Open thread 8/18/2026
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy:
That looks like some of my family!
SENNACHERIB, I resemble that remark!
Pointing back to the “Thirdworldism” thread, Rufo and Lomez interview Zineb Riboua (1:05:38): https://youtu.be/Q6w5BfHGS_A
The level of psychotic paranoia afflicting the TDS sufferers is reaching new heights. This is from a run of the mill Democrat friend:
“I’ve been trying to figure out what the emotions are that I’ve been recently experiencing. There’s definitely anger, anxiety, and fear. I feel unsettled. I know I feel a bit revolted and I feel a bit powerless. But I also feel undeterred and unflinchingly willing to keep speaking out and raising the five star alarm.
Let me tell you why. I fear that not too long in the distant future, we will see a moment in Washington DC not so drastically different from what history has taught us about Tiananmen Square. It is not so far fetched that this particular authoritarian regime would do the EXACT same thing to fully consolidate power.
I fear that if the Republicans don’t remove Trump very soon, he will attempt to push that BIG Red Button. And if he does, there is NO going back. There will be no “why didn’t you listen’s?” There will be no accepted apologies.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is also ringing the alarm. Same with Thomas Massie. The podcasters have turned. They’ve fired every military leader not loyal to Trump. Kinzinger, Cheney, the Governator, Larry Hogan, Paul Ryan, Thom Tillis, John Thune are ALL being called RINOs only because they won’t blindly follow an insane authoritarian.
He is getting the generals like Hitler had. And when they are ALL loyal to him, that’s how Hitler took power. It’s how all wannabe dictators obtain power.
And when he has those generals, look out.
Don’t say for a moment you were not warned.”
AppleBetty,
Lolololololo
Saw on Althouse than there was an outfit making up polls out of whole cloth supposedly to see how they’d be reported. One of those fictional polls was one that had Hong up 20 points in the Wisconsin primary. (There were, of course, “legitimate” polls that also showed that kind of lead, and not just one.)
I think this is yet more evidence that it is a waste of time to think about media-reported polls. When the poll says what they want it to say, they will do no vetting or due diligence whatever. Their only desire to spread the narrative. For our own mental hygiene, it’s pointless to take these kinds of things into our thinking just to have to undo them later, or worse, jump in the way that the spreaders of bullshit wish us to jump.
For context, see some contemporaneous interpretation of the Hong lead results from the Crowley campaign and how they got internal polls showing a different result much closer to the eventual outcome. We don’t have to accept this as gospel truth to see that it is one of the many ways such a discrepancy can arise, and that the media could, if they wish, apply that level of scrutiny to any poll they report on. And they never do so unless they want to discredit the narrative supported by the poll.
Marquette, of course, is a long-time source of “legitimate” polls, not the outfit that was inventing polls and spreading them to a selectively uncritical media.
Niketas Choniates – Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. We’ll know one way or another in a little more than two months.
physicsguy:
Run of the mill is certifiable, koo koo for Coco Puffs.
Unfortunately some of them are also willing to kill, to “save democracy, and our country,” as shown in Butler PA.
Well, CC™-R doesn’t have a strong record of being right, so that is a consolation.
Yeah, really, om and physicsguy, that “friend” isn’t rational any more. As om points out, there can be some very negative effects from this kind of language. Your friend might not go shoot someone, but heated rhetoric like this, repeated around the internet, may very will set off some genuinely unstable person.
And of course it would be very easy to say, just show this to him,
Don’t say for a moment you were not warned.
When absolutely none of that comes to pass, but we all know that won’t do any good either.
“Arrest warrant issued for 2024 presidential candidate Jill Stein”
https://www.azfamily.com/2026/08/17/arrest-warrant-issued-2024-presidential-candidate-jill-stein/
@Bauxite:Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. We’ll know one way or another in a little more than two months.
The thing I described actually happened. There’s no “waiting to know” on it. There are innumerable examples of polls unreflective of reality given extensive coverage to promote a narrative, with sometimes “how did we get it so wrong” articles afterward, and sometimes not.
Is “Democrat friend” an oxymoron?
That is an amazing video. I’d heard the name leatherback, but knew nothing.
It’s a laugh, but also a tragedy that their eggs taste of urea, and then, of course, humans decide they are prized delicacy and eat them towards extinction.
@Niketas Choniates: One of those fictional polls was one that had Hong up 20 points in the Wisconsin primary.
I haven’t forgotten Selzer’s notorious Iowa poll just before the 2024 election showing Harris up 47%-44% over Trump. This gave the Harris campaign a last-minute boost.
____________________________________
On Nov. 3, the front page of the Des Moines Sunday Register emblazed banner headlines: “HARRIS NOW LEADS TRUMP. She pulls ahead 47% to 44% among likely Iowa Voters” according to their Iowa Poll, celebrated since 1943.
This news spread quickly throughout the media, with Des Moines Register and Ann Selzer becoming notable “search” terms in 38 and 50 states, respectively, overnight. The excitement was captured in a New York Times lead the day after: “What That Surprising Iowa Poll Might Be Telling Us.”
In the actual vote, on Nov. 5, Donald Trump carried Iowa by 13 percentage points, for a total forecasting error of 16 points. How did this happen? What were the effects?
https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/the-2024-iowa-poll-for-president-a-cautionary-tale/
____________________________________
Selzer and her Iowa polls were very highly regarded. She retired from polling shortly thereafter.
Polling is naturally imperfect but when the margin of error is supposed to be 3.4% and the poll result is off by 16 points, then either the methodology is screwed or someone’s thumb is on the scale.
About physicsguy’s friend:
I understand that Trump is sort of playing around and tweaking people when he had joked about running for a third term, in the recent past. Very recently, he has also said, “No, that’s not going to happen.”
I do think that those earlier Trump statements were very unwise. Because people like the “friend” are about as smart and discerning as a bag of rocks, when it comes to politics.
I’ve encountered lots of extremely smart science people over my past. I’ve often wondered if they are any smarter about politics than the average Joe, or Jane. Nope. When you move the topic into that political sphere, then all bets on thoughtfulness are off.
When I was living in the Caribbean, the leatherbacks were a common feature, coming in to lay their eggs. You can hire guides to go out at night to the active nesting sites, wildlife refuges. They’re huge, some get more the 8 or 9 ft long, and they come lumbering up the beach on a return to their birthspot, to dig a nest. The guides are careful not to disturb them while they dig, but once they start laying eggs, it’s safe to approach them in their altered state of consciousness.
We saw a few laying, on our night trip, and next morning we went to a hatchery, where eggs are rescued from digging seabirds or lizards that have found the nests, and then the rescued eggs are incubated. The hatchlings are released by the bucketful to scramble down the beach and return to the sea for their own journey. It’s quite a sight, and also quite an experience, laying your hands on a living dinosaur.
Elections NEVER decide right or wrong.
David Morens, one of Fauci’s more “clever” co-conspirators goes down, but the sentence is absurdly light.
(And of course Fauci himself is being protected, at least for now.)
“Fauci Aide Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy That Shielded EcoHealth Records, Countered Lab-Leak Narrative”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fauci-aide-pleads-guilty-conspiracy-shielded-ecohealth-records-countered-lab-leak
But they’re chipping away at the crooked centerpiece of the huge global scam. Drip, drip, drip…
They say the turtle travelled thousands of kilometers before they lost contact. Or maybe the sensor left the turtle before they lost contact with the sensor.
@ physicsguy > “He is getting the generals like Hitler had. And when they are ALL loyal to him, that’s how Hitler took power. It’s how all wannabe dictators obtain power.
And when he has those generals, look out.”
Aside from the general (heh) ignorance of how Hitler actually took power, and the fact that the US military generals have nowhere near the kind of authority that Germany’s did, there really is only one way to answer his stated fear, since he seems to have no related fear that the hated authoritarian will find out what he is saying:
If Trump were Hitler, you would be dead or in jail. You aren’t, so he isn’t.
If the Democrats were not all in gulags by now, after saying in public and private all that they have been saying during the nearly 6 years of Trump being “in power,” that is unlikely to happen in the remaining 2 and a bit.
And that’s aside from this complete disconnection from reality: “I fear that not too long in the distant future, we will see a moment in Washington DC not so drastically different from what history has taught us about Tiananmen Square. It is not so far fetched that this particular authoritarian regime would do the EXACT same thing to fully consolidate power.
I fear that if the Republicans don’t remove Trump very soon, he will attempt to push that BIG Red Button”
History hasn’t taught them very much at all.
@ Niketas – Legal Insurrection has a post on the polling ploy.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/08/pollster-behind-karen-bass-12-point-lead-admits-poll-was-fake-shuts-down-operations/
A couple of points made by commenters at Althouse’s post:
No one seems to know who was behind the Median Strategies poll (dark money, donchaknow), and yet the media ran with it anyway; and despite MS withdrawing their polls and asking everyone to ignore they ever happened, the stories about them are still out in the AI-universe to be hoovered up — are the LLMs programmed to remove anything they ingested that’s later withdrawn? (As opposed to “debunked” which is sometimes a partisan game rather than a cut-and-dried test of truth).
AesopFan @ 312am,
You miss the point. You present rational historical arguments against what the person said. That makes no impression on such people. They are so marinated in their hatred of Trump, and by extension conservatives, that their fevered brains start imagining all sorts of fantastic scenarios.
All of us here understand that what this person is saying is absurd. My point in showcasing this statement is that there are a lot of such people out there. I know many of them. On first impression they have a home, a job, a family and seemingly normal lives until the subject of Trump comes up and then they go batshit crazy. And they vote. We have to deal with these people. I wish I knew how as rational discussion is way beyond them.
Democratic socialist Angie Nixon clinches surprise primary win in Florida US Senate race
How bad is the GOP? They have trouble beating DEMs far too often! Look into a mirror…so to speak whilst quoting.
Look at this DEM ‘Bench’ – DSA Nixon vs rat (lying rat?) Vindman!? How bad is that?! One of the reasons I have GOP hanging on in the upcoming midterm, i.e., DEMS are a mess right now — bench and most everything else.
Karmi,
Ashley is chomping at the bit to go against Nixon. I can’t imagine Nixon has a snowball’s chance (yeah a bit of a pun on Florida weather) here in Florida.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syf1UDSxHNc
physicsguy,
Yeah, I’d like to see the GOP really hammering her — on other ads elsewhere as representing what the DEM party is about. And Vindman!?! Sabato’s Crystal Ball moves Florida Senate race to safely Republican after Nixon win
@ physicsguy – “We have to deal with these people. I wish I knew how as rational discussion is way beyond them.”
We have some in our own family. They are, as you say, rational and generally virtuous and kindly people, until they start frothing at the mouth about Trump.
I was aiming at a short “hammer strike” response, as it is impossible to discuss anything with them because they don’t have the background omitted or mangled by their news sources.
Postscript from Althouse in re the credulity of media about polls:
IN THE COMMENTS: Rocco said: “At least Alan Sokal had to get published in an academic journal to prove his point. Today you can just post to the internet.” For background, see Wikipedia: “Sokal affair.”