It’s only fun until a cat gets his face permanently stuck in that glass.
Who is smarter? Cats look more willing to use their paws than dogs. Maybe a lot of problem solving “intelligence” is tied to physical capabilities. Dogs tended to run in packs and take down prey by biting. Their paws were more just for walking on. Cats use their claws more, so wouldn’t a cat be more inclined to use her paws more to solve problems? Dogs have an incredible sense of smell. I’d think the combination of smell with sight and hearing would give them a different way of approaching situations and problems than humans or cats have. Cats are more flexible, more agile, so maybe they have better spatial understanding than dogs. They know which jumps or falls they can make and how to make them. I’m just guessing though.
Border Collie dogs and Abyssinian cats are often regarded as the smartest breeds of each. It’d be interesting to see how they perform.
Nonapod on October 18, 2024 at 10:52 am said:
Border Collie dogs and Abyssinian cats are often regarded as the smartest breeds of each. It’d be interesting to see how they perform.
________
I don’t know about the cats, but the Border Collies would have a perfectly aligned row of glasses at the end.
When you see a cat or dog’s skull it’s surprising how little room for brain there is. A cat’s brain is about the size of a walnut, and a dog’s about the size of a tangerine.
A cat has 200 – 300 million neurons in its brain, a dog 500 – 600 million, a human about 16 billion.
Certainly both animals show personality differences and are able to learn things, though training cats takes a lot more time. But I think it much more likely that most of their behaviors we interpret as evidence of intelligence are us reading that into it. It’s very easy to remember the “smart” things your pet does and forget the thousands more “dumb” things, or just explain them away. You even see this at work in the ape sign-language studies, despite being run by professionals who should know better.
To be fair, neuron count isn’t a perfect measure of the relative intelligence of different animals. Supposedly Orca’s have a significantly larger number of forebrain neurons than humans, and while Orca’s certainly seem pretty smart relative to most other animals, I have yet to see one build and launch and catch a 400 foot tall rocket. But I guess a lack of opposable thumbs might make such a feet difficult.
My Cats, all of them, way smarter than and Dog.
Just got info on changes to our Med Advantage Plan. Things are going up. Out of pocket ext from 4900 to 5500. PET scan 195 to 330, same for other scans. I think people will be shocked at the overall increases.
Know there are many here interested in the history of science. I just came across this article which I think is a particularly good history of black holes.
I remember an interview with Freeman Dyson, where he talked about finally getting to meet and work a bit with his hero Einstein. Dyson was very interested in black holes and was terribly disappointed that Einstein didn’t even want to talk about them. This essay helps explain why that was.
Anyone who knows border collies — I’ve had three, and have one now — would merely laugh when asked this question.
Factoid: If you point at something with an ape present, the ape won’t know what you’re doing.
If you point at something with a border collie present, the BC will look at what you’re pointing at.
He was found with a weapon, a flak jacket and 40,000 shekels (£8,250).
‘Yahya Sinouar had a lot of cash and fake passports on him, he was ready to flee,’ Israeli army spokesman Colonel Olivier Rafowicz told French outlet CNEWS this morning.
He claimed that the items Sinwar had on him, which allegedly also included a card from UNRWA, the UN aid for Palestinian refugees, ‘may show that he was ready to flee and leave Gaza and his men behind.’
Had a show champion dog once that cats would freeze upon seeing it. He had a ‘Classic‘ ear crop—maybe called a “Show Crop” now (?), but it left his ears standing up about 4-5 inches—Spike looked like a gargoyle w/o wings, and was blue brindle ‘n white. Bred Pitt Bulls/Am Staffs for a long time. ‘Chain Gang‘ (or 1/4″ steel aircraft cable) dogs.
There are an incredible number of hand & finger commands for a dog. Whistle commands. Voice commands. They can be trained to attack, to find drugs, to find dead bodies, etc.
Maybe Harris’s “I won’t explain any of my positions but it’s all Trump’s fault” Fox interview has done her some damage.
Or maybe the interview did nothing to halt her downward trend.
But she’s in trouble, folks. Trump is now ahead in all seven battleground states and only 1.4% behind Harris nationally. Trump leads Harris 60-40% in the Polymarket betting odds.
Compared to 2016 and 2020 these are remarkable numbers.
If you point at something with a border collie present, the BC will look at what you’re pointing at.
–karmi
There are an incredible number of hand & finger commands for a dog.
–IrishOtter49
Temple Grandin, the autist-savant authority on animals, notes that dogs have coevolved with humans. Humans are now the dogs’ environment. Dogs are exquisitely attuned to humans and their needs.
Cats, not so much.
@ huxley > “folks. Trump is now ahead in all seven battleground states and only 1.4% behind Harris nationally.”
I have seen on the internet, and agree, that anything less than a 10-point difference will allow the fraudsters to claim that Kamala’s “votes” were within the margin of error of the polls.
Polymarket’s 20-point spread is encouraging, but won’t get any play in the Regime Media, so their readers will only see the 1.4% kind of numbers.
However, they are remarkable numbers.
IMO, the 2016 polls were probably only slightly tilted to the left (there are lots of stories about under-counted Trump supporters), but the 2020 ones showing Biden leading were as fake as the election results in Democrat cities.
@ huxley > “Dogs are exquisitely attuned to humans and their needs. Cats, not so much.”
As the saying goes, “Dogs have family; cats have staff.”
However, in re the evolutionary symbiosis, it’s not 100% flawless.
We toured a sheep farm in Wales (15 years ago!!) and were given a demonstration of how their dogs were trained, which was fascinating. The farmer pointed out that one challenge was finding the dogs who wanted to do the work.
Even in the same litter, there would be pups who just were NOT interested in herding sheep and WOULD not learn the signals no matter how much the farmers enticed them (although they were perfectly capable of being trained in other endeavors).
They did make excellent pets, though.
Saw Hinderaker at Powerline saying we should believe the betting markets over the polls because people are putting up their own money.
The problem with that is that people put down bets based on other factors than who is most likely to win. Some just bet because they want someone to win, some bet because they think one side of the bet is undervalued, some people with big enough bankrolls bet to manipulate the betting market.
The national media polls used to generate “horse race” narratives are probably not all that good, but I’m not sure that we yet know the betting markets are better predictors let alone how much better.
On Cheops Pyramid, mind you, spotted by a para-glider:
The dog that climbed to the top of the Cheops pyramid came down by itself. By the way, the dog broke the law: in Egypt it is forbidden to climb any of the 118 pyramids.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is focusing on “low propensity voters,” and the turnout is already “dramatically higher” than in the past, RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
“We are focused on low propensity voters. That is really, truly the push. And we are combining door knocks with phone calls with direct mail with digital communication, emails, texts,” he said, describing a low propensity voter as “somebody who is very likely to vote for Donald Trump if they vote, but they haven’t voted in two years or four years or six years.”
“And the Democrats are going to identify somebody the same kind of way, but it really, truly is … not a very regular voter. And so you know, what we’re seeing in our first initial assessments out of Georgia, North Carolina, out of Arizona, out of Pennsylvania, is that we’re having a really good response rate from the low propensity voters,” he revealed.
The problem with the polls is that you can no longer generate probability samples with efficient means. In Anglospheric countries, there also appears to be a higher degree of disinclination among starboard voters to respond to pollster. In this country, you have to add vote fraud to the equation. Don’t know that betting markets are worth much as forecasters.
AesopFan:
I’ve never seen a border collie that wasn’t keen to interact (as opposed to work) with sheep. The ability to work with sheep is, however, variable — just as athleticism in humans is variable. Some are naturals, right out of the chute. Others take time to train up: they start out slowly but gain in expertise as they mature until eventually they (can) become master sheepherders; several years of intensive training may pass before the nickle drops. But the nickle usually does drop.
I have a lot of experience with both types. One was a freaking prodigy, able at just twelve weeks to move sheep around a field with astonishing skill and authority. The one I have now is taking her time. We fell way behind in training when she was young, and this happened during her prime learning years, due to the COVID lockdown. But she’s very keen to INTERACT with sheep and showing steady improvement in her training even those she’s, a mature girl — a girl of a “certain age,” as the saying goes. Some border collies just never get any good at it. Like medical school, somebody has to graduate at the bottom of the class, and that’s true for border collies and sheepherding too. Their lack of ability is easy to misinterpret as laziness or non-desire to work with sheep. But I guarantee that even the herding duds are smarter than the vast majority of dogs.
I question the Welsh sheepherder’s evident penchant for judging whether a BC puppy is going to be a good worker. As I said, several years of training may pass before a BC manifests herding ability. You train and train and train, and you think it’s never doing to happen, and then suddenly one day . . . BOOM. The nickle drops and you’ve got an excellent worker. Border collies are not clockwork mechanisms. They’re all different. They mature and learn at different rates, and to different levels of ability. That’s part of the fun (and reward) of working with them.
I have seen on the internet, and agree, that anything less than a 10-point difference will allow the fraudsters to claim that Kamala’s “votes” were within the margin of error of the polls.
AesopFan:
Perhaps. I’m less cynical. I find much conservative pessimism reflexive and unhealthy. But we will see how much of a third-world country the USA has become.
I worry more about the Deep State, which is facing a near-death experience if Trump is elected and inaugurated. Trump knows better than to let such sleeping vipers lie.
I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.
@ huxley > “I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.”
That’s what worries me — a lot.
If Trump somehow survives past his inauguration, how long will he last before the implementation of what are now just threats drives someone to rid us of this turbulent reformer?
The Regime apparatchiks have already demonstrated that they may be cunning but they aren’t good at second-order thinking, as in: IF any of the 3 assassins to date had succeeded in killing Trump, what was most likely to happen next would probably NOT coincide with their wish-casting — because it so often hasn’t in the past.
If they are driven to overt measures on those lines, given the climate of suspicion already extant, can they reasonably expect to escape accusation? And if they aren’t directly responsible, but the constant yammering about Trump-Hitler sets off another “random lone wolf” killer, they will still be accused of the crime.
We are in deep, uncharted waters, and here be dragons.
@huxley, AesopFan:I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.
I’m sure we have nothing to worry about, what with Vice President Kamala Harris counting the Electoral College ballots and certifying the Presidential Election.
@ Niketas – good point.
How did Reagan’s VP, GHW Bush, handle the counting when he was elected?
It might not have been a problem, since the vote was pretty conclusive.
Wikipedia: “Bush defeated Dukakis by a margin of 426 to 111 in the Electoral College, and he took 53.4 percent of the national popular vote.[152] Bush ran well in all the major regions of the country, but especially in the South.[153] He became the fourth sitting vice president to be elected president and the first to do so since Martin Van Buren in 1836 and the first person to succeed a president from his own party via election since Herbert Hoover in 1929.[101][g] In the concurrent congressional elections, Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.”
Mark Steyn on the Al Smith Dinner and other things.
He relays a couple of Trump’s good quips. https://www.steynonline.com/14707/kamala-lightens-up
“It was an impressive performance given that Letitia James, New York Attorney-General, was sitting in the row behind. Even Jean Valjean didn’t play Open Mic Night with Javert sitting on the dais.”
Nonapod,
Forty plus years of schutzhund trained German Shepherd dogs in this house and husband likes to say the Abyssinian cat was the smartest ‘dog’ we ever had.
@AesopFan:How did Reagan’s VP, GHW Bush, handle the counting when he was elected?
Al Gore had the same problem in January 2001, in an election that was much closer and nastily contested, but he’d conceded by December 13. Twenty House Democrats contested the electoral votes of Florida and Gore ruled them out of order as no Senator co-sponsored. I’m not sure we could count on this level of adult behavior from the VP, the Senate, and the House Democrats given that they all say they consider Trump an existential threat to “our democracy”.
It’s all more evidence of the confusion surrounding what the Vice President is actually for.
We have a sort of public pretense that you elect a Vice President to be an understudy or successor to the President; in practice this rarely happens.
The original Constitution had the Vice President as the leader of the opposition to the elected President–which is why the Vice President is President of the Senate– and that sounds fantastic in a theoretical “checks and balances” way but it was a practical nightmare especially given the two-party system that grew up outside the Constitution. So they fixed part of it by electing President and Vice President on the same ticket but they never figured out what the Vice President is really supposed to be.
So now we have a system where sometimes one of the people running for President gets to certify the election they are a candidate in.
At any rate, if blue precincts in WI, PA, MI can’t deliver enough blue ballots in their counts, I’d expect successful challenges to the Electoral votes of some of the states Trump wins. That throws the election to the House, which will vote by state delegation and not as individuals. The Senate would choose the Vice President, voting as individuals. I don’t know how confident I am that Trump would get 26 state delegations to vote for him.
If they fail to reach a decision by Inauguration Day, Kamala Harris is acting President until the deadlock is resolved. I hate to give them ideas. I would hope that the rewards for defecting from intentional deadlock would be too much for Congressional consciences, but that would imply Harris would win in the end.
Under the revised terms of the Electoral Count Act, the VP’s role is ceremonial, it takes 1/5 of senators and representatives to contest electors and it eliminates the potential of an alternate slate of electors.
Based on the changes, it would be harder for Democrats to contest certification in Congress.
While it makes certifying the election more straight forward, it does reduce Congress ability to safeguard any malfeasance at the state level. Should that be a concern? Probably, given the courts reluctance to intervene in election matters.
Let me repeat here, for those who didn’t see it, “AesopFan’s” link from yesterday to Jonathan Turley’s comments about the Baier-Harris interview.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/10/17/i-will-follow-the-law-harris-adopts-a-purely-pedestrian-view-of-the-presidency-in-fox-interview/
New post: The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/72054.html
It’s only fun until a cat gets his face permanently stuck in that glass.
Who is smarter? Cats look more willing to use their paws than dogs. Maybe a lot of problem solving “intelligence” is tied to physical capabilities. Dogs tended to run in packs and take down prey by biting. Their paws were more just for walking on. Cats use their claws more, so wouldn’t a cat be more inclined to use her paws more to solve problems? Dogs have an incredible sense of smell. I’d think the combination of smell with sight and hearing would give them a different way of approaching situations and problems than humans or cats have. Cats are more flexible, more agile, so maybe they have better spatial understanding than dogs. They know which jumps or falls they can make and how to make them. I’m just guessing though.
Border Collie dogs and Abyssinian cats are often regarded as the smartest breeds of each. It’d be interesting to see how they perform.
Nonapod on October 18, 2024 at 10:52 am said:
Border Collie dogs and Abyssinian cats are often regarded as the smartest breeds of each. It’d be interesting to see how they perform.
________
I don’t know about the cats, but the Border Collies would have a perfectly aligned row of glasses at the end.
When you see a cat or dog’s skull it’s surprising how little room for brain there is. A cat’s brain is about the size of a walnut, and a dog’s about the size of a tangerine.
A cat has 200 – 300 million neurons in its brain, a dog 500 – 600 million, a human about 16 billion.
Certainly both animals show personality differences and are able to learn things, though training cats takes a lot more time. But I think it much more likely that most of their behaviors we interpret as evidence of intelligence are us reading that into it. It’s very easy to remember the “smart” things your pet does and forget the thousands more “dumb” things, or just explain them away. You even see this at work in the ape sign-language studies, despite being run by professionals who should know better.
To be fair, neuron count isn’t a perfect measure of the relative intelligence of different animals. Supposedly Orca’s have a significantly larger number of forebrain neurons than humans, and while Orca’s certainly seem pretty smart relative to most other animals, I have yet to see one build and launch and catch a 400 foot tall rocket. But I guess a lack of opposable thumbs might make such a feet difficult.
My Cats, all of them, way smarter than and Dog.
Just got info on changes to our Med Advantage Plan. Things are going up. Out of pocket ext from 4900 to 5500. PET scan 195 to 330, same for other scans. I think people will be shocked at the overall increases.
Know there are many here interested in the history of science. I just came across this article which I think is a particularly good history of black holes.
https://aeon.co/essays/mathematics-is-the-only-way-we-have-of-peering-into-a-black-hole
I remember an interview with Freeman Dyson, where he talked about finally getting to meet and work a bit with his hero Einstein. Dyson was very interested in black holes and was terribly disappointed that Einstein didn’t even want to talk about them. This essay helps explain why that was.
Anyone who knows border collies — I’ve had three, and have one now — would merely laugh when asked this question.
Factoid: If you point at something with an ape present, the ape won’t know what you’re doing.
If you point at something with a border collie present, the BC will look at what you’re pointing at.
No idea what a cat would do.
’A picture is worth a thousand words’
Was Yahya Sinwar out of his tunnel in an attempt to flee Gaza?
Cash and Fake Passports
Had a show champion dog once that cats would freeze upon seeing it. He had a ‘Classic‘ ear crop—maybe called a “Show Crop” now (?), but it left his ears standing up about 4-5 inches—Spike looked like a gargoyle w/o wings, and was blue brindle ‘n white. Bred Pitt Bulls/Am Staffs for a long time. ‘Chain Gang‘ (or 1/4″ steel aircraft cable) dogs.
There are an incredible number of hand & finger commands for a dog. Whistle commands. Voice commands. They can be trained to attack, to find drugs, to find dead bodies, etc.
Maybe Harris’s “I won’t explain any of my positions but it’s all Trump’s fault” Fox interview has done her some damage.
Or maybe the interview did nothing to halt her downward trend.
But she’s in trouble, folks. Trump is now ahead in all seven battleground states and only 1.4% behind Harris nationally. Trump leads Harris 60-40% in the Polymarket betting odds.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/latest-polls
https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1729192104655
Compared to 2016 and 2020 these are remarkable numbers.
If you point at something with a border collie present, the BC will look at what you’re pointing at.
–karmi
There are an incredible number of hand & finger commands for a dog.
–IrishOtter49
Temple Grandin, the autist-savant authority on animals, notes that dogs have coevolved with humans. Humans are now the dogs’ environment. Dogs are exquisitely attuned to humans and their needs.
Cats, not so much.
@ huxley > “folks. Trump is now ahead in all seven battleground states and only 1.4% behind Harris nationally.”
I have seen on the internet, and agree, that anything less than a 10-point difference will allow the fraudsters to claim that Kamala’s “votes” were within the margin of error of the polls.
Polymarket’s 20-point spread is encouraging, but won’t get any play in the Regime Media, so their readers will only see the 1.4% kind of numbers.
However, they are remarkable numbers.
IMO, the 2016 polls were probably only slightly tilted to the left (there are lots of stories about under-counted Trump supporters), but the 2020 ones showing Biden leading were as fake as the election results in Democrat cities.
@ huxley > “Dogs are exquisitely attuned to humans and their needs. Cats, not so much.”
As the saying goes, “Dogs have family; cats have staff.”
However, in re the evolutionary symbiosis, it’s not 100% flawless.
We toured a sheep farm in Wales (15 years ago!!) and were given a demonstration of how their dogs were trained, which was fascinating. The farmer pointed out that one challenge was finding the dogs who wanted to do the work.
Even in the same litter, there would be pups who just were NOT interested in herding sheep and WOULD not learn the signals no matter how much the farmers enticed them (although they were perfectly capable of being trained in other endeavors).
They did make excellent pets, though.
Saw Hinderaker at Powerline saying we should believe the betting markets over the polls because people are putting up their own money.
The problem with that is that people put down bets based on other factors than who is most likely to win. Some just bet because they want someone to win, some bet because they think one side of the bet is undervalued, some people with big enough bankrolls bet to manipulate the betting market.
The national media polls used to generate “horse race” narratives are probably not all that good, but I’m not sure that we yet know the betting markets are better predictors let alone how much better.
On Cheops Pyramid, mind you, spotted by a para-glider:
https://x.com/Doranimated/status/1847057475175952430
Video clip at link — (it’s a dog).
Then today, video of the dog descending:
https://x.com/Doranimated/status/1847353233443795054
Again, short vid clip at link.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley: Low Propensity Voter Turnout ‘Dramatically Higher’ than Usual
The problem with the polls is that you can no longer generate probability samples with efficient means. In Anglospheric countries, there also appears to be a higher degree of disinclination among starboard voters to respond to pollster. In this country, you have to add vote fraud to the equation. Don’t know that betting markets are worth much as forecasters.
AesopFan:
I’ve never seen a border collie that wasn’t keen to interact (as opposed to work) with sheep. The ability to work with sheep is, however, variable — just as athleticism in humans is variable. Some are naturals, right out of the chute. Others take time to train up: they start out slowly but gain in expertise as they mature until eventually they (can) become master sheepherders; several years of intensive training may pass before the nickle drops. But the nickle usually does drop.
I have a lot of experience with both types. One was a freaking prodigy, able at just twelve weeks to move sheep around a field with astonishing skill and authority. The one I have now is taking her time. We fell way behind in training when she was young, and this happened during her prime learning years, due to the COVID lockdown. But she’s very keen to INTERACT with sheep and showing steady improvement in her training even those she’s, a mature girl — a girl of a “certain age,” as the saying goes. Some border collies just never get any good at it. Like medical school, somebody has to graduate at the bottom of the class, and that’s true for border collies and sheepherding too. Their lack of ability is easy to misinterpret as laziness or non-desire to work with sheep. But I guarantee that even the herding duds are smarter than the vast majority of dogs.
I question the Welsh sheepherder’s evident penchant for judging whether a BC puppy is going to be a good worker. As I said, several years of training may pass before a BC manifests herding ability. You train and train and train, and you think it’s never doing to happen, and then suddenly one day . . . BOOM. The nickle drops and you’ve got an excellent worker. Border collies are not clockwork mechanisms. They’re all different. They mature and learn at different rates, and to different levels of ability. That’s part of the fun (and reward) of working with them.
I have seen on the internet, and agree, that anything less than a 10-point difference will allow the fraudsters to claim that Kamala’s “votes” were within the margin of error of the polls.
AesopFan:
Perhaps. I’m less cynical. I find much conservative pessimism reflexive and unhealthy. But we will see how much of a third-world country the USA has become.
I worry more about the Deep State, which is facing a near-death experience if Trump is elected and inaugurated. Trump knows better than to let such sleeping vipers lie.
I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.
@ huxley > “I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.”
That’s what worries me — a lot.
If Trump somehow survives past his inauguration, how long will he last before the implementation of what are now just threats drives someone to rid us of this turbulent reformer?
The Regime apparatchiks have already demonstrated that they may be cunning but they aren’t good at second-order thinking, as in: IF any of the 3 assassins to date had succeeded in killing Trump, what was most likely to happen next would probably NOT coincide with their wish-casting — because it so often hasn’t in the past.
If they are driven to overt measures on those lines, given the climate of suspicion already extant, can they reasonably expect to escape accusation? And if they aren’t directly responsible, but the constant yammering about Trump-Hitler sets off another “random lone wolf” killer, they will still be accused of the crime.
We are in deep, uncharted waters, and here be dragons.
@huxley, AesopFan:I’ve got to believe that the Deep State has got people thinking 24/7 how to stop a Trump presidency … by any means necessary.
I’m sure we have nothing to worry about, what with Vice President Kamala Harris counting the Electoral College ballots and certifying the Presidential Election.
@ Niketas – good point.
How did Reagan’s VP, GHW Bush, handle the counting when he was elected?
It might not have been a problem, since the vote was pretty conclusive.
Wikipedia: “Bush defeated Dukakis by a margin of 426 to 111 in the Electoral College, and he took 53.4 percent of the national popular vote.[152] Bush ran well in all the major regions of the country, but especially in the South.[153] He became the fourth sitting vice president to be elected president and the first to do so since Martin Van Buren in 1836 and the first person to succeed a president from his own party via election since Herbert Hoover in 1929.[101][g] In the concurrent congressional elections, Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.”
Mark Steyn on the Al Smith Dinner and other things.
He relays a couple of Trump’s good quips.
https://www.steynonline.com/14707/kamala-lightens-up
“It was an impressive performance given that Letitia James, New York Attorney-General, was sitting in the row behind. Even Jean Valjean didn’t play Open Mic Night with Javert sitting on the dais.”
Nonapod,
Forty plus years of schutzhund trained German Shepherd dogs in this house and husband likes to say the Abyssinian cat was the smartest ‘dog’ we ever had.
The 15 Smartest Animals in the World:
Bonus: Rat
15 – Squirrel
14 – Cuttlefish
13 – Octopus
12 – Cat
11 – Pig
10 – Dog, Wolf, Fox & Coyote
9 – African Grey Parrot
8 – Orca
7 – Gorilla
6 – Raven, Crow & Magpie
5 – Elephant
4 – Dolphin
3 – Bonobo
2 – Orangutan
1 – Chimpanzee
Humans didn’t make the list?! 😉
@AesopFan:How did Reagan’s VP, GHW Bush, handle the counting when he was elected?
Al Gore had the same problem in January 2001, in an election that was much closer and nastily contested, but he’d conceded by December 13. Twenty House Democrats contested the electoral votes of Florida and Gore ruled them out of order as no Senator co-sponsored. I’m not sure we could count on this level of adult behavior from the VP, the Senate, and the House Democrats given that they all say they consider Trump an existential threat to “our democracy”.
It’s all more evidence of the confusion surrounding what the Vice President is actually for.
We have a sort of public pretense that you elect a Vice President to be an understudy or successor to the President; in practice this rarely happens.
The original Constitution had the Vice President as the leader of the opposition to the elected President–which is why the Vice President is President of the Senate– and that sounds fantastic in a theoretical “checks and balances” way but it was a practical nightmare especially given the two-party system that grew up outside the Constitution. So they fixed part of it by electing President and Vice President on the same ticket but they never figured out what the Vice President is really supposed to be.
So now we have a system where sometimes one of the people running for President gets to certify the election they are a candidate in.
At any rate, if blue precincts in WI, PA, MI can’t deliver enough blue ballots in their counts, I’d expect successful challenges to the Electoral votes of some of the states Trump wins. That throws the election to the House, which will vote by state delegation and not as individuals. The Senate would choose the Vice President, voting as individuals. I don’t know how confident I am that Trump would get 26 state delegations to vote for him.
If they fail to reach a decision by Inauguration Day, Kamala Harris is acting President until the deadlock is resolved. I hate to give them ideas. I would hope that the rewards for defecting from intentional deadlock would be too much for Congressional consciences, but that would imply Harris would win in the end.
Under the revised terms of the Electoral Count Act, the VP’s role is ceremonial, it takes 1/5 of senators and representatives to contest electors and it eliminates the potential of an alternate slate of electors.
Based on the changes, it would be harder for Democrats to contest certification in Congress.
While it makes certifying the election more straight forward, it does reduce Congress ability to safeguard any malfeasance at the state level. Should that be a concern? Probably, given the courts reluctance to intervene in election matters.
https://www.cato.org/blog/two-years-after-january-6-electoral-count-act-reform-now-law
Smartest animals: 13 – Octopus
–karmi
Octopus is playing the long game. Slow and steady wins the race.
Humans are just a flash in the pan before the Great Octocene Epoch to come.