…. evah. He needs to retire from politics.
On the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, I find it strange that for an army supposedly cut out of supply, they were able to evacuate an estimated 25k troops and their equipment from the front lines and over the river in about 24 hours.
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Much of the withdrawal was over the “destroyed “ bridge.
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As I surmised, the Russian issue with supply was not current, but concerns of possible future issues that drove their planning.
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The withdrawal was a tactical success, but the Russian public looks to be furious because of the withdrawal from Russian territory. The Russian political leaders are working to assuage this anger or face political problems at home. Success on the other fronts are now required now to address the Russian public concerns.
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The freeze is coming in the next couple of weeks that will allow far reaching mechanized movement. We will see what happens then.
Mike M,
“I am not advocating any expansion of federal power.”
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OK, but there is no possibility Democrats would go along with changing the law to require ballots be received by election day. They would be more than happy to do make the other changes I listed.
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Loosie-goosy voting rules and ballot collection in states controlled by Democrats will continue indefinitely, and may get worse. I suspect 2024 will not have an election day, but rather an election week, and after that, maybe an election month… say early November to early December. I think the goal for Democrats is the ability to harvest ballots from “legal voters” even after election day, so they can win every close race.
I think Trump is finally done. I’m reading a lot of this. And between the options, I think I prefer it this way. Trump out of the way for 2024, no diffusion of blame for the next couple of years of trouble onto Republicans.. Things have a better chance of working out in the end. Just have to survive the next few years, and I think the next few years were going to be rough no matter what happened with the Senate anyway.
[Edit: Well. Less grounds for successful diffusion of blame, maybe I should have said.]
A Federal district judge has stopped the Biden administration’s loan forgiveness program as unconstitutional. There will be an appeal to the 5th circuit court of appeals, where I expect the judges ruling will be upheld by the appeals court….. then on to the Supreme Court…. it may take until 2024 to play out.
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The reason the Biden Administration will never end the “national emergency” of the covid pandemic is because that is the only justification for the student loan forgiveness program (2003 HEROS act). The loan forgiveness program has nothing at all to do with the intent of the 2003 law, but is the only fig leaf the administration has to justify its unlawful actions.
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So in case you wondered when the covid “emergency” will end, the answer is: not likely until a Republican is elected President.
“Russian territory”, ha ha. I’ll check last year’s maps.
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Russia can just declare London their territory, right? Ukraine can declare Moscow as Ukrainian territory, right? Thus, it is so.
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I think reasonable people would call this territory under dispute, but others apparently think Russia can just assert ownership of anything, anywhere. The Russian people might be feeling a bit embarrassed by the performance of their mighty army so far, and that is a direct threat to Putin’s ego and future.
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Right now you look at what Putin has done and wonder what has been gained here and what it has cost. Compare this to what they probably thought was going to happen, Crimea II. You can only hide that reality from the Russians for so long. As it sits Putin might be wise to get out of this while the getting is good.
I would love to see Trump go, but everyone spiking the football on his exit should be aware that the fundamental conditions that brought Trump to the forefront still exist. He will only be replaced by a sane version of Trump. DeSantis or someone else.
Maybe Trump is really done: https://nypost.com/2022/11/11/trump-voters-are-done-with-ex-president-he-needs-to-disappear/
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Zito is no establishment Republican.
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I am sure there are die-hard Trump supports who will never abandon him, but it does sound like a lot of former supporters think he is costing conservatives far too much, and needs to go away.
Tom,
I agree. I’m really only glad Trump is out for a couple of reasons, like (1) I won’t support him because I think he thinks his political interests are more important than the preservation of our political system and (2) I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of occupying the Oval Office again.
But sure. The problems that gave rise to Trump still exist. Maybe DeSantis or someone like him will clean it up. I’m just glad to think Trump might not be able to stand in the way of that.
Tom Scharf,
I am perfectly OK with a sane version of Trump like DeSantis, but not the insane version we have suffered for most the last 6 years.
mark bofill,
“I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of occupying the Oval Office again.”
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Well, he may have a slightly better chance than I do…. but not a lot better. Far too many people loath him for him to win election, and with good cause. I do hope the execrable and incompetent Merrick Garland heeds some sensible words: “Never murder a man who is committing suicide.” Forget about filing charges while Trump is self-destructing; filing politically motivated charges will only help Trump, not hurt him.
Two recent things about Trump.
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One is that before the election he made a wonderfully Trumpian statement that if the Republicans do well, he should get the credit, but if they do badly he would not be to blame; followed immediately by a prediction that the exact opposite would happen. If you take Trump literally, that is one more example of how unhinged and egotistical he is. But if you take Trump seriously, you realize that he parodied himself to illustrate the silliness of his critics.
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He was absolutely right. Lots of people are blaming Trump for the disappointing election results. How many would have given Trump credit for a red tsunami? Few or none, I think.
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Then yesterday Trump sent out a borderline deranged email attacking DeSantis:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/11/dementia-don.php
It is often said that Trump has been living rent free in the heads of his opponents. I am starting to think that DeSantis has taken residence in Trump’s head.
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I think this is the beginning of the end for Trump. He has already alienated many of his supporters with his behavior since the 2020 election. He knows he can’t beat DeSantis without going negative, He can’t go negative without alienating DeSantis supporters, but that includes most Trump supporters. Either way, he loses.
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I hope Trump runs in 2024. That way Republican voters can officially repudiate him.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216180): “I think reasonable people would call this territory under dispute”.
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I disagree. One might call Crimea “territory under dispute”. But Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts are Ukrainian territory partially under Russian occupation.
Ed Forbes
“they were able to evacuate an estimated 25k troops and their equipment from the front lines and over the river in about 24 hours.”
Well maybe the russians have finally learned how to retreat like a professional army. They have had a lot of practice. Try, try again! As for me, I’ll ignore the news from the Kremlin and wait a week to see what the final tally of lost equipment, kia and pows.
I think I would give Blake Masters a higher chance than Laxalt to win. Definitely Kari Lake.
Maricopa county is huge, but I just learned that you can vote anywhere in the county. When you go to vote, they print out a ballot for your area if needed.
Mike M: “I hope Trump runs in 2024. That way Republican voters can officially repudiate him.”
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I hope Trump endorses DeSantis, either before announcing his own run or at some point after where he would withdraw. I support Trump’s policies and thank him for his service but I have been waiting patiently for 6 years for him to adjust away from his bad habits. I think my patience and many others has run out.
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As others noted, he has made some very bad appointments, though he did not screw up on the SCOTUS ones. He just did not realize the size and depth of the swamp. He needed to declassify the Russia-gate documents and assign someone who did not hate him to get that done.
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There is a long list of people that screwed over the country because they were weak or naïve or Trump hurt their egos, including, Sessions, Flynn, Pence, Maddis, Kelly, Tillerson, Bolton, Barr, etc… This does not include the half of his cabinet and appointees that resigned after Jan 6.
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In short, there are not a lot of people that I can imagine that would want to give up a successful position to work for him.
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He was a true maverick and changed the party for the better. But like Patton and McArthur we must say thank you and goodbye.
Ron Graf (Comment #216190): “I hope Trump endorses DeSantis, either before announcing his own run or at some point after where he would withdraw.”
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I used to think the same. But I now realize:
(1) It ain’t gonna happen.
(2) It will hurt DeSantis by allowing the Demagogue Party to label DeSantis “Trump 2” or some such.
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Ron Graf: “He was a true maverick and changed the party for the better. But like Patton and McArthur we must say thank you and goodbye.”
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Spot on. Although fate intervened in the case of Patton.
I was at the Politico website and I see the Republicans have won 211 House seats with the Democrats at 194. The Democrats are leading in 20 undeclared contests and the Republicans in 10. If the leaders hold the House would have a Republican advantage of 221 to 214.
If the later counted votes break in high portions to the Democrats as they normally do there is a chance that the Democrats hold the House.
“Although fate intervened in the case of Patton.”
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There is a more than trivial chance it was not fate.
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“…allowing the Demagogue Party to label DeSantis “Trump 2”..”
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“Trump” and “MAGA” will be the Dem’s lips for twenty years after he has left the scene.
Harry Reid won one of his Senate races by about 400 votes.
I have been a never Trumper for a long time before Trump was running for President. He was a committed Democrat back in those days and had all the personal character flaws that he currently carries. When he was elected, I was as surprised as most people were and thought if he is not impeached, he will be a gift to the Democrats. That worry has come to fruition over the last 3 election cycles.
Having said that, do not think the media and the rest of the current intelligentsia will relent on Republicans if Trump were removed from the political scene. There enemy is more capitalism and smaller government and anyone who might lean that way even if the leaning is more talk than action.
The current election cycle strongly suggests, in my view, that when a party underperforms in the face of a troubling economy with the other side in power, the other side has some ardent true believers. I hold that that belief is supported by the intelligentsia who informs the voting public. It is not so much that the media as part of that intelligentsia get it wrong in pointing to problems with Republicans but that they totally ignore the problems with the Democrats and their policies.
My intellectual enemy is not the politicians or voters, whom I view as followers, but rather the current intelligentsia.
If Libertarians were Republicans they would vote Republican.
If Libertarians were Democrats they would vote Democrat.
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Some of them are hard core freedom of speech, anti big government, low taxes, and for individual liberty, they will likely vote Republican. Some of them are legalization of marijuana, against excessive police force, anti-interventionalist, and pro-choice in which case they will vote Democrat.
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I think they tend to vote Republican more often when forced to make a choice, but haven’t gotten any evidence for that. An empty ballot question is one thing, but there are actual people on the ballot in real races.
Tom, I am for legalization of marijuana, against excessive police force, anti-interventionalist, and pro-choice but would never vote for a Libertarian unless there were five other viable parties in the system.
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I doubt Antifa and anarchists are voting Libertarian when the Dems are representing them just fine. That leaves people like Judge Andrew Napolitano and Ron Paul but I would guess they would hold their noses and vote for Herschel in a runoff against Warnock.
In Georgia, it looks to me like the Libertarian candidate for Governor was probably much stronger than their Senate candidate.
Libertarians got 28K votes for Governor and 81K for Senator.
My guess is that a big chunk of those 81K were really “none of the above”.
I’m about 80% libertarian but consider voting for that party throwing my vote away. Like many people I’m voting against things I dislike more than I am voting for things I like. My priorities are mostly attached to individual liberty, free speech, and limiting government control. I don’t want the government to be paternalistic.
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Any major party is going to need to be good at herding cats. I always find it odd that some people support 100% of a party’s positions. That seems statistically unlikely, but I chalk it up to tribalism. Personal ideology isn’t random, but it isn’t like red and blue are such an obvious antithesis of each other across the board.
With latest small drop of votes in Nevada (about 3% of the total), Laxalt’s lead has dropped to under 1,000, with more than 100,000 (~10% of the total) left to count. Laxalt is very likely going to lose, and the Georgia run-off race then becomes much less important. At 51/49, Joe Manchin becomes just another Senator; he is about to lose all his clout in the Senate, and he looks to me now much less electable in 2024. Next year, when he is 76 years old, will be a good time for him to announce his retirement.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216196)
With my contacts and reading what libertarians – as opposed to Libertarians – are saying is that, with the Democrats moving to the far left, they overwhelmingly and publicly favor the alternative, i.e. Republicans. They reserve the right to criticize Republicans and point to the times when there is little essential difference between parties. Libertarians are more into thinking that their philosophy can be directly applied to the public and the voting process whereas libertarians are more into changing the political landscape through intellectual pursuits.
When a political philosophy holds for little of no government, pursuing changes by direct political action appears contradictory. The Libertarian party has candidates for almost all political contests which makes a protest vote by a non libertarian easy to do by marking their candidate.
SteveF (Comment #216200)
Those late gains by Democrats has to be worrisome for the Republicans in the House contests yet to be decided.
Ken Fritsch,
Sure, especially in California. But there are four almost certain seats the Republicans will take (NY, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, three of which should already have been called), which puts them at 215. There are four incumbent Republicans in California who are ahead, and most likely will win, and two non-incumbents who appear to have a good chance of winning. I figure a minimum of 219, and more likely 220, which is what NBC news projects will be the final number.
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With that thin majority, I don’t think the Republicans can get much done, but at least they won’t be passing endless unfunded trillion dollar boondoggles. And best of all, Nancy Pelosi will be gone, like the wicked witch of the west, who she resembles, both physically and morally.
WSJ Editorial Board opinion:
“Any settlement now would give the Russians a chance to regroup, reinforce their defensive positions, and prepare for a renewed attack. Every war ends with some kind of negotiation, but Ukraine has earned the chance to restore its Feb. 24 borders, at the very least, before it sits across from Mr. Putin.”
and:
“Russia’s retreat from the city of Kherson on Friday is another major milestone in Ukraine’s counteroffensive to reclaim territory lost since the Feb. 24 invasion. Ukraine’s progress continues to vindicate Western aid and shows the price Russia is paying for Vladimir Putin’s folly.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-kherson-breakthrough-counteroffensive-russia-vladimir-putin-11668199263?st=udfto1byvwrocx0&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Kherson Oblast, Street parties have broken out in the city and remote towns to welcome their conquering heroes. It is similar to the scenes of French villagers greeting Patton’s army during WWll. The following picture is very moving…. A babushka greets a soldier. https://twitter.com/IrynaVoichuk/status/1591089670812622848?s=20&t=NjzCHmF5pBmpdHqpCj0T0A
Also on Kherson, the OSINT folks I follow posted about the russian retreat almost a week before anyone else knew about it. I reposted it here and was met with skepticism. OSINT has been well ahead of the curve for months now. The good ones have an occasional mistake, but the vast majority of the time they turn out to be spot on, like in this case.
SteveF (Comment #216204)
November 11th, 2022 at 8:18 pm
I looked at Politico this morning and their count of decided is 211 Repubs (unchanged from yesterday) and 199 Dem (plus 5). In the undecided races Dems lead in 15 and Repubs in 10. If the leaders all win it would still be Repubs 221 and Dems 214. It appears that the Dems are closing faster than the Repubs.
Ken Fritsch,
Yes, most uncalled races are going to be won by dems. But the most likely outcome remains the Republican hold a seat or two more. Of course, that may not be final for several weeks. The western states (and especially California) are in no hurry to count votes. The counts in California have mostly remained fixed for three days! Arizona now does not expect final results until mid next week. Then there will be recounts (eg Colorado) which will add even more time. This is now bordering on crazy. How can it possibly take this long?
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Laxalt’s lead has fallen to 820 votes as of this morning, with 5% estimated outstanding. Whether or not Laxalt ends up a few votes ahead or behind, there will be another recount, so whether or not the Georgia runoff really matters may not be known for weeks, and there will be huge sums spent in Georgia for a race that may end up not being very important. It’s nuts.
The GOP lead in the total House popular vote is up to 6.1%, topped by only one election in living memory (2010, with a 6.6% margin).
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/red-wave-after-all-gop-winning-popular-vote-wide-margin-despite
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Obviously, that must be some combination of winning by bigger margins in places they won in 2020 and losing by smaller margins in places they lost this time. The latter might be due to GOP progress with minority voters.
I think demographics have changed significantly in the past few years. Sane people fleeing democrat insanity. The traffic on the roads around me has got significantly worse since covid. So yes, I think it’s likely republicans have overperformed in areas in which there is already good support, and underperformed in areas of democrat insanity.
DaveJR,
I suspect in the final counts there will be noticeable swings toward Republicans in most places, but there are so many non-competitive seats in the House and so many non-competitive States in the Senate that even significant changes in % of total votes doesn’t make as much difference as in the past. Remember also that in midterm elections the average voter is more partisan and motivated than in presidential election years, making the divergence of election results from total votes even greater.
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The Trump-endorsed parade of Senate and governor candidates mostly lost badly in places where they were expected to be competitive. While many don’t want blame Trump, I do: he consistently endorsed candidates who embraced his “2020 was stolen” endless tirade, rather than candidates who were more electable. The results speak for themselves. Trump needs to retire from politics, play a little more golf, and most of all, keep his stupid mouth shut.
After watching football for 30+ years this is the way it goes. In some seasons you win most of the close games and very successful, and some seasons you lose most of close games and seem very unlucky. The difference between the two can be marginal.
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Yes, I don’t know how they can make no progress counting votes at all. One article I read said that Florida bought letter opening machines that cut open ballots with a laser and inserted a puff of air to make extracting ballots much faster. My guess is that some rural counties still use very old methods and are constrained by voting laws. It’s kind of lunacy with a rep from both sides verifying each mail in ballot.
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Mail in ballots should have a deadline of a week before the election and they should all be removed and verified before voting day.
The Democratic strategy of funding the Trumpiest candidates appeared to be successful. I’d like to see less of this stuff in politics, I am already cynical enough. Totally legal.
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I kind of find it funny as the legacy media congratulates themselves on holding back the red wave with “Democracy won!” and “The voters are sane!” that nobody brings up Fetterman. Clearly a turnip can get elected if it makes it through the primary in most places.
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The house needs to have a 3 or 4 seat margin just to prevent election chaos. Imagine a one seat margin, overturning any of the 400+ races will flip control of the house. That’s a target rich environment for corruption and conspiracy.
My guess is the people in Kherson would much prefer the war go somewhere else for a while. The unilateral withdrawal by Russia is still mysterious. Making the opposition take an urban area gives the defenders an advantage usually. What are they going to do later, just shell Kherson into oblivion if they want to retake it? You can bet Ukraine will defend it and it’s much easier to hide from artillery in a city. It doesn’t add up.
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Wishful thinking is that this is the beginning of the end and a negotiated settlement over the winter is on the way.
Tom Scharf,
Kherson city proper was only a small piece of the 1,500 square miles (approximately) russia retreated from. The vast majority was flat open farmland. It was similar to the farm areas to the North that Ukraine rolled over and routed the russians.
Tom Scharf,
“Wishful thinking is that this is the beginning of the end and a negotiated settlement over the winter is on the way.”
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Wishful thinking indeed. Negotiations are not close to starting, and won’t start so long as the Ukrainian position is that negotiations can’t start until Russia agrees to 100% of its demands: return of all Ukrainian territory (including the Crimea), Russian payment for all war damage, and criminal prosecution for war crimes… which in the Ukrainian interpretation appears to mean every Russian up the line of command to Putin. In other words, the Ukraine clearly does not want negotiations at this time, and neither does the USA. That will change, since no resolution is likely without negotiations, but my honest guess is may be years of stalemate and continuing military costs/losses on both sides before negotiations begin.
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The good news is there has been some movement: the chairman of the joint chiefs is pressing the State Department to work toward negotiations… but so far State refuses to consider it. Thoroughly Modern Miley is probably looking at the drop in US conventional weapon stocks and is not happy about it, especially since restocking conventional weapons is costly and may force reductions in woke anti-racist training programs, gay and lesbian support programs, and possible cuts in funding for zero-cost transgender surgery in the military. Who knows, maybe Miley is planning on having that surgery.
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At some point it will dawn on the geniuses in Washington that $100+ billion a year in extra debt for the Ukraine, on top of the ongoing rapid growth in Federal debt, is not sustainable, unless destructive inflation forever is your goal. A recession from now to 2024 and falling real (after inflation) tax revenues with huge budget deficits may ultimately start to sharpen minds in Washington DC. But those minds are plenty dull, so the sharpening will likely be slow. On second thought, Biden’s mind, or what is left of it, is never going to sharpen. Let’s hope his handlers guide him toward accepting negotiations at some point before he leaves office in January 2025.
There is nothing mysterious about the Russian withdrawal from Kherson. Ukraine made it impossible for Russia to keep their forces supplied at the level needed to defend that territory. So the Russians cut their losses and fell back to a more easily defended position.
The Political numbers have not changed since my last post, but I looked at the leads that the contested races have. The Repubs have 6 of 10 with leads of 1.6% or less while the Dems have only 1 contest out of 15 with a lead of 1.6% or less. With most of the remaining uncounted ballots evidently being mailed-in and those going in large majorities to the Dems, I see control of the House going down to the wire.
“Prolonged election counts like this create suspicion and distrust and are unacceptable.” – Charlie Kirk
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The Dem counter point is that election tallies never got finished on election night due to military ballots and provisional ballots, etc.
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What has changed is that early election returns can no longer be assumed to be a homogenous sampling of the vote on the event: election day. Once that assumption is plausibly discarded there is no statistical guardrail from having late dumps that are unexpectedly skewed just enough to save the Democrat. And it the loser does not know how its being done, and surveillance cameras go out overnight, all they can do is make reckless accusations based on suspicions.
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All these close races that are being won in the late counting by Dems have a perfectly legal explanation. In many of these states they bring in non-profit organizations funded by millions of dollars to personally go out and collect the ballots that were mailed out to registered Dems but not received back. This information is made available to them by friendly state administrators, likely legally. I saw a registered Dem’s email was filled with reminders. If the election workers don’t receive the ballot Dems can offer to pick it up and drop it on election day for them.
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If the the voter does not respond there it would be a hard to resist for a radicalized Dem to fill in a ballot for them in their name knowing that signatures can’t be verified anyway, as we learned in 2020, and knowing a Dem that did not respond is not going to care either way to say anything about it.
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The one bright spot is that the NV Dem governor lost so that the 2024 election can be perhaps administered with integrity in NV. We can only cross our fingers that Kari Lake will not suffer Laxalt’s fate in a day or three.
Today I saw dozens and dozens of pictures of russian mechanized equipment left behind in Kherson. Everything, including tanks and helicopters. Most of it has been destroyed but some is in working order. Also pictures of munitions, tons of munitions.
The area is huge, roughly 100 miles x 15 miles. It’s gonna take a while to find it all.
A few examples:
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical
Ron Graf,
Karie Lake will lose in exactly the same way as Laxalt.
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Where Democrats have changed the law to allow mail-in voting, email reminders, harvesting, etc. the only way Republicans are going to win elections is do do the same things. So far, Republicans have counted on their voters showing up on election day…. it is not working, as we saw in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
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The truly frightening prospect is the same will happen in all the remaining house races. If the Democrats have even a one vote majority in the house and Manchin can’t stop them in the Senate, there is no upper bound to the economic and social damage they will do in the next two years.
Mike Pompeo telling Conservatives the reasons they should be against putin:
“Conservatives need to make the case: helping Ukraine defeat Putin is in our interest.
It will strengthen our national security, deter a foe, and lower costs for Americans.”
https://twitter.com/mikepompeo/status/1591529317665849351?s=61&t=zEUQ85H5MOfRaTGz5vf_yA
This pretty much sums up the problem with late reporting states:
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/11/image-10-2.jpg?ssl=1
Mike M,
There is one clear problem with late reporting: voters in states with polls not yet closed could look at early results from other states showing their party well ahead and decide to not bother voting.
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Republicans need to start using mail-in ballots the same way as Democrats do: a method to “turn out their voters” by making sure likely Republican voters get and turn in mail-in ballots, including ballot harvesting where it is legal.
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Republicans can (and obviously do!) object to election rules Democrats have put in place which undermine the security of elections, but that will not help them win close elections. They need to accept the reality that elections in many places simply will not be very secure so long as Democrats have control over a State, and do their best to use the same tactics that Democrats use to win close races.
The latest House results give the Democrats 204 seats and the Republicans 211 seats. The Republicans lead in 10 races, but have 3 or 4 that could easily go to the Democrats with mail-in voting yet to be counted. If the Democrats hold their leads and the Republicans lose 4 close races it would be Democrats 218 and the Republicans 217 in the House. I think it is looking like a real possibility.
Ken Fritsch,
Real Clear politics (based on AP calling the remaining Oregon race for the Republican, I think) has the Republicans at 212. Boebert will win in Colorado (after a recount), and the remaining race in upstate New York will almost certainly go to the Republican (1.5% ahead with 6% outstanding…again, after a recount), putting them at 214. NBC News still projects Republicans to end up with 219. It is possible that Democrats will win two seats they are not expected to win (that would be two flips of five current Republican seats in California), but the most likely result is that Republicans end up with control…. by one or two votes. I am keeping fingers crossed.
As I recall my mail in ballot had an individualized bar code on it, so I think you can’t just fill in blank missing ballots.
There are going to be some moderates in 435 house seats. Nothing crazy will happen with a closely split house. Things like chairpersons and committees are important though.
Tom wrote: “There are going to be some moderates in 435 house seats.”
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From a statistical POV, you should be correct. From a practical one, I have no idea what is considered moderate anymore.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216228)
November 13th, 2022 at 10:41 am
Tom, I believe in the past few sessions the so-called House moderates in the Democrat party stuck to the party line usually 100%. The moderate tag is essentially for talking and getting elected in the House.
In the Senate there were only 2 Democrats and sometimes one who very occasionally voted against the party line. Those occasions were only to overspend by some portion of what the Democrat line wanted.
The not-so progressive Democrats know that they owe their souls to the Democrat party, while the not-so conservative Republicans tend to be more independent and especially when they have a chance to overspend on so-called partisan bills. Conservative Republicans can be relied upon to spend big on defense and support foreign military actions and even self-destruct with nutty positions on social issues.
The midterms have been a victory for Biden’s agenda of big government with lots of spending and regulation. That momentum could carry over into the next election cycle regardless of the House and Senate party make up. As they say elections have consequences and in this case I see it being good and hard.
The midterms have given the Biden administration more confidence in using executive actions to push their agenda and has probably given a number of judges out there leeway to adjudicate with these results in mind. It is that living Constitutional thing.
Ken Fritsch,
“I believe in the past few sessions the so-called House moderates in the Democrat party stuck to the party line usually 100%. The moderate tag is essentially for talking and getting elected in the House.”
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True. There are no moderates that I can see in the Democrat caucus, only strongly left and extremely left. They voted lock-step for every one of the insane spending bills of the past two years, bills that any true moderate would have voted against…. and forced a little sanity/compromise. Even when a “moderate” Democrat withheld their vote on a nutty bill (to be able to say they are “moderate”) they ONLY did so when they were sure there were enough Democrat votes to pass the crazy legislation. The only way to stop the madness is for Republicans to have 218 or more votes.
The debt ceiling will likely come up for a vote soon. I was wondering who wins by this periodic charade, as the bill never fails to pass. Certainly nobody in Congress seems to take this issue seriously enough to consider a budget in which the debt does not increase. (Which was, presumably, the original intent of requiring a vote to increase the debt limit.)
However, this article writes that “In 2011, a Republican Congress agreed to raise the debt ceiling only after a President Barack Obama, a Democrat, agreed to future spending cuts.” I don’t recall that particular time. Did it actually result in less spending?
Tom Scharf (Comment #216227): “As I recall my mail in ballot had an individualized bar code on it, so I think you can’t just fill in blank missing ballots.”
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That would stop people from xeroxing blank ballots but it would hardly stop people from filling out such ballots. Which is why mail-in ballots should be made somewhat difficult to obtain.
That there was a barcode on a ballot doesn’t mean the barcode was unique. Even if it was, it doesn’t mean it was tracked, or tied to anything useful / trackable.
It might have been there strictly to look good and to engender the sort of speculation that’s happening here.
Just sayin.
You know what I mean. Maybe people ‘meant well’. Maybe there was a plan to use the unique barcode and check against this and that. But like George Lucas said, we had no time and we had no budget, and we had a backlog of ballots, and we felt pressured to get [done], and anyways ‘Democracy!’ and every vote should count, and so on and so forth.
I could imagine it happening like that. I don’t think people openly and explicitly and deliberately made plans to put deceptive useless barcodes on ballots.
[Edit: Or maybe the ballot people thought the postal people were going to check the barcodes. Or maybe the postal people thought the ballot people were going to check the barcodes. There’s countless ways this could have gone sideways.
Or — maybe the barcodes were useful and unique and used as intended. That is also possible too.]
mark bofill,
There ought to be a bar code that is 1) unique and 2) tied to the voter to whom it was sent. Any mismatch or duplicates: invalid ballot. The need for anonymity could be met by having the bar code printed on the return envelope.
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There is still plenty of room for fraud, even with unique barcodes, since there is no way to verify the voter actually filled out the ballot (signature match is weak tea for security). But better than nothing. The returned (signed) envelopes could be retained if an investigation for fraud was needed; oh say, when people have come back from the dead to vote.
Steve,
I’ve reached the point where I think ballots should be trackable back to individual voters. I don’t think people’s votes should be made public, but I’ve come to believe that the information ought to be available to officials for audit and error checking purposes.
In my view, you nailed the problem in an earlier comment. Do we really want universal standardized rules for how voting is conducted? Sounds Federal to me. I can’t say I care for the thought of the Federal government being any more involved than it needs to be. So – I’m loath to bitch too loudly about the current system.
I don’t know the answer to this.
I’ve done mail-in ballots in FL, one can see if one’s ballot has been received by the county, and if it has been counted.
Real Clear politics has called the NV Senate race for the Democrat. There should be less pressure on the GA runoff.
Low information voting is the new name of the game. Once upon a time they probably wouldn’t bother. Now they get a chauffeured vote and a potential kickback. I guess things are going to have to get much worse before the decades long, somewhat deserved, propaganda wears off, and “you will own nothing and be happy” is waiting on the sidelines to pick up the pieces :/.
Apparently the barcode is for the post office, the primary security mechanism is signature verification. There isn’t much information available about mail in ballot integrity.
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They won’t let me vote twice, but nothing stops someone from getting a bunch of mail in ballots from people who don’t care and filling them out and returning them. You have to sign up for mail in voting and change your address as you move, etc.
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It’s still pretty hard to do this at scale. 10,000 people who gave away their ballots probably aren’t going to keep that secret.
HaroldW (Comment #216232)
November 13th, 2022 at 1:57 pm
HaroldW, I am currently too lazy to look up the details, but that deal with Obama limited spending for a number of years. The Republicans called Obama’s bluff. Obama had included defense spending limits which he thought the Republicans would not touch. Democrats and some Republicans complained about these limits. There was a name for this deal that was used for years.
Damnit, now I do have to look it up.
It was called Sequester. When I attempted to Google for the name given to the Republican and Obama deal all I got were links that more or less were saying government spending limits are bad. No wonder the public votes the way they do.
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/five-myths-about-the-sequester/
It reminds me that my daughter-in-law told me that a Democrat representative came to her school to talk to the students and when a student asked about the government debt he told him that it was covered by government assets and he gave a number. When my daughter-in-law gave me the number I told her it was the number for the total assets of the US which included mostly non government assets. I told her he is either confused or thinks the government owns all the US assets. The representative was re-elected this term.
I think that most absentee ballot fraud works by getting ballots for people who are on the rolls but won’t be voting because they are dead or senile or have moved to a different jurisdiction. And if they goof and that person does turn up at the polls, the authorities won’t be able to trace the fraudulent ballot to the criminal who filled it out.
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Now states like Nevada have considerately freed up the fraudsters from having to request the ballots. We can be certain there is significant vote fraud in such places.
Ken Fritsch, Obama’s ‘don’t call my bluff’ was prior to the deal. It was Obama asking Republicans not to see if he will veto a debt ceiling increase that had tough spending cuts in it. They later cut a deal that had huge defense cuts automatically included figuring Republicans would definitely not go for that. Then I think they had some bipartisan commission that would produce spending cuts etc.
Ken Fritsch, MikeN — Thanks for aiding my (very) fallible memory.
Len Fritsch,
“I told her he is either confused or thinks the government owns all the US assets.”
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Which is perfectly normal for most of the left. You might recall Obama loudly proclaimed (using his best fake Southern Baptist preacher accent) that entrepreneurs didn’t really “build” the companies they created and grew. So logically, their wealth actually belongs to the public. That has always been the view of the left. Try to get a true progressive to give an absolute upper bound for inheritance tax rates; you either won’t get one, or if you do, it will be closer to 100% than 80%. The left REALLY doesn’t believe you own what you think you own, no matter the circumstances.
Control of the House looks ever more likely to be by the Republicans. Vote totals in two races in Arizona look like the Republicans will likely win at least one (maybe both) the Oregon race and NY race look almost certain for the Republicans. The Boebert race in Colorado hasn’t been called, but she will almost certainly win after a recount, and there are three or four very strong Republican incumbents in California who will likely win. The Republicans will probably end up with 219 to 221, and it looks very improbable that Democrats can get to 218, no matter how long the vote tabulation takes.
Holy Spit! The Ukranians are crossing the Dnipro River [maybe].
“Combat operations by Ukrainian defenders on the Kinburn Spit are the subject of online hints and chatter.
We await official confirmation from the Armed Forces of Ukraine with particular interest as this would indicate a flanking manoeuvre to cross the Dnipro River.”
I didn’t believe it but then I saw a report of a town being taken in the russian media:
“There are unconfirmed reports from Russian media outlet RoszMi that Ukrainian forces have taken control of the village of Herois’ke on the left bank of the Dniprovska Gulf near the Kinburn Spit. Waiting for more info and visual confirmation.”
There are unconfirmed videos, one from the Ukraine MOD:
“Beautiful Dnipro”
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1591900962699894784?s=20&t=TY7flU4nx2bDpBKT_ItmUw
Also:
“UA forces heading to the Kinburn Spit, unconfirmed.”
https://twitter.com/Paul_TheNewf/status/1592119938818650112?s=20&t=NmGeQo4cDgBj4942grN8FA
The videos are all of a small Special Forces flotilla, no heavy stuff. If it happened, this may just be a RIF or publicity stunt.
Mike M: “I think that most absentee ballot fraud works by getting ballots for people who are on the rolls but won’t be voting because they are dead or senile or have moved to a different jurisdiction.”
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For regain integrity we can simply retrace our steps backwards. Absentee voting can never be secure. If we value the right to move freely without being tracked the only way to securely vote is in-person using a secure identification. Registration should close at least 30 days in advance of the election to add another step of difficulty to cheat. (Many states incredibly have same day registration now.) Registration should require ID and remain a public record with the generation of a unique personal voter number that is and be available for third party authentication against a national database. Absentee voting should be allowed in extraordinary circumstances.
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Mechanical voting machines, like we used to have, are more secure and can be locked with the final tally for audit. I am not sure why we went away from them. Adding up the tallies of the machines at the election precinct can be reported to the county’s central headquarter and marked on a big board with observers easily watching both ends of the communication. Meanwhile absentee votes can be counted with observers at 8am that morning and be complete by 8pm. Ninety-nine percent of all results should be reported nationally be 11pm.
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We need to get this right. As Dems pointed out; our democracy is under threat.
The peninsula should be within artillery range of the UAF now that RAF have pulled back. UAF SF have been poking at the spit since Sept. Not a frontal attack by any means. I don’t think UAF has the transport capacity to get heavy equipment there to use it as a breakout area. I’d expect their next move to be further east.
It’s not known how many ballots are filled in for people, but Democrats are more aggressive about going door to door collecting absentee ballots. It’s not clear if Republicans are doing this better in California after losing all those seats in 2018.
Under California law, those responsible for counting ballots have up to 30 days to turn in their results to the Secretary of State. Since they must also, by law, accept any mail-in ballot received up to 7 days after the election (so long as post-marked by election day), some apparently refused to do much of anything until 7 days AFTER polls close. Which is why there are many districts in California which have only counted a relative handful of ballots. Of course the motivation to count appears to vary by a huge amount across California.
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It is almost unbelievable but true: there is zero urgency in California to determine winners and losers.
SteveF (Comment #216256): “It is almost unbelievable but true: there is zero urgency in California to determine winners and losers.”
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Oh, I think there is plenty of urgency to determine winners and losers. They just don’t want the voters to mess up the process. 🙂
It’s hard to fathom the amount of military equipment left behind in Kherson. The whole battlefield [1,500 sq mile] is strewn with abandoned and destroyed equipment. A sample video:
“Destroyed Russian equipment left behind at Chornobaivka airfield, Kherson Oblast”
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1591530638355857408?s=20&t=NmNJ4fKUpXme9p7y8OA0Ww
Probably hundreds and hundreds of pieces. In September and October the Ukraine army had been posting drone videos of russian vehicles blowing up. They had been touting the increased accuracy and range of their artillery and rockets. But I had no idea of the scale of destruction.
The russians had to evacuate their army; they had nothing left to fight with.
Where does Ukraine move this juggernaut to next? They have no need for them here. I say server putin’s land bridge to Crimea! [There are probably many military reasons why this is a bad idea.]
In the grand scheme it isn’t important whether the vote tallies are a week late … for a voting process with integrity. Allowing some districts to be really late and also be aware of the existing vote counts in other areas is an opportunity for fraud and corruption. The very late districts would be a prime target for people with corrupt motives. This needs to stop based solely on perceptions.
MSN Aug – “As the BRICS nations become more cohesive, cooperating on economic issues that affect food and oil supplies, other countries are taking notice. Argentina, for instance, has shown an interest in joining the BRICS coalition, and it isn’t the only one. Iran has also shown an interest in joining this conglomerate of countries, and China is open to several more joining a ‘BRICS Plus’ cooperation.
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Among those mentioned are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Saudi Arabia. Russian President Vladimir Put has also personally invited Iran and Turkey to join the BRICS coalition.”
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Richard Medhurst Nov 11 – “Over a dozen countries have now applied to join BRICS, including Algeria, Iran and Argentina. The multipolar order is taking shape before us.
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If expanded, BRICS would comprise over half the global population, 60% of global gas and 45% of global oil reserves.”
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Talk of an alternative BRICS reserve currency to the dollar is ongoing. Bolsonaro was sympathetic to western interests, Lula is not.
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I’m still not convinced Russia is as “isolated” as some people think and that it may have the last laugh when the dust settles as “western interests” try to fuel their bankrupt economies on virtuous words and fine sounding phrases.
NYT:
Republicans Appear on Track to Take the House
Democrats are falling short of their targets in key races in California and Arizona.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/upshot/tracking-election-house-results.html
“It might still be days until the major decision desks can project that Republicans have won the 218 seats necessary to win control. But over the weekend, Democrats fell short of their targets in the late count in critical battleground districts in Arizona and California.
The sometimes good — but not good enough — results for Democrats raised the bar for what the party needs in the votes yet be counted, while making a late surge seem even less likely.
Right now, Republicans would be on track to win 221 seats if the latest trends continued, though several of these races remain so close that they could easily go the other way.”
Taom Scharf,
“Allowing some districts to be really late and also be aware of the existing vote counts in other areas is an opportunity for fraud and corruption.”
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Whatever opportunity exists for fraud, I suspect it is the same no matter the time for counting votes. I think what changes with very late districts is a potential increase in motivation for corruption, or at a minimum, the appearance of greater motivation. Of course, it also makes people doubt what is going on for such a long time.
DaveJR,
“I’m still not convinced Russia is as “isolated” as some people think and that it may have the last laugh when the dust settles as “western interests” try to fuel their bankrupt economies on virtuous words and fine sounding phrases.”
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Russia has clearly suffered considerably from the war, but not so much as many people would like. Their businesses are unable to source products from Europe, Japan, and the States, and have lost sales in those places. There will be no meaningful political relationship with Europe or the USA for many years. And of course, they have suffered many casualties.
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But I expect most Russian companies will find alternative sources and customers outside Europe and the States, and will be extremely reluctant to ever return to those markets. The suggestion that ‘the world’ would unanimously adopt the USA and European stance toward Russia was always fanciful at best, and more accurately, plain silly. Many countries share neither the sensibilities of Europe and the States, nor the economic and political interests of Europe and the States. The Russians won’t be trusted in many of the BRICS+ countries, but neither will they be isolated, and besides, petroleum is fungible.
I should add that people who are willing to publicly spend $100M on a single Senate race will have some dark thoughts about spending a lot less to tilt a close election. This goes for both sides of course. Government bureaucrats aren’t exactly super well paid and have been hit with bribery charges since about the first ever tribal council started divvying up land near a well, so we can’t depend on their good graces. We need to have a transparent secure system in place.
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I’m still largely convinced elections are fair is true on the whole, but I worry a bit that the legacy media have declared it so by an emotional fiat, and aren’t curious enough to look into some dark corners unless their side is threatened.
Tom,
Me too. I think elections are as fair as they’ve ever been, generally speaking. Probably not perfectly free of error and cheating, but substantially so. And nothing we haven’t been living with for the past two and a half centuries.
[Edit: I think what has happened is an election innovation. Elections have changed, with the mail in voting. Naturally, Dems have embraced the change and capitalized on it. Republicans have not as of yet by and large. We need to. I read an article on this someplace today; this isn’t really my idea.]
Yeah. This was it:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/14/republican-leaders-have-a-choice-roll-back-early-voting-and-mail-in-ballots-or-learn-to-take-advantage-of-them/
It appears to me that one could conjecture that mail-in voting and whatever maneuvers are used with it to leverage it to a political parties advantage would involve getting people who would not ordinarily vote or care to vote to vote. I strongly suspect that the Democrats know better who those people are, which ones will vote for their party and how to get them to vote. It is all probably legal even if not passing the Civics 101 smell test. I doubt that the Republicans can match those inclinations of the Democrats even with great effort. I also do not know how many votes have been in the harvested in the past or can be in the future.
I think the voter, no matter how they deliver their vote, who is without a clue or political interest makes a bigger sham of democracy than already exists with that system. An effort that would involve revealing how much people really know about an election or what they think they are voting for might have some shaming (and entertainment) value.
Younger people went overwhelmingly for the Democrats in this election cycle as did single mothers (think abortion issue) so before going Trump crazy on election fraud we should understand who used mail-in voting. I think it obviously was mostly Democrats and the two groups above were definitely mostly Democrat and I would judge more likely than most to mail-in their votes.
I have been mailing in my votes in IL even before the Covid-19 rules. I would think that more older people would take advantage of mailing-in, but I suspect not that many do. That might be a place for Republicans to look even though I think Democrats look at these efforts as a full time job while the Republicans look at it as a hobby that they are interested in for a few months.
I wouldn’t trust the unionized Post Office workers to not throw away/mangle ballots in Republican areas. They still whine about George Bush passing some reforms to keep their pension fully funded.
I read an article praising a group in Wisconsin that was funded by Mike Lindell and cleaned up the voter rolls in Wisconsin.
Omega4America used Fractal Technology to identify thousands of phantom voters.
Looking at the website, the whole thing looks fake, but I see that Ron Johnson won.
If the high information voters and those who want a dictatorship of experts cannot convince the low information voters to vote for their preferences then I think it is the very definition of democracy to allow them to toss out the governing class on their keisters in search of perceived better results.
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One can debate or assume whether a dictatorship of benevolent experts will result in better overall outcomes, but one must also guard against the self serving interests of the governing class which can then become the opposite of benevolent. There must be safeguards against this and that mechanism can mean a bunch of low information voters occasionally wreck the place for a time period.
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An example of this is the offshoring of low skill jobs and the degradation of the rust belt. Perhaps this is inevitable or cannot be fixed but the low skill people get to register their disapproval with the governing class and have them removed. It is up to the governing class to make a case for their actions.
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The governing class has nobody to blame but themselves if they cannot win the debate. When they get too lazy and arrogant this mechanism resets the field for the better.
MikeN: “I wouldn’t trust the unionized Post Office workers…”
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I think most mail-in systems give email or text acknowledgement of receipt by the election people. The bigger question is who are these people and what it would take to play games with a hoard of ballots sitting in their possession. This is what motivated the GOP voters in AZ and and NV to bring their mail-in ballots to the drop boxes on election day. But this is countered by the choice of those states to hold those ballots for days and count them last.
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What even smarts more to those GOP voters is the Dem break on those ballots. It’s plausible that Dem harvesting mules (legit or not) had an election day surge that overpowered all. So the widening of possible scenarios of plausibility (with lax rules) provides the added benefit of deniability.
Tom: “The governing class…”
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I hear that term getting a lot of use but I was taught the whole idea of America was to eliminate class barriers by allowing the piercing of those natural stratifications by individual merit and charisma. Anyone, particularly those with inspiring stories of struggle, could rise to leadership class.
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As far as offshoring of jobs I think that was an inevitable result of advancement of supply chain and communication technology, coupled with decades of unions being more successful against management than was healthy for their long-term interests.
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This was exacerbated by Clinton’s and the USIC’s strategy of making China oligarchs rich which was supposed to make them more democratic and globally responsible.
According to RealClear Politics, Republicans have won 216 seats — thus needing 2 more for control of the House — and lead in 4 CA districts and 1 CO district. So we will be spared political theater such as impeaching Trump in the next Congress. Instead our leaders will give us political theater such as impeaching Biden. Plus ça change…
HaroldW,
While it is clear that Biden is corrupt and has been selling influence (enriching himself and his family) for decades, we still might hope that Republicans instead focus on things that are far more important: weaponization of the FBI, CIA, Justice Dept, etc against political opponents, refusal to enforce immigration laws, refusal to lease land for petroleum production, and utterly lawless “emergency” acts like suspending both evictions and student loan payments and now the plan to give away $10,000 to $20,000 to each holder of student debt. Some said the Biden administration would be Obama 3.0. It is not, it is much worse: worse policies, and ever more lawlessness. The House can stop much of this by refusing to fund it.
In California, the Republicans will likely win three or four more seats, and Boebert in Colorado will almost certainly win, after a recount, so the final count will likely be 220:215 or 221:214. And the Wicked Witch of the West will be gone for good on January 2. I can almost hear the singing in Oz.
House count now 217 for Republicans; another incumbent’s seat in California. All over but the shouting. McCarthy seems to have a rebellion on his hands for speaker. Conservatives want two rules as a condition for making McCarthy speaker: 1) “regular order” on all bills, allowing floor debate and effectively blocking ‘back room deals’ with Democrats that give no time to analyze the resulting bills before votes and 2) the ability to remove McCarthy at any time if he makes the conservatives unhappy. If I were McCarthy, I would agree to the first, but not the second.
Ah yes, the old “barons reserve the right to overrule the king” clause. Didn’t go down very well back then either!
Here is Zelensky’s peace plan (AKA conditions for starting negotiations):
1. Radiation and nuclear security
2. Food security
3. Energy security
4. Release of all POWs and deportees
5. Restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, respect for UN Charter.
6. Total withdrawal of all Russian troops from all of Ukraine
7. Punishment for war crimes
8. Protection for the environment, stopping Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine
9. New security architecture and security guarantees for Ukraine
10. Signing of peace treaty.
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This list is not serious. ‘ecocide’ is even less serious. It is unclear if Zelensky actually believes Russia would agree to those conditions to start negotiations, but if so, then negotiations will not start for a long time.
The more power the “democratic” governments take from the individuals the more those governments depend on the low information voters. Those voters in my view are not relegated to any particular socio-economic class.
The deception of a power seeking democratic government is to put as many issues as possible beyond the reach of the voter in the form of the administrative state, executive orders, continuing emergency rule and third rail issues such as Social Security and Medicare.
The so-called ruling elite are merely the current caretakers in the process of making the government more powerful and less accountable to individuals while at the same time espousing the wonders of democracy and our living Constitution, with post election kumbayas that all is well in America.
Ron Graf (Comment #216272): “‘The governing class…’ I hear that term getting a lot of use but I was taught the whole idea of America was to eliminate class barriers by allowing the piercing of those natural stratifications by individual merit and charisma. Anyone, particularly those with inspiring stories of struggle, could rise to leadership class.”
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What we were taught was never the way it actually was. But the discrepancy is far worse now. Class stratification has increased and has much more serious consequences.
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Family connections have always mattered, but it used to be largely among the wealthy. It has now spread much more widely, such as in multi-generation political and Hollywood families. Connections via certain universities act as a force multiplier. ‘Merit’ used to mean individual achievement. Now it means the right credentials, the right connections, the right world view, and increasingly the right political opinions.
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There have always been differences in interest between the people and the ruling class (or elites, or whatever, there seems to be no really good term). But there used to also be a great deal of overlap. Both had similar basic values, both were patriotic, and they were linked economically. None of that is true anymore. The ruling class has very different values, object to the idea that the US is special (unless to claim that the US is uniquely bad), and they can thrive financially even when the domestic economy struggles.
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So the ruling class is now largely severed from the people and at odds with the people.
Ron Graf (Comment #216272): “As far as offshoring of jobs I think that was an inevitable result of advancement of supply chain and communication technology, coupled with decades of unions being more successful against management than was healthy for their long-term interests.”
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A certain amount of that was inevitable, but what went far beyond what was necessary or good. Free trade is supposed to be beneficial by allowing a society to distribute resources in the most productive manner possible. So low productivity jobs get replaced by higher productivity jobs. But that is not what happened. Productive jobs got replaced by less productive jobs or no jobs at all. “Free trade” was not, in fact, free trade. In effect, if not in intent, it was class warfare.
SteveF (Comment #216279),
Zelensky’s proposal sounds fine to me, other than the sops to silly western leftists. I do not think that such nonsense actually means anything. I assume that the exact meaning of “all of Ukraine” will be negotiable behind closed doors but not in public.
McCarthy will get to be speaker after making some concessions to the Freedom Caucus. The only clear alternative is Jim Jordan and McCarthy has Jordan’s support.
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Whether McConnell gets to keep his job will be more interesting.
The Biden administration’s college loan forgiveness as a Constitutional decision comes up against the standing issue which in many ways appears as merely an impediment in reversing unconstitutional actions by the government. In the loan forgiveness case the taxpayer who is most affected and damaged by the move cannot evidently ever have standing and thus other entities have to invent damages in order to get Constitutional redress. I suppose these shenanigans are covered by the polite term of judicial precedent, whereas in fact BS might be more descriptive.
Mike M,
“Productive jobs got replaced by less productive jobs or no jobs at all. “Free trade” was not, in fact, free trade. In effect, if not in intent, it was class warfare.”
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Donno that I would go so far as ‘class warfare’. What free trade did was expose companies that produce physical products to competition from suppliers with far lower total production costs. I mean, there is nothing that stops a US based company from producing flat screen TV’s or laptop computers, cell phones, or a thousand other products from producing in the USA, except it is simply not possible to compete cost-wise with production outside the States. Those companies either moved production to lower cost regions (Apple being a good example), mostly automated, or disappeared. They mostly choose the first option. Of course, many American production workers have suffered as a result.
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That said, I note that there have also been substantial shifts in production labor within the USA, mainly from business unfriendly states to more business friendly states. One example: I started work after college at a company owned by Firestone Tire and Rubber. Firestone was an old-time, mostly northern company, (based in Akron Ohio) with plants mainly in the industrial midwest, but also in the Northeast and Coastal West. As Firestone self-immolated due to competition from overseas, it sold all assets to Bridgestone (Japan). Here is where Bridgestone set up tire and related production plants in the USA:
Save for one facility in Illinois, all plants are in states that are controlled by Republicans, and less than very friendly to unions.
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So the loss of middle class production jobs is a complicated subject. Much was due to free trade and off-shoring, some from automation, and some from shifts within the States.
Mike M,
We’ll see when negotiations start what the Ukrainians demand before negotiations start. But IMHO, that list is nonsense, and designed to keep negotiations from starting. I hope Zelensky understands that, but I am not sure.
Mike M: “Whether McConnell gets to keep his job will be more interesting.”
Not that Senate leadership is a popularity contest (at least among the public), but McConnell gets the lowest approval/disapproval score among US political leaders (lower than Pelosi!) at RealClear Politics
HaroldW,
Yes, but consider that McConnell is a procedural knife-fighter who kept the execrable Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court, and agreed to support many Democrat spending/boondoggle bills that the conservative base absolutely loathed. Those together are enough to get 60% disapproval, no matter what else McConnell has done.
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Pelosi is much the same story: a promoter of both horrible, damaging legislation and pointless show trials of Trump, which the right loathes, but she never went 110% all-in on the nutty green new deal, leading her extreme base to dislike her…. so 20% under water.
I pretty much agree with Mike M’s take at #216282 and I would say my view on this has changed over the last 20 years. Like I have said before, every time I go back to WV it is still 1985 there.
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The fundamental problem with global free trade right now is we don’t have global free movement of labor. The low skill workers in the US cannot go to work in China’s factories. It might be the case they wouldn’t want to, but the point is that they can’t. So the US economy is increasingly moving towards service and lack of middle income jobs. The government may not have magic fixes for this technical progress, but they also don’t have to actively make it worse with their policies. At least unemployment has remained low lately.
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I think what basically everyone missed was what happens if this idea of merit works too well? An optimally sorted system puts the highest skill people in the highest skill jobs. What we missed was that the upper and lower classes stopped getting mixed nearly as much and the classes became increasingly stratified.
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It is arguable that the classes have become isolated and out of touch with each other (deplorables). The wealthy, elite, governing, credentialed, knowledge, etc. class has sometimes forgotten they govern at the will of the majority of deplorables. Then we end up with AOC, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, Sanders. I see this as democracy working in its imperfect way. These are unconscious warning shots by the electorate. Although these people are clowns, they somehow have more trust from their constituents. That is the fault of those who think they know better, a failure to communicate.
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People in higher classes have much more to fear in radical changes to the status quo, the lower classes have much less to lose. So we get bombarded with political messaging that some changes are “dangerous”. Dangerous to who? The people living in trailer parks?
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The merit system has also become corrupted, this should have been foreseen. A system of credentials is not necessarily the same as a system of merit. Harvard, MIT, Stanford are full of students from wealthy families. This is somewhat expected in a fair system but it is very disproportionate. One could accuse the people getting in to these schools know all the secret handshakes of holistic admissions. Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.
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Unions have been more of a problem than a solution.
With the NV win, the GA runoff will have suppressed turnout. If the Republicans can manage to win that race then we are back to 50/50 with Manchin as a somewhat unreliable but better than nothing gatekeeper on crazy. He has reelection in 2024. Obviously taking the House will give Republicans the ability to block large spending bills and end the investigations which the legacy media covers breathlessly as truth and justice.
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All in all, a split government and Trump got smacked down. Not a bad result. Looks like Trump will announce his 2024 run today. Ugh.
Tom Scharf,
“Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.”
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Sure, and as a former bright kid from a poor family who had to work from age 12 on to have a dollar in his pocket, it absolutely fries my ass to see what an offensive abomination competitive college admission has become. My wife taught advanced high school chemistry for 15 years. All her students were bright to exceptionally bright, as you might expect, but the few who got into very competitive colleges were either from a wealthy family (and could afford to pad their resume with lots of “socially conscious” volunteer work), or were some kind of identifiable minority (but not Asian!). The process is inherently unfair, and rewards or punishes kids for things that are both irrelevant and beyond their control.
Tom Scharf,
“Looks like Trump will announce his 2024 run today.”
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I keep hoping for a bolt from on high…
SteveF,
Mjolnir. Please do your stuff.
Tom Scharf,
“He has reelection in 2024.”
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I doubt Manchin will even try to run in 2024. He squeaked by in 2018 because it was a midterm, but he hadn’t yet voted for all the crap legislation he has voted for since 2020. With the House controlled by Republicans, Manchin seems to me irrelevant and likely un-electable in WV. I think he will soon recognize that and plan on playing more golf, maybe in Florida.
I will not be sad to see Pelosi leave, mostly because she was so effective at her job. It will take some real work to get somebody with her skills to replace her. The attack on her husband likely will send her packing, it’s not worth all that at this point.
Always been my concern…. “Two stray rockets fell in the town of Przewodów in Poland on the border with Ukraine. They hit the grain dryers. Two people died. Polish Air Force launched fighter jets from the airfield in Tomaszów Lubelski”
and the Poles seem to be itching to get at the russians.
Free trade has many facets in consideration of who is affected. It is more than simply looking at the workers who might be affected. Free trade is a democratic issue for the consumers of that trade who can vote with their dollars by spending on foreign products or withholding them for domestic product. When trade restrictions are on intermediate goods it can often hurt the businesses and workers who are further down the production line.
If a nation’s economy is to advance it has to adjust to new technologies whether the competition is from domestic or foreign sources. Certainly, the American farm and the consumers of its products have benefited from its efficiencies. Those efficiencies have the reduced the number of farm workers greatly over past decades, but I do not see any hesitancy of people from farm families making the transition to other occupations.
Small businesses are an obvious place for workers of failed businesses to go for employment and even ownership. A negative drag of those businesses is government regulations.
Large corporations and large unions are nearly always the organizations looking for trade restrictions on trade with foreign nations and at the expense of the American consumer. I have lived through the times that that situation finally took its toll on the American auto industry and its workers where the companies and the unions did well until the lack of foreign competition made their product too expensive and of poorer quality. Today when you look at the national source of the parts that go into American autos and trucks one finds that foreign owned companies with manufacturing facilities in the US are often more American made than those of American owned companies who use foreign parts.
Free trade, when warmongers do not interfere, has had a great tendency to promote peace and interactions amongst nations. Unfortunately, free trade today is supposed to come out of government agreements while a more complete definition of free trade should be individuals and their organizations trading with whoever they can make a deal satisfactory to the involved parties. Government free trade agreements are for the benefit of me and thee and against the guy behind the tree.
Restrictions on international trade have recently come by way of executive actions as in the case of the Trump imposed tariffs. That does not seem very democratic or free market to me, yet populist conservatives appear to love it.
Getting into the top colleges is not just for the wealthy and minorities. Chelsea Clinton got into Stanford and Oxford before her parents cashed in. The same is true for any number of the offspring of lesser politicians, prominent journalists, etc.
“Free trade” deals are not about free trade. If they were, they would not require thousands of pages of rules and regulations. They often intentionally disadvantage US producers in the naive belief that trade is a good in itself and that it will tie our trading partners to us. If that worked with China, it did so in reverse.
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Free movement of people makes it worse. Biden’s open southern border is very bad for the US.
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The reason US companies take their production elsewhere is because our government heaps huge burdens on any company that dares to actually make anything and because the US dollar is greatly inflated relative to other currencies.
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True free trade probably only really works between near-peer jurisdictions.
Mike M,
“The reason US companies take their production elsewhere is because our government heaps huge burdens on any company that dares to actually make anything and because the US dollar is greatly inflated relative to other currencies.”
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Real wages are much lower in many other places than in the States, and that is even when the artificially inflated value of the Dollar (safe investor haven, standard currency for international trade) is taken into account. Even if you were to stipulate that the USA currency is inflated by a factor of 2, US labor costs are still high compared to many other places. Yes, regulations (environmental, employment rules, OSHA, and many more) do add to the burden of operating a business in the USA, and other costs in the USA are also much higher (property taxes, land costs, construction costs, etc). But it seems to me the biggest factor driving production off shore is the relative cost of labor. That same factor is partially responsible for migration of domestic production from northern to southern states.
Mike M,
“Chelsea Clinton got into Stanford and Oxford before her parents cashed in.”
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Well, before they cashed in big-time. But sure, the kids of very famous and especially politically influential people ALWAYS get into colleges they are in no way qualified for academically.
SteveF (Comment #216279): “Here is Zelensky’s peace plan (AKA conditions for starting negotiations):”
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For anyone interested the full English text of Zelensky’s speech can be found here: https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-zavzhdi-bula-liderom-mirotvorchih-zusil-yaksho-rosi-79141
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He does not say they are preconditions for negotiations. But he does imply that he expects unilateral Russian action on at least some and says that one item is non-negotiable.
Mike M,
That one item is pretty much the whole tamale: return of all Ukrainian lands. “It is not up to negotiations.”
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OK, quibble if you want about what will be defined as “Ukrainian lands”, but there is no way the Crimea is going to be returned to the Ukraine, and probably not most of the Donbas region. The crazy thing is: there could have been negotiations that would have ended up pretty much in the same final place as where they will end up, and that could have happened even before the war started.
Mike M,
One more comment on Labor costs. I have had many business contacts in Brazil over the past 30 years. When I first traveled to Brazil and talked with people about their salaries, I thought the country should be killing international markets in high value manufactured goods. Their wages were much less than half the wages in the USA and Europe (25%? 20% Less?). It was only later that I understood why the Brazilian economy does not dominate: the Government taxes companies at almost exactly 100% of the wages that are paid to employees, mandates ruinously expensive “benefits” (which are mostly just more payments to the government for fictitious individual unemployment accounts), saddles the national economy with a mindbogglingly complicated value added tax system that doubles the domestic costs for all industrial products, and has a regulatory scheme which hog-ties businesses. It literally can take years to start any business that manufactures a product… and that is years of nothing but bureaucratic waste.
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There are also 100% (and more) import duties on most products to protect domestic manufacturers that are struggling under the nightmarish taxes and regulations from overseas competitors that are not so burdened. Those duties also make it prohibitively expensive to purchase needed (imported) capital equipment… effectively doubling capital costs for many industries. So the net is: the government strangles economic growth in every possible way, suppresses capital formation, inflates the currency through deficit spending, and uses confiscatory tax rates to impoverish everyone. Many politicians, including the newly elected president Lula, want to INCREASE government take from the economy. It is a formula for disaster, but a formula that the left in the USA seems to want to duplicate.
Yet another attempt to launch Artemis rocket tonight at 1 AM EST.
McConnell got judges through and some tax cuts.
Schumer got judges through, as well as lots of legislation that Democrats wanted, and blocking legislation that Democrats did not want and blocking lots of nominees.
SteveF (Comment #216305): “The crazy thing is: there could have been negotiations that would have ended up pretty much in the same final place as where they will end up, and that could have happened even before the war started.”
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I’m not buying. Putin thought he could have the whole tamale without very much effort. He was not going to settle for just a whiff. And I don’t believe that Putin will give up any significant territory unless Russia is forced out.
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Such a deal was nearly reached in late March. It is not clear how close it was to completion. One source says that it was all but finalized until NATO (i.e., Washington) decided to deep six it and sent Boris Johnson to Kiev to lay down the law. If true, that is tragic.
Tom Scharf,
I wonder, does ‘Artemis’ translate roughly to ‘boondoggle’? As best I can figure, SpaceX could have developed a cheaper rocket (and much cheaper to fly) in 1/4 the time and 1/4 the development cost.
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If Artemis ‘crashes and burns’ (so to speak), heads should roll at NASA.
SpaceX has Starship which they did develop much faster and much cheaper, we shall see if it successfully flies soon, the next year probably.
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Artemis is exactly what you would expect from a rocket funded by Congress. It’s still going to be one of the largest rockets ever launched and will orbit the moon if successful. Manned missions over the next three years with an eventual landing, but it is wildly expensive and wildly late. One would have thought the people in 1960 would have been at a disadvantage in this race, but one would be wrong. Sliderules rule.
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Apollo program $257B (2020 adjusted)
Artemis program $97B (if goes to plan, never does)
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They should have just skipped the moon and gone directly to Mars IMO, although I cannot defend manned programs versus robotic explorers with a lot of enthusiasm. I do love the spectacle of a big rocket launch. I lived about 40 miles south of Cape Canaveral during the Shuttle era and watched a bunch of them. Night launches are awesome. Thank you taxpayers.
This is the best documentary, made for the 50 year anniversary. Apollo 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc
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It doesn’t have any contemporary interviews and all that stuff. It is just archive (restored) film from the time with reporting as it was done at the time. No narration at all. See this one in IMAX theater if possible.
A Russian missile evidently has landed in Poland and killed two farmers.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/poland-russian-missile-strike-11668540716?
Ken Fritsch,
The Poles really don’t like the Russians, something my Polish born daughter in law strenuously confirms (with a bit of anger mixed in). Still, an errant rocket that kills two civilians, while bad, is most certainly not an attack on Poland by Russia. They will sputter for a while, but this will soon be forgotten. The USA kills civilians unintentionally all the time (most recently in Afghanistan; we killed a bunch of kids). Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Well, it is official.
Let’s go Ron!
Beat the Don!
Also official: Republicans control the House.
Mike M “Also official: Republicans control the House.” Link please
WooHoo! That’s one big rocket. Made it to orbit. Hopefully the rest goes well.
Who has projected Republicans at 218? Haven’t seen it.
It wasn’t even a Russian rocket:
“Poland’s President Andrzej Duda says there are ‘many indications that it was an air defense missile that unfortunately fell on Polish territory'”
SteveF, can I come out of my bomb shelter now?
If the current House race leads hold up it would be 221 Republican and 214 Democrat.
The CA 3rd District shows only 57% of the vote counted. I would think all good citizens would want to know why the count is so slow. I doubt it is fraud but rather government incompetence in a simply process called counting and/or a process that is flawed or really does not care about delivering timely results.
The same state rules must apply for all voting in CA and thus the wonderment is why the wide range of percent of vote counted for the various districts at this many days after the election. In Pelosi’s district 93% of the vote is counted and where the final results where never in doubt. Of the 10 races not called 7 are in CA. The one district in Maine should be called for the Democrat based on 99% of the vote counted and the lead involved. The uncalled Colorado race is 99% reported but very close. Even Alaska has 90% of the vote counted. CA stands out like a sore thumb.
Ken Fritsch,
“CA stands out like a sore thumb.”
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Yes, and I would be 100% in support of California leaving the union and forming it’s own country…. much better for the rest of us. 😉
Laura Ingraham said that the Republicans were up to 218. I assumed it was a Fox News projection, but that does not seem to be the case.
Mike M,
Laura Ingraham pretty much always needs to calm down. This is no exception.
“Try to get to Harvard from a public school system and working at Wendy’s. If you aren’t summering in Costa Rica with Habitats for Humanity then your chances are pretty low.”
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The problem is that even a merit based society has positive feedback loops that cause stratifications.
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1) Wealthy individuals can help their offspring starting with mate selection and better child care.
2) Habits that lead to success can be more effectively modeled within the home.
3) Private schooling can group the children with better peer models, perhaps better teachers, and certainly a more academically competitive environment.
4) The resulting superior college admission test scores and other preparations provide a huge advantage in college selection.
5) The desirable colleges have their own positive feedback loop be creating doorways to success by creating networks of peers with all the attributes that led to admission.
6) Rinse and repeat.
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The cycle is partially countered by those who fall off the cycle due to the comfort of safety nets provided by being in a wealthy family. Trust fund kids are not always as successful as John Fetterman.
Ron Graf,
“The problem is that even a merit based society has positive feedback loops that cause stratifications.”
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Sure, but at least a truly merit based system gives people without a lot of financial/family advantages a chance. The current system (horse-shit ‘social awareness’ requirements and/or the right race/ethnicity) make the situation far worse than one based on merit.
Yes, you would expect there to be a disproportionate number of wealthy people at the upper end of a fair merit system for those reasons. A more efficient merit system closes those loops even more. It’s hard to separate the earned parts of the merit system in the wealthy from the unearned parts that they create to protect their progeny.
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Holistic admissions (intentionally) obscure this. I think that private institutions can admit who they like and if they also (intentionally) limit admissions to better market their product then that is their right. What galls me is that they are allowed to cover themselves with false virtue for their self serving efforts.
Tom
What galls me is we have systems to publicly subsidize certain private schools choices.
I don’t think that’s true. There are always some meritorious in the out groups for lots of reasons. Part of those reasons are “s*it happens”. (War, disease, bad luck. . .) An efficient merit system detects these people.
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Will more from the in group be meritorious and get picked for merit? Yes. An efficient merit system detects merit. Meritorious parents tend to foster merit in their kids.
My brother went to a very small public country school from a farm family that was far from well off. He went to Harvard. He indicated to me that it might have helped with his first job as a lawyer, but nothing after that.
All this class labeling is so Marxist.
“All this class labeling is so Marxist.”
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Yes. So is race labeling. And a Marxist would do it for the same reason: to delegitimize a free order, which for the same reason those who believe in freedom promote a race and class blind society.
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The problem is how does one focus on promoting something that you want people to ignore? Real question.
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Edit: There is class corruption, however, which separates class from race which is immutable.
It seems the legacy media aren’t very enthusiastic about Trump’s 2024 run and aren’t afraid to express themselves. They are approx. 100.0000% against. They are also 100.0000% sure that Trump is finished … this time … for sure. They know this because they asked everyone they knew who all feel the exact same way. Exactly the same way.
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What a bunch of dolts. If Trump correctly figured out anything in politics, it is making sure the right people don’t like you, and then inviting them regularly to express their disdain to demonstrate their emotional entanglement.
A more efficient merit system closes the loops more over multiple generations. People self selecting mates and peers from their own merit level, then passing advantages / disadvantages to children.
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These advantages are both genetic and class related (environment). The question remains is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s good if you want the optimal outcome by some measurements. It’s bad if you are on the wrong end of that distribution.
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If you want the very best basketball team and are competing against external top teams for real benefits then this is a good thing. If you want the best median basketball team then it probably isn’t, you would want more mixing of skill sets in the hope a rising tide will lift all boats.
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Fill in the analogy of your choice to show maximizing the top isn’t always the correct answer. What is the correct goal is the question.
Class is often in the eyes of the beholder and used to make points that might well be in the eyes of the beholder.
There are mixes of classes for given individuals and those individuals are not rigidly in a given class forever.
I have known lots of individuals who I would never know how to classify unless I could invent multiple classifications.
Tom Scharf,
“A more efficient merit system closes the loops more over multiple generations. People self selecting mates and peers from their own merit level, then passing advantages / disadvantages to children.”
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There is always an effect from mate selection, of course. But I note that the most economically successful (‘the elites’) tend not to have many children… and often none at all. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/)
The USA is well below replacement rate (population grows via immigration, not births), so the above graphic shows that more wealthy people are far (far!) below replacement rates in births. If this were to continue over many generations, the offspring of the wealthy might be meritorious, but few in number.
There is a very strange correlation between increased wealth and having less children that seems to be almost universal across different cultures, not just the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
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I’m not sure anyone really understands this very well. This is not predicted by evolution, but we don’t kill off the bottom end of the curve via the “strongest will survive”.
Tom,
I think it is speculated that increased wealth means parents can be confident their kid is likely to survive to adulthood. That and increased wealth means that a parent doesn’t actually need the kids to do any work, to contribute to survival.
Think of the days of yore when kids helped on the farm and child mortality was significant. It makes sense to have more kids under this scenario. But this isn’t the scenario people with upper middle income and wealth really face in the USA today anymore.
[Edit: I phrased this in as passive a way as I could manage, because I don’t know that I actually believe this. But I do believe I have heard and read this idea expressed before and I am under the impression this is ‘the conventional thinking’ about this. Who thinks this, where, when do they say this? I can’t actually support my claim here so maybe I am full of it. Buyer beware.]
I have talked with several educated and reasonably well off people in their 30’s to 50’s about why they either don’t have kids or decided to have only one (in the USA, Japan, Europe, and South American countries). The replies are usually the same everywhere: ‘kids are too much work’, ‘kids are too expensive to raise’, and ‘kids interfere too much’ with the lifestyle they want to have. Sometimes the reason is ‘having kids is selfish’ and don’t think it is morally right to ‘burden Earth’ with even more people. I have always found these answers very troubling and difficult to understand.
Marriage and first birth ages have increased significantly over the past several decades. Those who wait too long will often decide not to have children or adopt them. My 3 kids were in their mid to late 30s before marrying. They had 0, 1 and 4 kids (3 births with one being twins).
Mark, I have heard the same and I would buy it. I would also add that the traditional matriarch of a rural family is a domestic engineer and not culturally attuned to field labor (or corporate office or retail occupations). Women’s liberation ended the baby boom.
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What else might curtail population is male infertility growing worldwide from straight line to an accelerating rate. https://www.yahoo.com/news/male-fertility-crash-accelerating-worldwide-222355509.html
It was not long after the publishing or Origin of Species that intellectuals and industrial barons observed that the upper class and cultures deemed more advanced were less fertile than the poor and backward. This is one of the points that folded into the promotion of the eugenics movement, led by the US by the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, funded by Andrew Carnegie.
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A similar movement sprung up in Britain. These two influenced German scientists to promote these ideas to a receptive audience that happened to be gaining power. Since the end of WWII these ideas were realized to be unacceptably morally hazardous.
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Yet if you identify with a self-proclaimed party of virtue then you have license to promote Planned Parenthood, an organization with a slightly Orwellian name and founded as a eugenics tool.
AP and others have called a California race for the republican…. putting Republicans at 218…. they will get two (or worst case one) more seat in California, plus the Boebert race in Colorado, so either 220 or 221 final tally to 214 or 215 for the Democrats.
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The Wicked Witch of the West is finally headed for the exit.
New marching orders for the media:
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Search: “resistance”
Replace: “obstruction”
SteveF, I’m seeing the same figure (218) at RealClear Politics, with sizeable leads in 2 CA districts, and narrow leads in 1 more CA district plus Boebert’s in CO. If all those hold up, Rs will end with a total of 222, gaining 9 seats.
Tom Scharf, too true!
Eugenics and versions of it come in many forms and, of course, always with the coercive power of government does it come to fruition.
https://mises.org/wire/economic-evil-eugenics
A more direct route to the goals of eugenics in the Great Reset would be a form of transhumanism.
https://mises.org/wire/economic-calculation-and-great-reset
The source of the early call on Tuesday that Republicans had reached 218 was some outfit called Decision Desk HQ. They called CA-3 for Kiley. I think they are still the only ones making that call.
HaroldW (Comment #216344)
November 16th, 2022 at 10:24 pm
Harold, where does your 222nd Republican House seat come from? Alaska is the only district I can think of that was giving the Democrats a lead that could could change to Republican because of the unknow calculation of the ranked choice method.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #216345): “A more direct route to the goals of eugenics in the Great Reset would be a form of transhumanism.”
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I think that could only occur after by far the bloodiest war in human history. But I am something of a hopeless optimist.
HaroldW, I see now that Republicans have leads in 3 CA races and 1 in CO. If held that gets to 222 without Alaska. That means a race in CA changed from a Democrat lead to a Republican. That does not mean the Republican lead will hold but makes an interesting rare late vote counting lead change to a Republican. Probably needs an investigation and definitely a recount if the lead holds.
Actually the uncalled Alaska race which at Politico shows a lead for the Democrat actually has more votes for the 2 Republicans than for the one Democrat in the race. This is with 90% of the vote counted but with the great unknow of ranked choice deciding the ultimate outcome. A Republican win there would be a potential 223 for the Republicans.
MikeM wrote: “I think that could only occur after by far the bloodiest war in human history. But I am something of a hopeless optimist.”
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I don’t think so. There are plenty of intermediary stages that people will voluntarily apply. It’s really just an evolution of the smart phone. “Implants” for accessing data, messages etc are as much a staple of science fiction as the “tablet”.
A counter opinion, devil’s advocate view.
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Eugenics: The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
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Eugenics is basically a moral decision, engineering social outcomes this way (genetic engineering of babies, forced sterilization, etc.) is deemed abhorrent yet engineering social outcomes in other ways is deemed virtuous. I’m not sure there isn’t a lot more gray area here.
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Why is forced bussing and affirmative action OK but altering genetics to make somebody more intelligent somehow monstruous? Even when those people would agree to these actions?
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If I was to say that eugenics is commonly practiced by successful people selecting “desirable” mates then people would scoff, but that is exactly what is happening.
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Testing unborn babies for genetic disorders and aborting them are what? Look away! Not eugenics! Anyway, I see this more as a spectrum than a single clearly defined issue. The word eugenics is associated with cartoonish Nazi doctors in prison camps.
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If they had found a few genes that definitely improved social outcomes through intelligence, strength, speed, balance, immunity, leadership, beauty, blind acceptance of government control (ha ha) then this should be prohibited by law for individuals to choose? OK then, but let’s keep allowing the smart talented beautiful people to select and mate with the same.
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The losers in the genetic lottery have no way out here and being legally prohibited from doing so for their progeny also seems unfair.
Covid
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Australia:
“… the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (ATAGI) had recommended against a fifth dose, or third booster, after evidence from Singapore’s recent wave showed that severe illness and death were rare among the vaccinated and that a fifth shot had minimal impact on virus transmission.”
“In those who are eligible for a booster dose, ATAGI does not have a preference for bivalent mRNA vaccines over original mRNA vaccines.”
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CDC, 6 days ago:
“Bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster doses might improve protection against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron sublineages and, along with completion of a primary series in persons who remain unvaccinated, are important to protect against COVID-19, particularly among those persons who are at increased risk for severe illness and death.”
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“might improve”? Huh.
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The real news here is the * lack * of news. The efficacy of the bivalent booster has been memory holed in the media and the quick booster fading against hospitalization for omicron (40% at 9 months) is also never talked about except in academic papers.
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The good news is that protection against serious outcomes and death for healthy people has held up well for the vaccine and * do not appear to fade *, although it is a bit murky if that is primarily because omicron is less lethal or long term protection from the vaccine and/or natural immunity.
Tom,
1. Forced bussing and affirmative action is not OK. But with respect to eugenics, my impression wasn’t that the goal was ‘to make somebody more intelligent somehow’ but rather to prevent the birth and survival of people deemed inferior. This is a much different proposition in my view.
2. People exercising their free choice vs government policy are completely different things. It is perfectly fine (and in fact inevitable) for people to discriminate in their personal lives. You discriminate to chose a mate, a profession, where to live, what to buy, how to worship, etc etc. It is completely unacceptable for government to dictate these things as a matter of policy.
[Edit: I should add, it is also perfectly fine if people discriminating in their private choices leads to unjust or unequal societal outcomes, as far as I am concerned.]
Covid, one more thing. If you want to fill your head with thoughts there is a conspiracy to suppress nonconforming narratives on the vaccine, here you go …
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The actual data shows vaccine two dose protection against infection is actual * negative * after 6 months. That is, vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated after 6 months. This is the second paper I have seen with this phenomenon. I have no explanation for this (vaccinated get tested more often?) and have noted the academics usually have a euphemism for this and call it “negligible” protection against infection.
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The Lancet, Sep 2022, see Figure 1, negative protection
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/878297b5-d849-4499-8553-c2f17ee7e6db-MECA.pdf?abstractid=4224504&mirid=1
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“Somewhat implausibly, we even observed a negative VE against Omicron infection from week 14, indicating that vaccinated individuals experienced a higher risk of infection than those unvaccinated. This may relate to harvesting bias in this analysis of the first event of a common outcome (as infection with Omicron is getting close to ubiquitous in many areas now). More unvaccinated individuals had already been infected, leaving a larger pool of vaccinated individuals susceptible to their first infection later by Omicron. As a result, a higher risk among vaccinated individuals might be observed for a limited time period.”
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Even if the above theory is correct it also shows natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine against infection. I have never once seen this reported in the media.
Although discrimination has become a very dirty word, it is actually the bedrock of civilization. The foundations of law and order require people be discriminated against for their choices to protect others. Progressives railing against discrimination have taken the opportunity that the negative connotation has afforded them to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and we can see where this is going: the breakdown of law and order and the promotion of unethical behavior. Of course, they simply want to replace existing discrimination with their own, usually by turning it on people who aren’t doing anything to anybody.
Tom Scharf,
“Why is forced bussing and affirmative action OK but altering genetics to make somebody more intelligent somehow monstruous?”
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The short answer is Lysenko. The long answer is that the left (including the progressive left in the States) refuses as a matter of divine dogma to ever even entertain that differences in intellect are in any way inherited. When you reject completely the possibility that identifiable groups have different average intellect, then all measured differences, indeed all differences in life outcomes, can only be due to the differences in environments people grew up in, and, of course, the ever present systemic racism. It is the purest of rubbish, of course. Native intellect, culture, and environment all influence life outcomes. The left will no more admit that East Asians are (on average) 4 IQ points smarter than caucasians than it will admit that Caucasians are (on average) 10 IQ points smarter than Africans. It is the ‘big lie’ of the left, and has been since the days of Lysenko.
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Since obvious racial discrimination by colleges is both illegal and unconstitutional, maybe the SC will hand Harvard a much deserved loss.
Tom, the abhorrent part is when government tells you who you can and cannot mate.
If a fully aware individual chooses to be wired as trans-human that is their business. Although there would be a legal question whether that choice could be made just like voluntarily becoming a slave. A time limited contractual agreement might work under certain very special circumstances. I really doubt that more than a very few would choose to loss their autonomy in that way, although giving it up in exchange for promised security from the government might unfortunately be a different situation. But then again this only can occur when the government has made the individual dependent upon it.
I do not see any groups of people thinking about mating up or down when making mating choices or individuals giving consideration of the results or non-results of such a process. Your “desirable” may be the mating couples “compatible”.
mark bofill,
But the definition of eugenics is not forced genetics by the government, although it is conflated. Another definition is the study of how it might be done voluntarily. I just don’t see bright lines here beyond the forced implementation.
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If genetically superior groups can self select and produce superior children, then why can’t genetically inferior groups improve their children’s outcomes with genetic engineering (assuming we had the means)?
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If one believes this would be OK then we should be studying how it can be done. Group genetics studies are increasingly being banned in the academy. Men and women are no longer any different lately. It’s anathema to touch this subject, but I’m just not sure why. Seems more like a moral panic.
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There are real problems that are predictable if the technology was available. The first is that only wealthy people would have access to this technology at first and that would widen the gap even further. The second is that the government would step in to fix this by subsidizing the technology to allow other to have access … then … the government will only subsidize changes it deems desirable.
Tom,
It is totally not clear to me that ‘genetically inferior groups’ (whatever in heck that perilous loaded bomb term actually means) that they can’t. Why do you claim they can’t? It’s not at all clear to me that it would be wrong. I mean, prenatal vitamins are OK, lots of things that can positively affect fetal development are OK. What exactly are we talking about here (what option) that would be forbidden or wrong?
Is it just selective abortion?
Look, there’s another whole thing here. You appear to think that genetics are destiny. I don’t think that’s true. Genetics are a factor. Intelligence has some heritable components, but last I checked there wasn’t a ‘G factor’ gene – there’s a lot of genes that come into play. And intelligence isn’t the only selective factor, not by a long shot. If there is scientific evidence supporting the idea that smart women or conscientious hard working men are better looking than otherwise I am not aware of it and would welcome a link.
You also seem to think that there needs to be some sort of equalization of outcome for different groups of people based on group membership. I think you’re seriously barking up the wrong tree there.
One more comment and I’ll hush.
I think it’s something like this. It’s something like – we don’t know what gene combinations are optimal. We can never know that, it’s an intractable combinatorics problem like solving chess. Additionally, even if we could, we can’t predict what the future holds and what traits might eventually become more important.
People are free to participate in mutual selection.
Is it fair that you start with the genes you start with? It doesn’t matter! There isn’t anything anybody can or should do about that anyway. You start where you start. You look for the ‘best’ mate you can. You get to figure out what ‘best’ means for yourself. Nobody can know exactly what that means for each individual, or dictate that. Nor should they.
The Bell Curve was accused of being racist, but the section on race was a small section, and the author in future books focused only on whites.
The main focus of the book was that people are now more marrying college classmates or colleagues at work, and this is thru genetics creating a class divide.
“I do not see any groups of people thinking about mating up or down when making mating choices or individuals giving consideration of the results or non-results of such a process.”
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It’s perfectly fine to have this as a personal moral bearing, but in group preferences are a very real thing whether conscious or unconscious.
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35% of people graduate college, yet:
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College grads in U.S. tend to partner with each other – especially if their parents also graduated from college
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/07/college-grads-in-u-s-tend-to-partner-with-each-other-especially-if-their-parents-also-graduated-from-college/
“In 2019, 81% of household heads with a bachelor’s degree or more education had a spouse or partner who was also a college graduate.”
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The number is 86% if their parents went to college. I bet 99% of them will swear they have no prejudice against non-college graduates, they just don’t marry them and make sure and send their kids to college, and then praise junior highly when he brings home a college girl, invite her to dinner.
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This is just one line of evidence, there are many more. In this example these groups are segregated in colleges and college level jobs in their mating periods. So it happens. This is how class happens.
My 2 bits on this
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Breeding selects animal and plant stocks for inheritable traits.
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This is basic biology
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Mankind is an animal species
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Low intelligent humans breeding with other low intelligent humans will, in general, reinforce traits of low intelligence.
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On the intelligence difference between blacks and other population groups in the US, the difference seems to be a US issue, not a world wide issue.
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I would be very interested in a study looking at when US blacks started diverging from the overall world black population. My thoughts are this trend in lowering intelligence in the US black population started with the War on Poverty under President Johnson. US welfare strategy seems to acts as a biological sorting strategy.
Ed
Even if your theory of low intelligence in the US black population were true (and I doubt it), that time scale for the cause would be ridiculous.
Ed Forbes,
I have not the slightest clue what you are talking about: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
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Africa has among the lowest measured average IQ’s of any region. No doubt those low averages are confounded with poverty, poor nutrition, poor education, etc. But really, what would make you think USA blacks (average IQ of 85 – 90) are less intelligent than Africans?
I don’t know how women can select a sperm donor today but my guess is they are given some selection criteria and that donor pool is screened. Low grade genetic engineering. Should they be forced to take a random selection? I don’t think so. Shouldn’t they be looking at this?
https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Heritability
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If society deems they do not want to allow the sorted business of overt genetic engineering that is fine by me, but it’s not a clean question and I don’t see obvious answers.
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Downs syndrome is about 1% heritable and is genetically testable before birth using amniocentesis. Cystic fibrosis, another genetic defect is also detectable, life expectancy of 20 years in 1980 but much higher now.
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Will these potential babies not experience joy and happiness and a life worth living? Will they not burden their parents, their siblings, or the state? These are very difficult questions and they become even harder as the technology progresses.
There is a Flynn effect of IQs increasing with each generation. Since the IQs average to 100 by definition, the scores are not comparable with time without renorming.
Pelosi is out as House leader, my heart breaks. Hopefully they will elect AOC as minority leader.
Tom,
Hehe. Not going to happen.
Tom,
Never fear, AOC is speaking up for the most oppressed group in the country, Taylor Swift fans.
My comment disappeared and I have been busy entertaining today so I will just say I am in total agreement with the defiant side of Markbofill with regard to the genetic issue. He has framed it well.
Thank you Kenneth.
Kenneth,
I don’t see your disappeared comment. Sorry.
Lots of comments
“You look for the ‘best’ mate you can.
If genetically superior groups can self select and produce superior children, then why can’t genetically inferior groups improve their children’s outcomes with genetic engineering (assuming we had the means)?
Class is often in the eyes of the beholder and used to make points that might well be in the eyes of the beholder.”
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There is an expression “batting above your weight” in Australia [and USA?] to describe finding a mate much better than one deserves.
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There is reversion to the mean.
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Intelligence, as a trait, like beauty, is a luck of the draw for all human beings.
Hence it can afflict anyone.
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Genetic superiority is a horrible concept usually used by people who think they have a wonderful set of genes.
Having met examples of most of the different racial groups in the world, including Canadians, I would say it is and always will be to assign intelligence and race as obligatory co factors.
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A variation on Ken’s apt comment would be Asimov’s.
Claiming genetic superiority is the last refuge of the intellectually insecure.
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Why is it that the older one gets the more simple younger people seem?
Or am I just being Agist?
I would say it is and always will be WRONG to assign intelligence and race as obligatory co factors.
Lucia, my missing comment was probably a very rare miscue on my part. Do not do emoticons. Sorry for my wasting your time.
angech,
Obligatory co-factors? No, there are plenty of pretty dumb Japanese people, and plenty of pretty smart Japanese people (I am sure, because I have met a few of both), but Japanese people do in fact score about 6 IQ points higher on average than, say, Australians. Recognizing that fact does not make me prejudiced against Australians. There are clear differences in average intelligence between identifiable groups. There are much larger differences in intelligence between individuals in any identified group. The width of the distribution in every identifiable group is always far greater than the differences in means between groups, and the distributions always have large overlaps.
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This matters not at all in how people should be treated: every individual should be fairly and honestly evaluated, independent of membership in any identifiable group. But refusing to accept differences in average intellect between identifiable groups can (and often does) lead to damaging policies, policies which are claimed to be opposing ‘racism’, but which in fact are explicitly based on racial selection, not selection based on the qualifications of the person. The relative handful of physics majors at CalTech ought not be admitted to guarantee there is the ‘correct’ proportional representation of each identifiable group, but rather on whether or not they are the most capable individuals. Candidates to be medical doctors, engineers, programmers, accountants, and everything else ought to be selected by how competent they will likely be, not their race, sex, national origin, or religious beliefs.
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Or as one US Supreme Court justice noted: the way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating based on race.
Steve, I agree with your point that there are different mean levels of intelligence among identifiable groups. But we can’t know accurately what those numbers are due to confounding by culture and by choice of definition of intelligence.
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It is much easier to see the differences in dog breeds. My mixed breed shepherd – collie was much smarter than my pug.
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There is also differences in types of intelligence, on average I believe, between men and women. But I know Lucia strongly disagrees. (I did say on average).
One interesting point about German eugenics is that their scientists promoted racial purity as a benefit when we see in practice that genetic diversity produces superior traits, at least in the short run. I am not sure why this is or why inbreeding is harmful beyond increasing chances of recessive gene type diseases.
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Edit: Answering my own question, it would make sense that bad dominant traits would be eliminated from the gene pool faster than bad recessive traits. Therefore bad dominant traits are scarcer. So genetic diversity makes more heterozygous alleles, which are controlled by the dominant one.
Ron
Dogs have been intentionally bred for traits.
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I don’t know what “types” you think are different. I think women and men on average have somewhat different interests and orientations. By adulthood that’s bound to affect what they are good at and what they know. It also affects what problems they’ve practiced applying their knowledge to.
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It’s very difficult for people to tease out the difference between application of knowledge and “innate intelligence”, much less tease out whether people have different “types” of intelligence.
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Another thought on the topic brings to mind that German eugenics saw Jews, Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses as genetically inferior. Their main beef was that they were too tribal, which makes one smile at the irony.
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There are echoes of this today. Every group sees other groups as too tribal.
Ron Graf
In breeding over the long term results in a lack of variety in genes can result in the population not having genes that would be useful if conditions change slightly. And conditions always change slightly– for example new diseases arise. Consider Covid or the fungus that blighted the Irish potatoes. (Irish potatoes were one specific strain. Not all potatoes were as susceptible to the blight. The genes that made things blight resistant were identified in other potatoes and new commercial strains made.) Anyway, those are two potential down sides. But if the Irish potatoes had been the only strain of potatoe there was a risk potatoes could be wiped out. Otherwise, in the wild the potatoes with naturally existing resistance would carry on and out compete.
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Intentional inbreeding– for crops– tries to do things somewhat carefully to get a specific outcome. But you still often have other problems– German shepard’s have hip problems.
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I doubt the Germans under Hitler had anywhere near enough time to become inbred compared to other populations. Their populations was large enough to require a very large number of generations of in breeding to see problems. (Iceland doesn’t seem to exhibit problems as far as I am aware. My understanding is it’s hard for an icelander to meet another who isn’t at least as close as 5th cousin.)
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Of course, Hitler’s eugenic scientist didn’t even have tools to figure out who had “more” of the “correct” racial groups traits. Never mind that they didn’t have the tools to identify who or where the “correct” “master race” might have come from, what they looked like and so on. (The tools to obtain DNA from human remains and analyze them now exist. )
“It’s very difficult for people to tease out the difference between application of knowledge and “innate intelligence”, much less tease out whether people have different “types” of intelligence.”
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Agreed.
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I just believe there is based on your first point, which is that intelligence can be bread and thus different types of intelligence can be bread. And thus it makes sense that if for a million years before the last 50 men and women had different requirements in intelligence in providing for the propagation of the species.
Lucia wrote: “I think women and men on average have somewhat different interests and orientations.”
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While considering this issue in the past, I thought a good study might be to take a survey of YouTube channels and the subjects covered by men and women. Given these are largely voluntary, time consuming, extra-curricular activities, with a huge number of data points, it should give a pretty good picture of how these interests differ without the biases involved in asking the question.
Ron
I think it is possible to breed it. It may have happened with Ashkenaz Jews who are thought to have gone through a bottleneck in the middle ages and who remain a distinct group due to strong intermarriage within the cultural-religious group. (The bottleneck seemed to be down to 350 breeding indviduals. https://www.nature.com/articles/5201156 )
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However, given the known movements of human peoples, the very large size of the breeding group, I think it highly unlikely there are strong correlations between IQ and race, and the strength of the evidence that it exists is poor and tends to be flawed by other factors we know affect IQ. (Nutrition, disease, and– like it or not– training/social exposure.)
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Since I have no idea what “type” of intelligence you think differ between men and women and I suspect your view is due to “just looking around”, I’m pretty dubious of your opinion on that. Identifying differences in “type” of intelligence would require truly teasing out what you consider a “type” then designing a test for that. “Size of visual working memory”? There is some evidence women have more of this “type” than men: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18982954/ (just googled working -memory, men women.)
There is some evidence women deal with brain damage better: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00139/full
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So I wouldn’t reject your idea outright.
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There are supposedly somewhere between 4-7 “factors” or “dimensions” of intelligence. I casually googled working memory– which happened to pop up results that show evidence women are better than men at those. I would guess men might be better at some of the other ones– not going to google.
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I tend to think by the time people pass 18, interests and choices affect how “intelligent” they are in different dimensions. So I suspect most peoples impression of what “types” of intelligence men and women have is due to what types of activities, education and socialization they have had.
DaveJR
The more interesting good study is comparing job choices of women in very sex-egalitarian countries to less egalitarian countries with strong income distribution. Women in places like Sweden and Norway evidently pick more “female” type jobs relative to males than on other countries. In other countries women tend to pick things that get them jobs with better prospects. So higher proportions go into “male” jobs.
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The interpretation is that when there is no strong financial incentive to pick “male” jobs, women pick “female” jobs at an even higher rate.
DaveJR
Actually, a lot of youtube makes people who post a lot some $$. There is $$ in selling beauty products, gadgets, etc. The women posting about how to have “wonderful” nails often have storefronts. And etc.
Lucia,
“I think it highly unlikely there are strong correlations between IQ and race, and the strength of the evidence that it exists is poor and tends to be flawed by other factors we know affect IQ.”
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Could you define ‘strong’?
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What evidence do you think is poor?
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What is very clear from fraternal and identical twin studies (raised together and separated at birth) is that intelligence has a large genetic factor. Yes, of course nutrition, environment, and culture also have influence on adult intelligence (how could they not?), but the evidence for the basic heritability of intelligence seems to me strong, not poor.
SteveF
With respect to race: all that I have read. It’s almost as annoying as “education” evidence for most “evidence based education”. I’m not hunting it down to read more.
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I accept that there is a hereditary component. It’s also not evidence of actual existing strong distributions by race. So that is not counter evidence to what I wrote.
If someone points out that height, hair color, obesity, athletic ability, longevity, and many other characteristics are at least partially inherited, that is perfectly OK. But if someone points out that the ability to solve complex mathematical problems (or even comprehend the math necessary to understand those complex problems) is also at least partially inherited, that is not OK. I find it simply bizarre.
Ron Graf,
“But we can’t know accurately what those numbers are due to confounding by culture and by choice of definition of intelligence.”
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Definition of intelligence? Intelligence as measured by standardized tests of intelligence. I don’t know any other; perhaps you could point to other definitions, how the intelligence those definitions describe is measured, and how that measured intelligence correlates with academic and life outcomes.
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We can know, and do know (with reasonable accuracy) who is most likely to succeed based on their measured intelligence by standardized tests of intellectual capability. Standardized testing (eg SAT, ACT, various intelligence tests) are strong predictors of both academic and overall life outcomes. Perfect predictors? Of course not, there are lots of very smart people who fail for reasons other than their intellect, and lots of less smart people who do very well for reasons other than their intellect (like exceptional effort, responsibility, self-awareness, etc.). Please point to better predictors of outcomes than existing standardized tests.
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If we test high school athletes in how fast they can run 100 meters, we can predict which of them have a chance to succeed as defensive backs in the NFL…. and which do not. Nobody seems to object to measuring foot speed, but testing speed of mind to predict academic success seems verboten. As I said above, I find it bizarre.
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My objection to claims that identifiable groups can’t, or as Lucia claims, very likely don’t have different averages in intellect is that a) it is contrary to actual measured average intellects for large identifiable groups, and b) it is used as an excuse to explicitly discriminate against identifiable groups and favor others… like East Asians applying to selective colleges, and the whole of “affirmative action” in hiring and promotion based on sex, race, ethnicity, etc. Based on the plain words of existing Federal statutes, this is illegal. But more, it is immoral: people can’t control their race, ethnicity, or sex, and to punish (or promote) based on things they can’t control is simply wrong.
Jeff, the reason it is not OK to talk about intelligence being inherited, (unless you are talking to your offspring), is because it is so ripe for bias. Obviously the immediate thought turns to tribe seeing themselves as the chosen ones or master race. Thus it is not productive to discuss. That is unless we are forced to as in the case with Down’s syndrome.
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Besides sensitivities the other reason it is not productive to discuss is the moral hazard of thought of taking any pro-active measure to “improve” the gene pool.
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Edit: I agree, Jeff, that there should be no discrimination based on any measure except for demonstrated merit. And all individuals should retain equal rights except for those that have not been medically diagnosed mental disability and need a guardian.
Ron Graf,
Who is Jeff?
I do not think attempting to “improve” the gene pool based on trying to make people smarter is a wise choice. The genetic components which go into intellect are too poorly known and too varied to give any guidance. That does not mean that with greatly increased knowledge trying to make people smarter would be a bad idea.
One of the better talks on United States and worldwide Geopolitics with Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Ukraine.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EVMSqbvzU
I found this interesting if you have any interested in a tactical viewpoint.
Entire Modern Tank Battle Caught on Camera.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnK2OLH3mjg
Yep, somehow any discussion on genetics ends up here. I should have phrased my original comment more carefully. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
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There is strong evidence of statistically significant measured differences in IQ * tests * and race. Additionally almost every single standardized test from grade school to grad school shows the average differences. Other proxies for generalized intelligence including GPA’s, educational attainment, proficiency at high knowledge jobs, certain games, etc. all show it. IQ tests by employers were largely banned by the Supreme Court due to racial disparities (this is the legal precedent for disparate impact). Any one of these measurements can be argued, but the weight of all the evidence is that the tests are measuring something real. Intelligence is heritable, not as strong as things like eye color and height, but clearly heritable.
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The fact of the measurement results are not really controversial, but how to interpret them obviously is. How much of this difference is environmental versus genetic is unknown. One could assume it’s completely environmental until proven otherwise, or the opposite. Almost every attempt to normalize out known environmental factors results in a varying reduction of the gaps but the gaps still remain.
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They decoded the genome and cannot identify genes directly associated with intelligence. It is just a big messy soup for most heritable characteristics. I think they identified maybe 100 genes that correlated with 20% of intelligence differences. Not very convincing. That side of the proof isn’t coming anytime soon either.
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Instead of picking apart this test or that environmental variable try to think of the best test that would measure this fairly, and it is likely it has been done many times already because many people very much want to prove this gap is environmental. Studies of different races of parents/children in the same household for example reduces the gap but does not eliminate it. Studies of the children of interracial marriages shows the results are about the average of the races. AFAICT the current theory is that the invisible forces of systemic racism are responsible for the remaining gap and they don’t know how to measure them properly. Stereotype threat and other things. The dark energy of social sciences.
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So what? Clearly it’s best to table this specific aspect of the discussion as it is not productive and people get pretty sensitive. However when the education gap is completely blamed on systemic racism along with government policy then this along with differences in home culture, etc. are the counterargument which cannot be discussed in polite company. So be it.
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There may be a fundamental limit to how much the gaps can be closed, as there would be between any groups that have a 10 pt. difference in measured IQ. It doesn’t mean you give up trying to make education better.
Lucia,
“I accept that there is a hereditary component. It’s also not evidence of actual existing strong distributions by race.”
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I am still not sure what you mean by “strong”. Is 5 IQ points difference in mean “strong”? How about 10 or 15? It would help me understand what you are saying if you could explain.
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When blind auditions of prospective symphony orchestra musicians was instituted (judges heard only the sound, and could not see the person), the number of women who were hired increased quite dramatically, clear indication that there was ‘systemic’ prejudice against women in hiring musicians for symphony orchestras. But those same blind auditions DID NOT increase the number of black musicians hired for symphony orchestras. Recently, many symphony orchestras decided to no longer use blind auditions, because they insist blind auditions are ‘racist’. Do you think blind auditions of musicians are racist?
Tom Scharf,
“So what? Clearly it’s best to table this specific aspect of the discussion as it is not productive and people get pretty sensitive.”
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Yes, people get sensitive. I don’t agree that is a good enough reason to table a subject. Especially not when the prevailing politics (‘Differences in achievement are 100% due to ‘systemic racism’, and you are a racist if you ever suggest otherwise’) seem illogical and lead to unfair and unlawful policies.
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“The dark energy of social sciences.”
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The ‘dark matter’ of social sciences might be more accurate. Just wave your arms hard enough and you can explain away the observations, even while you have not a clue about understanding them.
Tom,
I agree much more strongly with what I read you saying above than what I thought you were getting at before. There must’ve been some misunderstanding there someplace, but it’s all good.
Except like Steve, I don’t know that I’d let it go at ‘so what .. so be it’, but whatever. 🙂
This guy wrote about global warming and Mann some time back.
He has a lot of posts about race and IQ.
The blog was more active about 10 years ago.
https://skepticink.com/prussian/2014/03/31/the-anti-racialist-q-a/
No conversations should be forgone because of its sensitive nature and I know where people are coming from when they throw out statistic for various groups of people. It is not malicious in the conversation we have had here.
My point rather is that when grouping people based on something over which they do not have control is unproductive. Individuals are what they think, what they accomplish, how they deal with other people and their skill sets. In my life I have made decisions based mostly on
individuals and far less often on what group(s) to which they belonged and then only when the group had some common ideas and philosophies that I judged could be generalized based on strong existing evidence.
Also thought generalizations as a human tendency and weakness are far different than generalizations upon which one might act.
WSJ Today: Law School Accrediting Panel Votes to Make LSAT Optional
Legal education community has been divided over testing requirement and its impact on diversity in admissions
https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730?st=9ri73cggd9iwcz7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“In one written comment, Fariha Amin, a full-time worker and mother to a 6-year-old son, said her LSAT scores remain a hurdle to getting into law school. She took tutoring courses, but her scores still weren’t high enough to be admitted, she told the ABA, urging them to eliminate the requirement.
“I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a family lawyer, just due to not being able to successfully handle this test,” Ms. Amin wrote.”
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That’s where things are increasingly headed, merit is being removed in order to make things more “fair”. Ironically merit was put in to make things more fair. I personally do not believe removing merit is a wise move, it invites hidden corruption and breeds resentment of a perceived rigged system.
Whether intelligence is genetic and is linked to race makes a big difference regardless of the intergroup range.
Assume IQ is a bell curve distribution with standard deviation 15. I think the real number might be 10, but the general principal applies.
About 15% are above mean + 1 SD, 2.5% above mean+2SD, .13% above mean+3SD.
With East Asians, you have a mean of 107-108, half a standard deviation above whites with mean 100.
This would mean 2.5% of whites above 130 IQ and 7% of East Asians. Also .13% vs .3% for 145+ IQ.
At higher levels the multiplier is much higher.
For a 15% difference as with blacks vs whites, this would mean only 15% of blacks are above average for whites, and 15% of whites are below the average for blacks.
An 8-1 ratio of whites to blacks above IQ 130, combined with a 6-1 population ratio, means about 50-1 ratio, and it gets higher at higher IQ levels.
Yeah. Well. Compassion and sympathy aren’t the greatest synonyms for fairness. I hate for people to give up their dreams too. I hate it even more when people refuse to give up dreams they can never realize, because their dreams are unrealistic. If Amin’s test scores aren’t high enough, it might be indicative that she doesn’t have what it takes to practice law. Now – maybe the test really is a BS requirement that has nothing to do with anything, I have no way of knowing that. But it’s also possible that the test is an appropriate criteria. Bottom line, if she really doesn’t have the capabilities, it’s *not* fair to let her into law school. Not for anybody.
SteveF
That would make about 8 IQ points a big difference.
SteveF
Nope.
SteveF,
I would also note that for me to believe that an difference of even 14 points between races was due to genetics related to race I would also need support from DNA guys finding specific evidence that the difference was related to specific genes. The reason is the Flynn effect from 1942-2008 was that large and I don’t think the Flynn effect is due to a major change out in the distributions of genes related to intelligence.
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I think 1/2 and SD is a material difference though– and would be big enough to be meaningful. It just doesn’t necessarily mean it’s related to the genes pool of a racial group.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730?st=9ri73cggd9iwcz7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Well, I bet they aren’t going to make the Bar exam optional. Other degrees don’t require students to pass something like the Bar to fully use their degree after they finish.
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If lots of schools stop requiring the Bar then 10 years from now we’ll be observing an increase in the number of people graduate from Law school and fail the bar. Then people will be debating whether we really need a Bar exam. It’s just an artificial barrier in the way of hardworking people’s dreams. If we don’t really need a Bar exam, we should get rid of the Bar exam now.
SteveF
You are mischaracterizing what I said. My position is I doubt the differences in IQ observed between racial groups is mostly due to genetics.
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I’ve explained why I doubt that it is– and it is not because I don’t think IQ is heritable. I do think IQ has a decent heritable component.
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Lucia,
“You are mischaracterizing what I said.”
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Sorry, that was not my intent. I think it is more that I did not clearly understand what you said.
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I will comment again a bit later.
The Flynn effect change may be due to across the board upgrades in environment. Improved prenatal care, better childhood nutrition, less smoking during pregnancy, less lead in the environment, etc. It’s all speculation and about impossible to prove.
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Almost all heritable characteristics cannot be traced to specific genes except in rare cases. It’s all loose correlation now I think. They don’t know how this works yet, but the fact that DNA expresses itself in statistically significant and predictable ways is known, the mechanism is not. My guess is figuring this out is a long way off. It is not a Lego set with a step by step instruction book.
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If you start with the exact DNA of Elon Musk you will get a little Elon out the other side. If you smoke crack the whole pregnancy you will get something like Elon Musk trying to fix Twitter.
Tom,
My point in bringing up the Flynn effect isn’t to explain it. My point is you have to recognize it exists when interpreting differences in scores across groups is that it is an observed phenomena, it is pretty big (1 sigma) it happened in a time scale too short to be due to genetics and in some countries happened despite a demographic change that resulted in the population having a larger percentage of the “low scoring” group. So it is almost impossible to attribute to increase in “smart genes”.
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If the difference between us and our grandparents (two groups) is due to something other than genetics, we can’t jump to the conclusion that the difference between to other groups is due to genetics.
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This isn’t denying that differences between groups exist– they do. And it is not denying that IQ has a degree of heritability. It does. But — at least for me– unless you have some other evidence that the difference between the groups is genetic, I’m not going to be convinced it’s due to genes.
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DNA science is at the point where they might be able to pinpoint specific genes that are linked to genetics. (It might be dangerous to someone’s career to do it– but the science is approaching that.) But until they have the sort of additional evidence actual DNA can provide, all we have is “we can detect average difference between race” along with “we detect the same size (or larger!) differences between two fairly closely spaced generations.”
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What will DNA evidence find when we eventually have it (which we will)? I don’t know. But for now: I think it’s jumping to conclusions to think the differences between races is due to genetics and the Flynn effect gives strong evidence that that size of difference can be due to something else.
Comparing people on different qualities is a fraught issue.
Judging books by covers.
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Even those two concepts, comparing and judging, highlight the problem.
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We all make comparisons.
The problem is making judgements.
Comparisons involve objective assessments.
I.e with a ruler, a scale, a colour chart, a scales.
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Regardless of who does the comparison the outcome will be the same. You will be 5 foot, eight inches on that day, or not.
No argument.
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Then there is judgement.
Here the measurer, not the measure, comes into play.
No more objectivity.
If the measurer has a flaw, as in being colour blind, he will never notice that a flaw exists in his judgement.
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I doubt, very strongly, that most people here would do well in an intelligence test organised by scientists in any foreign language.
I do not think an intelligence test has any meaning outside the group it is organised by.
This is not to knock the idea of comparisons, just to make people aware that making judgements is an eye of the beholder problem.
The judgement is not measurable and may be objectively completely wrong.
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Levels of intelligence.
I am writing notes on a patient 40 years ago in pen on a patient on a small five by eight card.
The notes, not the patient, who is sitting at the side of my desk.
The patient, whom I have judged as ordinary, and needs the instructions repeated twice for clarity says something like
“ you should spell my name with an e on the end”
Or any other comment on my notes indicating that they are literate, have good eyesight and can read words that are upside down and back to front to them in doctor’s handwriting and have extremely good awareness.
I make a quick mental note that they are much brighter than the semi and more intelligent than I am.
I dig a little deeper into schooling and whom they are related to and I put a little reminder mark of three full stops at the end.
No need to advertise to people who are smarter than I that I am aware of it.
agech,
Comparing individuals isn’t necessary “judging books by covers”. It can actually be judging books by their contents!
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No one gives people intelligence tests in a foreign language. That’s ridiculous.
The DNA people are, by the way, looking at genes and intelligence:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/
Lucia,
Thanks for the link to that review article. That article is now over 4 years old, and based on the progress the authors described as happening over a few years, it is likely there has been more progress since then. I will do a little searching for more recent work.
SteveF: “Who is Jeff?”
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Good point. (Multitasking is hazardous and lowers apparent IQ by one sigma, at least.) 😉
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I am half way between SteveF and Lucia on the issue of strength of evidence on group average IQ. One must remember all the factors that affect the group besides genes. I went to a 20% black junior high and I can attest that there was a marked difference in culture and upbringing between the blacks from the edge of the inner city and whites from the edge suburbs. I overheard my biology teacher to compare the difference between domesticated animals and not-so-domesticated. Many poor neighborhoods in inner cities with high crime and street gangs require their youth to attain certain toughness to survive. Part of that is the rejection of formal education and what one might call good citizenship. There were notable exceptions. And I saw some of that in a boy scout troop I joined. But there were strong social pressures that were unproductive to adaptation for successful education or scoring on IQ test.
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Culture is a major factor, perhaps the overwhelming one. But one still doesn’t know how IQ plays in culture formation. All we can do is try to support the positive and hope for improvement. Almost all government interventions are doomed to fail, IMO, just as they do in foreign nation building. I know that busing did not help the black students I went to school with.
From the same authors: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01348-y
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The authors seem to be mostly responding to criticism that their genetic analysis is rendered meaningless by confounding with things like mate selection. They don’t seem to be adding much new.
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One doubt I have is: There are SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in both coding and non-coding regions of DNA, and the frequency in non-coding regions is said to be much higher than in coding regions. Which makes sense, since non-coding regions, by definition, do not code for proteins. But then, the correlations they are searching for are mostly only markers for the genetic differences which actually lead to differences in intelligence (and many, many other traits). I wonder if narrowing the SNP analysis to include only SNPs from coding regions might be more informative.
Ron Graf,
“Almost all government interventions are doomed to fail, IMO, just as they do in foreign nation building.”
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So far that is true. Programs like Head Start showed some improvements at young ages, but these disappeared by high school. I agree that cultural issues are likely important and perhaps the most important factor in differences in educational achievement, but that remains unproven, and even if true, does not mean that genetic factors could not also be important. Culture, can (at least in theory) be changed, but genetic differences most certainly can’t be. The discouraging thing for me is that there are no obvious efforts to change counterproductive culture, efforts which might actually help narrow achievement gaps, but plenty of efforts to make outcomes equal based on sex, race, or ethnicity…. even if that means obvious discrimination against other people based on their sex, race or ethnicity.
lucia (Comment #216419)
No one gives people intelligence tests in a foreign language. That’s ridiculous.
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Tell these guys
Pintner, R., & Keller, R. (1922). Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children. Journal of Educational Psychology,
The Binet examination records of 674 foreign speaking children representing eighteen different nationalities showed a decidedly lower I. Q. than found in an English speaking group from the same schools, “whether because of actual lower intelligence, or because of a language handicap.” When the Pintner non language test was given to a group of these children, the I. Q.’s of both foreign and English speaking children were raised, but the increase was much greater for the foreign speaking.
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The ecfmg
ECFMG
Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.
is a test given in English for overseas medical students to enter the USA.
Being English speaking it was a breeze.
The much brighter Asian students in our year [to whom could be considered a foreign language test requiring intelligence failed and fail miserably.
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The implication or arrow I was drawing was that intelligence tests seem OK to those drawing them up but can seem to be in a foreign language to those people whose upbringings are and were not WASP.
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Ido not think other nationalities administering
angech,
So progressive matrices is an intelligence test only suitable for WASPs? Funny how those non-WASP Japanese do so well on it.
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Of course being tested in a foreign language is not going to generate an accurate estimate of intelligence. I don’t think anybody would ever suggest it would. But what has that to do with the entire thread above?
RonF,
I think a lot of the “solutions” people concoct are bound to fail whether or not IQ is genetic. Busing? The hoped for upside is integrating would work magic. An obvious downside: Being bused to a far away school is time consuming. Kids now end up sitting with other kids in a bus for some amount of time. Time that might be better spend doing extra curiculars, studying, being gainfully employed or even baby sitting younger kids. The magic of rubbing elbows with white kids was probably not going to make up for that wasted time.
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Even to the extent that some IQ is nurture, and certainly some skill building is, that doesn’t mean we know the precise actions that raise IQ. We have some general ideas about good and bad environments for infants, toddlers, preschoolers etc. But that doesn’t mean we can craft a formal program to raise IQ of preschoolers. So government can’t necessarily come up with a program that achieves raising IQs very much.
Lucia,
Who is RonF?
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For a couple of laughs: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6dMOfwUP0F0
angech,
Your linked article was a study to specifically determine the effect having foreign speaking parents had on the IQ test. The gave kids two kids of test to ‘find out’ how much language matter. Yes– it shows the obvious, a language based test needs people to speak that language. (It’s also young kids.)
It’s not an example of people intending to use IQ tests in foreign languages to find out kids IQs! The full paper is here”
https://zenodo.org/record/2509007/files/article.pdf
SteveF, RonG.
(I’ve got fake nails on from a competition. Typos are worse than usual.)
Lucia, after scanning the paper you linked where DNA was used in attempts to make associations with intelligence, the R squared value that kept coming up was 0.1 which was significant but only explains 10 percent of intelligence variability. Intelligence using very large samples was proxied by educational attainment- I think.
Statistical significance will get a paper published but that does not mean it has much practical importance. I would not use a DNA analysis in hiring anyone at any level.
November 18th, 2022 at 10:16 pm
angech, you will not get a quip past the Lucia test for meaning. You need to detail more and explain more.
Some changes have helped. Better pregnancy healthcare, Medicaid, food stamps, and free lunches to provide better childhood nutrition. I don’t remember exactly but I believe the gap had changed from around 15 points decades ago to around 10 points now. It depends on how you normalize out poverty and so forth. Living in poverty now is a lot different than it was 100 years ago to say the least.
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I support these type of programs more than I used to, they may be justified on multi-generational economics alone. These type of changes will hit a ceiling in effectiveness eventually when children are properly fed and cared for before and after pregnancy.
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I don’t think programs to “stop systemic racism” are particularly effective at this point. Just like above this type of program will hit a ceiling in effectiveness as we remove the last vestiges of that type of behavior. For example my large and populous county has had equalized school funding for many decades and a large gap remains. It’s not school funding here, but it could still be part of the problem in other places. Affirmative action was more justifiable with “separate but equal” schooling. That was a long time ago.
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A big problem from a social perspective is that groups still self select to live together and these groups form their own cultures that can enhance or detract from certain society wide goals. I say from a social perspective because I don’t think this should change other than some nudges of “it would be nice”. I highly prefer autonomy over social engineering, I don’t trust the engineers here.
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A big part of me still feels like “maybe if they just did their homework” then outcomes would improve. Verboten, but my guess a very common unspoken thought. There is a saying about horses and water. I think it is unfortunate that this is willfully beyond the scope of the social sciences at this point. I literally don’t believe I have ever seen a study reported about the link between doing your homework and educational success. How Asians succeed here and elsewhere isn’t a secret.
Intelligence tests have been tweaked in a lot of ways and there are different forms. Believing they haven’t been given a lot of thought to remove cultural biases is naïve. As I recall the difference between Asians and whites is fairly specific to performance on spatial awareness
https://www.123test.com/spatial-reasoning-test/
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In general these tests can be accomplished with only a basic ability to read, can be given orally, etc. Brain teasers. Certainly things like dyslexia can be a hindrance, but it is more likely that IQ tests discovered people with dyslexia were fundamentally OK.
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I’d like to see Fetterman’s results before and after his stroke for example. If they were the same then I think people voting for him could feel fine with it (beyond communication being a big part of that job).
Ken-
Yes. That’s about the current state of looking at genetics. But it shows that people are starting to look at foundations in DNA. Of course they haven’t gotten very far. It will probably take a while.
SteveF (Comment #216430)
November 18th, 2022 at 10:12 pm
The YouTube clip might be funny, but what if the interviews were across all ages and with the same selection process probably used over a large number of interviews? How does it square with generational IQ increasing? The commentator might well be confused as being smart and being a smarta$$.
Is that a laugh track I hear?
Tom
Some. And it’s never going to go away entirely.
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There is also some economic pressure. When we were house shopping we did consider niceness of the neighborhood. It’s more pleasant to live in a more upscale neighborhood. But only people with money can afford bigger lots, bigger houses in convenient locations etc. So wealthier people live nearer wealthier people and poorer near poorer at least as a general rule.
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Having a big influx of south Asians (Indian mostly) also puts quite a bit of pressure on schools to be good. I don’t know if the tend to settle near each other on purpose or if it just has to do with where new development is happening during the time period they immigrated. But Naperville has been growing over the past 40 years and it’s a little bit of an “indian hub”.
Tom Scharf
Oh…. there are plenty of teachers on /r/Teachers at reddit verbalizing this. Seems like more recently.
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You can’t get unbiased samples from reddit.
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But there recently seems to be a lot of grousing about Administrators implementing policies that say something like “Never give a score less than 50% for anything.” Or “We’ll do standards based grading”, which can be made to sound good on paper but means keep giving ‘opportunities’ to retake test or do work until the absolute end of the semester. The consequence is kids will put off doing work or learning. And from an Industrial Engineering POV, the amount of work for teachers explodes. (Offering the test 3 times means writing 3 tests and grading 3 tests.)
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And then there is the demand to “differentiate”– which is offer what they don’t call a “smart”, “medium” “dumb” version of an assignment. (Like– some kids READ the a novel and some kids get books on tape. Because READING isn’t isn’t “in the standard” for the high school class. I mean… that’s a *previous* standard. So it’s done now…. right?)
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The interesting thing is — pretty much since Covid– there are more teacher complaining about not being allowed to hold kids to even the published current standard.(And also complain about kids arriving not knowing how to, you know, read. Etc.)
Ken Fritsch,
No laugh track. Bill Maher always has a live audience.
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Of course the clips of interviews they show are the most ridiculous. For what it is worth, I doubt the population on average is less intelligent (less able to learn). But I would not be surprised if the level of ‘general knowledge’ is lower among people who left high school in the last 15 years; there really has been some ‘dumbing down’ of content and obvious (everyone gets a blue ribbon!) grade inflation.
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On a brighter note, after suspending their use for a couple of years, MIT has gone back to requiring SAT or ACT scores for all applicants. Reason: too many flunk-outs (>10%?) among students admitted without SAT or ACT scores. I must admit I am shocked (shocked!). I am not shocked that no testing = worse students, but rather that any selective school would have the intestinal fortitude to go back to requiring standardized tests….. and accept the mountains of abuse they will get from ‘activists’ and other selective schools (it has already started). Now if only the SC would rule against Harvard and the University of North Carolina for racial prejudice in admissions, that would be real progress toward sanity.
SteveF (Comment #216442)
November 19th, 2022 at 1:26 pm
Schools can and do fail to teach the fundamentals but that does not mean that students do not gain information outside the school setting. I would suggest that the internet provides a substantial overall net benefit in this process. Higher IQs would mean that students are capable of learning more wherever that learning occurs or in what form.
Bill Maher is someone like Trump that I have never liked. If the audience is live as you say it is, and I believe you, then the laughs are close to what a track with do. Maher’s audiences are probably much like Trump’s in being great followers.
Being prompted to give passing grades happens – as my daughter-in-law tells me. From what she indicated to me that problem is worse at the junior high level than for high school.
Ken
This might depend on what courses she takes.
My wife taught pre-algebra in high school about 15 years ago for one year. She was basically told to pass anyone that made any effort at all. I helped her grade some tests. You would not believe the inability in a large segment of the class. Fractions were completely hopeless and basic math was hit or miss. I would say around 30% weren’t even in the vicinity of passing the class in a classical sense (scoring 50% on a test). They should have never been in that class. Some students just signed their name and left the test blank. There were official standards of learning, they were ignored.
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It was shocking.
The parents that cared about schools moved to Naperville seeing the high ratings. This brought in higher caliber kids, making the ratings even higher, bringing in more parents, etc.
Question is were the schools good to begin with to justify the high ratings?
Ken Fritsch,
Ya, Maher is a jerk. Not as big a jerk as Trump, but a jerk just the same. Way too certain, way too full of himself, way too selfish. But at least he can be funny…. a lot more funny than Trump. And he sees the nuttiness in the woke left cabal of loonies, and makes fun of them, which is a plus.
Not sure if anyone is following the FTX crypto fiasco. The WSJ has a pretty good breakdown.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-alameda-bankruptcy-collapse-11668824201?st=d8mhrt6u99rqv69&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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Another article:
“FTX and Alameda sought protection from creditors after executives at both businesses revealed that FTX had lent billions of dollars worth of customer assets to Alameda to plug a funding gap”
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Ummm … no. They willfully * stole * customers money to gamble with themselves. Another angle here is FTX’s founder was the second biggest donor to Democrats this last election cycle. This company was a Bahamas corporation so criminal liability is uncertain. I would predict they are going to end up in the same cell as Elizabeth Holmes (see the excellent book Bad Blood).
Lucia, I am just going by the conversations I have had with her in passing, but I think she would agree that it depends on the course. During Covid-19 when she was teaching junior high she said a student would have to try real hard in order to fail. I also believe there was a difference in the administrations between her junior high and high school teaching experiences. She also said there was a big difference in the maturity of some of the students that affected the teaching experience.
She has had some major successes that I think keeps her teaching and particularly when the administration recognizes it – which usually comes through the student and their parents.
What I remember looking at prep books, the LSAT is the SAT with the math section replaced by logical reasoning questions.
Elon Musk posted a picture from an emergency meeting of the few remaining code engineers at Twitter yesterday:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593899029531803649?s=20&t=wam_ymqPHXrrZnJZsP9ZdA
No blonds, no neckties, no zoom, a disproportionate number of Asians and men, styrofoam coffee cups with their names written in pen. Looks like a dedicated bunch of engineers on a mission. Back when I was working I would have been proud to be on the team. Go Elon!
Tom Scharf,
Bankman-Fried will end up in jail for a while, as will others involved in the fraud. But investors won’t be getting back the billions that were stolen, not will Democrats be returning the $100+ million Bankman-Fried and his associates donated to them over the last few election cycles. Count on the Justice department to go very easy on Bankman-Fried and his associates, with some kind of not-too-punative plea bargain for Bankman-Fried before Biden leaves office. He’ll be back on the street trying to stealing money in a few years.
Does anybody understand the FTX numbers? I keep seeing that Sam the Scam Man was worth something like $25B, the firm had something like $8B in deposits, and $1B was stolen. And now both the scammers and marks are broke. Those numbers seem incongruent, even for crypto funny money.
Russel,
Looks like there are two women to me. 🙂
There is also at least one blond (by my standard of blond which is norther european. So actually blond.)
MikeM,
I’m not paying attention to the FTX scam. Just laughing. The sneaker scam is funnier. But . Still.
Mike M,
Scammers hide the real numbers, so there is still a lot of confusion. The actual numbers won’t be know untill they are prosecuted. What is not in doubt is that the scammers made huge contributions to Democrats over the last few elections.
Lucia,
Yup, and if not married, the two women get to choose from a huge collection of hard core nerds. 😉
Lucia,
“Looks like there are two women to me.”
Yes, and that is about right. I seem to recall the computer engineering field to be 90% male.
“There is also at least one blond (by my standard of blond which is norther european. So actually blond.)”
Well, that guy might be quasi-blond. The question is can one quasi-blond mess up the whole project.
Seriously though, they look eager to attack the challenge. I am biased, but I think a determined team of engineers can move mountains. [Literally!]
Of course they need to be provided the right tools… junk food and caffeine.
I suspect the big problems Musk will face at Twitter will not include not having code writers to maintain/change Twitter. It looks like the people who were fired (or quit) were mostly not code writers anyway. I think the biggest problems he will face are:
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1) Most advertisers have bailed (under pressure from woke activists, of course), and Musk has borrowed about $13 Billion to buy Twitter, so supporting Twitter’s debt looks problematic or even impossible with most advertising revenue gone.
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2) The Biden administration and State of California will go after Musk in multiple ways, limiting the changes Musk can make to Twitter, and perhaps even forcing it to stop operating.
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Musk has enough money to survive this by selling shares of Tesla and SpaceX to pay Twitter’s debt, but I doubt the establishment left is ever going to allow Twitter to stay in business if Musk refuses to censor tweets from people who challenge policies of the progressive left.
It looks like the crazy shooter at the gay nightclub (5 dead, 18 injured) in Colorado was from Texas, and had been arrested in Texas 17 months ago after threatening his mother:
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So, why wasn’t this crazy guy prosecuted and sent to prison or committed to an assylum? It beggars belief.
Elon did a massive loyalty purge. In general I think this is bad practice but given the preconditions he walked in with it might be a good move in the long term, but the short term is going to be chaos.
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Twitter isn’t a complicated technology. I’m sure massive global infrastructure is always hard but a chat app isn’t … errr … rocket science. It’s not a technology problem, Twitter’s product is the audience it has accumulated, not the app. If Musk alienates the audience too much they can easily go elsewhere.
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But … they probably won’t is my guess. Twitter is a global product and lighting the US’s Twitterati hair on fire isn’t likely to be a problem since they can’t focus on anything more than 10 minutes anyway.
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Twitter has been continuously losing money since the beginning and nobody has solved that problem yet.
This is Musk’s very subtle response to the Democrat’s call to investigate Twitter:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593624195136487426?s=20&t=1bl9ua0nqUWcnffWeUg3Mg
Russel,
Uhmmm no. The blond I saw is real blond. Hair color maps to “Level 8 or 9” in the picture. 9 is pretty much considered the lightest ‘naturally occurring’. Though honest, I know people with level 10 naturally occurring. My mother’s step brother’s kids among them. But 10 is usually “bleached blonde” a-la Marilyn monroe. 8-9 is called blond by norther Europeans. (6 is called dark blond in t he ‘international scale. I call it “light to medium brown”.)’
Looking at more pictures there are at least 3 women. Sometimes you need to look for the top of a head hear shoulder level of the other people. 🙂
But if you mean it looks like a typical distribution of computer science majors– yes it does.
Heady stuff for programming nerds: you are talking code strategy with the world’s richest man, who ALSO happens to be one of the worlds biggest technical nerds. Must be inspirational.
Tom wrote: “If Musk alienates the audience too much they can easily go elsewhere.”
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As the right discovered, this is far easier said than done. Neither side wants to sit in their own public square talking to themselves. They want EVERYONE to hear what they have to say and dominate THE public square. That’s twitter and this inertia can’t be stopped just by one side. It requires both sides to “agree” on a successor.
Lucia: “Being bused to a far away school is time consuming.”
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Since the color line was a little over a mile from the school the result was they all took the bus, which may have been for other reasons too.
Us kids that lived less the 1.5 miles walked. It took be about 20 minutes each way. In nice weather it took 9 min on a bike. In sub-zero blizzards it took about 30 minutes. The bussed kids would have had a chance to review their notes before their first period test. That’s if they took notes and if they could do it without anyone noticing, which would have been practically suicidal. There was zero tolerance to anyone who showed the slightest respect for learning, which was “bending to the man.”
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Whites, OTOH, had groups that supported sports, academics and partying. None were completely exclusionary of the other, and thus, being studious was not a social negative unless it was to the exclusion of being social.
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My thought is that all education initiatives should be designed to somehow create social success or other immediate payoffs. Asking 12-year olds to be long-term investors is a lot to ask.
My God! This must be a spoof and I’m being gullible. Did anyone here even know that the American Restroom Association even exists?
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/starbucks-pressured-keep-toilets-open-public-restroom-nonprofit-let-people-go
Let the people go!
The world still surprises me sometimes, even after all these years.
48 hours after going cold turkey, CBS news has decided to resume using twitter.
Ron Graf
When was a in 6th-8th grade, I lived just on the “not bussed” side of the busing line. There was a bridge across the DesPlaines that demarked the beginning of the bused zone. Most the based kids took longer to get home. The reason was the bus waited to load. That ate up 5-10 minutes. The bus would take less time to get to the river than we did, but then it turned down blocks….stopped… slow poke kid gets off… starts up… stops…
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I don’t remember actually walking home during a blizzard. After yes, but not during.
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I don’t know if anyone studied on the bus. I bet not. I don’t remember much homework in 6th-8th in anycase. Honestly, almost none.
Too bizarre:: FTX’s “chief regulatory officer” had been involved previously in cheating by an online poker company.
FTX’s tale will make an entertaining Netflix series. (Although not amusing to those who lost $$.)
“48 hours after going cold turkey, CBS news has decided to resume using twitter.”
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Tends to bring a smile to ones face. But don’t worry, they are only returning to Twitter to “do battle” against the forces of evil (AKA anyone who believes in free speech).
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Idea for Musk: Large commercial operations like CBS should pay large monthly fees to be on Twitter.
Lucia, I realize there is this natural tendency to think one had it rougher when they were a child than children today. But we literally walked to school in 30 below wind chills in elementary school in the late 1960s. Snow storms were so normal that the municipality had snow plows mounted on every sanitation truck, road graders, leaf collection trucks, etc… The schools were only closed if teachers could not make it in. Going home was on them. The kids all walked on instantly formed paths they made on top of the snow banks. The safety crossing guards in from of the school were made up of the honored 5th graders to make safety patrol. One of my friends still has his badge.
How ever tough and “free range” we were as kids it was nothing compared to my mother and father’s generation growing up in the Great Depression and WWII.
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I think it is easy to underestimate the abilities of young people (and/or poor people) to manage for themselves if they saw a necessity. There is tremendous pride in accomplishment when one is exceeding their circumstances or contributing to the family in a significant way that was beyond expectation for age or disability. Poverty, drug abuse and homelessness are caused at root by a giving up on the game of trying to succeed.
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We need to keep children in that game and not let them get knocked off track by a setback or creation of a habit that can knock them off track (out of the game). The “great resignation” is a social policy disaster.
I lived relatively far from the schools (about 7 miles), and the school budgets did not allow for enough buses for every bused student to load up at once, so those who lived relatively far away had to wait for buses to first take the nearer students home, then return to the school for the second (longer) bus runs….. adding about 45 minutes wait time after classes ended. In the morning it was the opposite, the far students were bused very early, and we had to wait an extra 45 minutes at school before classes started. So from 3rd to 11th grade I was spending an extra hour and a half each day sitting in the school cafeteria, either waiting for a bus or waiting for classes to start. In high school I learned to make use of wait time in the cafeteria by doing homework, but it still made for a very long day. On the bus at 6:50 AM, and off the bus at about 3:20 PM; add a half mile walk from home to the bus stop and back, and it was a 9 hour school day. In 12th grade I pooled enough money with my younger brother to buy a (very old) car from my parents… I did a valve job on the engine to make it run more reliably… and we gained 2 hours each school day. It seemed at the time an almost unbelievable luxury.
With all these tales about transporting to school I was sure I would hear the one about walking uphill to and from school.
My brother and I drove to high school so that we could help our father with the chores on the farm and later to get home from sports practices.
We were often late for school which for us meant late for study hall. The principal’s secretary was an anal retentive type who thought we should be punished for our lateness and would report us to the principal every day and ask for how we should be punished as she had us waiting outside his office. He would always wave her off in a disgusted manner as put down the Chicago Tribune he was reading and tell her to record a tardy day. We had an all time record for tardiness but it did not affect our grades.
The principal was the coolest person I every ran into in an educational setting. He would do things that were against the bureaucratic rules back in the day (but made a lot of practical sense) and would have had him fired many times in today’s settings.
There was a large family on the border of the school district that had been going to our school when someone determined that they should be going to schools in the other district. When they came to the principal with their problem he told them to wait for the bus on our district’s side of the road and it would be kosher. They all graduated from our school.
Looking back at my childhood everything I did, whether work or play, was
heavilycompletely influenced by modeling my older brother and his friends, including paper routes, shoveling snow for tips, little league, football, scouts, bike trips, getting grades..
I can’t imagine what person I might be if I had grown up 1.5 miles east of my childhood neighborhood.
FTX had listed assets of billions of dollars in some crypto. This number was their own estimate. The actual total value of that particular ‘currency’ worldwide among all holders was under $100 million.
FTX also lent out investors’ money to another company, which then invested the money and lost it.
I don’t see the FTX collapse is all that unusual. All financial institutions are leveraged to some degree. It makes sense that some will get very greedy, irresponsible or unlucky. It does not have to be fraud (in their minds). They need to create facades, as all people and companies do, to create confidence and trust. When a huge embarrassment happens the natural tendency is to cover it up.
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When the embarrassment affects an institution it is easy to justify the coverup as a responsible move to save the reputation and value of the institution. J Edgar Hoover learned this long ago.
Breaking: CBS News discovered Hunter Biden’s laptop is authentic.
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Catherine Herridge was allowed to investigate and get a copy of it. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/copy-of-hunter-biden-laptop-data-appears-genuine-independent-experts-find/
Musk trolling Trump. It’s hilarious…[and a little risque]! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594500655724609536?s=20&t=lkjx05Z4jSlKc7cq5BEHBg
AZ attorney general is investigating Maricopa county election day ballot printer malfunctions.
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https://beckernews.com/explosive-letter-from-arizona-ag-to-maricopa-county-is-held-up-by-kari-lake-as-evidence-she-will-become-governor-47768/
In the US there are legal firewalls between an investment firm’s money and any customer’s money they hold as a bank. This is to prevent the kind of fraud that happened with FTX where they “borrow” customer’s money for their own investments.
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It’s the oldest scam in the world, hold on to customer’s money as a bank telling them it’s safe, then invest it in risky ventures. If it pays off the customers never notice and you get rich. If it doesn’t you go bankrupt and only the customers lose out.
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Just like any semi-Ponzi scheme the danger is a bank run. FTX’s bank run was triggered by the release of some insider info (likely a short seller), a major investor and competitor then announced selling all his assets, everyone else panicked. It was over in a week.
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One would like to believe the legal protection in the US is virtuous and because it is not as corrupt but it is really because the US already learned that lesson the hard way. Big piles of other people’s money are like a mountain of crack cocaine to investment bankers who should be viewed as addicts. They are constantly scheming to invent “innovative” ways to get this done legally. I’m generally against excess regulatory oversight until it’s proven it is required. This industry requires it.
The laptop isn’t fake or tampered with! We now know, because CBS investigated.
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Hunter obviously has some problems. Yawn. The real story, as always, is the coverup. The media was complicit in this, a serious embarrassment. Twitter, Facebook. That CBS reports this now with zero explanation of why it took over 2 years to even look at it is beyond the pale.
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It’s obvious this original hard drive release was a dirty election trick that was politically timed, so was Trump’s video tapes. That doesn’t mean you don’t report on it.
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So, why report on it now? Probably because they think the DOJ may file charges. It’s even worse to never report on this to later have the DOJ announce it’s real.
Tom Scharf,
“They are constantly scheming to invent “innovative” ways to get this done legally. I’m generally against excess regulatory oversight until it’s proven it is required. This industry requires it.”
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Indeed. The 2008 financial crisis, the savings and loan collapse, and many other smaller collapses were all the result of lack of effective controls on risky use of other people’s money. The temptation to become wealthy via misuse of funds is obviously irresistible, as experience has proven many times over. I am reminded of “foxes guarding the hen house”. While there is no 100% foolproof solution, certain steps can be and should be taken: dramatically reduce the fraction of assets any institution can put at risk, have regulators torment the financial industry continuously and never relent, and send all financial malefactors to prison for very, very long times…. say, start with 10 years minimum, per count, and go up from there. Really big violators (like the ones who lose hundreds of millions or billions of other people’s money) should be in prison for life. That punishment is actually pretty mild: in Saudi Arabia, these folks would be beheaded in the city center after a quick trial.
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WRT Hunter Biden and the Biden family corruption:
“…why it took over 2 years to even look at…”. I imagine there were two factors: 1) They have been told Hunter is about to get a wrist slap from the DOJ via a plea bargain (a fine, with no prison time, of course), and 2) Catherine Herridge probably threatened to quit and go public with all the CBS dishonesty, and cause CBS a lot of PR damage.
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CBS News is shameless, and nothing more than another of the many propaganda arms of the Democrats.
It appears that the Republican leads in CA 3, 13, and 22 are holding. I have no idea how it is that so few votes have been counted, especially in CA 22. Boebert’s opponent has conceded; I am not sure if the recount will go ahead anyway. It does look like 222 Republican seats might be better than even money.
It does look like FTX really was just a Ponzi scheme and that Sam the Scam Man’s fortune was based on assets and profits that never existed. That could explain how quickly that fortune evaporated.
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A hacker (presumably someone inside FTX) stole over $600M in tokens from FTX as it was collapsing and turned them into nearly $300M in ether, then moved about $50M of that into bitcoin. It seems that steps are being taken to block further exchanges.
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/ftx-hacker-starts-dumping-massive-haul-ether-tokens
MikeM: “I am not sure if the recount will go ahead anyway.”
It will, it is a state mandate to recount for very close elections (<0.5% perhaps?). Not something that a candidate needs to request.
Mike M,
Yes, it will be 221 or 222. But on current pace, it will be well into December when the last race in California is called. Every race where the Republican is ahead has been slow walked. Maybe there is some reasonable explanation, but then again, maybe not. It is absurd that it takes this long. A big part of the problem is very lax state regulation: individual districts have 30 days after polls close to finalize results…. so December 8.
The chances of that FTX hack being an inside job is just north of 99.9% IMO.
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These large financial frauds need to result in serious jail time. If you knock off a 7-11 for $400 using a weapon you get decades of jail time. If you steal billions using computers ??? The high bar of proving intent when the perpetrators own a building full of lawyers is letting most of these crimes go effectively unpunished.
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All that said, crypto is high risk gambling. Nobody putting their money in FTX should have felt secure.
Does that 30 days to finalize include recounts, meaning you could “run out the clock” so there is no time for a recount?
SteveF (Comment #216491): “Every race where the Republican is ahead has been slow walked.”
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Not quite true. CA-41 and CA-45 have Republicans winning by 5 points or less and are nearly complete. And there are a bunch of districts with the Dem ahead, or a Dem vs Dem race, with less than 2/3 of votes counted. But it is ridiculous and makes me wonder along with DaveJR if they are running out the clock.
Mike M,
I followed the counting in those races. They too were slow walked.
They were called when it became clear the Republican would win, and then (surprise!) the counting accelerated. Maybe there is a good explanation, but it seems nobody is even offering one.
I glanced at Willis’s blog this morning (rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com). He has purposely double voted in each on the last three California elections: first by mail, then in person. Never even been questioned. They could prosecute him under state law (up to 9 years) but so far: crickets. Anybody who thinks mail-in ballots are secure hasn’t been paying attention.
I also saw Willis’s post. It is not at all clear that he double voted. It might be that they don’t start to count absentee ballots until after election day (it is not like they are in a hurry) and don’t count ones from people who show up as having voted in person. I am pretty sure that at least some states do that, but I don’t know what California does.
So the Bohemian government was given access to secure FTX’s wallet by SBF and Wang. But at the same time that was happening there was a hacker moving money out of FTX in Dai (another cryptocurrency). Since then their hacked $288 MM was turned into Ethereum and now being slowly converted to Bitcoin as capacity allows, like a snake that swallowed a large meal.
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Etherium lost 10% from the selling in one day. If this causes a panic we could see a run on all crypto currencies. I think that is around $300B, mostly in Bitcoin and Etherium. There are literally hundreds of new spawning currencies this year alone. I assume most will evaporate with mini-SBFs enjoying early retirement like the Enron execs that got out before the fall.
“Bohemian government”
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Now that is funny. 😉 (Bohemia is: A person with artistic or literary interests who disregards conventional standards of behavior, or the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic.)
Mike M,
“I am pretty sure that at least some states do that, but I don’t know what California does.”
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Worth asking Willis.
I became interested in the effect of the Immigration Court and their judges on the outcome of the asylum decisions when members of my family became involved in the process (not as migrants) and I was informed that asylum acceptance was very court, judge and nationality influenced. I have long been interested in the arbitrariness of how US laws are adjudicated.
There are comprehensive filtered data on court and judge immigration asylum cases at the Syracuse TRAC website https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/ . Unfortunately, the data are in the form that requires scrapping the website to extract the data efficiently and in good form. I used RSelenium and associated R programs to do that after familiarizing myself with html.
I looked at eight independent variables selected from the variable data at TRAC in constructing a multivariable model with denial rate being the response variable. The analysis was limited to the 37 US immigration courts that had sufficient numbers of cases over the time period(s) of interest. The period 2001 to 2022 was initially analyzed whereupon it was found that the data from 2011 to 2022 was very different than that from 2001-2010 and further modeling used those two time periods separately. To make an otherwise long story short, regression for the 2001 to 2010 period found the optimum model explaining 45% of the denial rate using 2 variables which were (1) the portion of migrants not having a lawyer representing them and (2) the nationality of the migrant. For the 2011 to 2022 period there were 3 variables explaining 75% of the denial rate which were (1) nationality of the migrant, (2) the percentage Democrat vote in the city where the immigration court was located and (3) the standard deviation of the denial rate of judges in a given immigration court.
In further explanation of the second and third variables above: the denial rate is lower the higher the Democrat percentage of the vote in the Biden/Trump 2020 election and the higher the court standard deviation the lower the court denial rate. Immigration court judges are not judges in a conventional sense since they are lawyers assigned to the courts by the justice department and serve at the pleasure of that political department. It has been established that judges tend to decide causes depending on the current administration with more leniency under Democrat presidents. That can be seen in the TRAC data, but I did not do a detailed analysis. I do not have a definitive argument for the Democrat vote dependency besides judges(lawyers) being selected locally and/or attuned to the local political environment. The standard deviation dependency could be explained by assuming that in a court environment where some judges (lawyers) are more lenient with the standards of the law, the degree of leniency is manifested in a higher standard deviation whereas with a higher denial rate court judges(lawyers) are sticking closer to the letter of the law.
It appears that the courts became more politicized in the Obama administrations and have stayed that way to current time. That would appear to coincide with the change to more immigration leniency in general under Obama around that time. I found it most interesting that papers published on the immigration courts tended to view the most lenient decisions that resulted in lower denial rates as the benchmark and higher rates as being abnormal and politicized. A number of papers with this viewpoint occurred when Trump was president.
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2020/03/An-Empirical-Study-of-Political-Control-over-Immigration-Adjudication.pdf
Foot Noted: It should be noted that the number of dependent variables could be reduced because of high correlations between some of the variables.
The link below describes most of the cause of the FTX collapse or at least for those of us who are into the Austrian school of economics.
https://mises.org/wire/how-easy-money-fueled-ftx-crypto-collapse
Of course, with Sam Bankman-Fried saying and doing all the right things with which the progressive media would agree, the critical attention needed to reveal this fraud was greatly delayed – with the exception of the-easy-to-look-at Austrian school economist, Caitlin Long.
Ken, the key to immigration is bringing back Trump. He is the only one that doesn’t care what he is called by leftists news media.
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The only way a Republican can win the presidency in 2024 is if election integrity laws are passed and enforced. Georgia and Nevada may be able to do that now.
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But Arizona is very important. If there was election stealing that was the place the Dems would have put all their eggs. Kari Lake was promising to reform their election and was demonized beyond belief by the AZ media and still is, though she was leading in the polls on election day. America may hang in the balance on a decision to place on hold the AZ gubernatorial certification.
Without AZ in 2024 the GOP will need PA or both VA and NH to win the electoral college. With AZ they will still need one of them or Maine’s first district to get to 270.
Ron Graf,
If the candidate is not Trump (and assuming Trump doesn’t throw a hissy fit and run as third party spoiler), I suspect Arizona, Wisconsin, and PA are all states the Republicans can win. But with Trump as the candidate, there is zero chance for the presidency. Which just about makes me vomit. Trump may be able to win the nomination, and if not, he certainly could (and likely would) choose to be a spoiler and destroy the Republicans as a third party candidate.
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But what Trump can’t do is be a rational person, and either bow out now or accept if he loses in the primaries, and so give the Republican’s a chance in 2024. I just loathe the man; he is truly horrible.
Perhaps the distance the court is from the border is a factor. Jurisdictions where immigration is a bigger problem locally may have higher denial rates.
MIkeM
When I worked the polls in Illinois, we opened and scanned the mail in ballots after the polls closed. The first step was to see if the voter had voted. If they had, you tossed the mail in vote away. There was nothing illegal about going in and voting in person after mailing in and you didn’t vote twice. The vote cast on election day counted.
Reality trumps satire once again.
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NYT: Chaos on Twitter Leads a Group of Journalists to Start an Alternative
Journa.host promises to be a new “reliable home for journalists.” What happens when they move in?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/style/mastodon-twitter-adam-davidson.html
“On Nov. 18, the journalist Mike Pesca, who hosts the popular news podcast “The Gist,” posted a link to a Times story about health concerns associated with the puberty-blocking drugs sometimes prescribed to transgender youths, writing, “This seemed like careful, thorough reporting.”
In response, Parker Molloy, a journalist who writes the Substack newsletter “The Present Age,” accused Mr. Pesca of anti-trans bigotry, and then posted angrily at Mr. Davidson for not removing the post.”
“On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca, who was informed via a text message from Mr. Davidson, a longtime friend. (The two are currently writing an exchange of letters hosted on Substack, about the nature of cancel culture.) According to Mr. Pesca, Mr. Davidson told him he had been suspended for referring to Ms. Molloy as an “activist,” which was dismissive.”
“We want to be a place for passionate engaged discussion,” said Mr. Davidson, who recused himself from the decision because of his relationship with Mr. Pesca. “But we don’t want to be a place where people insult each other.”
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It would all be so much easier if they just told everyone what to think up front.
Jeff Sessions took a direct interest in the immigration courts and was dictating denials. Now the Biden administration is removing immigration judges if they don’t grant admission.
“It would all be so much easier if they just told everyone what to think up front.”
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That is exactly what the left ALWAYS does. Under the left you are not allowed to disagree. Which is why the left has always been and and continues to be a real threat to liberty.
I just noticed 2 major word errors in my immigration post.
(1) scrapping should have been scraping as in to scrape.
(2) in the last paragraph dependent should be independent.
The edit option at Lucia’s website is available for a lengthy period of time making my errors more egregious.
Ken Fritsch,
Editing text is a bit like the theory of an effective lecture:
1) tell them what you are going to tell them,
2) tell them,
3) tell them what you told them
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In editing:
1) proof read as you are writing
2) proof read after you have written
3) proof read (slowly!) before you send the text anywhere
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This usually (not always) works for me. 😉
Tom, distance from the border could be a contributing factor but there were immigration courts within the border area that tended towards leniency and had a higher Democrat vote percentage for the city where the court was located. The courts in my analysis were located mostly in larger cities where even if located in red states voted overwhelmingly or at least in majority for the Democrat, Biden. There was only one city and court located therein that had a percentage vote for Biden less than 50 and it was close to 50.
MikeN, you are correct about the activism of the administrations of the Trump and Biden. I found lots of papers on the Trump administration activism with negative slants, but nothing yet on the Biden administration’s activism or much about the change occurring in the Obama administration.
Tom, I see Trump in a different light on immigration and other key issues. His obvious character flaws are used by those opposed to his policies to use the flaws as wedges and excuses to start with the premise that any policy he supports must also be flawed.
Trump is so full of himself that the discussion never gets beyond himself. Those policies need a better spokeperson. Plus there are issues/problems related to government that will not be addressed by politicians of either party and need attention from outside government which unfortunately will not be forthcoming from the current intelligentsia and the MSM part of it.
SteveF, your advice on proofreading is well taken and better applied to the patient person. On the other hand, I will never be mistaken for Job and I too often pay the price.
Interesting that I easily follow the meaning of Lucia’s posts even when her dancing finger nails get in the way of her spelling, but my errors tend to change the whole meaning of what I want to say.
I wanted to ask Lucia if ballroom dancing with long nails might be considered carrying a near lethal weapon. Making the rapid and exaggerated movements of that kind of dancing with a misstep could put the partner in peril. But again that just might be my exaggerated view of ballroom dancing.
Tom Scharf (Comment #216508
As it turns out the Molloy lady was also finally suspended and agreed that it was appropriate and apologized to Pesca. I would have thought, given the information from the NYT article and the sensitivities of the participants, that Molloy would have been suspended initially.
If a bunch of silly people with good intentions start a blog what is to say that silliness will not creep in and overtake.
Yes, is was funny that the first person to be suspended was for calling someone an “activist” while levying an accusation of “anti-trans bigotry” for posting a NYT article was given a pass. I had no idea who Mike Pesca even was, but looked him up. He was going to be persona non grata in that forum.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/media/slate-mike-pesca-suspended.html
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It was just ironic that a bunch of journalists thought moderation was going to be easy once they limited membership to their righteous tribe, but immediately fell into the same trap. Over zealous activist starts cry-bullying people, yawn. The answer is of course suspend everyone who doesn’t think along a very narrow path.
Peace and harmony achieved. Journalists are used to having the microphone all to themselves, they will be terrible at moderation.
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The most regretted college major by far? Journalism. 87%.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/the-top-10-most-regretted-college-majors.html
Reported today:
“The US is sending $4.5 billion in aid to the government of Ukraine to bolster economic stability and support core government services, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The grant, which brings the total of US direct government support to Ukraine to $13 billion, includes “wages for hospital workers, government employees, and teachers as well as social assistance for the elderly and vulnerable,” Yellen said.”
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$13 billion in cash, given to the government of a country fighting a war and with a long history of corruption (just ask Hunter!). Humm… I’ll bet every penny of that $13 billion is accounted for.
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The Biden administration has asked the lame duck congress to pass legislation for another $37 billion aid to Ukraine (before Republicans can start asking questions), bringing total US aid since late February to $105 billion. Our allies in Europe and elsewhere have spent only a combined $30 billion… even though their combined economies are far, far larger than the USA’s. No matter, our allies always take advantage of us financially.
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So the USA has allocated or spent ~$328 for each resident of the USA… and $2,500 spent for each citizen of the Ukraine. Which, to put it in perspective, is ~52% of what the per capita GDP for the Ukraine was in 2021.
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IMHO, with no clear, plausible goal stated, nor any clear path to ever reach that unstated goal, this expenditure is bordering on crazy. It simply can’t continue indefinitely. I suspect the next request for the Ukraine in early 2023 will not be granted without answers for some awkward questions the Biden administration has not so far been asked by Congress.
Tom Scharf,
There really was no need to publish that survey… most people already understand that fluff-head college courses lead to poor employment prospects. Surprisingly enough, if you actually know something useful, it helps you get a better paying job.
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I tried to explain this to my kids… some listened.
CDC releases data on effectiveness of bivalent vaccine against infection.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7148e1.htm?s_cid=mm7148e1_w
“For adults 50 to 64, the new shot increased protection by 31% among those who were recently boosted and by 48% among those whose last dose was at least eight months earlier. For seniors 65 and up, the figures were 28% and 43%, according to the report.” ***
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It’s some protection, better than nothing, but only 40% and quickly fading no doubt. May be worth doing if you are going toward a high risk situation or worry about infecting someone vulnerable.
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*** = The fine print says they only included immunocompetent people in this analysis which I find a bit hand wavy. Almost all these people will have mild illnesses anyway. One can argue this is misleading.
After hurricane Ian here was some discussion here about not allowing rebuild of houses that lie in danger of future hurricane damage. I explained that FEMA has rules about such cases. Well, we are having that problem here locally now as people start to repair their homes. It’s actually more restrictive than I thought:
“One of those guidelines requires building departments to not issue building permits to homes in special flood zones when repair costs exceed 50% of a home’s market value until the property owners raise their homes so that flood waters are less likely to cause damage in the future.”
Florida properties could be more impacted by the FEMA 50% rule because the rule only looks at a structure’s value. In Florida, he said, much of a property’s value is in the land. So, if someone bought a house for $300,000, but the home is valued at just $100,000, that means any repair work would need to be less than $50,000.”
The only recourse is teardown and rebuild at a higher elevation.
Link, Sarasota Herald tribune.
“FEMA rule could mean many can’t afford to rebuild after Hurricane Ian”
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/weather/hurricane/2022/11/22/fema-rule-impacting-thousands-across-southwest-florida/10711118002/
Russell,
That’s how you force buildings to new code over time. Those that were damaged heavily by weather are probably prone to being … damaged heavily by weather.
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There’s a good chance that many of those homes would be almost uninsurable if repaired in place which will have the same net effect for many people. It is definitely going to put some people in a bad situation where they will need to sell their damaged homes as is. There are already rules in place that you can’t extensively renovate a home like this without bringing it up to code, many people run into this with some work arounds available.
Tom Scharf,
I found that underwhelming for three reasons:
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1) It did not compare the bivalent vaccine effectiveness to an extra dose of the original vaccine, which seems to make the report meaningless save for that getting another booster (of any kind) probably reduces your chance of illness.
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2) It did not compare the effectiveness of the bivalent booster to the protection afforded by actually being infected (and surviving) the more recent omicron variants. Excluding the most important questions from a study doesn’t help make the study useful. Heck there are many MILLIONS of people who have had omicron illness; it shouldn’t be hard to compare the risk of repeat infection in that group to those who received the bivalent vaccine.
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3) There was no discussion of severity of illness. If you were triply or quadruply vaccinated with the original vaccine, did the increase risk for illness for not getting the bivalent booster amount to more risk of serious illness, or were all cases after 3 or 4 vaccinations mild? They don’t even pose that question.
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Seems to me a silly report with little practical meaning.
Apparently the data is from questionnaires filled out before people were tested at pharmacies. So they had no info on ongoing severity of illness.
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The unvaccinated / infected data is in the tables (History of self-reported SARS-CoV-2 positive test result) so they collected it. However it does not appear they collated how many of them got a positive test result. That was not the goal of this study but they could have easily reported it.
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They also did not break out hybrid immunity separately (vaccinated + infected).
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About 10% of people in the US are unvaccinated and maybe 80% of them have been infected. About 28M people. I obviously agree this data continues to be willfully ignored. I would expect though that effectiveness against infection to be pretty low here too if it has been >4 months since infection. They could just tell us though.
The CDC test results give my vaccination status with the bivalent shot plus 3 previous monvalent shots with the period between last monovalent and the bivalent at 5 months an effectiveness of 21% with the 95% interval of 6% to 29%. I think that I will probably have to survive some form of Covid-19 even with vaccinations.
My daughter-in-law’s parents aged 84 and 88 survived a recent Covid-19 infection without hospitalization. Both were immunocompromised. I saw them last week and they appeared in good shape.
Ken,
“Both were immunocompromised. I saw them last week and they appeared in good shape.”
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I am betting they both got Paxlovid…. miracle medicine. My personal experience may be unusual, but every person I talked to who took Paxlovid said they got much better immediately (less than 24 hours) with Paxlovid. Those who didn’t mostly suffered many days.
Looking more and more like it will be 222:213 Republicans in the House. One more race called in California, making it 219, and two races looking more and more like they will go Republican. Add Boebert’s seat in Colorado (the Democrat already conceded) and its 222.
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9 votes is a thin margin, but enough to stop most all the crazy stuff.
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Now if a bolt from on high got Trump…..
SteveF,
Which race was called and by whom? CA-3 (called by one outlet a week ago) or CA-13? RCP is not showing either as called.
I don’t think Trump can win the Republican nomination. There are many Republicans who never supported him, far more who won’t support him again, and a whole lot who are still OK with Trump but think it is time to move on. So I don’t see Trump getting close to a majority and I think his opponents will quickly close ranks.
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Of course, they will need someone to close ranks behind. So if something happens to DeSantis, then Trump might have a chance.
Mike M,
We must be looking ar different RCP pages: what I see says 219 (I think RCP uses the AP calls). NBC news also has the republicans at 219.
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WRT Trump: I agree his support is a lot more enthusiastic than broad. The only problems I see with defeating Trump in the primaries are:
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1) There are a lot of Republicans who would like to be president. If they divide up the majority anti-Trump voters, he could still get the nomination. Republicans with no chance to get the nomination (and that includes most all who have been mentioned by politicos and media types) need to stay out of the race so Trump goes down early.
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2) Even if Trump loses the nomination (which I think he will), he is very likely to hand the presidency to yet another woke lefty Democrat by running as a third party candidate.
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Did I mention that I loathe the man and think he is an utter a$$hole? I keep waiting for a bold from on high.
Mike M,
The AP called California district 22 for the Republican… he was up by 3.5% with ~3% of votes outstanding. I was mistaken: NBC news has still not called that race; lefty journalists aren’t very good at arithmetic I guess.
AP now has Republicans at 220.
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The Republicans are leading in the other two CA races by small margins.
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Alaska is interesting. They are using ranked choice voting and have 2 Republicans splitting the vote against a Democrat. If I understand this correctly then one Republican will get eliminated and the remaining one (Palin) has a chance to win if she gets all the other Republican votes.
Apparently they aren’t expecting the Republican vote to stay in party when it gets distributed in Alaska:
“While the combined totals of Palin and Begich would surpass Peltola’s tally, a special election in August showed the number of Begich voters willing to support Palin with second-choice votes was too small for her to overtake Peltola. Pre-election opinion polling showed little change in opinions since August.”
The Flynn effect: IMO, it’s mainly an artifact of the education and testing process, not an actual increase in general intelligence over time. The Bell Curve has a couple of pages on it (pp307-309 in my copy). Also IMO, The Bell Curve is most useful as a review of the history of studies of general intelligence and its relationship to IQ scores. The statistical stuff in the later chapters is totally bogus.
There are references cited, but it’s something of a PITA to copy them. The page notes refer to a shorthand version. The first sentence is referenced to Lynn and Hampson 1986a and the second to Teasdale and Owens 1989.
If the Republicans bicker among themselves while Trump romps to the nomination with 30% support, then they deserve to loose.
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I doubt Trump will run third party. If he does, he will likely get single digit support. And Trump is not a madman.
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The Dem in Alaska has just under 49% in the first round. She can probably win the second round without a single addition vote from the 3rd place candidate since some people won’t list a second choice.
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I though that the Republicans have been at 219 for a number of days.
Mike M,
“And Trump is not a madman.”
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I’m not so sure. The guy has done some really crazy things. But even if you stipulate he is not literally a madman, his egotistical personality leads to lots of foolish snap decisions, which his hyper-inflated pride then keeps from ever changing. If in a fit of anger (oh say, after losing a couple of early primaries) he blurts out that he will run as a third party candidate, I doubt he could ever walk that back, no matter how destructive it would be for the country.
Tom Scharf,
One of the two CA house races is very close, but in the other the Republican is up by more than 4%. That race should be called within a few days. No telling when the close race will be called, but probably before the Dec 8 legal deadline.
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Alaska is a perfect example of what Trump should *not* do if he doesn’t win the nomination: run as an independent. A coin toss between the two strong Republicans, with the loser dropping out, should have happened the day after the Jungle primary. It didn’t, so Alaska is stuck with a Democrat, in spite ofRepublicans having a big registration advantage. Doesn’t help much that both Republicans were weak candidates.