Don’t need Nostradamus in this situation, apparently. With 0% of votes in, the New York Times has called Massachusetts for the Candidate of Virtue:
They similarly called VT, CT, and MD with 0% of votes counted. RI was more efficient, apparently, because fully 1% of votes were tallied at 8:19 pm when I checked and the NYT had called the state for Kamala:
(Florida at the same time had 90% of votes counted.)
Looks like Republicans have taken over nearly all of the U.S. Senate, at least measured by floor space, with just one victory:
Could the person who calls himself “Jim Justice” be Jabba the Hutt’s cousin in disguise?
According to official media reports, Tim Walz was the most able of all American governors, yet at 9:47 pm central, nearly two hours after polls closed, his/her/zir/their state had counted just 5 percent of its ballots. Neighboring Iowa’s polls also closed at 8 pm and, despite malgoverance by Republican Kim Reynolds, was able to count 62 percent of the votes.
If Democrats are better at governing than Republicans, why aren’t Democrat-run states able to run elections as efficiently?
Update: the forecast gets darker.
From X: “If this keeps up Democrats are going to have to ask themselves why the hell they voted for this woman in the primaries.”
I spent Election Day-1 in Kissimmee, Florida, home to the Monument of States, which includes (I think) a rock from every state:
A closer look at some of the components:
If you’re going to watch election returns on TV and say to your friends, “A lot of these states are sending in a nominee who is as dumb as a rock” then this monument shows you the end result of each state sending a rock!
The definition of “state” seems flexible:
The folks who placed a time capsule here in 1993 for opening in 2043 didn’t factor in Science according to Democrats in the Northeast and California who say that all of Florida will be under water by then.
The city is officially at an elevation of 72′ above sea level so if the time capsule can’t be readily accessed there will be a lot of problems in Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. as well. It would be a shame if these murals were inundated:
The trip to Kissimmee was for aircraft maintenance and, therefore, I spent the whole day interacting with line guys, front desk gals, aircraft mechanics, and waitstaff. I sussed out that nearly all of these working class folks were Trump supporters. They believed that their standard of living had been reduced by Bidenflation and they didn’t want to compete for wages and apartment rent with another 10 million migrants. Democrats’ “tax the rich” promises did not appeal to them, despite the fact that they actually live the inequality that others only talk about. A line guy making $20/hour may be pumping Jet A into a $70 million Gulfstream. Why wouldn’t they be excited about a bigger government funded by taking stuff away from people whom they’ve met and who plainly don’t need it? It’s because they don’t expect to get any money or benefits from the government. Most of these folks earn too little to afford to have kids while maintaining what they consider to be a reasonably comfortable existence and, thus, they’re excluded from many of the most expensive government programs, such as public school and the various child tax credits. At the same time, they earn too much to qualify for the free housing, health care, food, and smartphone packages that recent migrants enjoy.
(The Census Bureau says that 32 percent of the people who live in Kissimmee are foreign-born and that over 70 percent of the residents are “Hispanic”.)
Returning to the election theme, it is understandable that an American might be passionate about who will spend nearly half of our GDP and who will decide whether teenagers get gender affirming surgery. But we shouldn’t let this interfere with our emotional connections to friends and family. I was sad to hear that a nonbinary progressive Democrat resident of Brooklyn found out that his conservative parents in an Upstate New York district voted Trump-Vance. He/she/ze/they said that he/she/ze/they is going to stop visiting their graves.
(Alternative from the same region: The cost of hosting migrants in New Jersey has been so high under the Biden-Harris administration that the Mafia had to lay off three judges.)
Barack Obama says that each of us should vote for a politician who shares our racial identify, e.g., Blacks for Blacks and whites for whites (video): “Kenyan raised by white mother in Hawaii urges Chicago’s [B]lack men to vote for Indian woman raised in Canada”.
It seems, however, that many of us aren’t willing to heed the advice of this Nobel Peace laureate. Here’s some potentially troublesome data for Donald “white guy” Trump:
Narrative: Whites are the most racist and intolerant group on earth
The underlying source has a front page showing the same information over time:
With the American population overall, whites have dropped from 85 to 69 between 1964-2020 while Blacks have gone from 64 to 72. In other words, Americans overall prefer Blacks to whites and Donald Trump isn’t the Presidential candidate who identifies as “Black”.
(Why don’t Americans in general have a “warm” feeling about Asian-Americans? Why aren’t they the most-loved group by all subgroups within the U.S. and by Americans overall? What’s not to love about a neighbor who is unlikely to commit a crime and very likely to pay taxes? One can see from the above data that Kamala Harris is wise to identify as “Black” rather than “Indian” or “Asian”!)
From the same source, as government has grown to consume a larger fraction of the economy the percentage of Americans who “care a good deal” about who becomes president has increased:
Among Democrats, its a roughly 17:1 ratio of people who want a larger government to those who’d like to see a larger role for private enterprise and private spending:
It’s not just Maskachusetts… Americans in general have grown to hate those who vote for the opposing party:
Loosely related… the New York Times reminds us that there is one class of Americans that is even better than the merely Black:
Speaking of the New York Times, a white reporter lists all of the reasons “Why Is Trump Gaining With Black and Hispanic Voters?” and fails to consider the possibility that Black and Hispanic voters might be capable of rational thought and, therefore, might have concluded that Donald Trump would do a better job at running the U.S. government than his opponent would. The reporter and his/her/zir/their editors posit that Black voters might like Trump because he is entertaining or that they are filled with “resentment” about “woke cultural norms”. It’s an interesting window into the mind of the white Democratic elite!
[Walz] also pushed through a $2.6 billion infrastructure bill—the largest in state history—that will benefit residents and businesses.
This is a news article, not opinion. So the Wall Street Journal reports it as an established fact that taking $2.6 billion from individuals who would have invested it or spent it privately and giving it to government contractors “WILL benefit” residents. In other words, the WSJ is certain that the government will spend this money better than individuals would have. Therefore, a Reagan-style appeal to shrink government should be rejected by essentially all American voters (readers of Democrat-affiliated media, such as the NYT, certainly aren’t going to argue that limiting government spending is beneficial).
Separately, how will the $2.6 billion in Minnesota taxpayer funds be spent? A press release says that “Black, Brown, and Native communities” will benefit more than second-rate white people:
I think this is why sharp-penciled guys such as Paul Ryan have been sidelined or forced out of government and why Congress will never stop borrowing and spending (which also dooms us to at least moderate inflation, I think). If tax-and-spend is great then borrow-and-spend is at least good.
Readers: Are there any candidates running for election this week on your ballot who seriously advocate for a smaller government?
Given the upcoming election this week, I thought it would be a good time to look at how the credentialed class perceives the world. These are the folks who determine what appears in our media and, ultimately, what policies get implemented in Washington, D.C. Where can we find the folks who’ve bubbled to the top of our meritocracy? At the bookstore! The pictures below are from the Barnes & Noble in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, August 4, 2024 (folks in Florida, of course, are not at the heart of national policymaking, but I think this Barnes & Noble is representative of what bookstores nationwide offer to the righteous).
First, a few happy images:
(The Wealth of Refugees (Oxford University Press) is my favorite. There has never been a situation in which Country A has offered to pay Country B for some refugees. Canada doesn’t offer to pay the U.S. for a share of the flow across our southern border, for example. In fact, there are countries that are willing to pay fines to the EU rather than accept refugees, thus suggesting that refugees have a negative value. At market prices, in other words, our four-year-old minivan is worth more than all of the world’s refugees put together. The author (“Alexander Betts is Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, and William Golding Senior Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, at the University of Oxford.”), who no doubt hasn’t been willing to pay to get a refugee in his/her/zir/their own household, apparently has a much more sophisticated way of establishing value than the market.)
Then some delicious schadenfreude about how badly Republicans are doing:
But the core of the political book section is mostly about fear. If we can’t get abortion care at any stage of a pregnant person’s pregnancy on every street corner in every state, that’s a “new [and bad] America”:
American democracy is under “threat” and/or very nearly already replaced by fascism or National Socialism (“Nazi”).
One thing that might help save democracy is making sure that peasants get all of their information from sources approved by the elites:
We also need to get rid of a frightening and dangerous religion, especially if practiced without supervision from city-dwelling Democrats, that threatens our national well-being:
The news isn’t all terrible because some brave souls are fighting back:
A restatement of Joe Biden’s wisdom, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black”:
Harvard professors share their wisdom at a $400,000 discount from list price and without the need to reside in a pro-Hamas encampment. From the Amazon page about this book:
They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.
The only way to preserve our democracy, in other words, is to eliminate most of its institutions because they’re “outdated”. (I guess the nomination of Kamala Harris, for whom nobody voted in a primary, is a decent first step.)
If a peasant were to vote for a conservative this coming week, it is because he/she/ze/they is a fool who has been taken in by a transparent grift:
My take-away is that fear seems to be the best way to motivate someone to buy a book or cast a vote. Peasants are promised almost nothing in exchange for a correct vote, but are threatened with catastrophe if they vote incorrectly.
Suppose that I do send in the requested $60. Kamala Harris has thus far raised $1.4 billion from her billionaire supporters. Will the $60 additional actually change what they can do over the next four days? How? Or is there some other reason for trying to convert me into a financial supporter at the peasant level?
The above email came two hours after a request for $47:
We need everyone, honestly. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for an expensive final push.
$47 to help get voters to the polls — voters we need to win.
$47 to make sure Trump never returns to the White House.
$47 one last time before the election. For Vice President Harris. For our democracy.
(They say “honestly”. Does that mean that previous statements from Harris and/or Walz were dishonest? Also, “our democracy” is at stake. Is that a message for the truly passionate anti-Trumpers to spend $47 on ammunition?)
At 5:23 pm today:
“our very democracy is at stake”! Where is a Latter-day Thomas Matthew Crooks to save our very democracy?
There were quite a few more today. My favorite has a subject line of “Your neighbors in Cambridge are counting on you!” (the direct mail hucksters have figured out that we moved to Florida; why couldn’t the political machines?)
At 12:14 pm, the price of virtue had fallen to just $1: “That is the donation we’re asking you to make directly to Kamala Harris’s campaign for president today. Yes, we’re lowering our ask to just $1 in the hopes you’ll chip in for the first time.”
So… with just a few days to go before what used to be considered the “big day” (before mail-in ballots and early voting) why does a $1 donation help? Why does a $60 donation help? Is the idea to build habitual donors so that money can be spent on the 2026 election?
(I can’t show any comparable examples from the Trump-Vance campaign because either they aren’t emailing out similar appeals or their computers agree with Harris-Walz’s that I am a Massachusetts progressive Democrat.)
This year we are informed that freedom dies on January 20, 2025 if the Nakba of a Trump victory occurs. Polls show that such a victory is at least possible. Here’s an Obama/Biden appointee and member of the “Harris for President National Finance Committee”:
The “Jewish community” (not to be confused with “Jews”) won’t be safe if Trump is elected (for which Doug Emhoff “slams” Trump; not to be confused with “slaps Trump”). Also remember that Andrew Weinstein’s presence on the Harris for President National Finance Committee disproves the right-wing conspiracy theory that rich Jews control American politics…
Here’s The Jewish Democratic Council of America, reminding us of the “direct threat”:
Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator. His rhetoric and actions echo Hitler, and he has twice now explicitly said that he wants his administration to mirror Hitler’s regime.
His candidacy is a direct threat to Jewish Americans.
Abortion care can be obtained merely by hopping on a Bloomberg Bus to a state, such as Maskachusetts, where abortion care for pregnant people is available at all stages of a pregnant person’s pregnancy. But the Trump Death Camps (TM) won’t be escapable via an interstate trip because they will be established on a federal basis.
Are the elites who warn of dire consequences from a second Trump presidency making a contingency plan in case the unthinkable occurs? Shouldn’t they have aircraft charters and visas set up for Americans to escape between November 6 and January 19? Evacuating the millions (or tens of millions?) who are “directly” threatened by Trump might not be doable without some advance planning, particularly because most countries defend their borders and won’t allow the undocumented to merely stroll across. Israel is plainly out as a destination for Jewish Democrats due to the country’s refusal to surrender to the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”), UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Finding a country that wants to receive oppressed Americans could be a significant challenge.
No fewer than 3 out of 130 immediate neighbors have Taylor Swift themes for Halloween decor. Here’s the best one:
And on the other side of the sidewalk:
The nighttime view:
(I hate to brag, but the above photos were taken with my new iPhone 16 Pro Max. Nobody has a better phone than I do and nobody hates to brag more than I do.)
Speaking of night photos, a house with a headless horseperson of unknown gender ID and a dragon (also of unknown gender ID):
A generally scary look:
The grim reaper and three clowns don’t seem to hang together. Can anyone think of a unifying theme? The clowns are animatronic:
Women from an Islamic society?
A neighbor with preschoolers has put an extra stroller to good use:
Try not to schedule your birthday for any time near Halloween… the scene from last weekend:
Go Big or Go Home:
Folks in the adjacent non-HOA Jupiter Heights community are famous for their Christmas displays, but they had a few fun Halloween houses:
I would love to see Jabba the Hutt as the advertising mascot for an Ozempic-style medicine.
One of our neighbors recently suffered a massive flood in their house due to a burst sink supply hose:
Readers: What material do you think we’re looking at here? A vinyl or rubber inside pipe surrounded by braided stainless steel?
All of our houses in this sub-development (within Abacoa) are 20 years old so it is possible that this supply hose had been waiting to fail for 20 years. This plumbing company says to replace the supply lines everywhere in the house every ten years, but also implies that five years is the correct interval:
The general rule of thumb is to replace all your supply line hoses every 5 years as a preventative measure to protect your home against any potential leaks. But since braided supply lines have a rubber core, we recommend that they can be replaced every 10 years.
The Fluidmaster Pro supply lines have a 10-year warranty, which presumably means that replacing after 7-8 years would be smart. A set of two is less than $20, I think, so it wouldn’t cost a lot to hit all of the sinks and toilets in a house.
Does anyone reading this have a Moen Flo AI overlord water shutoff device in his/her/zir/their home? If so, I would love to hear about it in the comments. It seems as though it would have potential to generate hassles, e.g., Family Member A is in the house taking a shower while Family Member B is outside topping off the pool, which looks to the Flo like a one-hour massive leak (it is possible to tell the Flo to sleep for a bit while one is doing something unusual with water). The Flo can be installed outdoors so long as there is an electric outlet nearby and it can latch onto 2.4 GHz WiFi (I think we can meet those requirements).
Another potential source of paranoia is erosion of copper supply lines by hot water recirculation. Apparently the pump has to be sized exactly right, which involves a lot of calculation (example). In an innumerate society such as the U.S., the inevitable result is a lot of houses being built with big pumps thrown at the recirculation system.
