Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) It seems that despite a scheduled mandatory recount, Boebert has been re-elected to the House.

(2) I’m getting that old deja vu feeling: Garland announces there will be a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump. For what? For possibly “unlawfully interferring with the transfer of presidential power following the 2020 election or the certification of the Electoral College vote,” and/or “whether Trump broke the law and obstructed justice in connection with his removal of hundreds of documents from the White House, which were shipped to his residence at Mar-a-Lago.” I think they would have done this whether Trump had announced a 2024 run or not.

(3) And of course the Democrats want Elon Musk investigated as well.
I will add that Democrats will characterize the investigations of Biden that the GOP House is planning as solely politically motivated and bogus.

(4) Arizona tabulates the 2022 vote.

(5) The new Democrat House leader is an election denier. Shhh, don’t tell!

What’s going on with the alleged perp in the LA car incident that injured the police recruits?

The New Neo Posted on by

First we were told it was probably a bona fide accident. Then we were told it was likely to have been a purposeful crime. Now we hear this:

Twenty-five recruits for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department got mowed down by a driver on Wednesday. Police arrested Nicholas Gutierrez for attempted murder almost immediately. Police investigators insist that they have probable cause and evidence to support those charges.

Late last night, however, Gutierrez walked out of jail…

What happened?

The explanation is that they want to build a more solid case. I supposed it could merely be that, but author Morrisey adds:

If the evidence is there, and the LASO has probable cause to charge him, why is Gutierrez walking free? None of the media outlets covering this mention Gascón by name, but this leaves the impression that the LASO — and likely other LA-area law enforcement agencies — have little trust in Gascón and the DA’s office these days. They seem to want a case so solid that Gascón cannot possibly deal it down without taking enormous political risks.

If they have decent evidence that this was a crime, it seems dangerous to release this guy. If not, he should be released. Which is it? It certainly shouldn’t also be necessary to worry about an adversarial DA, but there’s little question that they do have to worry about it.

A walk through presidential first-term midterms election history of the last 100 years

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Whenever I have a math-heavy post like this, I always get nervous that I’ve made an arithmetical error.]

I see it again and again: the assertion that the 2022 midterm results were almost unheard-of, because a president’s first midterm always involves the opposite party gaining a large number of seats in the House and a significant number in the Senate. Just to take one example, we have this:

Historically, every president in history facing his first midterm experiences a tough day with automatically 20 to 30 House seats lost…and 4 or more Senate seats lost…but this terribly unpopular President Biden is brain dead with severe dementia, and can’t put 3 coherent sentences together…Yet Biden defied history?

When I read something like that, I think: is it true? Did every president in history facing his first midterm experience results like that, or pretty much like that? Or nearly every president?

So I decided to actually take a look – not at every single president in history, but at least at presidents for the last 100 years, the group one would imagine would be most relevant to today. Then maybe, if it appeared true for all of them, I’d go back further in time and see what I found.

Let’s just say I didn’t have to go back further in time, because it wasn’t true during the last 100 years.

We’re not talking about midterms in a president’s second term; just the first. Here’s the record for the Senate midterms in presidents’ first terms:

(1) Calvin Coolidge (R) – first half of first term 1923-1925, Senate was R53 D43 and midterm results were R54 D42. Doesn’t follow the rule.

(2) Herbet Hoover (R) – first half of first term 1929-1931, Senate was R56 D39 and midterm results were R48 D47. This follows the rule.

(3) Franklin Roosevelt (D) – first half of first term 1933-1935, Senate was R36 D59 and midterms were R25 D69. This goes dramatically against the rule.

(4) Harry Truman (D) – first half of first term can be calculated either from the time FDR died (which was quite early in the term) or the time of Truman’s first election on his own, when he had already been president for many years. I’ll do both. First half of first non-elected term 1945-1947, Senate was R38 D57 and midterm results were R51 D45. This follows the rule.
First half of first elected term 1949-1951, Senate was R42 D54, and midterm results were R47 D49. This also follows the rule.

(5) Dwight Eisenhower (R) – first half of first term 1955-1957, Senate was R47 D48 (plus one other who caucused with the Democrats, making it 47/49), and midterm results were R47 D49. No change. Doesn’t follow the rule.

(6) John Kennedy (D) – first half of first term 1961-1963, Senate was R36 D64, and midterm results were R34 D66. This does not follow the rule.

(7) Lyndon Johnson (D) – I’ll skip his first term, because it wasn’t long enough for a midterm election. His second term and first elected term was 1965-1967, Senate was R32 D68, and midterm results were R43 D57. This follows the rule; however, it has an asterisk because of the special circumstances that involved LBJ having actually been president for 3 years at the time of those midterms rather than two.

(8) Richard Nixon (R) – first half of first term 1969-1971, Senate was R43 D57, and midterm results were R44 D54 but actually 45/55 because of members of other parties and where they caucused. This election did not follow the rule.

(9) I’m going to skip Gerald Ford because his term was too short, and he was unelected as well.

(10) Jimmy Carter (D) – first half of first term 1977-1979, Senate was R38 D61 (but really 38/62 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R41 D58 (but really 41/59 because of caucusing). This follows the rule.

(11) Ronald Reagan (R) – first half of first term 1981-1983, Senate was R53 D46 (but really 53/47 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R55 D45. This did not follow the rule.

(12) George H. W. Bush (R) – first half of first term 1989-1991, Senate was R45 D55, and midterm results were R44 D56. This follows the general rule, but in a very small way with the loss of only one seat.

(13) Bill Clinton (D) – first half of first term 1993-1995, Senate was R43 D57 (changing later to R44 D56 prior to the midterms), midterms were R52 D48. This follows the rule.

(14) George W. Bush (R) – first half of first term 2001-2003, Senate was R50 D50 (there was some small shifting back and forth afterward, but that was the original election result), midterm results were R51 D48 (but really 51/49 because of caucusing). This did not follow the rule, and in fact is similar to what happened in 2022 – a gain of one seat for the party with the presidency.

(15) Barack Obama (D) – first half of first term 2009-2011, Senate was R41 D57 (but really 41/59 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R47 D51 (but really 47/53 because of caucusing). This followed the rule.

(16) Donald Trump (R) – first half of first term 2017-2019, Senate was R51 D47 (but really 51/49 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R53 D45 (but really 53/47 because of caucusing). This did not follow the rule.

I was going to do the same thing with the House, but doing it for the Senate was already tiring and nitpicky and I think it made my point sufficiently anyway.

Here’s the tally: in the last 100 years, it’s exactly even for the Senate. Half of the first-term midterm results followed the supposed rule and half did not. So it’s not even close to “always.”

Just taking a really quick look at the House – the legislative branch that is more sensitive to political winds that blow because every member is up for re-election every two years, rather than a third every two years as in the Senate – reveals that the following presidencies did not follow the rule in their first term midterms (that is, the president’s party did not lose House seats in the first midterms): Coolidge, FDR, Eisenhower, and George W. Bush. What’s more, two other presidents only lost a small number of House seats in the first midterms, much like what happened to Biden and the Democrats this year: JFK only lost 6 seats, and George H.W Bush only lost 8 seats. So even in the House, results like those in 2022 have not been especially unusual.

What’s more, this year’s Senate breakdown was a difficult one for the Republicans, and yet they only lost one seat (perhaps two in the end, but we don’t yet know). By “difficult” I mean that fourteen seats held by Democrats and 20 held by Republicans were up for grabs this time. Not only that, but more of the seats held by Republicans were considered to be in battleground states (see the map here).

What does it all mean? Obviously, the common assertion that the 2022 midterm results were highly unusual is incorrect. However, I think we see the result this year as highly unusual and counter-intuitive for two reasons. The first is the predicted “red tsunami” set the right up for a huge win, and it wasn’t forthcoming. The second is that the awfulness of the present Congress and president, as well as some of the Democrat candidates, predisposed us to think that of course there would be a huge Republican victory. There had to be.

But there wasn’t. And whether you think the results were fraudulent, or the result of a legal exploitation of the relaxed voting rules, or an actual fair and square election, the results were nowhere near as unusual as so many people have been saying.

Make of it what you will.

Sometimes a roundup seems like the only way to deal with so much news

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Almost everything you wanted to know about voting in California but were afraid to ask – once you read this piece, you’ll see why it takes so long to count the votes in California, even if fraud isn’t going on. And if it is, it would take just a little longer.

(2) Please read this at Ace’s on DeSantis and donor money.

(3) San Francisco is instituting a pilot program to pay transgender people for – well, for nothing. It will be giving low-income transgender people who apply a guaranteed income of $1,200 per month for 18 months, courtesy of the local taxpayers. I guess regular welfare isn’t enough. One wonders at the legality of this sort of thing – isn’t it sexually discriminatory? But I see that San Francisco already has a similar program for black and and Pacific islander low income women who are pregant (that is, “pregnant people”). That would seem racially discriminatory to me as well. Both of these programs do not monitor how the money is used.

(4) Nancy Pelosi will not be running for Minority Leader. Before you get all happy about that, take a look at who will probably succeed her.

(5) The Republican-led House starts in on Hunter and Joe. Speaking of the House, another thing they’re planning to do – and might even be able to do – is cut off the funding for all those new IRS agents.

“The b**** did it!” says Bankman-Fried

The New Neo Posted on by

What a guy:

The FTX owner told [interviewer] Piper that his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s company Alameda was responsible for gambling and losing his company’s money – to which he was “oblivious” until it was too late…

“And also thought Alameda had enough collateral to [reasonably] cover it.”

“It was never the intention,” he later added. “Sometimes life creeps up on you.”

He has a way with words, doesn’t he?

Is the following the sociopath part? – although maybe it’s all the sociopath part:

Bankman-Fried is now backtracking on his statement about unethical moves and calling it a “front.”

“Man all the dumb s*** I said,” Bankman-Fried told Piper on Tuesday. “It’s not true, not really… some of this decade’s greatest heroes will never be known, and some of its most beloved people are basically shams.”

Bankman-Fried then discussed ethics as if it was a game – to which Piper said: “You were really good at talking about ethics, for someone who kind of saw it all as a game with winners and losers.”

“Ya hehe – I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent,” Bankman Fried wrote. “I feel bad for those who get f***** by it… by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us.”

He’s not wrong about the dumb game some “woke westerners play” where they mouth the necessary words to keep the Twitter mobs at bay. I guess he doesn’t see the need to continue to do it anymore.

It’s like Dana Carvey’s “Garth” character meets James Bond villain.

Here’s information about how the ex-girlfriend supposedly got the money:

Last week it was reported that Alameda was allegedly transferred $10 billion of FTX customer money in secret by Bankman-Fried as investors withdrew $6 billion from the crypto platform last week.

Around $2 billion of the $10 billion transferred to Alameda is reportedly still missing.

Just a little loose change.

Meanwhile, the bankruptcy liquidator is astounded at certain findings:

FTX’s new CEO and liquidator, John Ray III, who also oversaw the unwinding and liquidation of Enron, admits that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

FTX “did not maintain centralized control of its cash” and failed to keep an accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, or pay sufficient attention to the creditworthiness of banking partners, according to Ray. Advisers don’t yet know how much cash FTX Group had when it filed for bankruptcy, but has found about $560 million attributable to various FTX entities so far.

Although restructuring advisers have been in control of FTX for less than a week, they’ve seen enough to depict the crypto company as a deeply flawed enterprise. Lasting records of decision making are hard to come by: Bankman-Fried often communicated through applications that auto-deleted in short order and asked employees to do the same, according to Ray.

Like the old invisible ink routine, or Mission Impossible. Furthermore:

Corporate funds were also used to buy homes and other personal items for employees and advisers, sometimes in their personal names…

Ray…also noted that the company didn’t have appropriate corporate governance and never held board meetings. There was no accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, as well as insufficient attention paid to the creditworthiness of banking partners.

Where were the agencies that are supposed to oversee something like this? Hard not to think they were utterly compromised.

It seems to me that FTX is going to mount the “fool rather than knave” defense. I don’t think it would wash, but who knows? My cynicism tells me that this group might not ever have to pay the piper – or their investors.

Open thread 11/17/22

The New Neo Posted on by

A tiny glimpse of one of my favorite ballets of all time:

The female soloist is a dancer I’ve not seen before. But as soon as she began to move, I recognized that she’s a dancer of a type I like. Unlike many, she dances from a very strong central core in her torso rather than emphasizing the strength of her legs or feet or arms – although they’re plenty strong, too. She dances as a unified and harmonious whole.

What getting a majority in one branch of Congress actually means

The New Neo Posted on by

The GOP seems to have taken the House, at least according to reports like this (see also this). The MSM keeps saying it’s “on track” to take it or “on the cusp” of taking it, but it does seem to be imminent.

People also keep pointing out how incredibly narrow the majority will be, and that’s certainly the case even if the GOP gets a few more seats. They can’t afford any defections when they vote on something. Then again, passing legislation isn’t really the point in this Congress – stopping the passage of legislation by the Democrats is. The GOP wouldn’t have been able pass legislation in Congress even if the majority had been much bigger in the House, unless it also had a majority in the Senate. And not just a bare majority in the Senate, but a sizable one, sizable enough to to avoid a filibuster.

Or, of course, they could do what the Democrats tried so hard to do during the last two years and only failed to do because of two people, Manchin and Sinema: do away with the filibuster. I rather doubt even a majority GOP Senate could get a majority of votes to do that, and you’d suddenly see not a single Democrat voting for it.

And of course even then Biden would veto virtually everything any GOP Congress managed to pass in both houses, if it wasn’t favorable to the left. Legislation passed by the GOP could only get by if the Republicans had enough votes to override the veto, and that was virtually impossible. So of course there was never going to be any significant GOP legislation in the coming Congress even with a predicted red tsunami.

And yet taking over the House is still enormously important – taking it over by any margin – because it gives the GOP leader, who almost certainly will be McCarthy, power to set the agenda of the House.

I wonder how many voters even realize that. I’m not sure how many people don’t seem to comprehend why the roles of Speaker and Majority Leader are so important:

The speaker is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party. In pursuing this goal, the speaker may use their power to determine when each bill reaches the floor. They also chair the majority party’s steering committee in the House…

On the other hand, when the speaker and the president belong to opposite parties, the public role and influence of the speaker tend to increase. As the highest-ranking member of the opposition party (and de facto leader of the opposition), the speaker is normally the chief public opponent of the president’s agenda. In this scenario, the speaker is known for undercutting the president’s agenda by blocking measures by the minority party or rejecting bills by the Senate…

The speaker’s powers and duties extend beyond presiding in the chamber. In particular, the speaker has great influence over the committee process. The speaker selects nine of the thirteen members of the powerful Committee on Rules, subject to the approval of the entire majority party. The leadership of the minority party chooses the remaining four members. Furthermore, the speaker appoints all members of select committees and conference committees. Moreover, when a bill is introduced, the speaker determines which committee will consider it.

It looks like McCarthy will become Speaker. I’d like to see someone more conservative in there, but as long as McCarthy blocks the left that’s still very important.

A danger for the GOP is the usual danger: ripping itself to shreds in battles between its two main wings. Another danger is inaction – or worse, capitulation to the Democrats. Having the majority by only the slimmest of margins increases the need for unity as well as the chances for crippling disunity, and having control of only half of one branch of government means they have no power to change anything. Their power, if they manage to exercise it successfully, will be to halt the most wretched excesses of the Democrats and to set the agenda. Setting the agenda should include shining the light of day into the dark corners of things like the COVID response, Russiagate, the persecution of January 6th defendents, and the corruption of the Bidens. And of course, the forces arrayed against them will be formidable and will include the MSM and some moderate Republican House members.

But gaining the majority is a victory that was necessary. Without it, and with a slightly larger majority in the Senate than before, the Democrats might have been more successful in realizing their dreams of ending the filibuster, institutionalizing the relaxation of voting security for the entire country by passing HR1, adding new Democrat-laden states such as DC and Puerto Rico, and increasing the total number of justices on the court in order to pack it with leftist judges to negate the current conservative majority.

Trump is running: can he Make Trump Great Again?

The New Neo Posted on by

In a move surprising no one, but elating many and disappointing many others, Trump officially announces his 2024 candidacy.

This will further divide the already-divided right, which in my opinion doesn’t bode well for the already-highly-challenged GOP in 2024. On the other hand, there has long been a segment of voters on the right who say they will vote for no one but Trump, and also a segment who would never vote for him in the first place or never vote for him again. Which segment is bigger? And how many Independent (or even nominally Democrat) voters does he attract, compared to how many he repels?

That has always been the question with Trump.

Also, can Trump win the nomination? And even if he doesn’t, will he run third-party as a spoiler? Will his running discourage or encourage others to enter the fray against him?

None of this fills me with joy, because I think that these divisions only benefit Biden any way you slice it. However, it’s still early. Can Trump reinvent himself once again? I don’t think so, but Trump is an unusual person and these are unusual times. His more sober “presidential” demeanor last night indicates he might want to give at least the impression of having toned it down.

One thing I have to say for Trump at this point, he has cojones.

I also wonder how this will affect the left’s plans to indict him. Perhaps Netanyahu’s election success – winning when the trial against him is apparently still ongoing – encouraged Trump to run despite the legal threats against him. Not that he needed encouragement to run; I think he’s been planning this for a long long time. It may even be that his announced candidacy will discourage an indictment for the duration, because those making the decisions about whether to bring an indictment might think that letting Trump run unencumbered could be to their advantage. Perhaps they don’t want to stop him; perhaps they think that he’s already so wounded that he’ll be easy to beat even without it. Then again, I don’t think there’s any legal impediment to a presidential candidate running for office while under indictment or being tried.

You think things couldn’t get more bizarre, and then they do.

It’s roundup time. Again.

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) I often see statements like this one from authors and commenters on the right [emphasis mine]:

In the current system, ballots are gathered or harvested either, legally or illegally, and submitted…This disenfranchising process could not happen if one political party vehemently opposed it.

Statements like that don’t ever seem to be followed by an analysis of exactly how the GOP would have prevented it had it wanted to, in those states (mostly blue and some purple) that have enacted the rules that enable it. There is a possibility it might have been done in Arizona, but if one actually studies the process on a state-by-state basis, I believe the unavoidable conclusion is the one I came to in this previous post.

(2) More on the FTX mess and its implications here. An excerpt:

How many scam artists are using such “bluewashing” in order to cover for malfeasance — all the while colluding with government figures to redraw regulations that benefit them? That, after all, was SBF’s biggest scam: He was an advocate of particular types of regulation that benefitted him and used both familial and business connections in order to protect his corporatism.

And that’s the dog that didn’t bark here: Where were the regulators with whom SBF was close? Where were the supposed advocates of “ethical capitalism,” who posit social responsibility but whose friends seem to repeatedly be caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, dating all the way back to Bernie Madoff?…

Maybe the problem is with a cadre of supposed protectors of the public who aren’t out to protect the public at all, but to hobnob with other “change agents” from Bahamian estates while patting themselves on the back for all the good they’re doing.

(3) I’ve heard people pooh-pooh the idea of the slippery slope, especially when it’s someone on the right pointing out an example of the concept. If you know someone who is a mocker of the slippery slope, have that person read this piece about the history of Canada’s euthanasia program. It’s an excellent illustration of how slippery that slope can be. The ratchet seems to go in only one direction.

(4) I cannot possibly summarize this article entitled “Trans People Are Seeking Nonbinary Bottom Surgeries,” except to say that no, it’s not in the Babylon Bee and I’m going to assume that it describes a real but infrequent phenomenon, and to add that it’s astounding that any doctors would do this. On the other hand, it’s probably less mutilating than traditional (can we speak of a “tradition” here?) “bottom” surgery. It also seems to be exclusive to people born male, which makes me recall that Jordan Peterson has said that biological men who identify as trans women are sometimes autogynephilic. It occurs to me that this group wanting nonbinary surgery might qualify.

(5) Steve Scalise will be the new Majority Leader of the House. It remains to be seen whether McCarthy will become Speaker, but my guess is the answer is “Yes.” And here’s a look at what has gone down involving McConnell in the Senate.