Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 24, 2023 • 6:45 am

I am back from Israel, still Jewish and still an atheist, but sad to be back in a country where the hummus is dire. The jet lag is bad this time, so give me a few days to catch up. I do my best.

Welcome to Sunday, September 24, 2023, and National Cherries Jubilee Day, with a historical background:

Auguste Escoffier receives the credit for the Cherries Jubilee recipe. Since he knew Queen Victoria’s fondness for cherries, Escoffier prepared the dish for one of her Jubilee celebrations. However, his original method didn’t include ice cream. Instead, the chef poached the cherries in a simple syrup and poured warm brandy over them. Then just before serving, dramatically set the alcohol aflame.

For an updated recipe with ice cream, go here.

It’s also

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the September 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Oy! A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows Biden trailing Trump in a rematch election, which will be the match next year. This is a bigger margin than some other polls show, and it’s early days, but it’s not to early for those of us who are anxious to start worrying: \

A Washington Post-ABC News poll finds President Biden struggling to gain approval from a skeptical public, with dissatisfaction growing over his handling of the economy and immigration, a rising share saying the United States is doing too much to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia and broad concerns about his age as he seeks a second term.

Biden and former president Donald Trump appear headed for a rematch of their 2020 contest, although more than 3 in 5 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they would prefer a nominee other than the president. But Biden’s advisers have argued that he is the strongest Democrat for 2024 and those who wish for someone else share no consensus on who that should be, with 8 percent naming Vice President Harris, 8 percent naming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 20 percent saying they prefer “just someone else.”

The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

If it’s probably an outlier, why the deuce did they PUBLISH it, sending me and a gazillion other Democrats into sweat mode. I think it would help, though, if Biden, given the worries about his age, would choose a Vice-President with more than a few working neurons. Note that 20% of Democrats would prefer “just someone else” compared to either Harris or Sanders. I nominate Mayor Pete.  I do worry seriously that Biden is lapsing into dementia, and is that the Democrat we want? Of course I’ll vote for him, as Trump is demented in a more dangerous way, but really, is this the best we Democrats can do?

One other bit of worry:

In his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee for a third time, Trump is in a strong position nationally despite facing multiple criminal charges. He is favored by 54 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, little changed from 51 percent in May. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is second at 15 percent, down from 25 percent in May. No other Republican reaches double digits. Trump also leads his GOP rivals in recent state polls, which are likely to be more reliable indicators than national polls of the shape of the GOP race in the coming months.

*Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press is called “TGIF: Ennui the People,” and as usual I’ll steal three of her items.

→ This man won a Nobel Prize in Economics: It turns out that if you exclude all the things people buy, there is actually very low inflation. We did it, Paul!

Even Trump has realized that many state laws enacted after the Supreme Court’s latest ruling on abortion are draconian:

→ Abortion is a winning issue even in red states: Andy Beshear, the Democrat governor of Kentucky, has made abortion rights the center of his campaign in its final weeks. He put out a remarkable ad with a young woman speaking straight to camera, addressing his competitor in the race: “This is to you, Daniel Cameron. To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable.” Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump this week bashed Ron DeSantisfor taking such a hard-line pro-life stance. It’s just amazing to see politicians finally reflect back to voters what has long been the American consensus on this: that abortion, by and large, should be legal.

→ How are things for the Jews? Tunisia’s president claimed that a storm was caused by Zionist “attack on the mind and thought.” Someone entered the University of Pennsylvania’s Jewish student center screaming antisemitic obscenities days before an on-campus Palestinian literature festival that features many open antisemites. The ambassador for Iran, a genocidal regime, is set to be Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum. Trump lashed out at “liberal Jews” in a disturbing post to Truth Social, writing: “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

In a happy twist, Arab News, a major English-speaking source of news for the Middle East, wished a happy Jewish New Year. You win some, you lose most.

*The WSJ discusses three scientists who are making their careers not producing original research, but in an equally valuable way: showing that “truths” published by other scientists are bogus. They and others recently helped bring down neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the President of Stanford, who resigned after having his name on many fraudulent pieces of research. And others are engaged in sleuthing, too. Check out the numbers

An award-winning Harvard Business School professor and researcher spent years exploring the reasons people lie and cheat. A trio of behavioral scientists examining a handful of her academic papers concluded her own findings were drawn from falsified data.

It was a routine takedown for the three scientists—Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson and Uri Simonsohn—who have gained academic renown for debunking published studies built on faulty or fraudulent data. They use tips, number crunching and gut instincts to uncover deception. Over the past decade, they have come to their own finding: Numbers don’t lie but people do.

“Once you see the pattern across many different papers, it becomes like a one in quadrillion chance that there’s some benign explanation,” said Simmons, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the trio who report their work on a blog called Data Colada.

Simmons and his two colleagues are among a growing number of scientists in various fields around the world who moonlight as data detectives, sifting through studies published in scholarly journals for evidence of fraud.

At least 5,500 faulty papers were retracted in 2022, compared with 119 in 2002, according to Retraction Watch, a website that keeps a tally. The jump largely reflects the investigative work of the Data Colada scientists and many other academic volunteers, said Dr. Ivan Oransky, the site’s co-founder. Their discoveries have led to embarrassing retractions, upended careers and retaliatory lawsuits.

While it’s possible that fraud has increased 50-fold in two decades due to increased competition, I’m betting that most of the retractions are coming simply from both a climate that’s gives more scrutiny to bogus research, but is also intensified by the successes of debunkers. This trend can only be a healthy one, for what is published gets high credibility as “scientific truth” (though it must of course be replicated to become truly credible), and, given the public’s increasing mistrust of science, the sight of scientists ardently checking each other’s work can only be good for both science and the public.

*According to the NYT, China has built a sophisticated military base on a reef in the South China Sea, although an international court says China has no claim to the waters its defending there (yeah, and who’s gonna enforce that?) and is also defending them against a wide variety of both civilian and military traffic and forcing Asian fishermen from several countries to simply stop fishing there:

The Chinese military base on Mischief Reef, off the Philippine island of Palawan, loomed in front of our boat, obvious even in the predawn dark.

Radar domes, used for military surveillance, floated like nimbus clouds. Lights pointed to a runway made for fighter jets, backed by warehouses perfect for surface-to-air missiles. More than 900 miles from the Chinese mainland, in an area of the South China Sea that an international tribunal has unequivocally determined does not belong to China, cellphones pinged with a message: “Welcome to China.”

The world’s most brazen maritime militarization is gaining muscle in waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes. Here, on underwater reefs that are known as the Dangerous Ground, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., has fortified an archipelago of forward operating bases that have branded these waters as China’s despite having no international legal grounding. China’s coast guard, navy and a fleet of fishing trawlers harnessed into a militia are confronting other vessels, civilian and military alike.

. . .The mounting Chinese military presence in waters that were long dominated by the U.S. fleet is sharpening the possibility of a showdown between superpowers at a moment when relations between them have greatly worsened. And as Beijing challenges a Western-driven security order that stood for nearly eight decades, regional countries are increasingly questioning the strength of the American commitment to the Pacific.

While the United States makes no territorial claims to the South China Sea, it maintains defense pacts with Asian partners, including the Philippines, that could compel American soldiers to these waters. Just as anxiety over nearby Taiwan has focused attention on the deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing, the South China Sea provides yet another stage for a contest in which neither side wants to betray weakness. Complicating matters, Chinese diplomats and military officers are engaging less at a time when open communication could help defuse tensions.

Here’s a satellite image from the NYT of the facilities on “Mischief Reef”. Click to enlarge:

The U.S, seems to have little taste for military conflict with China, and can you blame them? It’s World War III, Jake? But I feel sorry for the Taiwanese, who are surely suffering mass anxiety in the face of rumors that China will take over their island by 2027.

*It pays to read the “oddities” page of the Associated Press, for you learn vital information like the Oscar Meyer “Wienermobile” (a hot-dog-shaped vehicle) was temporarily renamed the “Frankmobile.”  But here’s some biology news: five American flamingos, a denizen of the tropics, have showed up in Wisconsins, of all places, wading along the shores of Lake Michigan and driving birders to drag out their cameras and run to photograph them.

Five flamingos that showed up in Wisconsin to wade along a Lake Michigan beach attracted a big crowd of onlookers eager to see the unusual visitors venturing far from their usual tropical setting.

The American flamingos [Phoenicopteridae ruber] spotted Friday in Port Washington, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, marked the first sighting of the species in Wisconsin state history, said Mark Korducki, a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The birds stood quietly 25 feet (7.6 meters) off Lake Michigan’s western shoreline as waves lapped against their thin legs. Three were adults, identifiable by their pink plumage, and two were juveniles clad in gray.

Jim Edelhuber of Waukesha was among a crowd of about 75 bird enthusiasts drawn to the city’s South Beach after word spread on social media about the flamingos’ appearance there.

Gotta be either hurricanes or global warming!

The sighting was unexpected but not a total shock because of recent reports of flamingos in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said Ryan Brady, conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Wildlife biologists hypothesized that the flamingos were pushed north in late August by the strong winds of Hurricane Idalia, the Journal Sentinel reported.

The typical range of the American flamingo is Florida and other Gulf Gulf Coast states as well as the Caribbean and northern South America.

The errant birds:

AP photo by Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Here’s the range of the American flamingo, followed by a photo of the Wienermobile, which I’ve seen three times (once it was parked and they gave me a wienermobile-shaped whistle):

Here’s a FrankWienermobile, and a bit of the report:

Those who drive Wienermobiles around to promotional events are known as Hotdoggers. Perhaps the most famous Hotdogger is former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who drove a Wienermobile one summer while in college.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a joke:

Hili: Did you read about the elephant in the room?
A: Many times.
Hili: A cat in the garden doesn’t surprise anybody either.

Hili: Czytałeś o słoniu w salonie?Ja: Wiele razy.Hili: Kot w ogrodzie też nikogo nie dziwi.

*******************

From Irena:

From Seth Andrews:

From the Absurd Sign Project 2.0, the Big Truck That Couldn’t:

From Masih, more of Iran’s brave women fighting for both personal and national freedom. Sound up (language is Farsi).

From Barry, who asks, “But what is the drink?”

From Emma Hilton. Yes, it does have to stop:

From Simon; there’s other (and sadder) news about Larry below:

From the Auschwitz Memorial; this looks like a wedding photo:

Tweets from Matthew. This first one is very good!

I get this when I put my hospital bills on my website (I have insurance). “If you’re poor you’re dead.”:

This makes me very sad. Larry is sixteen years old:

33 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “At least 5,500 faulty papers were retracted in 2022, compared with 119 in 2002 …”

    [ impulsive comment ]:

    What is N and how has N changed across that period.

    N of papers.

    N of journals – including “predatory” types.

    Reply

  2. On this day:
    787 – Second Council of Nicaea: The council assembles at the church of Hagia Sophia. [Dispensed with iconoclasm and instead approved the veneration of icons.]

    1789 – The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act, creating the office of the Attorney General and federal judiciary system and ordering the composition of the Supreme Court.

    1852 – The first powered, passenger-carrying airship, the Giffard dirigible, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.

    1869 – Black Friday (1869): Gold prices plummet after United States President Ulysses Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.

    1890 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.

    1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation’s first National Monument.

    1906 – Racial tensions exacerbated by rumors lead to the Atlanta Race Riot, further increasing racial segregation.

    1929 – Jimmy Doolittle performs the first flight without a window, proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.

    1932 – Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar agree to the Poona Pact, which reserved seats in the Indian provincial legislatures for the “Depressed Classes” (Untouchables).

    1950 – The eastern United States is covered by a thick haze from the Chinchaga fire in western Canada.

    1957 – President Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.

    1960 – USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.

    1975 – Southwest Face expedition members become the first persons to reach the summit of Mount Everest by any of its faces, instead of using a ridge route.

    1996 – Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.

    2014 – The Mars Orbiter Mission makes India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit, and the first nation in the world to do so in its first attempt.

    2015 – At least 1,100 people are killed and another 934 wounded after a stampede during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. [Allah moves in mysterious ways…]

    Births:
    1802 – Adolphe d’Archiac, French paleontologist and geologist (d. 1868). [I initially misread his name as “d’Archaic” , which seemed appropriate for a paleontologist…]

    1812 – Mary Ann Browne, British poet and writer of musical scores (d. 1845).

    1870 – Georges Claude, French chemist and engineer, invented Neon lighting (d. 1960).

    1880 – Sarah Knauss, American super-centenarian, oldest verified American person ever (d. 1999).

    1883 – Franklin Clarence Mars, American businessman, founded Mars, Incorporated (d. 1934).

    1893 – Blind Lemon Jefferson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1929).

    1896 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1940).

    1898 – Charlotte Moore Sitterly, American astronomer (d. 1990).

    1899 – Bessie Braddock, British politician (d. 1970). [A forthright campaigner on housing, public health, and other social issues. Towards the end of her life she became Liverpool’s first woman freeman. After her death in 1970 her Guardian obituarist hailed her as “one of the most distinctive political personalities of the century”.]

    1900 – Ham Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 1955). [Best known for his long, popular run on Joe Palooka, which was launched in 1930 and ranked as one of the top five newspaper comics strips for several years.]

    1918 – Michael J. S. Dewar, Indian-born American theoretical chemist who developed the Dewar–Chatt–Duncanson model (d. 1997).

    1931 – Elizabeth Blackadder, Scottish painter and printmaker (d. 2021).

    1931 – Anthony Newley, English singer and actor (d. 1999).

    1934 – Chick Willis, American singer and guitarist (d. 2013).

    1936 – Jim Henson, American puppeteer, director, producer, and screenwriter, created The Muppets (d. 1990).

    1941 – Linda McCartney, American singer, photographer, and activist (d. 1998).

    1942 – Gerry Marsden, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2021).

    1965 – Janet Weiss, American drummer.

    1969 – Christopher Pincher, English politician. [Almost unbelievably, it wasn’t the lies, the pandemic partying, etc. that ended Boris Johnson’s reign as prime minister, but instead his appointment of alleged sex pest Pincher (“Pincher by name, pincher by nature”) as Deputy Chief Whip that led to Johnson’s resignation. Pincher only resigned as an MP earlier this month and the imminent byelection poses a challenge to the Conservative party.]

    1980 – Victoria Pendleton, English cyclist.

    Time will rust the sharpest sword,
    Time will consume the strongest cord;
    That which molders hemp and steel,
    Mortal arm and nerve must feel.
    1541 – Paracelsus, German-Swiss physician, botanist, and chemist (b. 1493).

    1572 – Túpac Amaru, last of the Incas.

    1848 – Branwell Brontë, English painter and poet (b. 1817).

    1863 – William Debenham, English businessman, founded Debenhams (b. 1794).

    1889 – Charles Leroux, American balloonist and skydiver (b. 1856).

    1904 – Niels Ryberg Finsen, Faroese-Danish physician and author, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1860).

    1945 – Hans Geiger, German physicist and academic, co-invented the Geiger counter (b. 1882).

    1991 – Dr. Seuss, American children’s book writer, poet, and illustrator (b. 1904).

    2014 – Christopher Hogwood, English harpsichord player and conductor, founded the Academy of Ancient Music (b. 1941).

    Reply

  3. If it’s probably an outlier, why the deuce did they PUBLISH it, sending me and a gazillion other Democrats into sweat mode.

    Perhaps in order to send a gazillion Democrats into sweat mode, realising that they do need to ditch Biden?

    Out of interest, can Biden decline to do televised debates? For all of Trump’s faults, one thing he can still do is bluster, bombast and bravado. In comparison, Biden mumbling anecdotes and looking around for the script is not going to look good.

    Reply

  4. E. Hilton:

    “… by declaring yourself non-binary! 🎉

    Women! No such luxury for you. ”

    Actually, this makes a lot of sense :

    People who believe they have more than two legs and run a race using that belief would be expected to be faster :

    Three, four legs – faster!

    Women should just go with the status quo* and compete like everyone else.

    *I mean of course the new status quo, not the old one. Remember, we are practicing Repressive Tolerance (Marcuse) now.

    Reply

    1. At first glance, somewhat slimmer(than now)versions of Roger Stone and *ucker Carlson, an a-hole and a d*ck (or vice versa)?

      Reply

    2. Two a-holes–hence the perineum joke. Serial liar, former Faux Noise employee and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson on the right and insane, cynical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones–who said the shooting at Sandy Hook that killed 20 kindergarten children and 6 adults–was staged as well as saying chemicals in the water are turning frogs gay–on the left. Both are horrible, beyond reprehensible people who are responsible for spreading egregious lies and helping with the insurrection by spreading lies. Alex Jones owes the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims millions of dollars for defaming and doxing them so they became targets of Jones’ deranged followers. But he has somehow successfully hidden his assets and still is on the air spreading his lies while his victims haven’t seen a penny for damages. Tucker’s lies got him fired from Fox “News” and his lies are one of the main reasons Fox had to pay Dominion voting machines almost 1 billion dollars. Tucker is also a white supremacist and a cynical hack who has the support of folks like Elon Musk. He also remains free to spew lies and hate through twitter.

      Reply

      1. Two a-holes–hence the perineum joke.

        Not exactly; considering where the perineum is, he insinuation is that one of them is an arsehole, the other a dick.

        Reply

        2. This was used in an episode of Weeds, where the suburban Mom dope dealer comes home to find her useless husband and his buddy stoned in the living room, having been smoking the product she has promised the gangs that she’ll sell. They are having some stoner argument, “Say, Nancy, whaddya you call that thing between the dick and the asshole?” She looks over at them, “The coffee table?”

          The correct answer in context was, “the taint.”

          Reply

  7. Mark Korducki, a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology,

    Cor, ducky, that’s some nominative determination right there.

    Reply

      1. Yes, I think the Data Colada team is on firm legal ground. In the link below, Data Colada uses the exhibits in Gina’s own lawsuit to bolster their claims.

        https://datacolada.org/114

        “Gino’s lawsuit (.htm), like many lawsuits, contains a number of Exhibits that present information relevant to the case. … Specifically, those Exhibits contain excerpts of a report by an “independent forensic firm” hired by Harvard.

        … We have never had access to those earlier files, nor have we ever had access to the report that Harvard wrote summarizing the results of their investigation.

        For all four studies, the forensic firm found consequential differences between the earlier and final versions of the data files, such that the final versions exhibited stronger effects in the hypothesized direction than did the earlier versions. The Exhibits contain some of the firm’s detailed evidence of the specific discrepancies between earlier and published versions of the datasets. In this post we summarize what is in those Exhibits.”

        Reply

    2. IANAL but truth is a reliable defense against a claim of defamation, and in some jurisdictions the bar is high to show defamation against a public figure like a well-known Harvard professor. Francesca Gino’s own coauthors agree something bad happened in all those papers, and Gino is the only common denominator.

      The Data Colada guys were very careful to say,
      “We recently presented evidence of data tampering in four retracted papers co-authored by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino,”
      https://datacolada.org/114
      and not “data tampering by Francesca Gino”.

      Harvard itself is also a defendant, because after reviewing the evidence Harvard suspended Gino from her job. It’s worth reading the Data Colada blog posts.

      Reply

    3. In a similar case involving a grant proposal (not a journal article), an administrative law judge found that a PI was liable for research misconduct (in that case plagiarism) even if the misconduct was carried out by another person in the PI’s research group.

      https://retractionwatch.com/2018/12/03/a-colleague-included-plagiarized-material-in-your-grant-proposal-are-you-liable/

      IOW ignorance was not a defense against responsibility. By that standard, even if Gino’s claims never to have committed data falsification are true, it would still be reasonable to hold her responsible for the falsification.

      Reply

  9. There IS great hummus in the U.S., but you may have to visit my house to experience it. My wife makes terrific hummus from rehydrated dried chick peas and tahini, with (lots of) garlic, olive oil, and other (not-so) secret ingredients. Her technique is to not process the chick peas until they have the consistency of toothpaste but, rather, to leave them a bit coarser—retaining some mouthfeel. The final result doesn’t form a puddle on the plate, but stands on its own two feet. I know that hummus is a highly personal matter, but I do think that I’m one of the lucky ones.

    And in other news, it’s cool that the flamingos are migrating north. Soon I’ll be able to remove the plastic ones I have in my yard and replace them with the real thing!

    Reply

  11. Oy. Where did I go wrong? My undergraduate university, Binghamton University (officially the State University of New York at Binghamton), just missed the bottom group at number 228, and my graduate university, Harvard, came in last at 248. Both are an embarrassment.

    Reply

  12. Biden will have even less of a chance then he has if he doesn’t dump Pamela Harris. The situation is not unlike that for FDR’s fourth-term run. He dumped Henry Wallace and had to choose among four uninspiring candidates, the least desirable being Harry Truman. Everyone knew that Roosevelt was unlikely to survive another term, so the veep candidate was what the election was all about. Remarkably, a number of potential candidates were rejected on the grounds of being too old; they were in their 60s! Happily, Truman got the nod on the second vice-presidential ballot of the 1944 convention and turned out to be a great president. We should be so lucky.

    Reply

  13. To be fair to Paul Krugman, he has subsequently published an explanation acknowledging this reaction to his inflation analysis and demonstrating why the analysis is actually correct and not a farcical dodge. There are valid reasons for excluding certain categories (“all the things people buy”) but it doesn’t have to do with making inflation seem artificially low.

    Reply

  14. The Democrats will not “ditch Biden”. Presidents run for re-election. If Biden had said in 2020 that he would only serve one term it would be different, but he didn’t so his campaign for reelection was a given. Polls over a year out are worth less then nothing. People going into “sweat mode” at this point are just being silly. Biden hasn’t even started to campaign yet. Trump hasn’t had to defend himself in court yet.

    As for dumping Harris, that won’t happen either. Can you imagine the slap in the face it would be to black voters if he dumped her? It would be an idiotic thing to do. All of the complaints about Harris are basically made about EVERY Vice President during a re-election campaign. Doing nothing is their job description (well… other than the war-mongering Cheney.) Democrats have been outperforming in almost every election since the Court’s disastrous abortion decision it this will likely continue. Let’s all just relax for awhile and at least let the primaries play out.

    Reply

    1. I agree dumping Harris is an impossibility. And perhaps the complaints are unjustified. However, have you seen this video from The Daily Show?

      Reply

      1. Well, it is a humorous clip. But everyone says things on occasion that don’t make sense. It’s the job of the Daily Show writers to exploit this. Besides, even when Biden or Harris demonstrate they’re human and periodically spout inane comments, they are still far more intelligible than the idiocy of Trump every time he opens his mouth. For every one Daily Show clip of Biden or Harris, there are hundreds that make fun of Trump.

        Reply

    2. Thanks for your sound comment. I just shake my head when I hear pundits and others calling for a change of course…either POTUS or VPOTUS. ‘Tis ultimate folly at this point. And Biden has billion$, probably a lot more than Trump has at his exposal and hasn’t started campaigning. Trump’s doing it from his social media wreck, barely campaigns either, and I think campaigning might hurt him with Independents, etc. What is this bed-wetting over Harris? It’s really stupid. Women, esp. black/ minority women are key to Biden’s efforts. Why (as you aptly observed) would Biden want to slap this constituency in the face? Utterly imbecilic politicking. Democrat and other anti-authoritarian, pro-choice voters need to calm down, stop listening to the “polls” whatever they mean nowadays and turn up. Simple as that. It’s absurd reasoning to think Trump has more support now than he did in 2020 or that Dems are disengaged, or so worried about Harris or Biden’s age that they won’t vote or will vote for Trump. Nonsense.

      It’s also helpful to note that even polls closer to 11/24 won’t be reliable. The largest voting bloc (Millennials and Gen Z and Y) can’t be polled. It’s just folk who answer the phone…skew older and Republican. The pollsters have been trying to correct for this reality, but so far, they can only rely on the older generations. These young voters are outraged at Roe being overturned and when on the ballot, whether in red or blue states, the American people don’t want abortions illegal: Republicans are doomed and I’m happy for it.

      Reply

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