These Boots Are Made For Walking

Trump has made no public indication that he plans to concede or recognize the legitimacy of Biden's victory, and CNN has reported that his campaign is planning a messaging blitz to fuel its argument -- unsupported by any evidence to date -- that the President's second term is being stolen from him through corrupt vote counts in battleground states. -- CNN/9 November 2020

Martial law is on the way. Time to get your jackboots on.

He's Melting

The wicked witch is dead. One had hoped for a Tuesday Blue Tsunami, but the actual event might well be more satisfying.

Like Mussolini, ex-President AuH₂O 2020 was, metaphorically, strung up by his heels in the town square. And fileted, ever so slowly, in tiny pieces until only the fat and bones remained. Took four or five days, depending on when you started counting. Satisfactory.

Sleepy Joe currently leads the popular vote by more than 4,000,000; the newscritters see the possibility that he hits a total of 80,000,000 and margin in the vicinity of 8,000,000. Not quite AuH₂O territory, but it will do.

Fortunately ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is on the way out. Unfortunately, I am reminded that one of the talkinghead critters had the gonads (a couple of months ago) to say what I've been thinking since longer ago than that: ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is perfectly willing to sell to the Russians and/or Chinese and/or North Koreans and/or Any Tinpot Dictator all the intelligence material that only he is privy to (modulo the agents who collect it). Not that there's no precedent for him doing that; the Russians in the Oval Office might give you a clue. Hope that helps you sleep.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Sleepy Joe has to order the release of the unredacted Mueller report and the full audio of every contact between Russians (and their surrogates) and ex-President AuH₂O 2020 (ditto) at 12:01 pm 20 January. Out the bastard full and complete. Only then can the sane folks, particularly those who were gulled by the Ghoul, finally understand what the last four years were all about. If he were only a useful idiot (not chatting directly with Russian agents, for instance) rather than a conspirator, that would be a smidgeon of evidence in his favor. I doubt it, but I won't ignore the possiblity.

Count on Me

The Trumpians continue with the canard that all votes must be counted by the end of election day. Needless to say, but I will anyway, for at least the first hundred years (from ancient American History class memory), the first 'automated' way to vote was some form of retained paper ballot.

Voting is the cornerstone of American democracy, but the United States Constitution doesn't say exactly how Americans should cast their ballots in elections. Article 1, Section 4 simply states that it's up to each state to determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." Over the past 200 years, the mechanics of voting have evolved from open-air "voice votes" to touch screen digital consoles.

So when did sort of machine voting happen? According to this piece:

In the late 19th-century, Jacob H. Myers invented his lever-operated "Automatic Booth" voting machine, an engineering marvel that would come to dominate American elections from 1910 through 1980.

Another source has this to say:

By 1934, about a sixth of all presidential ballots were being cast on mechanical voting machines, essentially all made by the same manufacturer.

While I can't find a document with a date, it appears that 'instant' voting tabulation wasn't possible, nation wide, until WWII or even later.

So the Trumpians are fools, once again. What they choose to ignore: 1) 'calling' the election by AP (almost always) is based on recorded votes and expected results from unreported precincts (i.e., precinct Q in state Y has always voted Democrat, so the remaining votes will likely be Democrat) and 2) votes aren't certified by the states until weeks later (mostly) anyway. It's only the certified vote that determines who's President, not a loser concession speech. Certification dates are all over the calendar, from (in 2020) Nov. 5 to Dec. 11.

And we're still not done. The 'electors' vote on Dec. 14. That's what determines who won. So put on a pot of coffee and set a spell.

By George!

For such a long time, I've been wracking my brain to figure out how a Big Blue City Plague managed to find its way into God's Country of the upper Midwest and Northern Plains. I mean, those places don't take kindly to city slickers from Back East. Don't tarry too long in Fargo.

Then, the Fog parted. By George!! I've got it. And so, I have a modest proposal. George Soros is a well known Jewish billionaire terrorist, and knows perfectly well that New York City is having a growing problem with Brooklyn Hasidim spreading Covid liberally within that community. Well, the solution is simple for a guy with that much money. Pay a few hundred of the infecteds to clean up to look like normal New Yorkers, and send 747s loaded with them to all those dinky cities out West. They only need to stay a few days to spread the plague widely, hanging out in saloons and salad bars and Dew Drop Inns. In no time at all, God's Country is Hell on Earth. A perfect plan.

I hope I figured it out first. I must act Swiftly. Wouldn't want to be lagging behind QAnon.

I Told You So - 5 November 2020 [update]

Very early on, I puzzled and mused on the most important factor at issue in this election: what's going to happen with the Johnson voters from '16? So far as I could tell when I first mentioned it in these missives, and ever since, not one of the many pundits who weighed in mentioned this in any way. (Turns out, long before the campaign started, there was this missive.)

My take was that these 4,489,341 voters were going to go to ex-President AuH₂O 2020. One could raise a similar question about Stein's 1,457,218 as well. (numbers from the wiki.) I concluded that Johnson voters were in Trump's pocket and Stein's would stay home smoking weed ("drinking Merlot" earlier). In other words, the Democrat would start out with at least a 4 million vote deficit.

Well, lo and behold, we get this reporting today from the NYT (Baker and Haberman)

He received at least 68 million votes, or five million more than he did in 2016, and commanded about 48 percent of the popular vote, meaning he retained the support of nearly half of the public despite four years of scandal, setbacks, impeachment and the brutal coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 233,000 Americans. [one need only (re-)read Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" to know why.]

Note: that's, sort of, on the front page of my dead trees version. Sort of, because my copy of the paper (printed hours and hours ago) says, "at least four million".

I told you so.

Parallax View - part the thirtieth

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 -   417
100 to 999 - 1,698 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,125. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying.

The northern route for the Memorial Trophy Dash remains in place. The southern route is nearly connected, if only a laggard teeny (by Texan standards) county would just get to work.

Carnac Predicts - part the fourth

It is very hard to predict, especially the future.
-- Niels Bohr (or may be Yogi Berra or Mark Twain or ...)

Thus encouraged, let's game some scenario about the outcome of Election Day, not so much as to who'll win (Biden in a landslide if the fiddling by the Trumpicans is sequestered), but what might come of the Covid pandemic. The two situations are connected, alas.

Here's what we 'know'.

1 - Democrats have chosen mail-in voting much greater than Trumpicans.

Trump supporters are more than twice as likely as Biden supporters to say they plan to vote in person on Election Day (50% vs. 20%).

Thus we should expect the pre-election day infections to continue pretty much on the same course in Blue areas following election day, while Red areas should spike even higher. Thanksgiving won't be giving much thanks in Red areas. We 'know' that congregant activities, less so outdoors than in, lead to more infection. In-person voting is a mix. That 50% level seems kind of squishy support for ex-President AuH₂O 2020, don't you think? Shouldn't it be closer to 90%? Shouldn't they be following Batshit J. Moron faithfully? Covid isn't a problem? May be they're not all as dumb as a sack of hair?

2 - The CDC now says that 15 minutes of contact with an infected, and need not be continuous, is sufficient to lead to infection. In-person voting in Red areas is most likely to be among the mask deniers, and thus conducive to spread. Bigly.

3 - There were spikes, albeit small-ish and localized, following primaries earlier in the year.

4 - Since some states ban mail-in vote counting before election day, it's likely that early results from such states will have ex-President AuH₂O 2020 in the lead; unless the Blue Wave is a Total Tsunami, of course. And see 6, below.

5 - Some evidence/reporting that rallies do lead to localized Covid spikes. As you would expect, ceteris paribus.

6 - The determining factor: what effect will the evident nationwide spike over the last weeks have on the Trumpican preference for in-person voting? What we know today is somewhat dated and from polling.

A - They'll do it anyway, thus leading to an initial ex-President AuH₂O 2020 vote lead and subsequent spike in Covid in Red Areas. They'll feel like they won; by dying.
B - They'll see the grim reaper waiting at the polling place door, choose self-preservation, and go home instead. The Blue Wave becomes a Blue Tsunami.

I'm not about to predict whether A or B will dominate, but keep in mind that the average Trumpican is old, white, barely educated, sick, and rural; not the sort of folk who'll do well if struck with Covid. Not that most of them understand that, given their predilection for attending those rallies.

Carnac isn't willing to stick his neck out, too much, with regard to the election outcome, but whatever the outcome, a spike-upon-the-spike is pretty much a slam dunk in Red areas. They don't believe in Covid, it's all a Left Wing Hoax, so let's not send them any resources to support their (soon to be) overrun hospitals. Seems fair to me.