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Home » Open thread 4/8/24

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Open thread 4/8/24 — 80 Comments

  1. I think we’ll be at about 80% totality here. I’ll be watching the dog and the birds to see if they’re confused.

    Meanwhile, Trump has made a constitutionally correct decision. He announced today that abortion policy belongs to the states.

  2. We might be around 60% in my part of CO.
    At least the Eclipse has taken the worst Earthquake in the World off the front pages and the news.
    Yes, agree Kate, it should be up to the states. CO has abortion up to birth, which I don’t agree with, but I am not opposed to abortion, just not for a whim. Of course the Dems want a Fed law for abortion up to birth

  3. Iran’s Currency Collapse:
    • Lost 17% of its value against the dollar since January 2024.
    • 4/7/2024 drops to 660,000 Rials equal to 1 American Dollar.
    • Protests across Iran as economy continues to deteriorate.
    • Emigration among young Iranian professionals jumped by 140% last year.

    Meanwhile, Iranian leaders ignore the plight & pleas of the desperate Iranians, and continue sending military aid to the “Axis of Resistance” in Syria, Lebanon/Hezbollah, Iran, Gaza/Hamas, Yemen/Houthis, and other terrorist organizations.

    Exporting Hate is expensive — tighten yore belts, Iranians, because it’s gonna get worse…

  4. We’re (in Valley Forge) due for 90% eclipse. May watch it unfold through our kitchen strainer onto a sheet of white paper, seeing dozens of suns disappearing. Ra-Ra.

    Or not.

  5. Drove down to Indianapolis last night, which is in the path of totality. Staying with family, and have two telescopes set up and ready to go. Now just praying for clear skies.

  7. 97.9% totality here at the house. Had 99.7% totality last time. Think I might drive out into the country to improve my percentage.

  9. Overheard on X this morning:

    Q: What time am I supposed to stare directly at the sun today?

    A: Start early so you don’t miss anything.

    A: All day long bud

    A: Just do it until everything goes dark

    A: I heard to get the full eclipse, it’s best to dilate your pupils first. I’m ready, eye drops in pocket

  10. I have some really goofy personal mondegreens. From The Clash’s Rock the Casbah line “The Sharif don’t like it” I couldn’t figure it out and so I did my best with “Velveeta took me higher.”

    And Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody’s line “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me” became “Beelzebub has a devil for a sidewalk.”

    I have a lot of fun singing anyway!

  11. Trump’s abortion position is spot on. An intelligent statement that will take one of the two Democrat 2024 attack points off the table. It will be interesting to see how the left-wing media spin it. For now, they are pariroting the Democrat talking points that Trump does not really mean it, and that he’s a crypto abortion ban supporter. In his statement, which was clear,and to the point, he correctly states that it’s the Democrats who have a radical position of abortion, even in the ninth month.

  12. I’m jinxed with regard to solar eclipses. I’ve seen many partials, never in the right place for a total. Given my age, I probably never will be. Oh well… partials are boring so I won’t be paying much attention. Lots of high cirrus clouds here in northern FL today anyway.

  13. I live near Seattle. Typical overcast day. Doubt the eclipse will be more than marginally detectable here.

  15. Earlier in the campaign season, Trump talked about a federal abortion limit of about 15 weeks. This would have satisfied neither pro- nor anti-abortion factions, and would have allowed the Dems to use the issue on a national basis.

  16. Re: abortion – Credit where credit is due to Trump. This is the correct position for a national GOP politician. It has the virtue of being both politically expedient and constitutionally correct, as Kate notes.

    On practicalities, the pro-life movement just won a generational victory with Dobbs. Since then, it has comprehensively lost the post-Dobbs propoganda war. If pro-lifers do not take this kind of tactical retreat now, it is entirely conceivable that the unborn will be worse off in the future then they were under Roe. I would much prefer it if we lived in a society that valued all life, including unborn life, but we most certainly do not. Even so, I don’t think that means that we have to conduct the political equivalent of ritual suicide. Apparently Trump agrees, at least with the “don’t commit political suicide” part. Good on him.

    (And also – good on us. If Trump does lose this year, he won’t be able to blame it on pro-lifers like he did in 2022. It’s worth pointing out again, that for every Mastriano and Hershel Walker in 2022, there was a Ron DeSantis and a Mike DeWine. The common demoninator among 2022 losers was their lack of qualifications and ties to Trump, not their pro-life position.)

  17. This is not only a constitutionally correct position on abortion, but a step in the right direction of re-establishing the country as a federal republic, not a single unified body run by an unelected monstrous bureaucracy.

  18. Live in a “dead spot” of Dixie county, FL – well, 3G Verizon flip phone used to work great here, it was one of those $20 Walmart phones for Verizon. No battery swap or sim in them so when they went they were done, and apparently Verizon phased out 3G phones and Walmart only had 4G ones. 4G phone never worked here, but the 4G Verizon WiFi internet box still worked so WiFi calling worked on phone. Had Hughes net for internet previously. 4G internet worked—4G phone didn’t and that has been my experience w/ Verizon. If they improve something, then something else breaks.

    Recently switched to T-Mobile 5G w/ a free phone. Inside mostly doesn’t work except for WiFi calling, but there are spots in the yard that have 1-3 bars of 5G. Next year T-Mobile is supposed to have Elon’s satellite for “dead spots” here & nation wide—unlike Verizon, they seem to keep improving, e.g. tried T-Mobile some years ago and it didn’t work at all here.

    Fiber Optics coming this Friday (12th) 🙂 Bye Bye Verizon! Hopefully WiFi calling will still work w/ Fiber – fingers crossed! Fiber is being provided by Electric company. Am going w/ the 100 MBPS Download Speeds first since that will be by far the fastest internet I have had. $49.99 a month, but I qualified for an “Affordable Connectivity Program” which knocks it down to $19.99 a month – due to unsuccessful criminal career I live below the US Poverty line (not bad since it’s all about money management). They also offer 1 & 2 GBPS speeds, but I think most of my computers only support 1GBPS speeds. Fast and reliable internet is going to be a first for me!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

  19. Sharif is the name of the moroccan prince where strummer of the clash grew up also a direct descendant of the prophet the line is somewhat ironic because moroccos flies french aircraft not american

    Theres also the pompatus of love

  21. I admit that fettermans chip upgrade is going well would oz have staked any ground on squatting or gaza or immigration majic eightball says maybe

    Well someones got to clean um grin,

    Of course she blinded me with science

  23. The eclipse is over halfway here in Abq. Crescent. There are dogs barking and doves cooing. Maybe because of the dimming.

    There is a thin layer of clouds and a ring around the sun.

    I recall reading about this total eclipse when I was in sixth grade. 2024 seemed an eternity away. But I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to see that.

    I’ve friends in Arkansas near Russellville right in the totality path. I tried hard to convince myself to drive there, but my appetite for long drives has diminished over time.

    That’s a lot of driving and I’d rather keep to my routines learning French.

  24. Here in Alaska we have 0% totality. Always have, pretty sure always will.

    I agree with any political stance that returns power to the states.

  25. Re: Blinded by the Light

    I loathe the Manfred Mann version.

    The song was from Springsteen’s first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park” when he was young and overflowing with imagery like the 60s Bob Dylan. IMO “Asbury Park” is a great album, though a freshman effort.

    Here’s Springsteen’s explanation of his lyrics, including the infamous deuce (Springsteen) vs douche (Manfred Mann) business. Mann’s risqué substitution still strikes me as childish, like inserting a fart joke.

    –Bruce Springsteen, “Blinded by the Light – The Story (From VH1 Storytellers)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Gav2Rsucg

  26. huxley:

    I don’t think “douche” was on purpose. Mann was the keyboardist, not the singer, by the way – the singer just didn’t enunciate well on the recording. If you watch them in live performance the singer says “deuce” very clearly (at least in the video I’ve seen).

  27. We just went thru near totality in Tyler, Texas. I was not expecting that distinct, well defined , bright red line under the orb.

  28. A good discussion of our fiscal and monetary mess for lay people, like me.

    Hoenig thinks there is still time to make a course correction to our looming debt crisis, but the solution is deeply depressing. It will require Congress and the President to work together to both restrain spending and increase revenue.

    Unless the American people elect a different mix of Congresspeople, we are doomed. So basically we are doomed.

    Hoenig doesn’t see it as a cliff, but a long steep decline in national wealth as it becomes clear we are just printing money.

    Remember that the Fed was supposed to be removed from politics, so good monetary policies could be maintained. How is that working out for us?
    Hoenig, while he doesn’t directly say it, indicates the pressures by interest groups are too strong.

    Veteran Federal Reserve Exec Thomas Hoenig Warns We’re On A Trajectory For Crisis
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZCVCTWRAl4

  29. the singer just didn’t enunciate well on the recording

    neo:

    Chat agrees with you. I still find it hard to forgive.

    Live OK, but on a studio recording, what’s the defense? They didn’t notice or they didn’t care. Professionals.

  30. huxley:

    So I got the Chat seal of approval? 🙂

    I think it generally can be hard for singers themselves to hear a mondegreen when they know what they were trying to say.

  31. neo:

    But how many other people were in that studio listening, and presumably caring, to get it right? Professionals.

    It’s not just, well, someone goofed. It’s a big bleep in the song — what was that? he said douche! — and changes Springsteen’s intention.

    It’s a mondegreen if the listener hears it wrong, not if the singer sings it wrong.

  32. We just saw the eclipse whilst sitting in our backyard here in Boerne Texas, there was low cloud cover moving over from the South to the North and there were a few gaps that allowed us to see the crescent sun as it became more covered and the the entire corona while it was covered and a crescent as it passed on through. What an incredible sight with the sun just about directly overhead.

    The birds were quiet during the total darkness and then of course they started their wake up chatter as the light became brighter. As it became dark we did see a few bats flying around, we do have lots of bats in South Texas and that was fun, when the light first started to return we saw six vultures flying in a line as they moved over us heading North.

    What a fantastic show for us to watch today while I have a nice batch of ribs cooking very slowly to enjoy as a celebration dinner on this Eclipse Day and now as I write this the daylight of is becoming brighter. I am so very thankful for our universe that works like divine clockwork and our solar system where each bit of stuff in the sky, way above, does its part every day.

    Peace and Blessings for all of us folks on our nice planet.

  36. Our daughter in Birmingham sent us some great photos of their 89% eclipse. Here, it got dim at ~80% but not dark enough to turn on the outdoor lights which are on sensors.

  37. I. “It’s worth pointing out again, that for every Mastriano and Hershel Walker in 2022, there was a Ron DeSantis and a Mike DeWine.”

    It is also worth pointing out:
    a) DeSantis and DeWine ran for FL & OH state Governor – as Rep incumbents/ Beat non-incumbent.
    b) Mastriano ran for PA state Governor – as non-incumbent/ Lost to non-incumbent.

    • 100% of Reb incumbent Governors won reelection (15/15).
    • 100% of Dem incumbent Governors won reelection (12/12).

    • PA Governor office was held by a Dem – not run for re-election – Dem candidate won.

    c) Walker ran for GA USA Senate – as non-incumbent/ Lost to incumbent.

    • 100% of Reb incumbent Senators won reelection (14/14).
    • 100% of Dem incumbent Senators won reelection (13/13).

    II. “The common demoninator among 2022 losers was their lack of qualifications and ties to Trump, not their pro-life position.)”

    • 16 of 24 Trump endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (67%).
    • 1 of 2 Biden endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (50%).
    • 3 of 6 Obama endorsed 2022 Senate candidates won (50%).

    • Trump’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
    2023: 80%
    2022: 83%
    2021: 67%
    2020: 78%
    2019: 67%
    2018: 59%

    • Biden’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
    2023: 71%
    2022: 89%
    2021: 50%
    2020: 29%
    2019: 00%
    2018: 64%

    • Obama’ General Election endorsement success rate is as follows:
    2023:
    2022: 74%
    2021: 59%
    2020: 40%
    2019: 53%
    2018: 68%

    III. “If Trump does lose this year, he won’t be able to blame it on pro-lifers like he did in 2022.”

    It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20! It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!

    • “For Democrats, abortion was the clear top issue (35%), followed by the Jan. 6 committee hearings (22%), health care (16%) and inflation (13%).”

    • “For Republicans, inflation was by far the top issue (40%), followed by immigration (22%), and abortion (10%). Nothing else received double digits.”

    • “For independents, inflation was also tops (37%), but abortion was second (22%) and health care after that (12%).”

    https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121535686/poll-abortion-inflation-midterm-elections

  39. I tried posting this but it got swallowed up:

    I tried watching “Poor Things” last night. I couldn’t take it, especially after Mark Ruffalo, the rake/roue/debauche showed up and things got kinky. Most of the reviews said the movie was like no other. That’s basically true and the visual look was unique, but as Rex Reed (who hated the movie) pointed out, not everything that you haven’t ever seen in a movie is really worth watching.

    The other thing the critics said is that it was a feminist film. Alasdair Gray, who wrote the novel was certainly far left, but I doubt he was much of a feminist. He seems to have been more influenced by the Marquis de Sade than by Simone de Beauvoir. The minority opinion, largely ignored, is that the novel and film are very misogynistic works. Indeed, the film is more misogynistic than the novel.

  41. huxley said:

    There is a thin layer of clouds and a ring around the sun.

    That makes it sound like something in need of a good scrub with Comet (or a comet?).

    Here, we got 96% coverage. I found myself crashing a little tiny viewing party of sorts consisting of a couple of friendly retired or near-retired couples at a certain set of nice benches by a nature trail. Got there just in time for the peak! And though there were clouds, we managed to get a window of visibility above from just before peak to right after peak.

  43. Why on earth would Israel brief the US State Department? A less reliable entity would be hard to imagine.

  44. Hood Canal, brilliant blue hole in the sky surrounded by white billows as is normal for here. No eclipse effect at all as far as I can tell.

    Re: abortion

    Congress can determine when the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness begins under federal law in my opinion. In my view a state can be more restrictive but not less. Like minimum wage.

  45. that guy – Give me a break. I’m sure you’re very proud of Trump endorsees Mitt Romney (2018), Mitch McConnell (2020), Lindsey Graham (2020), and Marco Rubio (2022).

    In other words, Trump’s general election win % as an endorser is practically meaningless.

    If you want a meaningful measure, take away the stat padding and look to the candidates who leveraged a Trump endorsement to win a contested GOP primary. There you have . . . Mastriano, Oz, Blake Masters, Kari Lake, Don Bolduc, JD Vance, etc. You might also consider endorsements in swing states, which gives you pretty much the same motley crew.

    (FWIW, I hate putting Vance in with that group. There are a lot of things I like about Vance.)

  46. Bauxite, are you voting for Trump?

    At this point, that’s all that matters.

    Please vote for Trump. He will need every vote he can get. Except in my state where the odds of Trump winning the state are exactly 0%, unless there is a miracle!

    And in case you point out he said he didn’t need Haley voters– don’t let Trump’s sometimes convoluted rhetoric get in the way of Trump’s policies.

  47. Brian E – No. I voted for him in 2020, but I won’t again because of his behavior after the 2020 election. I’ve been clear about that since well before the primaries started.

  48. At this point then, you’re just trying to get Biden elected.

    If you live in a deep blue state, I guess it doesn’t matter, but otherwise four more years of the Biden border policy trump’s anything Trump said.

  49. MAGA should’ve put someone besides Trump forward, so if Biden gets elected, then the MAGA mob can only blame themselves…

  50. Karmi,
    I voted for McCain and Romney. How did that turn out?

    I wish Trump weren’t an obnoxious New Yorker. But his policies were better than we could have hoped with those two. I thought Romney might understand the needs of Main Street/Manufacturing– but I was wrong.

    Trump will have no problem putting together a first-rate cabinet. These folks are professionals and the needs of the country will trump whatever division the media tries to generate.

    I would suggest you watch the video with the former FED official at 2:50 pm.

  52. there’s nothing wrong with Trump’s policies, did the rot start with Clinton, did W not measurably deter it, did Obama accelerate it, I say yes,

    when kruschev (who was a relatively mild commissar,) said ‘we will bury you’ this is what he meant, did he think he could destroy the US by force of arms, if needs must, but soviet measures, active and passive don’t work that way

    certainly educational policies that have enfeebled this country had soviet origins, common core was perhaps the 3rd Generation of same, to train a generation of then youth, to hate their own country with almost a lust, to despise it’s tradition,

    now is Russia, really the main adversary, who killed a million americans in 2020-21, not Russia, but Xi’s China, perhaps the direct effort of Marshal Chi Haotian,

  53. Continued, does Putin enjoy the death throws of our mouldering republic, our youth decimated by fentanyl, the epidemic of murder and rape and robbery, that this withered shell has enabled, oh most certainly,

  54. I thought the Meuller report proved he wasn’t a Russian puppet? Wasn’t that why 40 FBI agents and 20 lawyers spend three years and $30 million on?

  55. Brian E. – I’m not voting for him either. Great voter outreach, by the way.

  56. we pretend to ignore why our country is dying, it’s not about Orange Man, its about the nearly preternal lust of the Democrats to destroy this country, I have suggested some motivations, but ultimately it is the will of the actor, to do so,
    so a slumlord Hamas high priest like Warnock was put up, to the tune of 400 million dollars, by looting svb and ftx among other enterprises, he was the one arguing for the profanation of the Lord’s most sacred day, and the return of the Old Gods, you see the length they will go, of course there is an actual trial of Dominion machines going on, not the Kangaroo tribunal that NewsCorp copped out about

    the Legion of Doom that comprises China Russia, Qatar and Iran, with some minor part by North Korea, that was a party to at least one of these alliances are slavering at their good fortune

    when the latter, challenged us, Trump shot back, almost literally what the consequences would be to a direct attack, this was the basis of a reasonably solid understanding,
    as much as I disagreed with the negotiations,

  57. miguel+cervantes – The country is dying because in the face of everything you note, the best that the opposition can muster is an incompetent blowhard who tried to stay in office after losing an election.

  58. bauxite, you sound like a good Republican friend of mine who thinks Trump is an insurrectionist and should be barred from running for President.

    As he’s tried convincing me of that fact, I’ve noticed that most of his proof comes from the New York Times, Seattle PI, and other liberal media.

    Was the election stolen?
    Yes, but I can’t prove it, because the audits that would determine that have never been allowed. Arizona courts in both the 2020 and 2022 elections refused to allow a signature verification audit between the signatures on record and the signatures on the ballot envelopes. Allowing these to be audited could put to rest claims that the ballots weren’t from the legal voters on file. It doesn’t endanger the privacy of the voters but that’s been the legal excuse the courts have accepted.
    In the case of Pennsylvania, the Penn Supreme Court and then the State Clerk ruled that if there was any mark in the signature box on the ballot envelope, the ballot was to be counted. This violated state law and made it impossible to verify the ballot was from the eligible voter.

    Those are just a couple of the problems with the security and integrity of the 2020 election.

    But he didn’t “try to stay in office after losing the election.” The protests on Jan.6/ turned riots worked against senators who were ready to challenge the electors from the contested states returning them to the states to investigate.

    Trump certainly didn’t want the protests to turn into riots.

    Pence had already said he wouldn’t reject the electors, which would have required Congress to vote to reject them, which probably wouldn’t have happened.

    But none of this was illegal, as outlined in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

    Explaining how Congress settles electoral college disputes
    https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/explaining-how-congress-settles-electoral-college-disputes

  59. Romney was a financial guy who had very little interest in the country’s industry. That’s a big reason why he didn’t win. It was easy for Democrats to point to him as someone who had taken away somebody’s job or health care. Obama cost a lot more people their health care, but Democrat voters forgot that or didn’t care.

  60. Bauxite was present briefly when he commended President Trump on his stated position regarding abortion, however before the end of that coment CC™ had gained control Bauxite (imagine Gollum and his Precious) and the pursuit of The Great Orange Whale was back on in the rest of the comment.

    Now CC™ is fully reingaged, willing to lament another 4 years of the Brandon junta because The Great Orange Whale is the worst of evils imaginable. And present evils are acceptable.

  61. like norman osborn and the green goblin, whose ego is preeminent, well a little sanity is warranted,

  62. A ton of songs have mondegreens. Perhaps it is just sloppy tech people.

    neo:

    Not at all what I said or meant.

    If the singer sings it wrong and the people hear accurately what the singer sang, it is not a mondegreen.

    I’ll throw in the third possibility the Manfred Mann changed Springsteen’s lyrics intentionally for fun or whatever, then caught flack and claimed it was just sloppy singing. MM did change the first part of the line:

    MM: Revved up like a douche/deuce.
    BS: Cut loose like a deuce.

  63. Anyway. Not to beat the poor horse any further.

    I do find this stuff interesting in terms of auditory language processing, which I’m up against daily with French. It is amazingly, fascinatingly complex.

    Then there’s the artistic side. I’m reminded of an anecdote from Françoise Gilot’s book on her life with Picasso. Picasso had found what appeared to be a squirrel in one of Braque’s paintings. Braque struggled for days trying to get rid of it.

    The point being, if an artist by mistakenly creates something easily misconstrued, it’s on the artist to fix it.

  64. Brian E – I believe that the 2020 election was stolen too, not with fraudulent votes but with Zuckerbucks turning local election agencies into Democrat GOTV machines and the CIA and FBI supressing evidence of the petty corruption of the Democratic nominee by falsely claiming that it was Russian propaganda, while every news source outside of the NY Post played along.

    It’s not outside the realm of possibility that there were fraudulent votes, and there almost certainly were some, but there’s no evidence that fraudulent votes swung the election. Nor was there any evidence of it in January of 2020. In fact, every opportunity that the Trump team had to present evidence in court in 2020, they either withdrew their cases or produced incorrect or misleading evidence. They had nothing. (There is still no evidence of that, frankly, just the abiding belief of Trump’s supporters that one more audit is sure to produce the evidence that all of the other audits failed to deliver.)

    So, based on nothing but the belief that he was the rightful winner of the election, Trump tried to strongarm Pence into rejecting electoral votes and had his congressional allies try to delay certification for more investigation, investigation that had been already been going on for more than six weeks and had turned up nothing, this with only two weeks until the inauguration.

    There was absolutely no chance that an additional two weeks of investigation was going to turn up evidence that Trump was the rightful winner of the election. None. Zero.

    So the precedent then is that when a candidate believes that his or her reelection defeat is illegitimate, the candidate gets to delay certification of the election and delay the transition of power while objectively futile investigations are conducted? I don’t understand how any Republican who lived through the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections could fail to understand how profoundly dangerous that is. What if Al Gore had decided to try to reject Florida’s electoral votes in 2000? What if Biden had tried to do the same in 2016 on the grounds that Trump was a “Russian agent?” (No, I do not believe Trump is or was a Russian agent.) And yet Republicans, including you, are still defending Trump’s behavior.

    And no, my opinion has precisely nothing to do with the NYTimes or any other leftist media.

  65. huxley:

    Mondegreens are indeed very common in song lyrics. I don’t think most rock singers are that much into enunciation. Many times I’ve also heard cover versions that change lyrics slightly and deliberately for what seems like no good reason.

    However, as with Braque and the squirrel, Manfred Mann and the band actually did try to fix the mondegreen-maker. This is from the Wiki entry for the song:

    It sounded like ‘douche’ instead of ‘deuce’, ‘cos of the technical process – a faulty azimuth due to tape-head angles, and it meant we couldn’t remix it.

    Warners in America said, ‘You’ve got to change ‘douche’, ‘cos the Southern Bible belt radio stations think it’s about a vaginal douche, and they have problems with body parts down there.’ We tried to change it to ‘deuce’ but then the rest of the track sounded horrible, so we had to leave it. We just said, ‘If it’s not a hit, it’s not.’

    But in the end, it was No.1 in America, and so many people came up to us after and said, ‘You know why it made No. 1?… Everyone was talking about whether it was deuce or douche.’ Apparently Springsteen thought we’d done it deliberately, which we hadn’t, so if I ever saw him I’d avoid him and cringe away like a frightened little boy.

    —Manfred Mann, Record Collector interview (August 2006).

  66. bauxite, a couple of points. We can’t prove misfeasance or illegal voting because he haven’t been able to get access to the data.

    I talked about this before, but after the 2020 election, the state of Washington conducted an audit looking for bias at the county level rejecting voters based on name, sex, ethnicity.
    They didn’t find that, but they did find that ballots counted where ballot signatures didn’t match the signature on record. They did an audit of approx. 7500 ballots, representing a sample of the ballots cast. The first ran the signatures through software and identified 574 ballots where the signatures didn’t match. They then went through three rounds where groups tried to determine whether the signatures matched. They end up identifying somewhere between 2.1% to 7% (the machine rejections) of ballots should not have been counted.
    In the case of Arizona they probably would have identified enough ballots to question the outcome. There is a real problem with mail-in ballots. In this case, there is no way to determine which candidate the voter voted for, so the only recourse would be to order a new election.
    In reality, if a election worker was trying to affect the outcome, they would allow ballots from precincts that skewed heavily to their favored candidate to approve ballots where the signatures didn’t match.

    Since Arizona courts refused to allow that sort of audit/verification we have no way of knowing.

    An audit of the signatures and a recount aren’t the same thing. What states did is recount the ballots. Once in illegal ballot is accepted though, you could recount as much as you want and the outcome would be the same.

    Based on the type of ballots used in Florida at the time, Gore was trying to overturn the election using the hanging chad (deciding what the voter meant with dimpled ballots, etc) only doing recounts in precincts that favored Democrats.
    Had the Supreme Court not stopped the recounts, Gore might have “found” enough votes to win the national election.

    Because there was no remedy in the courts, the only way to get the issues was back to the states and let the legislatures investigate their elections and decide which slate of electors represented their states votes.

    Both were attempts to affect the outcome. Gore just used a different method.

    In the 2020 election, I don’t think it would have changed the outcome because the ECA of 1877 ultimately relied on the governor of the state to return the electors and while the Republicans controlled the legislature, the governors were Democrats.

    I think you’re misunderstanding what the ECA of 1877’s rules were and what Trump and Republicans that believed the elections were illegal. At best Congress could have forced the issue back to the states, as I understand the Act.

  67. Bauxite, a couple more things

    In the case of Georgia, Trump’s campaign filed a suit and the courts just sat on it until after the election had to be certified and then dismissed the case.

    Which points out another problem– slow counting. I think this has become a strategy, because there is a very short period of time between the election and when the election has to be certified. If the county/state takes two weeks to count the votes, that makes it even harder to file a case.

    In the 2022 election Arizona’s Maricopa County stopped counting votes for a few days to do an audit of the ballots they had already processed, which delayed the final tally. WHAT?

  68. Anatomy of a Russian Puppet

    Russo-Ukrainian War

    The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which began in February 2014.

    Donald Trump

    Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

    Trump has ‘secret plan’ to end the Ukraine-Russia war

    Former President Donald Trump has reportedly revealed he has a plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in just one day if he is re-elected in November by convincing Kyiv to give up land.

    Sources told The Washington Post that Trump’s proposal includes urging Ukraine to give up Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia in order to end the war.

    ‘If I were president, the Russia-Ukraine war would never have happened… never in a million years,’ Trump said in a video obtained by DailyMail.com in February 2023.

    • Russia-Ukraine war started in February 2014.

    • Trump was President from 2017 to 2021.

    Why didn’t Trump stop the Russia-Ukraine war—‘in just one day’—whilst he was President?

    ‘But even now, if I were president, I’d be able to negotiate an end to this horrible and rapidly escalating war within 24 hours.’

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also made clear he will not surrender any territory .. ‘That’s insane, to be honest,’ Zelensky said through an English interpreter.

    ‘That’s part of Ukrainian society. We are talking about human beings. They are being tortured, they are being raped and they are being killed,’ he said. ‘That’s not a matter of territory. That’s a matter of life, of families, of children, of their histories.’

    ‘I don’t know whose idea it is, but I have a question to these people, if they are ready to give up their children to terrorists. I think no,’ Zelensky said.

    Trump was impeached in 2020 for attempting to coerce Zelensky into investigating Biden…

    Who would come up with such an “ideal”? Probably a Russian Puppet…

  69. Are you sure you’re not a Democrat?

    WASHINGTON ? U.S. President Donald Trump will seek at least another $250 million in security aid for Ukraine in his 2020 budget request to Congress, including lethal Javelin anti-tank weapons, according to a senior Pentagon official.

    The Trump administration began selling Javelins to Ukraine in 2017-18.

    I think it’s fair to say Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Trump still been president.

    Trump to seek $250M in new lethal aid to Ukraine
    https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/04/trump-to-seek-250m-in-new-lethal-aid-to-ukraine/

  70. Karmi:

    Save your effort. People here are quite familiar with that line, and no one is buying it.

  71. IIRC “the Russian Puppet” charge was the Democrat mantra starting in 2016 and was heavily pushed by the Hildabeast. You do remember that “Russian collusion” playbook? You do recall Trump sending weapons to Ukraine and utterly decimating the Wagner Group forces in Syria? And of couse you must be forgetting Trump’s opposition to the Nordstream pipeline.

    Trump must have been an evil twin puppet in Vlad’s cold, cold eyes.

    Do try something a bit more original, Karmi.

  72. Neo:

    People here are quite familiar with that line, and no one is buying it.

    What line? This one:

    ‘But even now, if I were president, I’d be able to negotiate an end to this horrible and rapidly escalating war within 24 hours.’

    My humble question remains – Why didn’t Trump stop the Russia-Ukraine war—‘in just one day’—whilst he was President?

  73. Brian E:

    Thanks for fighting the good fight.
    When the roll is called up yonder, you’ll be there.

  74. Karmi:

    Are you at all aware of who was president when that war began in February 2022? Biden. Or when the earlier portion began in 2014? Obama. While Trump was president there were a few skirmishes but it was otherwise static. But almost as soon as Biden became president – March and April of 2021 – the Russians began a troop buildup along the Ukraine border, preparing for the big invasion which began the present war.

  75. Karmi. You are certainly a peach of the fanciful. The one thing we might agree on is that Trump has highest opinion of himself as a negotiator — but then neither you nor I wrote a best-selling book on that subject.

    In 2019, Ted Galen Carpenter took on the subject of “Trump is a Russian Puppet,” calling it “The Myth That Won’t Die” for the National Interest.

    Before sharing his many counter-examples to this claim, he spends a few paragraphs setting up the dispute.

    “Donald Trump’s political adversaries, along with an assortment of Russia haters in the foreign policy community and the news media, keep pushing the narrative that Trump is Vladimir Putin’s puppet. That allegation shows few signs of dissipating even though no credible evidence supporting it has emerged. Unfortunately, the situation is unlikely to change even though Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded that the Russian government’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election did not entail collusion with the Trump campaign.

    “Yet, shrill allegations of treason have been commonplace, reaching a crescendo following last year’s Trump??Putin summit in Helsinki, when the president made some highly favorable comments about his Russian counterpart. The innuendos and outright accusations persist. And despite the bland outcome of the Mueller investigation, congressional Democrats, most notably House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), insist that they will continue to investigate the “Russia collusion” angle.

    “Russophobes seem to believe that if they repeat an absurdity often enough, it somehow becomes true. The myth that Trump has been Putin’s puppet falls into that category. Trump did commit the apparently unpardonable sin during the 2016 campaign of advocating better relations with Moscow, and he was guilty of using effusive diplomatic language at Helsinki. But if one examines his administration’s actual policies toward Russia, the notion that he is “doing Putin’s bidding” or even pursuing an appeasement policy evaporates.

    “Critics who contend otherwise need to cite specific Trump administration policies that Putin welcomes. It would be a very difficult task.”

    Trump, against Obama, sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. And in January, 2016, Trump gave a policy talk in the North Dakota Oil Patch saying he would unleash American oil and gas fracking potential. And did.

    Meanwhile, 9% of Russian GDP comes from oil sales. And Putin hates fracking. And the FBI tells my sources in the Colorado oil and gas industry that Russian money finances anti-fracking movement and their protests in America.

    Well, who cares about contradictory facts when innuendo and gut intuitions fill the bill?

    Carpenter’s evidence to the contrary begin here.
    https://www.cato.org/commentary/myth-wont-die-donald-trump-russias-puppet

  76. How to destroy a country: There are many ways, of course, but it would seem that sufficiently damaging the social fabric is the way to go. (“Biden” would no doubt enthusiastically agree!)

    The talented people of Scotland demonstrate….
    “”We Cannot Cope”: Police Scotland Deluged With Politicized Hate-Crime Reports”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-cannot-cope-police-scotland-deluged-politicized-hate-crime-reports
    – – – – – – – –
    Regarding Trump-Russian collusion, I can only conclude that since this charge was created, marketed and spread thickly far and wide by Democrats and their friends that it is in fact the Democrats who have colluded with Putin.
    (It’s called—or used to be called—“common sense”.)

  77. Brian E – A few additional thoughts:

    – I actually agree with most of your points. Mail-in voting is a disaster. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, I am skeptical that signature audits would have done much. Signature matching is a ridiculously subjective way to authenticate ballots. It would have been “hanging chads” all over again, except this time the disputed votes were already counted. So you would have had Trump’s team challenge ballot-by-ballot arguing that already-counted votes should be removed from the tally? Even if they did manage to disqualify the 40k or so ballots that they would have needed to change the outcome in AZ, GA, and one other state to get to 270, if you think anyone other than die-hard GOP and Trump partisans would have accepted that outcome change, you’re dreaming.

    – You’re absolutely correct that they significantly relaxed the standards for dq’ing mail-in ballots in 2020. I recall that, in most swing states, the rate of dq’d mail-in ballots in 2020 was an order of magnitude lower than in previous elections. I also recall that, even given that, the raw numbers weren’t enough to change the outcome. For example, I think the mail-in ballot dq rate in PA had historically been about 10%. In 2020, it was about 1%. But even if you assume that the rate should have been 1% and that every single one of the 9% of mail-in ballots mistakenly (or maliciously) accepted was cast for Biden, it still wouldn’t have changed the outcome in PA. I recall doing the same calculation for AZ, GA, and WI, but if you can show me otherwise, please do.

    – I’m not even sure how a signature audit could have been conducted. In PA, for example, the portion of the ballot bearing the signature is separate from the portion that is counted. The two portions of the ballot are separated during counting. After that, there is no way to tie a signature to a particular ballot. I believe other states are the same way. (It’s kind of necessary to do this in order to protect the secret ballot – yet another problem with mail-in voting.) So then you run into the raw numbers problem again. The very best that a signature audit could do is show that the number of erroneously (maliciously) accepted ballots was greater than Biden’s margin of victory, and even then, the back-of-the-napkin calculation based on acceptance rates suggests it is unlikely that you could prove even that. And still remember that you are going to be fighting ballot-by-ballot, “hanging chad” style. (Do you think you are going to find a set of judges who are willing to potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters because two signatures don’t look the close enough? Dream on. Yet another knock against mail-in voting.)

    – I believe your recollection of several of the litigations is accurate. There were several others, however, where Trump promised evidence and failed to deliver. I recall that in WI, for example, Trump’s team introduced evidence of supposedly fraudulent votes that was actually based on voter rolls from Michigan. Democrats’ moves to disbar local attorneys working for the local RNC are based on this sort of thing. Filing a complaint implies that the attorney has a good faith belief in the facts being plead. Trump’s team threw a number of these local attorneys to the wolves by promising evidence that they didn’t actually have and were not able to produce. In their disbarment hearings, these attorneys are having to adopt the “my client lied to me” defense. (The client who lied to them would be Trump, by the way.) Yes, the lawfare against GOP attorneys is hugely destructive, but Trump’s team hung them out to dry.

    – Trump partisans hate to hear this, but an erratic, trolling bully repulses a lot of voters. It is not, by any means certain that Trump actually did win in 2020. It is completely plausible that large numbers of people who don’t love Democrats voted for Biden in 2020 just to make Trump go away.

    – Bottom line – The game was over after election day in 2020. There was and is no plausible way that Trump was going to reverse the result of the election after that. Trump couldn’t accept this and responded by, basically, trying to take a sledgehammer to the structure of the republic and the peaceful transfer of power.

    As bad as our degraded Constitutional arrangement is now, what comes after it is a lock to be much, much worse for people on the right. Giving power to a man who is willing to tear it all down when things don’t go his way is profoundly foolish for the right. And that is why I cannot and will not vote for that man ever again.

  78. “The game was over after election day in 2020. There was and is no plausible way that Trump was going to reverse the result of the election after that. Trump couldn’t accept this and responded by, basically, trying to take a sledgehammer to the structure of the republic and the peaceful transfer of power.” -Bauxite

    We shouldn’t either. But you’re wrong to blame Trump for that. He followed the rules. He brought suit after suit, based on information he had on the ground. The courts, in many cases, refused to hear the evidence because admitting the election had been conducted with misfeasance by those in charge, by changing the rules of the election by judicial fiat, or outright illegal vote getting would have created a reaction that would have made the summer riots seem to have been a bonfire rather than a forest fire.

    Don’t blame Trump for that.

    I also don’t think you can accuse Trump of “tearing it all down.” Did Trump fabricate a “dossier” accusing his opponent of being a Russian agent? Did Trump allow the DOJ to go after that candidate with all the resources of the federal government? Did Trump get 50 former high ranking government officials to lie about the laptop of the son of the Democrat candidate? The list could go on. The tearing it all down was going on for some time.

    The use of the Electoral Count Act of 1877 was a legal attempt, using a never before used theory to allow the contested states a chance to fix the illegal/malfeasance in their elections. I agree that once Pence made it clear he wasn’t going to reject the electors, the electors weren’t going to be rejected even though there were Senators ready to challenge them. There were many, not a majority, but many who believed the election had been stolen based on illegal ballots and malfeasance by election officials.

    But how is that worse than the lawfare being used against Trump right now– where laws are being used in ways never conceived when the laws were passed. Changing the statute of limitations just for Trump, convicting Trump before a trial for a crime that had no victim, requiring a half a billion dollar bond just to appeal the conviction. Using the RICO law to charge a political opponent of racketeering.
    It’s all being torn down as I write this– and yet you blame Trump.

    Now to the crux. January 6. I think most conservatives assumed there were bad actors in the mix on J6. But we were thinking of BLM and Antifa agitators. I never assumed that DOJ would be working overtime to provoke/encourage the protestors to become rioters.

    The level of agitation going around on the internet the weeks prior to J6 was astounding. I had a renter that bought everything hook, line and he sank into the morass of tripe. And it was all earnest and seemingly convincing. How much of that was conducted by our government?

    The most you can blame Trump for the debacle was looking for the optics of average Americans protesting in front of the Capitol building while Congress was installing a president that hadn’t won. Yes, he wanted Congress and the left to know we knew and didn’t like it.

    By the way, at this point you’re not voting for the man, you’re voting for one last attempt to right the ship. It’s badly listing to the left. Another 10 million illegal immigrant will likely finish the transformation Obama started 16 years ago.

  79. @Neo

    Are you at all aware of who was president when that war began in February 2022? Biden. Or when the earlier portion began in 2014? Obama. While Trump was president there were a few skirmishes but it was otherwise static. But almost as soon as Biden became president – March and April of 2021 – the Russians began a troop buildup along the Ukraine border, preparing for the big invasion which began the present war.

    Well said, though I’d also note another thing. It wasn’t quite so static during Trump’s presidency…. because the Kremlin and its puppet troops steadily lost ground and material while being driven back. I do think Trump’s Presidency marked a turning point in the war for the best, and while not all of that can be credited to Trump he and the GOP members in Congress did help. By 2018 ish the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya” Project had basically collapsed and by the end of Trump’s term the Kremlin were holding onto a relative sliver of the Donbas that was directly reinforceable from Russia proper.

    This doesn’t gel well with the Left’s posturing, especially not Biden’s since he would REALLY REALLY want us to believe he had a different role than what he and Obama actually had in the Ukraine war, but the maps speak for themselves.

  80. there have always been alternate delegate selections, the difference here, unlike in 1961, the GOP slate was one who actually abided by election law, and marc elias and shadow governor abrams did not, now ducey and kemp didn’t care about the law, and now we find ourselves in this place, in 2022 with mcdaniels help, they stole all off arizona, including the help of the Dem atty general candidate, who has some sketchy details, in his past,

    now cause and effect, is sometimes a little complicated, but we can infer in 2014 and 2022, the Khozayen, regarded Obama and Biden with so little respect the events in Smolensk, in 2009, and the meager reaction showed he had little to fear, the subsequent reaction to the Malaysian Airliner shootdown, told him so,

    all the kings men and the kings horses and their sniveling scribes like simon schuster of Time Magazine all assured it was good and proper, even though Hillary had funded Skulkovo village, among other projects of course they employed outfits like Crowdstrike, who were known to hide critical evidence likethe Chinese servers involved in the Sony Hack, to create this illusion,

    Elias has been a party to fraud at Perkins and Coie, since 2016 with the Danchenko dossier, and Christopher Steele who was tied to the same Oligarchs like Deripaska

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