There's normal math and then there's weird math. Most agreed about the normal math. The President's lead would shrink in several states once the mail-ins started to be counted. The strange math led to Trump eventually having razor thin leads in those same states with Biden eventually having the sliver in his favor. What are the odds of so many of these slivers? The normal math said a majority of the absentee ballots would favor Biden. Again most including myself accepted this. The strange math would have it though that a vast majority of absentee voters voted for Biden. Odds? Now you could make the case that Democratic voters took the pandemic more seriously and so went this route but there still has to be quite a few elderly Republican shut-ins out there too. Lastly Georgia a historically red state seemed to flip overnight. Were Georgian Republican voters so repulsed by the package of Trump's personality they threw political practicality overboard? Not likely.
For me it's a case of the weird math and the strange algebra says to check it out.
The weird math is that he lost his first election by 3 million and this time is behind by 4 million. (all cheating aliens of course)
ReplyDeleteThat weird math is known as the Electoral College. It's what we have and Chuck Todd gets all jazzed up about it. You wanna take playing with the electoral map away from him? He acts like a weatherman.
DeleteIt's all about the electoral map. Otherwise it would be one man, one vote. How boring...but democratic.
DeleteCongratulations on a new post. Just anecdotal, but regarding
ReplyDelete" a vast majority of absentee voters voted for Biden." some observers noted the voting could be predicted by the percentage
of people not wearing mask while waiting in line. BTW, I know of a few people that didn't vote for Trump this time..they liked
his administration, but not his dictatorial arrogance. Given eternal polling at 40%, it is hard to explain Trump running close to 50%. I go with the conspiracy theory that trump voters,
when contacted, were too ashamed to admit it. It is a circus, for sure.
I think you kind of have a mask fetish at this point.
DeleteAnother odd math thing. When we say the country is very polarized and divided we normally don't mean the country is a 50/50 split, exactly 50/50 with such mathematical exactitude and yet THAT is exactly what is being represented in the voting an exact polarization % of half each. Mathematically that's very strange and doesn't seem to reflect reality that voters are so exactly split down the middle. On some level the whole thing seems simulated or scripted and all the media does is shrug their shoulders and say Trump is undermining democracy by pursuing his very legal options.
ReplyDeleteThe voting suggests about 50-50. Hitler took over Germany
Deletewith only 35%. Did he undermine democracy? Look, the county clerks are working extremely hard, following the rules. Are they hoaxes, fakes, losers, suckers? I would posit not. Like accusing the medical community of driving up Covid cases to make more money. Do you believe the doctors and nurses working 16 hours a day weeks on end, exposed constantly are doing it to get rich? Ok, then
talk to our friend, a nurse in North Dakota, who worked
4 consecutive months with Covid patients. She is in the hospital with Covid as I write. You need some empathy and compassion, man. Forget the endless lies and accusations and sit back and study the data. Or not, its up to you if
you have an axe to grind. I just replied to relatives in
Switzerland who are very concerned and basically told them
don't take advice from us.
Is Biden in some kind of legal or criminal trouble?
DeleteI don't know why you're talking shit here. I've never said covid is a hoax but at the same time I try not to indulge in grim hobbies like studying every death on a graph. People also want to think of other things. It has to do with keeping your sanity. My only thing with Fauci is he has a good bedside manner but he's also a grim little man at times. Where was Cuomo's compassion and empathy man when his policies in New York State needlessly caused the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents who got infected? Sure though go on and on about some white guy without a mask having a birthday party in his backyard.
DeleteMartha Raddatz always looks like she's about to cry.
More strange math. I've been watching the networks special election coverage every night and Alaska is heavily going for Trump but for three of four nights in a row the screen says 56% of votes counted. That's after three or four nights! Are they incredibly slow there or took some days off?
ReplyDeleteModern skeptics generally and aggressively support mainstream views. Again though what are the mathematical odds of so many razor thin margins in so many states? George Stephanopoulos said last night that Trump got the second highest number of votes of any presidential candidate in history. Imbibe that. The math may simply be quirky and flukey but it's axiomatic at this point that this election needs to be looked into. If Biden were on the losing end he might have pursued some legal options too. Undermining democracy? Such hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteWell, Clinton won her election by 3 million votes. Trump, the ever quixotic loonybird, had the FBI investigate her
Deletecheating ways. Clinton just walked away. Like you, I have double standards. The GOP can cheat, can gerrymander, can
complain and can investigate every chimera. The Dems better damn well shut up, stay pristine and admit total
inferiority. Make you feel better? I'm sure president Biden will follow your advice and look into it, and as
for Trump - who is that little man behind the curtain.
No, just kidding. It is a bizarre count and the process with the pandemic, early voting, mail in voting, provisional ballots (what the heck are they) has slowed
things to a crawl and confusion everywhere.
I will concede your point if you make it that Al Gore should have become President in 2000 or at least that's a fair point to make. Didn't think I'd say that did you? Extremely close elections by their very nature are controversial. I'm simply applying the same logic here. I don't like extremely close elections. I'd rather the guy I hate win by a fair margin. It's depressing but clean.
DeleteWhich will come first, the election results or the Covid vaccine?
ReplyDeleteWell apparently NBC News is projecting a projection for a President-Elect Biden but what happened to all those provisionals that were to be counted and were supposed to go to Trump in PA?
DeleteIn other news, we note the need for jockstrap ventilation for a peculiar Covid
ReplyDeleteinfection site. Nice guy trumpbuddy pisses off own defense lawyer, who quits for less reptilian clients. What a world, Z-Man
Two interesting links there. Imagine covid being sexually transmitted. Covid is becoming an everything disease. On the second link beheading seems a little harsh. I'm detecting a little boss with the sauce here.
DeleteHow 'bout the Z-Man Projection. Black guy at work came back from his 15 minute break all happy with his smartphone in his hand and announced "It's President Joe Biden" then I bought some cat food after work.
ReplyDeletePeople in the msm act like voter fraud is some far-flung conspiracy theory. As far as conspiracy theories go it's pretty mild. I mean it's not like lizard people from Saturn.
ReplyDeleteDunno. Heard a Sasquatch hunter opine about the Saturn
DeleteLizard. Said he spotted him trotting next to Elvis.
I have no idea of how to commit voter fraud. Maybe pay some county courthouse clerk to write down 25 to 16 instead of the
ReplyDeletereal actual 10 to 31 - dump a bunch of ballots in the garbage?
Most irregularities I've heard of involve mistakes. In 2016,
the Dems had an unusally big lead. Then the election head lady
remembered she had 11,000 votes on her home computer..mostly GOP. No one complained, but it seemed a little fishy to me.
Unbelievable turn out..two highest presidential vote totals
ever between them. What comes next?
You have a higher opinion of human nature than I do. I don't want to get into those old world philosophers some of whom thought people were naturally good but that's another discussion.
DeleteWhat I find rather startling about the msm is they collectively decided almost instantaneously that there was no voter fraud. This is like working backwards drawing a conclusion first. I'm thinking it would take more than a day or two to ascertain if this is the case or not but the talking heads all agreed it was crazy talk. If after a week or two nothing is found then ok clean election.
Rich Lowry editor of the conservative National Review has been on the major networks lately basically bashing Trump well before the official projection today. Last I saw he was on NBC News the other night agreeing with the liberal talking heads and said something about Trump's "selfish interests." Hey Rich what's that brown stuff on your nose?
ReplyDeleteHave you considered that Trump wrote the book on trashing?
Delete"Loser, sucker, fake, fraud, yuuuge, crooked, low energy,
lock them all up"? Hardly presidential, more like a schoolyard bully. And like one, he loves to dish it out
and simply can't take any honest criticism. So reluctantly, Z-man, I have to disagree. the brown stuff
on Rich's nose was the unvarnished truth.
There's something to be said for being a team player. There's something else about Rich Lowry. I've been reading his columns for years and they're quite conservative pieces. You'd have issues with him but when he appears on network TV he seems to tailor his comments to appear more mainstream. He's also on the public record as saying he finds Trump's personality repugnant but he still voted for him. You still like the guy BB? He seems wishy-washy.
DeleteNever heard of the guy until your comment. But I can tolerate conservatives that aren't mean, ya know?
DeleteThe polling industry has taken a hit. In considering why, we note that polls have historically been pretty good. The only
ReplyDeletefactor I can detect is Trump and his followers. They caused
decoherence in the poll process. But how or why? That is my
poll question. :)
Maybe many pollsters have a liberal bias and they oversample certain demographics.
DeleteThey are supposedly objective professionals. I would think they dislike being wrong. But you may be right:
Deletethey could word their surveys in a biased manner subconsciously. Any idea of when the pandemic will end,
or an effective vaccine become available?
Maybe part of it is known as cognitive dissonance. In other words they can't believe such a large swath of the public would support someone they see as an asshole so maybe they simply lop that part off the results. Maybe they see it as an error so they subtract 5-7 points automatically. Dunno we should ask them. What would they say?
DeletePandemic-wise seems most of them are saying by the middle of next year things should semi-normalize. Vaccine rollout in January, buildup of here immunity over time and all that. Something tells me Westchester libraries will still be closed though.
DeleteWe disagree like 90% of the time now. If you were a woman we'd have nothing in common.
ReplyDeleteAnd your blog would be shorter. You would have no news of the wild hinterland and I would know nothing of Yonkers or
DeleteCuomo. Consider if we agreed on everything: there would be
nothing to discuss, a bit of arguing makes us think, you know, like cursive fencing, attack-defend..have a cigar etc.
So what is Trump going to do in his lame duck period? Some say
ReplyDeletehe will do something nice and boost his legacy, others opine he
may take revenge in spades.
Most important thing he did was put that woman on the court. As for the rest basically sulk.
DeleteAs you may recall, I rather liked her. I'm thinking she may be conservative, but a legal scholar and hopefully not
Deleteas entrenched as Scalia, Thomas and Kavenaugh. Judge of
character stuff: I hired a couple of women, one a born
trouble maker, the other a professional absentee. But
they were smart. Glad I did. Just saying.
Got a cigar catalog in the mail yesterday..hundreds of cigars and deals. Haven't had a cigar since the birth of last child.
ReplyDeleteWhy me?
The trend on the part of the American electorate lately has been to give presidents two terms which makes sense. Bush Jr., Clinton, Obama. It has a stabilizing influence. A president gets to hopefully finish the work he started in his first term and also becomes a consistent presence on the world scene. Foreign policy becomes consistent and stabilized so I really thought that's where this election was headed. Maybe a boring but safe trend. Not shocked but maybe a little surprised is all.
ReplyDeleteClinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump. Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican. No party having permanent power as it should be many would say.
ReplyDeleteJust an old guy opinion, but Trump was a bit enigmatic..kind of
ReplyDeleteunpredictable, pretty much hated in Europe, hanky panky with Putin, putting down science and medicine, so beloved that he boasted he could shoot someone on 5th Av and not lose a single voter etc. I tend to use the reduction ad absurdum approach, which really isn't fair, but amuses me. So, do you think I'm
out of line if I ponder two extremes of the next couple of months? Trump presents Dr. Fauci with the medal of freedom - or
posthumously pardons Ted Bundy? ..ad absurdum..
You have pretty much beatified Dr. Fauci in these pages. Since you're not religious or even spiritual as Lista once said Fauci for you is as close to a secular saint as you can get. I've long had the view even a President Biden might have tensions with the man but we'll see.
DeleteBiden is big on masks no doubt but remember too very early in the pandemic Fauci said a national lockdown was actually on the table which means he's open-minded about it. He also tends to make alarmist pronouncements. Biden is not going to want to shut down the whole country. If any disagreement develops between the two it won't be as public as it was with Trump but there could be a simmering. Fauci is also of retirement years.
DeleteI mean feel free to disagree.
Don't disagree.
DeleteAlex Trebek died today. We like to shout out answers (usually worng) during Jeopardy. Mrs. is wondering if the show will go on and who would take over. Suggestions?
ReplyDeleteHe seemed to be doing well. He looked ok. How 'bout Tom Selleck?
DeleteHey Steve Harvey. No too highbrow for him. Stick with the Feud.
In five months I will turn 80. Lot of water under the bridge etc. But I have my peccadillos. Like root canals. I place them on my fright list between being captured by cannibals and bungie jumping without the bungie. That said, a week long awful
ReplyDeletetoothache had me undergoing the dreaded root canal this week.
Took care of the toothache and now I am faced with another
fearful concern...the bill. A lorazepam pill helped my anxiety
and Saty would have approved. Why can't live be a bed of roses?
What ever happened to Julian Assange? Is he hiding with Jimmy
ReplyDeleteHoffa in Saginaw? Are they running a pedophie ring out of Benny's Pizza? QAnon wants to know. So many questions..did
the buffalo have herd immunity? Are Sasquatch and Bigfoot related? If Area 51 is mysterious, what about Area 52? Will
Pee Wee Herman be the new host of Jeopardy?
I didn't know this but QAnon also believes J.P. Morgan deliberately sank the Titanic. Don't ask me how. Now I'll give things a fairer consideration than you. Hey ya never know but begs the question why would J.P.Morgan sink a cruise ship with over a thousand passengers on board just to get at three millionaires he hated? Hitmen weren't around back then? People never poisoned cocktails? I don't even know if Alex Jones believes this stuff.
Delete" Don't ask me how" Maybe he had a fleet of Swedish tugboats tow an iceberg in front? Dunno, Z-Man..I'd
Deletehave to check with Leonardo DiCaprio. I find regular theories weird enough, the conspiracy ones are just icing on the cake.
Seems the leaders of Mexico, Poland and some other countries won't acknowledge Biden as president until all the votes are counted. Makes sense to me.
ReplyDeleteSome feel the AP called the election too early and should have waited until all the legal issues and vote counts are ironed out.
ReplyDeleteAP is Associated Press? They say Jared and Melania asked the prez to concede. Dunno, the election has been pure chaos for a year, what's another year? Rudy asserts thousands of dead Philadelphians voted, all dead Dems.
DeleteMeanwhile Trump has been golfing the last few days.
He lives and dies by courts: well over 3500 cases in
his courtly career, all suits. That's about 3500 more
than me. You been in a lot of court cases? Golfing..
Stuck on a kind of philosophical question which you have yet to answer. How can the media determine apparently right away that there was no voter fraud? This would imply powers of insight and perception normal people don't share. It would be equally weird to also say at the outset there was voter fraud as apparently Trump has done. I'm stuck on the logic of both positions.
DeletePromising Covid vaccine candidate announced today. More details
ReplyDeletehere . One of those joint efforts
between Pfizer and the German group BioNTech. You should be the
expert at work, so the BNT162b2 is a nucleoside-modified RNA in
lipid nanoparticles with optimized SARs-COV2 with full length
protein antigens. Best I've seen so far.
Lipid nanoparticles come from Moderna Corp. They sneak
Deletethe antigen complex into the human cell. Neat.
But is it good for only one year and do you need booster shots? My cats got a better deal with the three year rabies shots.
DeleteYeah, apparently like a flu shot that way. But what a shot in the arm for the stock market. Up 4% in one day,
Deletea record by a long shot. IMO, the vaccine companies went
way up, but the possibility of a pandemic ending vaccine
drove investing enthusiasm. I give Trump credit for pushing the vaccine and the rising market. Can he bask
in that and concede?
There seems no legal duty to concede or make a concession speech that's just traditional. As long as you vacate the premises come January 20th.
DeleteWould Obama refusing to concede have offended you? Tradition: let's blame it on George Washington. IMO it's just a thing of simple dignity, but as you know, the new GOP confuses me no end.
DeleteIt gets more complicated if there was a possibility of a not totally fair election. Normally I'd agree with you here. Tell you what my idea would be say after two or three weeks if no fraud or irregularities are found then absolutely he should concede. You seem to have a philosophical problem with the idea that sometimes rules have exceptions. I think the AP could have waited a few more days before making their projection. You don't see it my way because your guy won. Are the leaders of Mexico, Poland and some other countries who won't yet acknowledge Biden as president before all the votes are counted are they lacking in simple dignity too? I like you better when you're talking about bugs.
DeleteIn answer to your Obama question no if the tables were turned and he and his party believed they had grounds.
DeleteI think most TV networks thought it would drag on a little longer then the AP called it. AP should have waited until all the votes were counted and all issues resolved in the courts.
Well, I guess Trump is your guy. I try to be nice, but to
Deletehe is a sore winner and a sore loser. I know, let's fire the Defense Secretary, Sue the AP, play golf and discuss
bugs. My expertise is thin, you know Army Chemical Corps,
Latin motto Elementus Regamus Proelium: any priest would
translate that as 'We rule the elements' and anyone at Dugway as 'up your ass with bugs and gas'. I was an odd
soldier, actually liked Army food, was yanked as a private from a snow covered tent, dusted off and commissioned lieutenant by the 3rd TNR REGT commander.
No one liked me. Now you make me crabby. *sigh*
Don't no much about bugs, even less about election law. But Ben
ReplyDeleteGinzberg, the lead lawyer in the Bush-Gore court case, said:
" Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none — zero — are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers.
All of the suits include the mythical fraud claim. Many are efforts to disqualify absentee ballots, which have surged in the pandemic. The grounds range from supposedly inadequate signature matches to burdensome witness requirements. Others concern excluding absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day but received later, as permitted under state deadlines. Voter-convenience devices such as drop boxes and curbside voting have been attacked....
...This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud. Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn't about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes."
-that from the Republican lawyer who has worked with them for
many years. Ain't me talking here, it's a fellow Republican.
You can always find subject matter experts to support your pov. My question was more a logical one. How can we make a pre-conclusion saying there was no voter fraud when that very issue would naturally require some time to look into? IMO saying from the outset there was voter fraud is just as much a prejudgement as saying there was no voter fraud. I think my parsing here is skimming over your head.
DeleteForeign leaders can't go by NBC or AP projections of the next probable American president. All the votes have to be counted and the legal issues ironed out in court. We waited this long we could have waited a little longer.
I'll mince it one last time before it turns into a paste. My point is more along the lines of the msm saying from the outset, saying early on as the balloting was nearing the end, saying over and over there was no voter fraud. It'd be like walking into a large company/conglomerate, walking out a few hours later and saying "there's no evidence the books are bad."
DeleteOK. Give you credit for being open-minded and putting up
Deletewith my natterings in the matter. Much more impressive than we note at any number of RW blogs (where I am not welcome, but read). We await the evidence.
Dunno about you, but the social distance thing has reduced my
ReplyDeleteDunbar's Number down to about 10.
Back to basic bugs. I've got dozens of pages of tech data from
ReplyDeletevirologist daughter, but the chemistry daughter sent one in
understandable
language with diagrams. In case you are the virus expert over
at work. I'm still a bit skeptical, but Dr. Fauci is pretty
excited. A million new cases last week and the country argues
about voting. Such are the times. We old and decrepit may be
among the first to get it...if we dare.
I says to the Mrs. there's a blogger back in NYC that thought
ReplyDeleteTom Sellick might be a good replacement for the deceased Alex
Trebek for Jeopardy. She said that was brilliant. You wanna
contact Tom for us?