Changing the rules of the American political game

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democrats have long been intent on trying to make sure that Republicans never win another election. Rather than figuring out how to do this through argument or through amassing a solid record of accomplishments, they have figured out that the best way to do this is to change the rules.

Change the rules about immigration, illegal immigration, and/or who can vote and at what age and how they must prove eligibility, so that voter demographics favor Democrats more and more strongly. Abolish the Electoral College. And my current favorite, that oldie-but-goodie pack the Supreme Court:

…[S]everal presidential candidates are calling for an increase in the size of the Supreme Court. Nine justices are too few, apparently. In a proposal that seems straight out of the writers’ room at “The West Wing,” Beto O’Rourke wants the court apportioned by party, with five Democrats and five Republicans, and an extra five chosen by the 10 partisan ones.

Does anyone believe even for a nanosecond that if Hillary Clinton had been elected and had gotten to appoint the last two SCOTUS justices, that the Democrats would be floating that particular notion?

The Electoral College is unlikely to be abolished in the conventional way because of the large number of states that would have to agree. But some states have figured out a way around that, or at least they think they’re getting around it. The mechanism would be the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a dull (probably purposefully so) name for a fairly radical idea:

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome. As of March 2019, it has been adopted by twelve states and the District of Columbia. Together, they have 181 electoral votes, which is 33.6% of the Electoral College and 67.0% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of voters of both parties seem to favor the abolition of the EC:

A 2007 poll found that 72% favored replacing the Electoral College with a direct election, including 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans, and 73% of independent voters. Gallup polls dating back to 1944 have shown a consistent majority of the public supporting a direct vote.

It’s not even a recent trend, so we really can’t attribute the idea to modern education. I think the reason for these poll findings is that the benefits of the EC are difficult to see (although I think they are strong enough that it should be kept) and the populist emotional reaction to it is much more readily provoked.

I also think it’s one of those “be careful what you wish for, Democrats” things. It would be kind of funny if the mainly Democratic states which have enacted this law find that, in some election or other, their electoral votes end up being cast for a Republican even though the state has voted for the Democrat.

The Democrats are no longer proposing any of this rule-changing in a subtle manner. They tested the waters, and for whatever reason they now believe that playing to their leftist base is the way to go. My guess is that this leftist base has become the majority of the party, and the benefits to be gained by such enormous and transformative rule changes are judged by Democrats to be well worth any risk entailed in showing just how radical they have become.

However, one of the results of these proposals by Democrats is that they have solidified the right and even some of the middle in opposition against them. For example:

I am a middle-of-the-road Republican who voted for Trump with the utmost reluctance in 2016. He sure wasn’t perfect. He was no Cicero, either––though he can give a decent speech when the chips are down. He had a few extra skeletons rattling in his closet, especially compared to colorless non-entities like Jeb. So yeah, I was queasy about voting for an ex-registered-Democrat-from-New-York-and-possible-liberal-now-turned-Republican.

Was I worried? Hell, yeah! Was I depressed? You bet. But, really, what options were there?…So I swallowed hard, took a leap of faith, and pulled the lever for the Donald.

That was then. This is now:

This gets us to the next installment of “Friday the 13th,” a.k.a. the Democratic presidential candidates. Kamala Harris, you say? You seriously want me to vote for Kamala Harris? And you say that Cory “Spartacus” Booker is just like Kamala, only better and balder? Are you kidding me? Pete Buttigieg? Ask me again when I stop laughing.

Bernie? Really? This grumpy near-octogenarian “public service” millionaire with three mansions is running for the presidency of the wrong country. All his best ideas have already been put into practice––in Venezuela…

Did someone say Warren? Warren, the first Cherokee candidate — that Warren? Doesn’t she now want reparations not just for African-Americans, but also for Native Americans? Where, oh where, is that lever to pull for Trump?…

…[W]e’ve got the triumvirate that truly runs the Democratic Party now––Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Tlaib. I see this nutterfest, and let me tell you, dear Democrats: I am motivated as hell. If ever given a choice (in this election or in other ones) between Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, Pelosi, Warren, Harris, Booker, Biden, Sanders, or Trump, I will take Trump any day of the week.

I am a highly motivated Trump voter because the Democrats have motivated me up to my eyeballs. I have never been more motivated in my life, because the Democrats are terrifying me. I am locked, cocked, and ready to rock in that voting booth. I just wish I didn’t have to wait 20 months.

Labs are the most popular dogs…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and that’s been true for 28 years in a row.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love labs. They are generally so friendly and good with kids and just about anyone. But they are not my favorite breed, and I’d never own one.

They’re a lot to handle, really big and strong, and they have tails that can just about knock you down and feel like thick whips. They shed. They shed a lot. When you swim, they try to help you and can end up drowning you. Feeding them is an investment.

Now I’ll just tiptoe out of the room before the lab lovers come to give me not just a tail-lashing but a tongue-lashing…

Detainment during WWII

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday while looking at Ted Koppel’s Wiki entry for a comment I was writing, I came across this history:

Koppel, an only child, was born in Nelson, England. His parents, German Jews, had fled Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In Germany, Koppel’s father had operated a tire-manufacturing company. To help the British economy, the Home Secretary invited him and his wife to move the factory to Lancashire, England, where, he was promised, they would be protected in the event of war. They moved the factory there in 1936; but, when war broke out in Europe, in 1939, he was instead declared an enemy alien and imprisoned on the Isle of Man for a year and a half.

Koppel was born in 1940, shortly after his father was taken away. For income, his mother sold her personal jewelry and did menial work in London to provide for her infant son. When his father was released, he still was not permitted to work in England, nor would he allow his wife to work. In the years after the war ended, they gained some money from their confiscated assets and decided to leave for the United States.

Not surprising that they decided to come here.

Not only had I not previously realized any of that about Koppel’s history, I hadn’t realized it had been a policy of the British government to intern even some of the German nationals who were Jews running from the Nazis. I did know—and in fact had written a post about it—that in the US 11,507 German nationals were interned here during WWII. Follow the link to read about it, and how it differed from the much larger scale and much better known detainment of Japanese nationals (as well as their citizen children) during WWII.

Ted Koppel wakes from a long slumber and notices something about the press

The New Neo Posted on by

Ted Koppel says:

“I’m terribly concerned that when you talk about the New York Times these days, when you talk about the Washington Post these days, we’re not talking about the New York Times of 50 years ago,” Koppel noted to journalist and author Marvin Kalb earlier this month. “We are not talking about the Washington Post of 50 years ago. We’re talking about organizations that I believe have, in fact, decided as organizations that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States.”…

“So [Trump’s] perception that the establishment press is out to get him — doesn’t mean that great journalism is not being done; it is — but the notion that most of us look upon Donald Trump as being an absolute fiasco, he’s not mistaken in that perception. And he’s not mistaken when so many of the liberal media, for example, describe themselves as belonging to “the resistance”? What does that mean? That’s not said by people who consider themselves reporters, objective reporters of facts. That’s the kind of language that’s used by people who genuinely believe — and rather suspect with some justification — that Donald Trump is bad for the United States … and the sooner he’s out of office the better they will like it.”

Koppel added to Kalb that “we are not the reservoir of objectivity that I think we were.”

I find it bleakly amusing that Koppel thought the press was a “reservoir of objectivity” fifty years ago. Koppel is 79 years old, and he should know better. But at least he’s noticing something now, although as AOC might say, “Ted Koppel, who dis?”

And even now, Koppel is careful to include some language to indicate, to those who would excoriate him for his criticism of the press, that he’s really on the anti-Trump side: “doesn’t mean that great journalism is not being done; it is” and “by people who genuinely believe — and rather suspect with some justification — that Donald Trump is bad for the United States…”

Yeats was a goner for Gonne

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written about the great poet Yeats before, and in this post I dealt at length with his attitude towards aging and sexuality. In it, I mentioned that he had a lifelong love for and fascination—you might say “obsession”—with the Irish activist, actress, and radical Maud Gonne.

Gonne was quite the looker, too:

Their relationship was nothing if not complex and convoluted. He proposed a number of times, she refused, but she loved him and thought they were soulmates (they shared a devotion to the occult, as well). She didn’t think they should have sexual desire for each other, but they did sleep together at least once (apparently). If you search for “Yeats and Gonne” you’ll get many many lengthy discussions of the ins and outs of their long, long mutual dance.

But this exchange in particular caught my eye:

When Yeats told Gonne he wasn’t happy without her, she replied:

“Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.”

I imagine that only made him want to marry her more.

And yet, indeed, the mostly-unfulfilled and yet extremely intense relationship was the wellspring from which a great deal of Yeats’ poetry came. Love that cannot be doesn’t cause people to be poets, much less great poets. But for someone who’s already a great poet, it certainly furnishes a lot of deep material.

Is Jexodus a real thing?

The New Neo Posted on by

Seems possible, although it’s difficult to know how widespread it is:

Jewish voters furious at Democrats’ defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar say they’re done with the party that has held their support for generations.

“We felt we had a home there,” said Mark Schwartz, the Democratic deputy mayor of solidly blue Teaneck, NJ. “And now we feel like we have to check our passports.”…

Mark Dunec, a consultant in Livingston, NJ who ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2014, says, “I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family,” adding, “I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.”

The reference in the title of this post is to this movement, a sort of #WalkAway for Jews, which has been labeled fake by the Trump opposition (much as WalkAway itself was originally attributed to Russian bots). This article at Vox by good old Matthew Yglesias, for example, sports the headline “‘Jexodus,’ the fake departure of American Jews from the Democratic Party, explained: It’s not happening, but it’s fun to pretend.” One reads it in vain to discover some facts about this purported fakeness. But one looks in vain.

Now, it certainly may be that Jexodus amounts to nothing much in terms of numbers. That wouldn’t surprise me—because, as we know, a mind is a difficult thing to change, and party loyalty is very very strong, especially for identity groups with long traditions of being part of one party or another. But that doesn’t make something fake or “fun to pretend”—although when you have no facts about a group, like Yglesias seems to have no actual facts about how many people are part of Jexodus right now, it’s “fun to pretend” that you do, especially if you’re writing propaganda of the “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” variety.

As far as I can see from looking at Yglesias’ article, his reasoning for saying it’s a fake movement is that Jews have previously been loyal to the Democrats. Then he also proceeds to say that long-term trends for Jewish allegiance to the party have been in the downward direction. He also manages to write the entire piece without referencing the fact that one of the things that has sparked this is the very very recent post-2018-election doinsg by Ilhan Omar and the party’s defense of her remarks. The only time he mentions those remarks is this:

The contention that Jews should vote Republican because Republicans are stronger backers of the Israeli government isn’t identical to the “dual loyalties” issue that got Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in trouble earlier this months, but it’s not entirely unrelated either.

Oh, so Jews are not allowed to have interests in Israel? And actually, the contention is that Jews should consider leaving the Democratic Party not just because Democrats don’t support Israel anymore, but because they have supported anti-Semitism now. Obama certainly showed a lack of support for Israel (and a real detestation for Netanyahu) compared to previous presidents, but he never (to the best of my recollection, anyway) publicly mouthed any anti-Semitic rhetoric, and things like that smiling photo of him with Farrakhan were suppressed for a long time.

Omar, however, is quite up-front about her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, although she’s tried to backtrack a tiny bit (a very tiny bit). Her statement just may have gotten the attention of a significant number of Jewish voters, and that doesn’t have anything to do with dual loyalty.

So, is Jexodus a real thing? I have no idea. As I’ve written before, Jews are such a tiny percentage of the electorate, and are clustered in such reliably and overwhelmingly Democratic strongholds, that they can probably be safely ignored by the Democratic Party except in very very close races—and except for the fact that they donate disproportionately to the Party. If the donors start running away in significant numbers, that will be getting some attention from Democrats.

To know AOC is to not love her

The New Neo Posted on by

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is becoming less popular over time:

A March 15 Gallup poll, for example, found that just 31 percent of Americans view Ocasio-Cortez favorably, compared to 41 percent who view her unfavorably. It appears that as more people have gotten to know the congresswoman, the less they like her. The last time Gallup surveyed AOC’s favorable rating was back in September 2018, prior to her election to Congress, when 50 percent of respondents had no opinion or had never heard of her. That number has shrunk to just 29 percent over the past several months as the congresswoman has aggressively made a name for herself on Capitol Hill.

Gallup’s finding are in line with those of a Fox News poll of registered voters conducted in February, which found that Ocasio-Cortez had a favorable rating of just 26 percent, and an unfavorable rating of 39 percent (-13). In that poll, 34 percent of respondents didn’t offer an opinion or said they’d never heard of AOC.

Regarding the title of this post, here’s the reference:

Has anyone else noticed a strange thing about Google lately?

The New Neo Posted on by

As you might imagine, I do a lot of searches on Google. Say what you will about Google’s politics, but I’ve long preferred it as a search engine. In the past, if you chose your search terms very carefully—and I tried to do that—you could really narrow things down and find what you wanted quite quickly.

But I’ve noticed in the past couple of months, although I’m not sure when it began, that no matter how specific I try to be in my searches, the results are very generic. That makes them a lot less helpful.

Is anyone else having a similar problem? Has anyone else noticed a change like that?

It wasn’t just some Pelosi statement: the Democrats intend to give 16-year-olds the vote

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote a post yesterday about Nancy Pelosi’s statement, “I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16…I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school…”

But today I want to emphasize that this was not just some isolated statement of Pelosi’s. While I very much doubt that Pelosi actually has been in favor of this for long, much less “always,” she most definitely did not just think of it when she made the statement last Thursday.

In fact, this is part of a movement within the Democratic Party. The question recently came up for a vote in the House on March 6, as an amendment to the Democrats’ For the People Act, a vast piece of “voting-reform” legislation otherwise known as H.R.1. There was quite a bit of criticism from the right about that bill at the time (see, for example, this and this), but most of it seemed to focus on aspects other than voting for 16-year-olds.

That amendment didn’t become part of the bill. But 126 Democrats (and one Republican, Michael Burgess of Texas) voted in favor of the amendment to have 16-year-olds vote in federal elections. That’s a majority of the Democrats in the House. So right now the Democrats didn’t have the votes to add this, but a very substantial majority of them were in favor of it, and not just the youngsters.

This needs to be taken very very seriously. I believe they are intent on doing it in a few years, as the party veers ever more leftward—if they ever get control of House, Senate, and the Presidency. The only way they can be stopped, other than voting them out of office, would be a constitutional amendment saying, for example, that the voting age in federal elections can be raised above 18 but not lowered below it.

Could such an amendment pass? I don’t know, but it better happen soon or it could be too late. It takes a long time to pass an amendment, as well. At present, the vast majority of Americans are not in favor of 16-year-olds voting: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters favor lowering the legal national voting age from 18 to 16. Seventy-four percent (74%) are opposed.”

How long will that last? The Democrats are beginning to try to norm the idea and get us all used to it. Just as an example, there was this in the WaPo from a year ago, in which the case is being made for the benefits of lowering the voting age:

There are two good reasons to reduce the voting age. First, it is likely to help young people establish the habit of voting lifelong. Second, as my recently published research shows, it makes their parents more likely to vote as well.

I don’t give a rat’s patootie about either. I’m in favor of protecting people’s right to vote if they are non-felon citizens. They shouldn’t have to leap over extraordinary hurdles or face great obstacles to voting, either. But other than that, it’s their decision, as well as their responsibility. Adults are adults, and they don’t need to be coaxed into voting. Children shouldn’t be voting. The idea that children should be allowed to vote in order to make voting a habit, and or in order to coax their reluctant parents into voting, holds zero weight with me.

The Democrats feel, of course, that this entire enterprise will result in an enormous political advantage for them. And so it might. But it is also absurd and ill-conceived on its face. But don’t make the mistake of not taking it seriously.

[NOTE: I wondered who Burgess of Texas is, and why he was the sole Republican voting for it. So I looked it up, and here is his reason, apparently:

Those who pay taxes should have a voice in our democracy. As a teen, I worked & paid taxes. This week I voted for an amdt that would give young adults the right to vote – it failed by a wide margin. I support policies that encourage work & this could be part of the conversation.

Oh really, Rep. Burgess? As the author of the article where I found that quote says:

What about those who don’t pay taxes? What about those who work but don’t make enough to pay taxes? Let’s have that conversation.

No, we won’t be having that conversation. But Burgess’s reasoning appears extremely flawed, to say the least.]

Better eat your eggs quickly…

The New Neo Posted on by

…before they decide they’re not good for you again.

That article, about the back-and-forth and back-and-forth on eggs and cardiovascular health, illustrates what’s wrong with most nutritional research in humans. Way too many uncontrolled variables. A reliance on self-reports.

No wonder the results are so contradictory.

Some people think they have the answers. But even a lot of the people who are trying desperately to eat healthfully have trouble figuring out what that might entail. Everyone else has given up and shrugged.

Some people eat whatever they please. Some of them live a long and happy life; some don’t. Some people restrict themselves rigorously. Some of them live a long and happy life; some don’t.

I’m not a huge egg fan. But I like them now and then. I especially like deviled eggs, but what a pain they are to make. I’ve read about a thousand articles on the best way to peel hard-boiled eggs, and yet I’ve never found a foolproof method.

New Zealand reacts by calling for more gun bans

The New Neo Posted on by

I really don’t see how this reaction will have any real effect on curbing violence:

The estimated quarter of a million gun owners across this largely quiet, peaceful South Pacific country, many of them dedicated hunters, are bracing for what are likely to be significant reforms to New Zealand’s firearm laws. Leaders have hinted the changes will impact the proliferation and availability of semiautomatic weapons in particular.

The changes, agreed to in principle by the country’s coalition government Monday – just 72 hours after the deadliest act of gun violence in New Zealand history – put the country in line with others that have taken swift action following tragedy within their borders. Details of the changes will be announced within the week, and must be passed by parliament…

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled the massacre “the worst act of terrorism on our shores” and immediately promised swift action, calling for gun laws to be changed. Her declarations have been celebrated by many in New Zealand, some of whom had no idea that military-style semiautomatic weapons were so prolific in a country famously known for its extremely low murder rate.

Let’s pause for a moment to scratch our heads in collective wonderment. I believe that even before my political change, even back when I was what I then considered to be a typical liberal, I would have found that last sentence rather odd. It seems to me that logic would dictate that if “military style semiautomatic weapons” (whatever “style” might mean) are so prolific in a country famous for its low murder rate, then the presence of military style semiautomatic weapons is unlikely to be the cause of a high murder rate. Plenty of other factors come into play.

Now, if New Zealand banned only that sort of weapon—however such weapons might ultimately be defined—it probably wouldn’t stop people from arming themselves, and so whatever deterrent value an armed populace presents would still be operating. But gun control enthusiasts rarely stop at one sort of weapon. Their goals are much bigger.

It goes almost without saying that criminals and terrorists will continue to get weapons, if not legally then illegally. But that doesn’t seem to be an argument that convinces gun control enthusiasts of much of anything, either. New Zealand may be just beginning to go down a well-worn road:

The Port Arthur massacre in Australia in 1996 shook the continent, changed gun legislation the Pacific nation, strictly restricting self-loading rifles and other weapons.

A buyback program destroyed thousands of guns and high-capacity magazines. A shooting at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, that same year also prompted a campaign for tighter restrictions on firearms, which led to a virtual ban on civilian ownership of handguns.

Great, just great. Disarm law-abiding citizens entirely, so that now the whole country is vulnerable. It’s not my impression that Scotland was especially riven by terrorism or violence to begin with, so this may not come back to haunt them. But it sounds mighty dangerous to me to disarm law-abiding people in general.

And then there’s the extreme of registering all firearms:

New Zealand, like the United States, also has no requirement for gun owners to register their weapons, unlike many countries in the world.

Again, there are ways to get weapons outside any system that requires registration. What’s more, registration is sometimes used by tyrannical regimes to perform a sweeping confiscation of a citizenry’s guns, in particular of the guns of these they deem enemies [see NOTE II below]. The Founders understood the importance of an armed populace; many modern people have failed to heed the warnings of history.

The New Zealand article ends this way:

The government’s decision, he said, has been in part motivated by the frequency of mass shootings in the United States, which has among the most lax gun laws in the world.

“There is a baseline determination not to go down the American road,” he said.

That presupposes, of course, that the US has a terrible record of gun shootings, and that the number here per capita is extraordinarily high compared to that of other countries, at least other first world countries not undergoing civil war. Ah, but with so many things, it depends how you choose to crunch those numbers:

Even when we use coding choices that are most charitable to Lankford, such as excluding any cases of insurgencies or battles over territory, his estimate of the US share of shooters falls from 31 percent to 1.43 percent. It also accounts for 2.1 percent of murders, and 2.88 percent of their attacks. All these are much less than the United States’ 4.6 percent share of the population.

Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.

[NOTE I: We have reason to believe that more gun bans, and then a reaction to those gun bans, are what the shooter wished. More specifically, I’m talking about some quotes I read from his manifesto, which I’m finding difficult to find right now because Googling for anything connected with gun rights and this shooter seems to only yield a slew of articles about how New Zealand is stepping up its gun control efforts in the wake of the killings. If I had more time I could find the quote, but it was about his desire to inflame and further polarize the debates about gun control, and to ultimately spark an actual war between right and left over this issue and other issues such as immigration (a hot war rather than a cold one).]

[NOTE II: The question of how (and how effectively) the Nazis used the Weimar republic’s gun registration laws—laws meant to protect the Jews, actually—to disarm the Jews of Germany, as well as to disarm any group the Nazis thought would be a threat, has caused an enormous amount of debate. I’m not going to be covering the issue in any depth in this particular post, but I find the side that says the Nazis used the law quite effectively to be far more convincing. It’s a long, involved, complex debate, but I refer you to this shorter and this longer article, and to this for a summary of the critiques. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, by the way.]

[NOTE III: See this for a discussion of the current state of gun laws in New Zealand.]

Seeing earth from space

The New Neo Posted on by

This experience must be enthralling:

After the groundbreaking test flight, we caught up with Moses to learn about what it was like to see the curvature of the Earth and experience weightlessness in actual space. We also wanted to know how she will use this flight to improve Virgin Galactic’s future customer experience. The company, which promises quick flights to the edge of space, has sold hundreds of tickets on the VSS Unity to paying customers. And as the chief astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic, Moses will be responsible for training hopeful passengers for the flight she just experienced…

“I felt like the Earth was so beautiful, but even more so than you can describe or can be imagined. I happened to fly on a day where we had snow on the mountains in the southwestern United States. And I remember vividly that appearance of glistening white mountaintops and blue Pacific Ocean and the green of the Earth. I told someone the other day I felt like Earth was wearing her diamonds for us that day, because it was so, so glistening and sharp.

“It just took my breath away. It was amazing. I hope everyone can see it…

“You know the Earth was so curved and the ocean was so massive. I felt like we were just suspended with this God’s-eye view of the world. It was just sharp and beautiful…

“I do feel very much more connected to myself and the people around me and planet Earth. I’m one of those glass-half-full, people-are-good, Earth-is-lovely kind of people. And I feel that even more so now.”

I well remember when we first saw photos of earth taken from space. Even the photos were enough to give a little of that feeling.