Apr 122024
 

Yesterday, I heard from Trinette that she has a cold, and might not make it Sunday. I said let’s skip a week – I want you to be well. (Thoughts and prayers welcome.) Also, yes, I’m aware that O.J.Simpson died Wednesday. It’s not something I really want to discuss. But the New Yorker, the Atlanta Black Star, and The Root, are packed with discussion, so if anyone wants to, the resources exist.

I realize that conservative groups consistently mis-name themselves to suggest the opposite of whatever bug is in their brains when they form the group – but this is extreme even for them.

This is something Joe can do without Congress. and I think – but am not sure – that the Food for Thought might be another thing. If so, I’m all for it.

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Mar 142024
 

Yesterday, I really did not want to get up. It might be the fault of the weather. Today and tomorrow, snow is heavily predicted, starting at 2 am today and going steadily through about 10 Friday morning.  We do need the water so I can’t really complain -though the watersheds are where we need it most, and they are at much higher elevations than Iam.

I may be one of the last remaining Americans who actually like Merrick Garland. When I see articles all over Democratic sites blaming him, for example, for Jan 6 rioters getting short sentences (judges do that – not even the same branch of government) or dragging his feet (I do admit to someone not involed in criminal law that it looks like that, primarily because he committed so many of his criomes in broad daylight and plain sight), I find it refreshing to see a different opinion. Especially from someone such as Marcy Wheeler, who has credentials and a solid reputation. The first link takes you to the her main argument, and the second, at her own blog, supplements the first somewhat.

Kerry Eleveld, who is on the staff at Daily Kos, analyzes the shifts in polling produced by the quality of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. It’s good news.

I’m slipping this in today because I don’t want people to be needlesslay alarmed. (Alarmed is fine if it’s needed.) Wonkette’s style is frivolous butI think handles the story well.

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Sep 112023
 

Yesterday, I was able to see Virgil. When I went over to the game cabinet to see what was avaiable, my jaw about hit the floor – there was a brand new deck of standard cards. It’s amazing how much easier it is to concentrate on, and have fun with, a game of cards when none of them stick together, and none are creased in half to the point of falling apart. When I left, I told the offcer who was supervising, “I don’t know who came up with the new deck of cards, but please tell them they get to go to heaven without doing anything else.” (As usual, that got a smile.) I needed the air conditioning on in the car on the way down, but coming back, it was cooler, and there was even a little rain, so I didn’t. I had to stop for gas on the way home, and yes, it’s pricey here too, but when a single tank lasts me two months I really don’t have a lot to gripe about. As usual, I was exhausted upon return. I think what is going on is that, even when I don’t realize I am, I get nervous about everything that could go wrong – and after it’s all gone fine, and there’s nothing more that could go wrong, I melt with relief.

Also, I did finish the last 2 cartoons in September and was able to look at October. TC made only 2 cartoons in October 2015, for the 30th and 31st, and they were both personal medical mayhem topics. So I’ll need a bunch. There are some images which could be made into cartoons with a frame and a watermark, and I’ll start by doing something with those. I didn’t count them. I did notice that Nameless uploaded images for an exquisite fall foliage post around the 16th. I didn’t look to see whether any were gifs or slideshows – but the images were lovely just by themselves.

Cartoon –


Short Takes –

Projest On Government Oversight – Routine Disqualification: Every State Has Kept Ineligible Candidates Off the Ballot, and Trump Could Be Next
Quote – In addition to the disqualification clause, the U.S. Constitution imposes several qualifications for federal elected offices. Representatives, senators, and presidents must meet minimum age requirements (ranging from 25 to 35 years of age); must be United States citizens (natural-born for presidents); and must live in the state they represent (or in the case of presidents, must have lived in the country for at least 14 years). In addition, the 22nd Amendment prohibits individuals who have already been elected to two terms as president or served more than one and a half terms from being elected president again, and the 12th Amendment prohibits a president and vice president from residing in the same state. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that these qualifications are exclusive; Congress and the states cannot create additional qualifications for these federal offices. However, as will be discussed in this report, states do have the authority to ensure that candidates for federal office meet the Constitution’s requirements.
Click through for full article. This could have been titled “Everything you wanted to know about disqualification but didn’t know enough to ask.” In addition to general rules, the article includes case studies in several states of diqualification for different offices. Some of them it’s challenging to believe that a candidate not intelligent enough to realize they were unqualified would even apply for candidacy, or challenge the Secretary of State when exceluded.

HuffPost – 6 Things To Know About Biden’s Bad Polling
Quote – 2. The anti-bedwetting brigade is out in full force, and mostly correct. “I don’t worry about any polls a year and a half before the election,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost. While his timeline was not entirely accurate, he’s correct to say the predictive value of polls this far out is essentially nil. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both came back for clear victories after trailing the leading GOP contenders at similar points in their presidencies.
Click through for all six. Yes, another article on polling. There are two potential negative consequences to overreacting to polls. One can get overdonfident, on the one hand. And, on the other, one can get discouraged enough to fail to vote. In 2024, we can’t afford for any of us to make either mistake. We need to find middle ground. If this doesn’t help, don’t get hung up on it.

Food For Thought

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Sep 082023
 

Yesterday, Peter Navarro was found guilty of contempt of Congress. Yay! Now we just need a decent sentence. Numerous other stuff happened in various court filings in multiple cases also. I won’t even try to list them all. If I find a comprehesive list, i’ll definitely pass it on.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Hubbell – One more time with feeling: Ignore the polls!
Quote – [M]ajor media outlets and respected commentators treat the polls as if they are meaningful and predictive. They are neither. Instead, they are clickbait wrapped in statistics that misleads by confusing precision and truth. If someone tells you that the universe will end in 3,198,642,971.25 years, that is a “precise” prediction. Whether the prediction is “true” is a different question entirely. So, too, with the polling…. For those of you tired of reading my response to such polls, I apologize for the repetition. You may want to set aside this newsletter and start afresh with tomorrow’s newsletter. To those of you who need reassurance, read on! Because we will see many similar polls over the next fourteen months, I will use the WSJ poll as an example of how pollsters can distort the truth and why we should generally ignore the polls.
Click through for article. It appears that the stakes just keep getting higher and higher, which makes it very tempting to follow polls closely. But he makes good points. Also, it’s not really possible to think productively or do the things that need to be done, and that’s even if the polls are in good faith. I recently saw a story about a poll published by the Wall Street Journal hich came up with a low approval rate for Biden. What the publication did not include, and that the author of the article critiquing it did, was that the participants included two Republicans for every Democrat polled (and a sample size of only about 1,000.)   Remember this poll for tomorrow’s OT.  This is Substack so you’ll need to do a little clicking to read it all.

HuffPost – A 2024 Trump-Biden Rematch Isn’t Boring. It’s Something Entirely New.
Quote – The likely 2024 Biden-Trump contest should be viewed less as a rerun and more as the rare reboot that actually ups the stakes: Compared with each man’s first successful run for the presidency, both are taking positions that repudiate past governing commitments of the American state in ways that we probably haven’t seen before. In pursuit of a national hand in economic policymaking, Biden is rhetorically attacking the neoliberal paradigm that has dominated American domestic and foreign policy for the past 40 years. His Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did so too at times, but Biden is also enacting actual policies that turn the page on this era. Trump, on the other hand, is running to turn the presidency into something akin to a monarchy. He has deemphasized the old conservative “tax and spend” discourse in favor of an all-out attack on government depth. Yes, he still embraces cutting taxes for the rich and slashing government spending. But the policy that he and his allies are emphasizing most in pursuit of conservative aims is placing the administrative state and its 2 million-plus workers, including law enforcement and investigatory bodies, under his direct control by gutting civil service protections and the independence of agencies. If you can’t cut the size of government, you can at least make it bend to your wishes, or so the thinking goes.
Click through for (IMO well-founded) opinion. The thought that an election, or any other event, upon which one’s life depends, could possibly considered boring, simply boggles my mind. But here we are.

Food For Thought

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Sep 022023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Disgraced lawyer & RICO defendant Sidney Powell files an ABSURD “legal brief” in her Georgia case

Farron Balanced – Lauren Boebert In Trouble As Poll Proves Her District Hates Her

Joe Biden – Catch A Break

Liberal Redneck – Trump’s Big Week

The Telegraph – Howdy Doody: Police pull over man carrying enormous bull in his car

Beau – Let’s talk about a question of accuracy and dissonance….

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May 042023
 

Glenn Kirschner’s recap for April would have sppeared today. I was able to find a substitute.
Talking Feds with Harry Litman – BRAND NEW Trump Criminal Probes are Beginning ACROSS the Country

Sen. Whitehouse Delivers Opening Statement at Judiciary Cmte Hearing on Supreme Court Ethics Reform+

MSNBC – Democrats have a ‘legislative secret agent’ to fight GOP on debt ceiling crisis

Farron Balanced – Fox Feared Release Of Disgusting Tucker Carlson Texts So They Fired Him

Parody Project – A DAY IN THE LIFE (of a Swindler)

Tiny Shivering Kitten Gets Huge And Floofy

Beau – Let’s talk about understanding term polling….

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Nov 212022
 

Glenn Kirschner – The upside of AG Garland appointing Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump’s crimes

The Lincoln Project – This Werewolf Votes (I actually am dumber for having watched this.)

Al Franken – Midterms: America Told GOP: “Stop it!” (It’s longer than I like to post, but it’s Al)

Farron Balanced – Republicans Are Now Praying That Trump Gets Indicted

Rocky Mountain Mike – Kari Lake (Parody of “Fire Lake” by Bob Seger) (Transcript at YouTube)

Guy Is Determined To Save Cat Living Out In The Snow

Beau – Let’s talk about people being unhappy with the direction of the country….  I will not only never answer this question, but I will never answer any question on a poll that contains this question.  It just isn’t black and white, and as Beau points out, nobody knows what anyone even means by it.

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Oct 142022
 

Yesterday – Well, that was interesting. My best advice is to get earplugs or noise-reducing headsets out th protect aganst the deafening howls and sceams coming from Mar-a-Lago. (If you need to make some, don’t use loose cotton strands – they get stuck too easily. Rolled up fabric or pieces cut from sponges are safer.) In other news, a new poll shows Adam Frisch tied with Lauren Boebert (however, see short take #2.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Democratic Underground (UCmeNdc) – FBI Source in Mar-a-Lago Investigation Shot and Left for Dead at Canadian Resort
Quote – So yeah, that’s not good. Man helps the FBI, and then the man ends up getting shot by three men who escape in a black SUV. And those files don’t necessarily pertain just to his “partner,” they could be files she scooped up in Mar-a-Lago itself. Speculating, this woman fits the perfect profile of a spy. She speaks Russian. She is a Ukrainian but some Ukrainians were more loyal to Russia than Ukraine. There are a lot of moving parts here and the Tarasenko’s injuries are grievous enough that he wasn’t shot as a message to him.
Click through for story. The source is provided if anyone wants to dig deeper. A lot of speculation here, but fewer facts.

Robert Reich – Warning: The dirty little secret of polls
Quote – But wait. There’s reason to doubt these optimistic numbers. The debacle of 2016 election polls showing Hillary Clinton with a healthy lead, and the 2020 election polls overstating Biden’s lead over Trump, reveal a dirty little secret: Election polls overstate Democratic strength and understate Republican.
Click through for the three reasons he gives. The first two are unavoidable – just as the opposite unavoidably happened in 1948, when polls were done by telephone at a time when most non-wealthy peole didn’t have telphones in their homes. The third – I don’t knw – has anyone ever seen a shy Trump** voter? They seem pretty blatant to me – and confident that everyone agrees with them. In any case, GOTV efforts are, as always, vital for Democrats.

Food For Thought

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