Exercises: can anyone explain this phenomenon?

The New Neo Posted on by

For many years—decades, actually, ever since I hurt my back and arms about 25 years ago—I’ve done a series of exercises before I go to sleep.

Perhaps “exercises” is too strong a word, because they’re not strenuous. They’re more like yoga—mild stretches of various kinds, plus some crunches. Some of them involve a series of head positions I perform lying down, designed to stretch the neck but also to just relax the head and neck.

I’ve noticed two things I find odd about this practice of mine. On the occasions when I skip the exercises, I’m more inclined to wake up in the morning with—of all things—a slightly upset GI system (you can fill in the details yourself). One might think this has something to do with the absence of the crunches, since those involve that area of the body. But that brings us to the second thing I’ve noticed, which is that invariably when I come to the head/neck position part of the exercises, I feel my entire GI tract relaxing, and any discomfort I might have felt (from eating too much at dinner, for example, or eating foods that ordinarily cause me problems in that arena) is almost immediately relieved or eased.

It’s not my imagination, either. Nor is it some sort of expectation, because it’s counter-intuitive, and I was very surprised when I first noticed it happening. But it’s been very consistent. The phenomenon has led me to some new-agey conclusions about holistic approaches to health. And it makes a certain amount of sense, because nothing in the body exists in isolation.

When I hurt my back and my arms (see this), I was a relatively young woman and had been used to being very active. Not only was I in wretched pain for many many years, but the pain naturally changed the way I walked, sat, and stood, and even the way I slept (maybe especially the way I slept; some day I’ll write about that). For at least a decade I spent an enormous amount of money, time, and effort chasing around the country after either a cure or at least an improvement, and 95% of what I did was futile or even made things worse. I used to joke that I was single-handedly (although both arms were affected) supporting both medicine and alternative medicine—to the tune of many many thousands of dollars, because I’d tried so many things; well over a hundred.

One of those things was the Feldenkrais approach. I went to some practitioner for about eight or so sessions, and it didn’t really seem to do anything for me except that I liked the head/neck exercises, which I incorporated into my routine. Those are the ones I do to this day.

It occurred to me just now that there must be some demonstrations of these exercises on YouTube, but I couldn’t find them, even though there are a lot of Feldenkrais videos there. The exercises I do are so simple—just a way to turn the head slowly from side to side—that I suppose perhaps the people who make the videos don’t even feel the need to show them. But for me, they’ve been great.

One unique part of the exercises I do is that you are supposed to use your eyes in a certain way when you perform them. That was novel when I first heard it, and I thought it might be sort of stupid and worthless, but I’ve come to think that’s one of the most important aspects of these movements. In the first set of exercises, your eyes work against the head motion: that is, you look in the opposite direction of the way your head is turning. In the second set, you look in the direction your head is moving—in fact, the eye movement leads the head movement rather than following it. It sounds both simple and meaningless, but I’ve become convinced that it enables you to have more freedom in your eyes and head and neck rather than to use your eyes and head and neck in a more rigid way, everything marching in lockstep together.

What this has to do with digestion I can’t quite imagine. But it really seems to affect it and improve it.

[NOTE: Here’s an article about Feldenkrais’ use of eye movements in his exercises:

As [Feldenkrais] explained it, “The head habitually moves with the eyes”¦because the eyes and the ears necessitate the movement of the head in order to direct themselves to the source of information… The movement of the head will come by itself if you stop holding the breath”“”“that means if you do nothing, just let yourself be as you are. And with the movement of the eyes, the neck muscles will change, involving the rest of yourself.” When Feldenkrais had us move our eyes in different configurations in relation to the head, we became better able to move everything else.

What is so powerful about the Awareness Through Movement lessons he developed around eye movements is that we are led to consciously connect them with movements in all other parts of ourselves. This makes possible much greater improvement in our difficulties”“”“improvement that lasts and lasts.

Here is a way we might understand how the Feldenkrais® work with the eyes can be so powerfully helpful throughout our whole self. Think of it as learning a conscious, intentional shift in how we focus our attention. Ordinarily, in connection with our eyes, our attention is focused on what we are seeing”“”“ on something external to ourselves. In Awareness Through Movement lessons we may be asked to look at a point on the ceiling, or look slowly around in a circle, all the time noticing what we have to do with our neck or legs in order to do that smoothly. This is a focus of attention that none of us would normally ever think of doing spontaneously. Our human nature is such that we need someone to guide and lead us into such awareness. With this kind of instruction we have great potential to change and integrate how we organize ourselves for whatever we choose to do.

This may sound like gobbledygook to you. It sort of sounds like gobbledygook to me, too. But experience has told me there is definitely something to it.

Hey, shouldn’t I plug something on Amazon now, so I at least get something out of this deal? I’ve not read any of these books on Feldenkrais method, and maybe I should. Take a look; this one seems to be most popular; it’s by Feldenkrais himself.]

Cruz vs. Donald

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting interview with Ted Cruz, worth listening to. But right now I’m particularly interested in the part between minutes 11:17-12:00, when Cruz talks about calling Trump “Donald.”

I have a very good friend who pointed out this phenomenon to me many months ago, around the time of the first and second debates—that Cruz never refers to Trump as Trump (much less “Mr. Trump”) but always by his first name “Donald.”

The technique does two things, although it does them fairly subtly. The first is that, superficially at least, it sounds casual and friendly. The second is that it makes Trump seem slightly lacking in dignity (although in this day and age it’s not all that unusual to use first names, and is not considered such an affront) and sounds a little silly. I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear “Donald,” but what comes to mine is “Duck.”

I don’t know whether Trump ever uses “Cruz” or even “Mr. Cruz” to refer to Ted Cruz, but I doubt it happens often if it happens at all. In print, when he refers to “Ted,” it’s almost always “Lyin’ Ted.” But then, that’s Trump, right? Always making with the schoolyard stuff, insulting and accusative, and often accusing others of what he is guilty of himself. He wants his followers and even the undecideds to associate the two words: lying and Ted.

In the clip, note also what Cruz does at 11:17 to Chris Christie:

Paul Ryan says he isn’t running

The New Neo Posted on by

Paul Ryan just made an announcement:

“I do not want, nor will I accept the nomination for our party,” Ryan said in an announcement at the Republican National Committee. “Count me out.”

…”So let me speak directly to the delegates on this,” Ryan said. “If no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only choose a person who has actually taken part in the primary.”

The Trump people have been putting out the idea that Cruz is a mere stalking horse for the GOP, which will double-cross him and put in someone like Ryan or Romney instead. This is supposed to make you vote for Trump because he’s the only real anti-establishment guy, and think that Cruz hasn’t got a chance despite the fact that he’s been piling up votes (and delegates) lately at a fast clip. Are Cruz’s delegates going to defect that easily and bow to the will of the establishment? It doesn’t seem likely, although Trump and his supporters would like you to think it is.

Ace has this to say on that:

I have to say that the “Vote for Trump or else the Establishment wins” scare tactic cuts less ice with me than it used to. That’s because, as bad as the Dreaded Establishment is, I have to compare them to the other threats to democracy and American conservatism that are also on the horizon, and a larger threat is a man I call Donald F. Trump.

Burning it all down looked better to me when I imagined the arsonist in question would be smart, well-put-together, and likely to have success in an election and in governance.

Now that I see Trump’s pathetically disorganized and inept campaign — and his utter inability to make any headway with people who aren’t already in his coalition — I see him as a sure disaster in an election, and an even surer disaster as a president, if by some dark miracle he should win. Somehow.

So the “boo-scare vote for Trump or the Establishment monster’s gonna gitcha” thing doesn’t really scare me.

It’s interesting that Ace has come to this outlook on things. Ace is one of my favorite bloggers, because he’s smart and funny in equal measure (not a common balance), as well as usually doing his homework. A while back he got on the “burn it down” wagon with a vengeance, and initially was a mild Trump-supporter (or, as he said, he was “Trump curious”). But over time Trump’s words and deeds seem to have alienated Ace to the point where—well, that quote said quite clearly what point he’s reached.

Are polls purposely skewed or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday we had a discussion on this thread about whether polls are gamed in order to help a certain candidate or party. It’s a question that’s interesting enough to devote a whole other post to it.

Then answer is: it depends on the poll and the circumstances, but for the most part, most mainstream, recognized pollsters have an investment in getting things right. If a pollster fails to predict an election, and is off (or way off) too often, that pollster’s reputation suffers. Reputation for accuracy is important to a pollster, and argues for trying to be as correct as possible in predicting outcomes.

However, some pollsters are known to be more propaganda-driven than others. That is based on their track records, and who hires them and for what. But a great many of the more well-known pollsters’ fame and reputation rests on their predictive ability, and to be accurate you cannot also be repeatedly and consistently skewing the data.

Poll companies are money-making entities, for the most part. It costs money to run polls, and the more respondents included on a poll, the more expensive the poll is. Therefore, although sampling techniques are very important and can make up for other deficiencies, in general the higher the “n” the smaller the margin of error. These days, the response rate is so low (which is a built-in problem in many respects) that for every respondent a poll reaches, the pollster has to have contacted nine more. This takes time, and time is money. In New York state (the subject of yesterday’s post), delegate are determined on a district-by-district basis, and to do an accurate poll would require matching the number of respondents to the GOP registration for each district. Getting it right—and getting enough GOP subjects to be accurate in each district in a state where GOP membership is very spotty—would probably cost a lot more than pollsters are willing to spend for a state poll in a primary.

Trump the fabulous wheeler-dealer, hirer of the best and smartest people who know how to work the system, whines “It’s unfair!” when he fails to successfully wheel and deal and work the system

The New Neo Posted on by

Ace points out the contradiction of it all. Read the whole thing, plus the links to pieces such as this one:

If anything, in fact, the delegate-wrangling process should be a godsend for Trump. It moves the race out of the ballot box, where he’s vulnerable to a surge of #NeverTrump votes as the primaries near their conclusion, to the backroom, where he can work his fatcat dealmaking magic. In practice, Cruz is beating the pants off of him, something that should never happen per the mystique that surrounds Trump of being a master negotiator. Noah Rothman claimed this morning that the fact that two of Trump’s kids failed to register in New York as Republicans in time to vote in this year’s primary is a microcosm of Trump’s disorganization generally, which is fair enough. But I’d add to that that him getting consistently beaten by Cruz at the delegate level is a microcosm of how Trump’s image as wheeler-dealer extraordinaire is oversold. An ingenious salesman should not be at this sort of chronic disadvantage against a guy who’s not very personally likable, whose methods are loathed by the establishmentarians who “rigged” the system, and who’s operating at a financial handicap compared to Trump. But he is. How come?

The question is rhetorical, and the answer is obvious: Trump is not the ingenious guy he presents himself as being, nor does he hire the best people. Or maybe he is all that in the field of real estate development, but that’s because he actually has skills there that don’t transfer easily to a lot of other processes, although they transfer to some. And he’s an infantile entitled complainer, too, which I’ve noticed a lot of his fans seem to have no problem justifying and excusing.

By the way, I would think this whether I liked Trump or not. How do I know? Simple. It has to do with my reaction to Bush/Gore 2000. At that time I was, of course, a Democrat, and I voted for Gore. During the long and nerve-wracking legal process of watching the courts decide who had won the photo finish election, I very much wanted to it be Gore, naturally. But when Bush won in the courts, unlike a lot of Democrats I never cried “Foul!” or thought he had stolen the election. I remember being very very disappointed in Gore and his advisors and aides, and thinking that if they couldn’t mount that fight and win—if Gore had been outfoxed and outmaneuvered by the Bush team—then he probably didn’t have the requisite toughness and knowledge of the system to have deserved the presidency and made an effective president.

President Obama started a new presidential tradition of whining and complaining, blaming and accusing. Prior to Obama, such behavior in a president was considered both unmanly and unpresidential. But at least Obama didn’t run on touting his macho alpha male characteristics, except for the occasional remark. Trump does.

[NOTE: See also this, as well as this:

Trump is not being cheated. Everyone is playing by the same rules, which were available to every campaign well in advance. Trump simply is not as good at converting knowledge into success ”“ notwithstanding the centrality of this talent to his candidacy. Perhaps this is because he is singularly good at generating free publicity (and consequently minimizing the publicity available to his rivals). Maybe he underestimated the importance of building a competent, experienced campaign organization. But he can hardly acknowledge this because it is a colossal error of judgment ”“ and his purportedly peerless judgment is the selling point of his campaign…

Trump is constitutionally incapable of admitting errors ”“ a flaw exacerbated by a campaign premised on a personality rather than a program. So his now familiar, repulsive reaction is to smear his opposition as cheaters, liars and even law-breakers ”¦ while Roger Stone, one of Trump’s brass-knuckles specialists, threatens to extort delegates. The stubborn fact, however, is that Trump has a management problem ”“ namely ”¦ Trump. He grossly miscalculated the task at hand, he is scrambling to find suitable staff way too late in the game, and in a vain effort to divert attention from his own failings he is slandering others. This is the kind of candidate he has been, and the damage someone of his judgment and temperament could do if he were president is blatant.

Please read the whole thing.]

[ADDENDUM: Please see also this and this.]

[ADDENDUM II: Rather than turn this blog into an all-Trump all-the-time festival, I’m going to just post another link to an article on a topic that truly does deserve a post of its own, the fact that the hundred million dollars of Trump’s supposed charitable donations mostly amount to free golf rounds and hotel rooms at his resorts.]

What do candidates’ plans actually mean?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “JuliB” remarks:

Trump offers a poorly thought out idea [on how to make Mexico pay], then people analyze it and discuss it. Other people call it like they see it ”“ ”˜he’s just mouthing off, and it means nothing’. This smaller group knows for sure that it would just be a starting point, and would evolve into something completely different if elected. Or even next week ”“ who knows.

But the same thing happens with the serious candidates. They make these promises/stated intentions, put up policy opinions on their website, then get elected and things evolve into something different.

Trump’s campaign is an entertaining parody of our system.

If I were conspiracy minded, I would say that the global elite is bringing bread and circuses to our election and governing.

Interesting idea. However, although it is certainly true that candidates “get elected and things evolve into something different,” that doesn’t make it worthless to try to analyze the proposals they make as candidates. That’s because—unless candidates are flat-out lying, and lying knowingly, about their intentions—their proposals are indicators of their frame of mind, their political philosophy, and also of how the candidates (and/or their advisors) think.

For example, if the proposal is unworkable and preposterous in its face, or something you don’t even think is desirable if it could be implemented, then that tells you that you don’t want to vote for that candidate if there’s a better alternative. Policy statements are indications of what a candidate would like to do in an ideal world, whether he or she could actually accomplish these goals or not.

And even if the stated plans of a candidate are a flat-out lie on the part of that candidate, they also tell us who the candidate thinks is his/her constituency—what type of person the candidate is trying to appeal to, and what the candidate thinks that voter would like to hear.

I don’t think there’s a monolithic “global elite” conspiratorially plotting all of this. I do think there are people in power who want to keep power and who sometimes work together to do so. I think this is inevitable; it’s part of the nature of power and of human beings, and it’s one of the reasons I consider small government conservatism the best way to temper the tendency. A lot of people in power are corrupt, and whether they start out that way or not, being in power for any length of time encourages corruption by putting more temptations their way. A certain amount of cynicism about government and government leaders is most definitely appropriate, but not so much that we lose sight of the need to evaluate what they say and do and mean to do, as well as that all-important thing called character.

Last leaves

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually write about my dreams, but last night I had one that was so vivid I feel the need to do so.

And no, it wasn’t about politics.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve either dreamed less or remembered fewer of my dreams. It’s disconcerting to me because I used to have such vivid, interesting, plentiful dreams. They were interesting to me, anyway, and often I used them for guidance.

Last night’s dream was vivid, too, which is much more unusual for me these days. It was very long and involved, and much of it I really don’t remember except as a vague impression of dealings with a bunch of people, a man, an apartment. Someone was getting married (not me!) and dressing up in her finery, then going off with some of the people for the wedding. In the meantime, other people had arrived (perhaps for a party)?

When I finally moseyed out into the living room—in a bathrobe, all bedraggled—I found that the people who had arrived included my mother. She’s been gone for over three years, and I’ve hardly ever dreamed about her, but there she was, along with a group of people I slowly realized were her friends and contemporaries. Since my mother was nearly 100 when she died, all of the people in that room were the adults I’d known when I was growing up, a tight community the members of which have died, one by one by one, until there is virtually not one of them left on this earth.

But there they sat, at a party in a strange apartment, and when I tried to speak to them they were in various states of dementia and illness. They didn’t look very good, either, although in the dream they were most definitely alive and not dead at all. But they answered strangely (if at all) when I asked them questions. They didn’t make sense. They looked off into the distance. My mother in particular appeared as she had in the last months of her life, when she was fading terribly, and not as she had even a couple of years before.

When I awoke it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that one of the strange and unexpected things about growing older is the disappearance of the generation above you, the ones who in your youth you took for granted would always be there. It’s a clean sweep. Although it happens gradually, by the time you’re my age they’re almost all gone or going very fast.

When I write that this was unexpected, that may sound odd, because after all it’s one of the surest things on earth that this will occur if you live long enough. But it’s something I never ever thought about in advance—or rather, if I did think about it, it was in a distant, abstract way. Now it’s much more up-close and personal, as my own generation starts being picked off with increasing rapidity—and not just the extreme outliers, either.

I had a great-grandfather who lived until well into his 90s. I never met him, because he died before I was born, but my mother used to say that in his final years he would repeatedly lament “I’m the last leaf on the tree.” He was referring, I believe, to this poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled “The Last Leaf” and written in the early 1830s (my great-grandfather was born around 1850):

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said–
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago–
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

ADDENDUM:

Here is my great-grandfather, holding my mother on his knee. He is in his 60s here, and he lived for about thirty more years, looking not all that different. He was a handsome man.

Ma and grandpa-001

While we’re at it, here is his brother, who died towards the end of WWI. I believe it may have been in the flu pandemic. He has the family “look,” particularly in the eyes, a look that is strangely similar on both sides of the family:
uncle.jpg

New York polls

The New Neo Posted on by

Polls of New York Republicans (not an oxymoron) say that Donald Trump should be getting slightly over 50% of the vote in the April 19 primary there. That wouldn’t be surprising; after all, it’s his home state. But let’s take a closer look at those polls.

A recent one (4/3-4/5) was done by Monmouth. Since New York is a closed primary state, it sampled registered Republicans only. However, it has what I would consider a small sample for a poll: 302. What’s more, although it’s weighted for age and gender it’s random in terms of geography, and I very much doubt that New York’s Republicans are evenly distributed throughout the state. The margin of error is 5.6, which is somewhat high but certainly not astronomical, but for subgroups it’s higher (for example, for males it’s 8.1 and for “very conservative” voters it’s 11). That has to do with the fact that once you get into subgroups the already-small n becomes much smaller.

For example (and I find this interesting in terms of the makeup of the Republicans of New York state), of the 302 subjects, only 80 described themselves as “very conservative,” 98 as “somewhat conservative,” and a whopping 117 as liberal or moderate. Liberal Republicans? There’s a long tradition of that sort in New York, actually; think of the term “Rockefeller Republicans.”

Then we have the curious fact that 9% of the registered Republicans in that poll say they will vote for Hillary Clinton against Trump, and if Cruz were the nominee 10% would vote for Hillary Clinton. Again, who are these people? Kasich does best of all with them against Hillary; I guess those liberals and moderates among them figure he meets their needs as well or better than Hillary does.

In addition, the repondents’ votes are not set in stone. Although 2% have already voted, and 38% have decided for sure, 34% have only a strong preference, 12% a slight preference and a full 14% are undecided. That’s quite a bit of wiggle room; if you add those last two categories you get 26%.

Another recent poll is this one, taken by CBS News just a few days earlier (3/29-4/1), with somewhat similar results. In it, 20% of Republican respondents (the number of Republicans was 545, significantly more than in the other poll) seemed willing to change their minds.

Another interesting question is how often these respondents have voted for the GOP candidates in the past. 34% said “almost always” and 40% said “usually,” which leaves 19% split about evenly and the remaining 7% usually or always have voted for Democrats. And only 81% of respondents in the poll said they probably or definitely will vote in the primaries.

In that CBS poll, however, the subjects were registered voters and there seems to have been no attempt to make sure that the respondents who answered about the Republican primaries actually are registered Republicans who can vote in the primary (New York’s is closed)—or it there was such an effort, the poll results don’t mention it. They also don’t mention whether the sample was weighted and if so in what way. In general, although there are a lot more questions in that particular poll, the pollsters offer a lot less information about its methodology.

One of the most recent NY polls of all was by Emerson (4/6-4/7). Unfortunately, I can’t access the full results (they say it can be found here, but when I try to download the file I get something that looks like impenetrable gibberish) so it’s hard to tell as much about it. But it involves “321 likely [GOP] primary voters, with a margin of error of +/5.4%,” which again seems like a very small n. And I have no idea how they define “likely voters” (are they, for example, registered Republicans? Because if they’re not they can’t vote in the GOP primary in NY). They were weighted for gender, but not for anything else, which makes me wonder once again how the geographical distribution goes, which is important because the majority of NY’s delegates are awarded by winning districts. The rules on that last point are so complex that it’s hard to summarize them (the Emerson link doesn’t do a very good job, either), so if you’re really interested I suggest you go here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Trump’s Emerson score is good (56 to Cruz’s 22 and Kasich’s 17). But interestingly enough, it represents a drop from his score from just three weeks earlier in a poll by the same group. In an Emerson poll taken March 14-16, Trump had received a hefty 61% of the vote, with Kasich only at 1 and Cruz 12. You can see what’s happening here, and the difference does not reflect the previous presence of Rubio, who had only polled at 4% in that mid-March poll before dropping out.

So the real question—aside from whether any of these polls are correct, which is always the question with polls—is whether the current trend of Trump falling and Cruz/Kasich rising will continue in the next week or so, and if so how far it will go. The margin of error in that recent Emerson poll is already 5+ percent, which means that Trump is within the margin of error for achieveing the 50% level he would need in New York to trigger certain winner-take-all provisions for the state delegates (not the district delegates). Again, it’s so complex I suggest you go to that website if you’re interested in the details.

I am nearly positive that Trump will win the NY GOP primary; all indicates suggest that very strongly. But by how much, and how many delegates will it mean he actually receives?

Plus, the delegates are chosen by the state GOP—even the Trump ones—which could create another problem for Trump, because they may not be particularly loyal to him. That, of course, would probably anger his supporters very much, and understandably so. But as many people have pointed out, if Trump the smart dealmaker didn’t know this and prepare for it, maybe he’s not such a smart dealmaker after all.

By the way, that most recent Emerson poll indicates that in a general election, all of the GOP candidates would be toast and the Democrat would win the state.

One other curiosity I noticed in the same poll:

Among New York’s 27 Congressional districts, each worth 3 delegates, [Trump] appears to dominate in five (the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Eleventh) and stands a good chance of passing the crucial 50% threshold in 11 other districts which would give him a winner-take-all victory [that is, in terms of the three delegates in each of the districts where he might get 50% of the vote]. In contrast, Cruz is competitive in only seven Congressional districts.

But recall that there were only 321 likely GOP voters in that entire poll. You’ll note that there are 27 districts in NY. That means that there was an average of about 12 poll respondents per district. How could any valid conclusions possibly be drawn on a such a basis?

A poll with almost double the number of respondents was the most recent one by Fox, taken March 4-7, and featuring 602 likely Republican primary voters. That’s almost double. Trump’s score was 54, Kasich’s 22, and Cruz’s 15, so this one was the lowest of them all for Cruz. 23% of respondents say they could change their minds, however.

Here’s the description of how the respondents were chosen:

…[They] were randomly selected from a statewide voter file of registered New York voters using a probability proportionate to size method. This simply means phone numbers are proportionally representative to the number of voters in all regions across the state of New York.

I don’t know quite what that means. We know that only registered Republicans are allowed to vote in the GOP primary in NY, so were only registered Republicans asked about the Republican primary? It’s not at all clear from the way that is worded. As for the geographic proportionality of the sample, districts in NY vary greatly in their composition—some districts are overwhelmingly Democratic and some are majority Republican, and New York’s delegates are selected on a district-by-district basis, so in some districts each single voter has far more selective power in a primary than in other districts with more Republicans. Was that reflected in the geographic distribution of poll respondents, or are the samples merely assumed to be proportionate because the list is of all registered voters in a region and they were randomly selected within each region? It’s very confusing, I must say, but it’s important to know the answer in order to understand how valid the poll is.

As I already indicated, my guess is that Trump’s support in New York is very very strong. But since the majority of New York’s delegates are not selected on a statewide basis (only 14 out of 95 are), it’s hard to know what to make of any of these polls, because they don’t seem to take the importance of districts into account.

You may ask why on earth I’m paying so much attention to them, then. Good question. Well, they’re the only evidence we have. Plus, when I read headlines about the results of polls, it usually piques my curiosity. How was the poll done? Is it really valid? It’s a weird little peccadillo I have, but I happen to be interested in polls.

The Vikings got around

The New Neo Posted on by

For absolutely no reason except curiosity I was looking up the Vikings the other day, and came across this:

Spices were obtained [by the Vikings] from Chinese and Persian traders, who met with the Viking traders in Russia.

I already knew that the Vikings got around, but that impressed me. In fact, though, there was a a tremendous amount of world trade back then—“back then” being the 8th to 11th centuries.

And in case you wondered—no, Viking warriors did not wear horned helmets.

Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and metallic reinforcement for regular troops. The iron helmet with mask and mail was for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel-age helmets from central Sweden.

Viking art was highly stylized and ornate, as well as extremely skilled. For example, here’s one of their wood carvings:

vikingart

And the detail on this Viking ship that now resides in a museum in Oslo just blew me away:

Oseburgship800s

I’ve noticed before that our distant ancestors, even the ones often thought to be brutish and boorish, seemed very intent on creating things of beauty even on utilitarian objects.

Trump the dealmaker: hiring the best people

The New Neo Posted on by

Donald Trump learned the real estate development business at his father’s knee, serving a long apprenticeship that taught him every aspect of the business from the ground up. He also seems to have had a natural aptitude for it and interest in it, and has been quite successful at it although he has admittedly (at least, I’ll admit it) made some mistakes.

But like a lot of people who are successful in one arena, Trump thinks that translates into being successful in areas he knows much less about. Right now, for example, he seems to be running into some unaccustomed roadblocks in his campaign—with his organization, tactics, and the personnel he’s hired to be in charge.

Trump’s hype is that he’s a dealmaker extraordinaire, but the skills involved in real estate deals are not necessarily the same as those needed for political deals, nor is the knowledge base. Trump is fond of calling many other people stupid and himself smart, but is he smart enough to know what he doesn’t know? Trump says he hires “the best people”—but he doesn’t seem to have done so during his campaign, and it’s really starting to show. The long apprenticeship his father put him through taught him a lot about the real estate development business he’s been immersed in for his entire adult life, but he hasn’t served an apprenticeship in politics except as influence-buyer and observer of others.

For example, why did Trump choose Corey Lewandowski to manage his campaign? Lewandowski is a relative novice, and what experience he has had doesn’t seem to have involved being all that successful at campaigning, either as a candidate or behind the scenes:

In 1994, while an undergraduate student, Lewandowski ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, losing to Thomas A. Golden Jr., a Democrat…

After graduating from college, Lewandowski worked on Capitol Hill in Washington while earning a master’s degree in political science at American University. In 1999, Lewandowski was arrested for bringing a handgun and ammunition into Longworth House Office Building…

Lewandowski worked on Ohio Republican Bob Ney’s campaign, and after the election became Ney’s congressional chief of staff. In 2007, before Ney was sentenced on federal corruption charges arising from the Abramoff scandal, Lewandowski wrote a letter to the presiding judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, saying that Ney was a mentor and “surrogate father” to him and asking for leniency in sentencing…

Lewandowski served as campaign manager for the 2002 re-election campaign for U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire. Smith was defeated in the Republican primary by John E. Sununu. During the campaign, Lewandowski generated controversy by publicly suggesting that Sununu, who is of Lebanese descent, had divided loyalties in fighting terrorism.

Lewandowski then worked in the private sector for a while, as well as being a lobbyist, and trained as a NH police officer. His stint with an advocacy group called “Americans for Prosperity” was marked by “fiery confrontations” with fellow employees. After that:

In 2012, while still working for Americans for Prosperity, Lewandowski unsuccessfully ran for town treasurer of Windham, New Hampshire. NPR reported that during the campaign, Lewandowski “upended the town’s politics, using public records laws to probe local government and launching robocalls targeted at voters to stoke outrage over a visit to the town by President Obama.”

In 2014 Lewandowski met Trump, “at a political event in New Hampshire,” and six months before Trump made his announcement as a 2016 candidate, Trump hired Lewandowski as his campaign manager.

Is this an impressive resume? Would it impress you? However, it—or something about Lewandowski—appears to have impressed Trump mightily. Perhaps he sensed a kindred spirit in Lewandowski: pugnacious, confident, cocky, unafraid to make waves. At any rate, Lewandowski became his indispensable right-hand man. This Politico article quotes Lewandowski as having said that Trump has, “the most cohesive, loyal staff, the most loving staff I have ever had the privilege of working with on a campaign.” Perhaps that’s true, considering the previous campaigns he’s worked on, and his role in them.

If Lewandowski is an example of hiring the best people, I really wouldn’t want to see the worst.

[NOTE: There’s also this Keystone cops situation for the Trump campaign in Washington state.]

Andrew C. McCarthy eviscerates Trump’s plan to make Mexico pay for the wall

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s wrong with Trump’s plan to make Mexico pay for the wall?

Just about everything.

Here are a few excerpts, but I suggest you read the whole thing:

Trump first brays that he “will build the wall” (which, incidentally, would have no bearing on visa overstays, who account for nearly half of the illegal-alien population)…

[But] Trump is actually proposing amnesty of the “touch-back” variety occasionally championed by open-borders advocates…

Trump boosters are apparently content to have their man issue Obama-esque executive decrees under the guise of this erstwhile bane of their existence ”” as opposed to, oh, I don’t know, maybe asking Congress to pass a law addressing remittances to Mexico. Perhaps Trump has opted against approaching lawmakers because his idea, even if we dubiously assume its legality, is pointless…

Section 326 of the Patriot Act ”” which expressly targets “international money laundering” and “terrorist financing” ”” empowers the Treasury Secretary to prescribe rules that financial institutions must follow in identifying people who open accounts and use them to move money. Trump figures all he needs to do is rewrite the relevant regulation. Our would-be chief executive’s memo explaining this to the Post features his signature attention to detail: It twice cites the regulation in question, but misidentifies it both times ”” it is actually 31 CFR 103.121, not 31 CFR 130.121. The latter provision does not exist in the Code of Federal Regulations…

Not only would Trump adopt Obama’s practice of unilaterally decreeing federal law; he would continue Obama’s habit of deploying government legal processes as a weapon against political foes. Brazenly, Trump’s memo crows that he does not intend his proposed regulation to be like, you know, a real regulation. It is instead meant to be a scare tactic [to intimidate Mexico into paying]…

…[A] large chunk of [the money sent to Mexico by people here] comes from legal Mexican aliens and American citizens of Mexican descent. They would have no trouble complying with Trump’s threatened regulation. Nor would illegal aliens be much deterred: There are many alternatives to wire transfer for remitting funds…

Mexico would continue to get its money. Trump’s regulation would succeed only in imposing heavy burdens on American financial institutions, which would pass the resulting costs on to American citizens. Meanwhile, by driving remittance practices underground, Trump’s regulation would deprive American law enforcement of a useful avenue for tracking money transfers made by the very criminal element that he routinely decries in speaking about illegal immigration.

What could possibly go wrong?

Trumpbots on the web

The New Neo Posted on by

Here is an example of how the Trump campaign appears to have been profiting from Twitter accounts purchased in bulk (it’s not clear by whom) to game the internet and to spam comments sections and online polls.

One of the commenters here (I can’t remember who it was, and can’t locate the comments right now) has been pointing out something similarly suspicious about the Twitter accounts of many supposed Trump supporters. I don’t know whether the Trump campaign pays for this sort of thing, or whether it’s instead a function of the alt-right activists doing it themselves. I suspect it may be more of the latter, but either or both are possible.

I’m not on Twitter, and don’t really know that much about how it works. But I have noticed that many of the pro-Trump trolls who arrive here have proxy IP numbers, mostly originating from Australia, Hong Kong, and the like.