PMC Commentary

This has got to stop

Not that it makes much difference, but RealClearPolitics' readout of the Emerson poll is incorrect; Harris leads by the same Marist margin of 2 points (50-48, when rounded). It's the second of those statements that has to stop, not rounding errors. A less reliable pollster has Harris 3 points ahead — again, not that it makes much difference.

Remember, national polls are often dismissed in favor of battleground polling, which certainly has its own uses. Yet national polling also reflects the general levels of partisan support across those battleground states. And Democratic nominees require more than 1 or 2-point leads nationally to carry the Electoral College. One can always hope that all the pollsters have it all wrong, which could, in fact, be the case. I, for one, nevertheless prefer a little more statistical leg up, and a lot more leg showing.  

Both surveys are of likely voters. Among Marist's respondents, 10% think they know whom they'll vote for but could change their minds, and 4% (almost unbelievably) are entirely open. Same survey, the third entry is worrisome. (No party ID surveying by Emerson.)

Both polls have Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot by only 1 0r 2 points. After all, who really wants to give up this Republican House majority that passes no legislation, investigates every official whose name comes with a D, wants to impeach half of them, and calls as its own more psychopaths and clinically tested morons than any other criminal organization in U.S. history.

And not just Jeff Bezos

Yesterday we visited Seattle's Museum of History and Industry, which, by the way, is the finest museum I've ever explored. Its displays are superb, from the largest, such as the U.S. Mail biplane below, to the roulette wheel operated in a gambling establishment run by one of the city's earlier "entrepreneurs" — operated in the sense that the gaming house owner rigged it, plus he marked his cards. (Not much different from the early entrepreneurial spirit of Standard Oil, Google and Amazon.) Count me shocked to then read that this sporting gentleman was gunned down on one of his unluckier days.

The first image comes from a kind of cubicle the museum has in which you take a seat, face a camera and then you enter a "cool idea" you might have for an improved world. Your photo and genius then go up on a wall displaying others' thoughts. My idea may be "cool" and unquestionably it would benefit the world but it's in no way innovative or brilliant — only just. The number of words consumed by a visitor revealing (or repeating, in my case) the globe's next blockbuster idea is limited. So I must explain here that Jeff's marginal tax bracket would apply to unearned income as well. Modern moguls take in very little income, since the taxes derived might actually help people. Instead they shovel stocks options into their obesely bloated, piggish bank accounts, so to speak.       

Trump's appeal? He can explain complex issues in simple terms

@kamalahq

bro what

♬ original sound - Kamala HQ

For computer historians

Wednesday my daughter, Ellie, took me along to the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington, to scout the Visitor Center, where she'll be holding an event for members of the press in a couple weeks. Microsoft is the major client of an event planning firm for which Ellie works. This photo is of a prehistoric Excel program (called MultiPlan, 1982) — initially the only software marketed by Microsoft; run on a Mac computer — followed incrementally by Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Mail.
This shot is of Bill Gates and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allens' earliest-known printout of their code, "BASIC" (1975), found years later behind a file cabinet in a Harvard computer lab. For commercial distribution, the code was placed on paper tape (shown) and read into the buyer's computer.     

But I'm still a Mac guy, even if I can no longer afford them.

Harris' Michigan problem

Sometimes it's not low-information voters who infuriate but intensely tuned-in activists. Presently they're on display in Michigan as Exhibit A of blockheaded strategery.

The state has the largest Arab-American population in the nation, and its leaders are putting Kamala Harris through their own little hell. They're enraged by the Biden administration's sustained support of the terrorist state of Israel, and that, I can find no cause to criticize.  

First came the scorched-earth invasion of the Gaza Strip — current body count, 42,500 —and now its "ground incursion" into Lebanon, as Politico delicately calls Israel's preliminary re-colonization. We'll watch the body count of innocent Lebanese rise as well.

For Harris, the acute political problem is that, as Politico also notes, "Michigan’s large Lebanese Christian population is now just as angry as Palestinian Americans." So last night she met with "Arab and Muslim leaders, in what WaPo described as an 'ongoing effort to stem defections from a pivotal group of voters.'"

What is it these leaders demand? The impossible. Yesterday, the head of the recent "Uncommitted" group, Abbas Alawieh, evidently spoke for all when he posted on Twitter: "What we need right now is for [Harris] to specifically say that as president she will respect international humanitarian and U.S. law and stop sending the Israeli military weapons for war crimes."

Their initial demand — that she "respect international humanitarian[ism]" — is already met. Although the second and third demands would coherently fulfill the first, politically, and especially in the grip of a presidential campaign, for Harris to announce that she as president would terminate all arms to Israel would also terminate her path to the White House.

Essentially what Arab and Muslim activists are demanding is that Kamala Harris do the right thing now, which would feel ever so good, in exchange for handing the election to Donald Trump, who would do everything wrong and feel precisely like the catastrophe it is. On Day One he'd become the activists worst enemy, over whom they'd have zero influence.

I'll never understand how so many among the grown, intelligent, politically engaged can be so extraordinarily stupid.

A.I.'s human imbeciles

This is wild. My daughter's partner has a keen knowledge of all things computer, the man has even built two fully functioning, 32GB RAM computers at home. He also keeps up on AI developments. Last night he said he had entered this site's URL into one of the AIs he works with and gave it instructions to create a two-person commentary on the site's current page. What's wild is how humanlike the discussion sounds, and the program picked up on more context than I thought possible — since it hasn't a clue as to what it's talking about. It also feels the need to gush about the writer; I guess that's meant to keep users coming back. For that I apologize. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear a minute or two of what AI is already capable of.

For now you can click the link and a separate page should appear with audio.

Download Untitled notebook 12

(I must have done something wrong when I embedded the code for this traditional audio format. And Boy Wonder isn't here. He will be later, and my error will be corrected. I'M THE HUMAN IMBECILE.)

A peek into the bizarrest of Trumpian brains

For those of you wise enough to avoid Twitter, or perhaps drop by only on occasion, I thought you might like being updated on its continuing degradation under Elon Musk. "Mr. Roomba" from Arizona may be among the most extreme of the extremist far-right crowd which Elon encourages to dwell in his online neighborhood; a place where they can plant tents and fly massive Trump flags as proof of their crimson cultism.

Yet even though Mr. Roomba has clearly achieved the very highest level of inverted Buddhist enlightenment, coming out of his meditations raving about U.N. soldiers invading the U.S., if you did drop by Twitter more often you'd see that Steve here is but the slightest degree crazier than his fellow extremists.

All day every day the dedicated Trumpers go on in demonstrable sincerity about the Harris-Biden administration smuggling "illegals" in by plane or just waving them across the border, where they'll vote in next month's election. Otherwise Harris has already rigged the election in every which way, they say, while also celebrating Trump's coming landslide. These are but the tip of the sludge-slide you'll find on Twitter. We always knew the clinical wingnuts were out there, just not so damn many of them.  

I left Steve as much help as I could: "Steve. Oh, Steve. This is either a parody of Trumpian paranoia or it's the real thing and super severe, I might add. Proceed accordingly."

A good time to take a look at voters in North Carolina

Because disastrous North Carolina is in the news and because Trump's Project 2025 would have rendered North Carolina even more disastrous, here's a timely look at the state's likely voters. This High Point University Survey Research Center poll, released yesterday, was conducted 20 Sept.-29 Sept., thus capturing four days of disaster-induced opinion.  

These topline numbers are nothing new; they closely track many other polls' findings. I show them only to further show that NC's likely voters have a fair level of situational awareness, in that the GOP half has turned on the madman Mark Robinson. Yet they strap on the blinders again when asked about Trump. I guess Mark needed more time to build a larger cult following.

Below are the issues that likely voters gave Kamala Harris the advantage in handling. Note that her biggest spread is on climate change. Given that North Carolina is presently underwater, that Trump would have exacerbated the catastrophe (recall the above; these likely voters appear to be in touch with realities, such as Robinson and probably Project 2025) and that Harris holds a whopping 18-point lead on handing climate change, logic would dictate that the two nominees wouldn't be tied.

Same question, different issues, and where Trump leads in handling them. Here you'll note that he does much better in the categories of "masculine" protection and in the "manly" fighting of bad guys. This despite Kamala having done both as a tough prosecutor while Donald, out of abundant caution, might still have been hiding from his Selective Service board.  

I was about to bring you comprehensive results on issues of character, such as which nominee has the "right" presidential temperament, is honest and truthful and gives a hoot about us. Alas, my platform is still having technical problems. No matter, I'm sure you already guessed the results. In the general category of who's the decent human being, Donald Trump never had a chance.

What Trump would do for his supporters whose homes are disastrously carried away

Politico reports that Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Fox News the other day to say that Congress "'will have to address' passing more disaster aid at some point in the wake of the devastation across the Southeast."

Not with Trump in office, you won't. He'll be exercising fiscal responsibility by reducing or eliminating outrageous government expenditures such as disaster relief while he's racking up another $5 trillion of national indebtedness via tax cuts for the 1% with dry, high-rise penthouses.

Before the Trump administration's Reichsleiters are let loose on vital federal programs that assist in natural disasters, they'll be put through a rigorous course on the assorted splendors of the 920-page Project 2025. Just the gist is all they'll need, and that can be covered in a few seconds. Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Common Sense described the Project as the essence of "ideological desire [overpowering] political pragmatism." 

With that mission in mind, the Reichsleiters can then go about gutting the kind of crisis support that Speaker Johnson had in mind. Scientific American recently wrote an overview of what Trump's guiding ideological document would unpragmatically do. The points are in the magazine's words. 

* Weaken the government's response to disasters by slashing public rebuilding money

* Phase out the program that provides almost all of the nation’s flood insurance under the Federal Emergency Management Agency

* Replace the flood insurance program "with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program"

* Terminate disaster-preparation grants to states

* Stop or reduce aid after smaller and more prevalent disasters 

* Shrink or dismantle the National Weather Service

* Commercialize the forecasts it now provides for free

Why was the National Flood Insurance Program created in the first place? Private insurers wouldn't cover flood damage. Trump would take us back to those pre-1968 days. Chad Bargains of the Association of State Floodplain Managers said Trump's goal is "unrealistic. There are areas where the private market [for property insurance] is all but nonexistent because of the hazards that are there.”

There would, however, be one poetic justice in thousands of rural homes being flooded and swept away without hope of rebuilding. Virtually all the former, Trump-rallying homeowners would have seeded their own destruction when they pulled that lever on 5 November. 

A campaign stunner - JD Vance answers a question. The Big one, no less.

V-P nominee Tim Walz couldn't do it. At Tuesday night's debate he asked JD Vance, "Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?" Replied V-P nominee JD, "I'm focused on the future." (He then focused on a Kamala Harris something-or-other from four years ago.)

And reporters couldn't do it. One of them asked JD yesterday why he had wormed his way out of the question the day before. Before nonresponding again with — you got it — "I’m focused on [anything but this question]," JD moaned that "the media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago." That's true. For four years Trump has tried to kill the story, though he has found it unkillable, given the media's pounding perseverance.

But a jokester could do it! — because JD's a joke. Comedian Jason Selvig pried an answer out of Mr. Transparency, at long last. (Video on Twitter, 27 secs.) "Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?"asked Selvig. "Yes,” replied Vance. "He did win," persisted Selvig in search of confirmation. And he got it. "Yep," Vance again replied.     

The jokester then persisted too far. One truth a week is a heavy-enough load for JD. To expect two truths in one day is sheer folly. I mean, c'mon, Trump's sidekick isn't Atlas carrying the weight of the heavens and Apollo, Greek and Roman god of honesty, on his back. The universe, maybe, but certainly not the terribly burdensome heft of a trifle less lying, dodging and stonewalling.       

What was Selvig's intolerable persistence? "If your opponent gets more votes, will you concede?" This battle betwixt wits and a weasel was morphing personal. So after Selvig's thrust, Vance parried, "I really feel bad for you, man."  

He should feel bad for all of us, in view of what he and Donald are doing. But again, c'mon. That would add compassion to already impossible honesty, the total weightiness of which would crush Mr. JD Vance into a hillbilly eulogy.

How inflation rains down sometimes, as do Republican lies about it

Whenever a Democrat is in the White House and his already unbearably high price of gasoline becomes even more unbearable, the tortured phizogs of the Borglike Republican Collective begin sputtering Outrage on behalf of The Common Man, the Rs' singular concern.

These selfless protests of the Democratic president's fecklessness radiate throughout the republic, and soon, Americans of all classes and all political persuasions are cursing the White House occupant for their unbearably painful, unfueled-up anguish.

Meanwhile, one crucial element behind the nation's outrage goes unmentioned by the Democrat, which I find quite odd. These, it seems, are the words not to be spoken by the Democrat, preferably in stentorian tones:

U.S. presidents don't set and cannot control the price of oil, whence your gallons of gasoline. Other than cartels' unilateral production outputs and price-fixing, international events can swiftly disrupt oil's market stability — disruptions such as ... 

Middle East diplomacy in action:

After Iran rained down a missile barrage on Israel in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah leader, Israel vowed to retaliate against Iran for having retaliated, which will compel Iran to retaliate for Israel's retaliation, to be followed by Israel's retaliation against Iran for having retaliated for the last — but not final — retaliation.   

Middle East diplomacy's affect on American consumers:

A barrel of Brent crude had been trading at about $71 until yesterday, when Israel announced its next jingoistic act. This raised the price modestly, to around $76, reported The NY Times. The weak increase was largely due to less Chinese demand and oil's higher production, mostly by the U.S.

So far, then, Americans have been lucky. But weak increases could pump themselves up to stronger ones if Israel hits Iran's exporting ports, or if Western sanctions on Iran are screwed down tighter, or Iran hits oil facilities in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates or jams up the Strait of Hormuz.

And, as Bush II's Donald Rumsfeld once brilliantly observed, we know there are things out there we don't know. We do know that yesterday's 3% price increase came on top of the previous day's 5% hike, as the Times' DealBook reported. Together they could suggest the onset of a grinding pattern. One research firm has projected increases from $13 to almost $30 a barrel, depending on the unknowns we know.

All of which is to say, and say it in the simplest as well as most honest way, that a lot of American consumers only show their ignorance of exceptionally elementary, easily understood facts of oil's economics. Their ignorance is buttressed and safeguarded by feigning Republican pols, but there's also the enduring absence of Democrats' simple, honest, easily understood rebuttals.

Accompanying their generic outrage is the Rs' principal line of attack on Democratic administrations — their almost criminal negligence in the production of more U.S. oil. But worse than the lie is Democratic presidents rebutting it. They defensively enhance the lie's credibility by playing Republicans' game of this vacuous distraction.   

A politically ruinous distraction from? See above. A Democratic president saying as often as necessary, Listen up, people of America, neither I nor a Republican president can set or control the price of oil. Those haranguing Republicans are lying to you, big time. Oil is a global commodity, produced globally and traded in global markets. We chief executives of the United States have no power over other producers and speculators who are market-involved.

Now, do you, good people of America, prefer Republican lies over the plain simple truth I just gave to you? About the price of gas, Republicans have been taking you on trips to the most ludicrous of falsehoods. They know it, as do I, but they sure don't want you to know it. Do you also prefer rewarding them by believing and repeating to friends and family the barefaced lies about the price of gasoline that they've been peddling for years? And destroying your faith in the country you love? 

I think not. So next time you hear a Republican politician huckstering this same old lie, tell him to go soak his shameless head in a barrel of Brent crude. Tell him you know better.

My Blue Whale peeves

These peeves are anything but pet size. Not because they're common grammatical errors — except for No. 3 — rather, the people committing them — especially No. 1 — should know better.

1. Axios, on GOP senators hoping that Trump stays out of their conference leadership contest: "Why it matters: None of them know — or it's a damn good secret — whether" he will. 

Political journalists can wield only words, so they should know how to use them, don't you think? "None of them knows" if he'll stay out (he won't). None is singular, no matter what Webster says. It seems the lexicographers in Springfield, Mass., need read but one instance of any unorthodox usage — i.e., poor grammar — and presto, it's acceptable. (Webster even accepts irregardless!)

2. Quoted by Axios in the matter above: "I said, 'Sir, if I was you, I would stay out of the race, because there's no win for you in this'" — Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.)

"Sir, if I were you...." You're a United States senator, Senator, and as a member of the do-nothing party you should carve out at least one defiant act of doing something — if nothing else, perhaps be a role model for young Oklahomans? A suggestion: use proper English. I never attended high school so I knew nothing of the subjunctive until learning about it as a college freshman studying another language that uses the same verb tenses as English. If I could learn the mysterious refinements of the subjunctive, surely you can, Senator.

3. I hate to do this, but here's Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz speaking of his and his wife's hopes for fertility success: They became "Gwen and I's" hopes.

My daughter heard Mr. Walz say this recently. She has told me since her high school days (she actually went) that those in her age group were dumbfoundingly using I's instead of the possessive my. I tended to write off this rather bizarre linguistic invention as one among only a small, local group of teenagers. But then she began hearing it at college — and now a grown man potentially in line for the U.S. presidency is using it.  

I am not a language prude. Really. But there are limits, particularly ones that should apply to professional people. After all, speaking like a well-educated person is one reason the whole bunch of them gets to call themselves "professionals." So write and talk as though you're one, okay? Good. That's done. 

Say what, Donald?

Of course he was lying. No news there. Nevertheless it's helpful to recall some of the moments in which his lying could put an end to what has been called the American experiment — whether democracy can long prevail.

I have nothing to do, as you know and as [Kamala Harris] knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it, purposely. I'm not going to read it.

— Donald Trump, presidential debate, 10 Sept. 2024

His month-ago disavowal conflicted a bit with his 2022 keystone address to the organization that acted as Project 2025's juggernaut:

"[We've been] working closely with many of the great people at Heritage over the four incredible years that we’ve worked with you a lot.... They’re going to work on some other things that are going to be very exciting, I think. I think maybe the most exciting of all....

"The critical job of institutions, such as Heritage to lay the groundwork. And Heritage does such an incredible job at that.... This is a great group. And they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that’s coming. That’s coming."

If you'd prefer to hear this in Trump's own flawlessly delivered words, and in only 28 seconds, be my guest.

Trump, in April '22, keynoted a Heritage dinner as it began work on Project 2025:

“This is a great group & they’re going to lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America." pic.twitter.com/2ni0XESMci

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) July 11, 2024

By the way, Trump used "incredible" 16 times in his little speech, and "great," "greater," "greatest" or "greatness" 57 times.

One insignificant yet critical expenditure not made by his campaign is a thesaurus, for ages 6 to 10. No strange, befuddling, polysyllabic words for the great Donald Trump.

The Cipher-Walz debate

I caught most of the debate on a plane. It went as expected: Tim Walz was exposed as an inveterate liar because of a misstatement about a 1989 visit to Hong Kong, thus disqualifying himself from the vice presidency, while JD Vance shone through as a veritable model of probity in this beatific age of Trumpian authenticity, thus wrapping himself in future presidential garb.

Other than that — and I'm so sorry for this whiplash — the following are my sincerest reactions to the debate, which I sent off first thing this morning to a friend who had commented to me via email this morning: 

"I'm just hoping that JD's wonderful, beautiful little children got to bed on time. That worried the hell out of me throughout half the debate as those wonderful, beautiful children's father was on national TV lying like Joseph Goebbels, and with the same sentiments. I also hope the little lovelies don't meet the same fate as Joe G.'s did."

Post-debate I sat suffered through MSNBC's panel discussion. (Not my choice; a flight attendant switched it on for me and I saw no way to change channels.) The discussants represented the network's usual diversity of opinion; there was Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Joy Reid, Nicolle Wallace and Chris Hayes. 

Perhaps I'm a rare duck, in that I care very little about reading or hearing the same opinions I have, as were expressed by the panel members. From that I learn nothing. Nor did I prefer to hear a verbal fisticuffs between blue and red. What I did want to hear was how the latter would defend the 90 minutes of sheer humbuggery dished out by Trump's errand boy. Intel from the enemy is always more valuable than feel-good reinforcements of what's already known.   

On the upside, the Harris-Walz campaign immediately cut this 30-second ad from the debate, which packs a pretty good punch. 

Last night, what JD Vance didn’t say said everything. pic.twitter.com/0vmMwr0f37

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 2, 2024

The Rime of the Ancient Flyboy

Getting a later start on the day than I had planned. I'll blame it on Delta — left Bloomington Ill. at 4 p.m. for Seattle, but first we had to to flap our way to Atlanta before crossing the continent in the other direction, arriving at destination 12:30 a.m. (my time).  But I got this much out of it; a decent shot of the Peach State's capital city. Important geographical note: To the best of my knowledge, Atlanta doesn't really sit at a 3º angle.