The two large political geography stories of the last 30 years are much of the Midwest turning Republican, and the West turning heavily Democratic. And it hasn't been just the coastal states. At this moment, and obviously subject to change today, the eight-state Mountain West has one more Democratic US Senator than the 13-state Midwest.
I'm terrible at national stuff. I'll confine myself to: the 13-state West will be bluer than the pundits are predicting. Harris wins AZ and NV, the AZ and NV Senate seats stay blue, Tester will be closer than people think, all four of the abortion ballot initiatives pass, the total number of (D) Representatives increases by two, and one of the two AZ state legislative chambers flips.
She's the sitting Vice President. There are rules. The only conditions under which Harris's security contingent -- which includes, recall, a military officer carrying her copy of the "nuclear football" -- would have allowed an interview in Rogan's studio would have been unacceptable to Rogan.
There are (or at least were, it's been too long since I kept track of such things professionally) other programs that require states to behave or lose Medicaid funding. TTBOMK, none of those have been challenged in court. OTOH, there's NFIB v. Sebelius where Roberts wrote that Medicaid funding was so large that requiring states to adopt new programs on threat of loss of traditional Medicaid funding was unconstitutional coercion.
That isn’t how you build systems, though. If your failure mode is right there in the design, but it only fails catastrophically when it fails catastrophically, it still fails in exactly the way you designed it (and maybe in a couple ways you didn’t design).
All voting systems have failure modes built in. Eg, in-person voting on election day is subject to weather, work and work-related schedules, and transportation problems. Probably the most common single fix used for all of those collectively -- other than a full vote by mail system -- is the permanent no-excuse mail ballot list.
If you want to argue that coerced voting is the bigger problem, offer some evidence.
My argument has always been that if such felonies are being committed on any sort of scale, it would show up in divorce filings. Or in labor complaints.
In the best possible scenario it’s a national unity project which will get buy-in from the vast majority — even as it gores various oxen from place to place.
As I (too) often point out, when the various state systems are evaluated by experts for accuracy, security, and ease of use, the top few spots are dominated by western vote by mail states. Justify requiring those states to maintain a second poorer-performing parallel precinct system.
I suspect that there will be considerable difficulty in finding a single voting system that enough state delegations will get behind. There are states that want a traditional system emphasizing election day voting at hundreds/thousands of neighborhood precinct places. There are states that have gone full-on vote by mail that have minimal in-person voting locations. Some of the latter group actually discourage, at least indirectly, in-person voting. My state is one of those, with warnings that in-person election-day voting may require a lengthy drive and long wait.
The most recent version of the Congressional Democrats' bill on the subject actually followed the worst path I can imagine, requiring that states go to the expense of having both precincts and vote by mail systems sufficient to handle the full load.
A weekend-like chore on a Monday morning... I woke up this morning to no hot water. That wasn't horrible, I didn't have to be anywhere requiring a shower and shave [1]. The fancy display on the tankless water heater was flashing "E110". Found the paper documentation for the unit. Looked up the code, which was "insufficient air flow for the burner." The table that had that info also pointed at one of the maintenance sections. That showed (roughly) how to extract the unit's internal air filter [2]. When I got that out, it was filled with desiccated moth corpses [3]. Emptied the carcasses, washed the filter, put everything back together, and -- voila! -- hot water. I'll take myself out for a nice lunch later in the week :^)
[1] I can grow a beard sufficient to provide a disguise in three weeks. Granddaughter #3 came to visit after I had gotten that far along and hid behind her mother. "Who's that?" she asked. "That's Grandpa, he grew a beard." Once I spoke up and had the right voice, the beard was okay.
[2] I'm an oldster and long-time home owner, so have the habit of keeping all manuals for household appliances (despite the internet). Is this another thing the youngs will not do? I also took pictures of the actual filter, and how it fit into the bracket, which was not in the manual, before removing it. Dropped one screw and was halfway to the stairs to go get a flashlight when I remembered, "Phones are flashlights and your phone is in your pocket." Somewhere here I have the beginning of a short story where the private investigator uses his phone to do all the things that old stories depended on the PI not being able to do -- no phone, no flashlight, no audio recorder...
[3] Front Range Colorado has an annual miller moth migration from the plains to the mountains each spring. The last couple of years have been unusually heavy. Presumably these were seeking some sort of shelter and got lost. I'll buy and install filters for the PVC vent pipes (opening near ground level) to block the insects in the future.
Yes. Of all cities in the US above some cut-off population number, Colorado Springs is most dependent on the federal government for paychecks. As I recall, around 21% of households are dependent in some part.
Lots of quite good wine comes with screw caps these days. The fungus that spoils the wine (produces the TCA chemical) has become widespread enough that sourcing untainted cork is a problem. Repeated testing by wineries has shown screw caps are essentially perfect -- no oxygen ingress or TCA taint -- for ten years. At that point the plastic used in the screw caps begins to break down and allow oxygen ingress. Unless you plan on laying the bottle down for longer than that, screw caps are actually the best choice.
From long ago... The Bell System was broken up in 1984. Some years later USWest, one of the Baby Bells, was found guilty of violating the consent decree multiple times, and paid fines. At the end of the court proceedings after the last of them, the judge told the CEO, "Next time it won't be a fine, you personally will go to jail." There were no more violations.
At the time, I was working in an organization that operated in one of the gray areas. Our training changed dramatically. One of the new trainers said specifically, "If the CEO goes to jail because of something you did, rest assured that you too will go to jail."
The last few runs of the National Weather Service's supercomputer-based Global Forecast System have a named storm developing in the Caribbean late next week and hitting somewhere in Florida near Election Day. I have as much faith in that prediction as polls that assert Trump will win the national popular vote by millions. More, actually, since the NWS will show you the computer code and raw data they use.
Thing of it is, if he doesn’t have the energy to make it through a full day of campaigning, does he have the energy to President come January?
Certainly the stories that came out of the White House while he was President the last time were that he didn't spend full days president-ing. That he didn't take meetings before 10 or 11 in the morning. That briefing booklets be cut to a single page. Record number of days spent off golfing.
OTOH, he gave the media a consistently rich set of outrageous Twitter comments, which seemed to make them quite happy.
ETA: When I was in the business of writing tech summaries that SVPs had requested, one of the rules that I learned was "one side of one page."
If there are enough of those to do the job, then it comes down to whether the regular military mutinies when Biden orders them to suppress the insurrection.
"Hon, get up early tomorrow morning and pack me a lunch. Then get online and book me a motel room for, let's see, tomorrow night south of Atlanta, and the next night in Virginia. Don't worry about the night after that, we'll be in charge in DC and occupy whatever hotels we need. Text me when you've got the details. This is an important deal, so I'm going to take the truck down to Jiffy Lube this afternoon and get the oil changed and tire pressure checked. Is there still room on the credit card for gas and a few meals at Mickey D's?"
Just for grins, the NWS's long-term model has a tropical storm sideswiping the Keys and Miami/Dade on Monday, Nov 4. Farther north along the coast on Nov 5.
It would be interesting to ask the 12% and 30% what sort of violence they envision. I suspect that the vast majority mean "the military installs my candidate" rather than "millions of us will roll out with our guns, shooting everyone/thing in sight, and install my candidate".
I completed my ballot and put it in the drop box last week, got confirmation yesterday that it had been collected, verified, and counted. I plan on spending the next two weeks retaining calm in the face of potential disaster. Like the princess in my granddaughters' fairy tale, having tea with the wyrm.
Nitpick... Europa Clipper was originally required by statute to launch on the SLS, which would have allowed a shorter faster trip. NASA had to go back to Congress and ask for permission to use something else after Boeing announced they would be unable to build SLS rockets for anything except Artemis until sometime in the 2030s.
SLS sidenote... Michael Bloomberg published an opinion piece calling for Congress to terminate the SLS program, and for NASA to redesign the Artemis program around commercial launch capabilities.
More "October (and the last week of September) was a good month for SpaceX"... The Crew-9 Dragon mission to the ISS launched on Sept 28. It flew with two empty seats for the astronauts that didn't return on the Boeing Starliner. It launched from SLC-40 in Florida, demonstrating that SpaceX now has two working human-qualilfied launch sites for Crew Dragon. SpaceX won contracts for eight more national security launches because no one else is currently qualified to bid for them.
Apparently that particular McDonald's was closed to the public while the publicity event was conducted. I had been wondering how the more paranoid than usual Secret Service was going to handle security at an open McDonald's.
In a filing yesterday, in their new case arguing that states can regulate mifepristone regardless of the FDA, the state AGs of Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri say that states have the necessary interest because abortions reduce their potential population. That in turn reduces the number of Representatives they may get, and the size of federal grants based on population.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The Night Before the 2024 Presidential Election”
Two years ago you predicted an enormous GOP wave sweeping the West. That turned out to be the Nevada governor's office.
"
The two large political geography stories of the last 30 years are much of the Midwest turning Republican, and the West turning heavily Democratic. And it hasn't been just the coastal states. At this moment, and obviously subject to change today, the eight-state Mountain West has one more Democratic US Senator than the 13-state Midwest.
"
I'm terrible at national stuff. I'll confine myself to: the 13-state West will be bluer than the pundits are predicting. Harris wins AZ and NV, the AZ and NV Senate seats stay blue, Tester will be closer than people think, all four of the abortion ballot initiatives pass, the total number of (D) Representatives increases by two, and one of the two AZ state legislative chambers flips.
On “Final Thoughts Before November Fifth”
At a less serious level, next weekend's football games will not be wall-to-wall obnoxious political ads.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/28/2024”
She's the sitting Vice President. There are rules. The only conditions under which Harris's security contingent -- which includes, recall, a military officer carrying her copy of the "nuclear football" -- would have allowed an interview in Rogan's studio would have been unacceptable to Rogan.
On “What If Kamala Wins?”
Nit: Medicaid funding.
There are (or at least were, it's been too long since I kept track of such things professionally) other programs that require states to behave or lose Medicaid funding. TTBOMK, none of those have been challenged in court. OTOH, there's NFIB v. Sebelius where Roberts wrote that Medicaid funding was so large that requiring states to adopt new programs on threat of loss of traditional Medicaid funding was unconstitutional coercion.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/28/2024”
Cite? All I can find online is a picture of him sitting in the passenger seat of a spotless white truck. Hardly "working a shift".
On “What If Kamala Wins?”
That isn’t how you build systems, though. If your failure mode is right there in the design, but it only fails catastrophically when it fails catastrophically, it still fails in exactly the way you designed it (and maybe in a couple ways you didn’t design).
All voting systems have failure modes built in. Eg, in-person voting on election day is subject to weather, work and work-related schedules, and transportation problems. Probably the most common single fix used for all of those collectively -- other than a full vote by mail system -- is the permanent no-excuse mail ballot list.
If you want to argue that coerced voting is the bigger problem, offer some evidence.
"
My argument has always been that if such felonies are being committed on any sort of scale, it would show up in divorce filings. Or in labor complaints.
"
In the best possible scenario it’s a national unity project which will get buy-in from the vast majority — even as it gores various oxen from place to place.
As I (too) often point out, when the various state systems are evaluated by experts for accuracy, security, and ease of use, the top few spots are dominated by western vote by mail states. Justify requiring those states to maintain a second poorer-performing parallel precinct system.
"
I suspect that there will be considerable difficulty in finding a single voting system that enough state delegations will get behind. There are states that want a traditional system emphasizing election day voting at hundreds/thousands of neighborhood precinct places. There are states that have gone full-on vote by mail that have minimal in-person voting locations. Some of the latter group actually discourage, at least indirectly, in-person voting. My state is one of those, with warnings that in-person election-day voting may require a lengthy drive and long wait.
The most recent version of the Congressional Democrats' bill on the subject actually followed the worst path I can imagine, requiring that states go to the expense of having both precincts and vote by mail systems sufficient to handle the full load.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Switch”
A weekend-like chore on a Monday morning... I woke up this morning to no hot water. That wasn't horrible, I didn't have to be anywhere requiring a shower and shave [1]. The fancy display on the tankless water heater was flashing "E110". Found the paper documentation for the unit. Looked up the code, which was "insufficient air flow for the burner." The table that had that info also pointed at one of the maintenance sections. That showed (roughly) how to extract the unit's internal air filter [2]. When I got that out, it was filled with desiccated moth corpses [3]. Emptied the carcasses, washed the filter, put everything back together, and -- voila! -- hot water. I'll take myself out for a nice lunch later in the week :^)
[1] I can grow a beard sufficient to provide a disguise in three weeks. Granddaughter #3 came to visit after I had gotten that far along and hid behind her mother. "Who's that?" she asked. "That's Grandpa, he grew a beard." Once I spoke up and had the right voice, the beard was okay.
[2] I'm an oldster and long-time home owner, so have the habit of keeping all manuals for household appliances (despite the internet). Is this another thing the youngs will not do? I also took pictures of the actual filter, and how it fit into the bracket, which was not in the manual, before removing it. Dropped one screw and was halfway to the stairs to go get a flashlight when I remembered, "Phones are flashlights and your phone is in your pocket." Somewhere here I have the beginning of a short story where the private investigator uses his phone to do all the things that old stories depended on the PI not being able to do -- no phone, no flashlight, no audio recorder...
[3] Front Range Colorado has an annual miller moth migration from the plains to the mountains each spring. The last couple of years have been unusually heavy. Presumably these were seeking some sort of shelter and got lost. I'll buy and install filters for the PVC vent pipes (opening near ground level) to block the insects in the future.
On “What If Trump Wins?”
Yes. Of all cities in the US above some cut-off population number, Colorado Springs is most dependent on the federal government for paychecks. As I recall, around 21% of households are dependent in some part.
On “POETS Day! William Faulkner’s Go at Anachronism”
It’s a bottlecap wine, now. Sigh.
Lots of quite good wine comes with screw caps these days. The fungus that spoils the wine (produces the TCA chemical) has become widespread enough that sourcing untainted cork is a problem. Repeated testing by wineries has shown screw caps are essentially perfect -- no oxygen ingress or TCA taint -- for ten years. At that point the plastic used in the screw caps begins to break down and allow oxygen ingress. Unless you plan on laying the bottle down for longer than that, screw caps are actually the best choice.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
From long ago... The Bell System was broken up in 1984. Some years later USWest, one of the Baby Bells, was found guilty of violating the consent decree multiple times, and paid fines. At the end of the court proceedings after the last of them, the judge told the CEO, "Next time it won't be a fine, you personally will go to jail." There were no more violations.
At the time, I was working in an organization that operated in one of the gray areas. Our training changed dramatically. One of the new trainers said specifically, "If the CEO goes to jail because of something you did, rest assured that you too will go to jail."
On “From The Atlantic: Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’”
The last few runs of the National Weather Service's supercomputer-based Global Forecast System have a named storm developing in the Caribbean late next week and hitting somewhere in Florida near Election Day. I have as much faith in that prediction as polls that assert Trump will win the national popular vote by millions. More, actually, since the NWS will show you the computer code and raw data they use.
On “The Election’s Home Stretch”
Thing of it is, if he doesn’t have the energy to make it through a full day of campaigning, does he have the energy to President come January?
Certainly the stories that came out of the White House while he was President the last time were that he didn't spend full days president-ing. That he didn't take meetings before 10 or 11 in the morning. That briefing booklets be cut to a single page. Record number of days spent off golfing.
OTOH, he gave the media a consistently rich set of outrageous Twitter comments, which seemed to make them quite happy.
ETA: When I was in the business of writing tech summaries that SVPs had requested, one of the rules that I learned was "one side of one page."
"
If there are enough of those to do the job, then it comes down to whether the regular military mutinies when Biden orders them to suppress the insurrection.
"
"Hon, get up early tomorrow morning and pack me a lunch. Then get online and book me a motel room for, let's see, tomorrow night south of Atlanta, and the next night in Virginia. Don't worry about the night after that, we'll be in charge in DC and occupy whatever hotels we need. Text me when you've got the details. This is an important deal, so I'm going to take the truck down to Jiffy Lube this afternoon and get the oil changed and tire pressure checked. Is there still room on the credit card for gas and a few meals at Mickey D's?"
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
Just for grins, the NWS's long-term model has a tropical storm sideswiping the Keys and Miami/Dade on Monday, Nov 4. Farther north along the coast on Nov 5.
On “The Election’s Home Stretch”
It would be interesting to ask the 12% and 30% what sort of violence they envision. I suspect that the vast majority mean "the military installs my candidate" rather than "millions of us will roll out with our guns, shooting everyone/thing in sight, and install my candidate".
"
I completed my ballot and put it in the drop box last week, got confirmation yesterday that it had been collected, verified, and counted. I plan on spending the next two weeks retaining calm in the face of potential disaster. Like the princess in my granddaughters' fairy tale, having tea with the wyrm.
http://www.mcain6925.com/little_monsters/little-monsters-tea-color.pdf
On “Mini-Throughput: Rockets Rockets Everywhere”
Nitpick... Europa Clipper was originally required by statute to launch on the SLS, which would have allowed a shorter faster trip. NASA had to go back to Congress and ask for permission to use something else after Boeing announced they would be unable to build SLS rockets for anything except Artemis until sometime in the 2030s.
SLS sidenote... Michael Bloomberg published an opinion piece calling for Congress to terminate the SLS program, and for NASA to redesign the Artemis program around commercial launch capabilities.
More "October (and the last week of September) was a good month for SpaceX"... The Crew-9 Dragon mission to the ISS launched on Sept 28. It flew with two empty seats for the astronauts that didn't return on the Boeing Starliner. It launched from SLC-40 in Florida, demonstrating that SpaceX now has two working human-qualilfied launch sites for Crew Dragon. SpaceX won contracts for eight more national security launches because no one else is currently qualified to bid for them.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
Apparently that particular McDonald's was closed to the public while the publicity event was conducted. I had been wondering how the more paranoid than usual Secret Service was going to handle security at an open McDonald's.
"
In a filing yesterday, in their new case arguing that states can regulate mifepristone regardless of the FDA, the state AGs of Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri say that states have the necessary interest because abortions reduce their potential population. That in turn reduces the number of Representatives they may get, and the size of federal grants based on population.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.