(forw) [skeptic] On the art of becoming an uncarved rock (was: Please allow me to introduce myself...)
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 22:56:53 -0800 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@linuxmafia.com Subject: [skeptic] On the art of becoming an uncarved rock (was: Please allow me to introduce myself...) Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Eva Durant (durant.eva@gmail.com):
what can I say? Maybe the unwashed were a tad disappointed with Obama? Remember, he was elected twice... Just doing a Futurelearn course on "The mind is flat" - we are very fickle us humans - maybe in the US even more so... never mind. He won't be able to do much either. Unless that 0.1% really got madly panicky and ready for a 1984.
Dear Eva: There's a perceptual bias that people unfortunately labour under, that says that definitive election results can be expected the same day, and that whatever's available the same day needs to be considered the outcome. This attitude of impatience doesn't mislead people 95% of the time -- the times when the margin of victory is clear, early on. In the other 5% of cases, there's really no alternative but to wait -- and people really don't want to hear that. They want elections to be settled on Internet time. When elections are close, or when elections are atypical and difficult to model, this bias leads people into adopting early, shaky guesses as if they were fact. Here in most-placid, Democratic Party-dominated California, it's been obvious all along that the state's bloc of 55 Electoral College votes would go to the Democratic Party ticket (which ended up being Clinton/Kaine). But even here, it's actually not even remotely possible to fully model and predict the statewide vote on Election Day -- if only because of the several categories of ballots that are counted only slowly _after_ Election day: all mailed-in ballots, all provisional ballots, and all early-voting ballots. To picked mailed-in ballots as an example: As long as a mail-in ballot has been postmarked by election day and received within three days, it must be counted, by state law. However, as it happens, the third day will be Veterans' Day, a Federal holiday with no mail delivery, with the effect that mail-in ballots received even by Monday, November 14, 2016 are valid and must be counted. So, California's Secretary of State cannot even in principle know fully what the results of the election are until _six days_ after Election Day. I'm really not familiar with the specific situation in the other 49 states plus District of Columbia, but I'll bet there are similar problems everywhere else -- and this is not what those of us conditioned to a 24-hour news cycle and instant Internet-timescale results want to hear. But it's the cold, hard, unpleasant truth: In a close election, you just have to wait. Days, maybe even weeks. It _is_ apparently a close election. The interim results are (mostly, in many places) all we have yet, and are at best poorly reliable and subject to upset by later, better data. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to take go on holiday and wait for futher developments, remembering that nothing actually need be settled until Monday, December 19th, when the Electoral College casts its votes. Meanwhile, I'm going to resume watching 'Borgen', the Danish show about the story of an effective, powerful, rational, intelligent female head of government. Catch y'all on the other side. -- Cheers, A woman's place is in the House, Rick Moen the Senate, and the White House. rick@linuxmafia.com McQ! (4x80) _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic@linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick@linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----
The results won't be actually official until, as I mentioned, the USA Electoral College votes on December 19th and the new, incoming Congress in joint session certifies their vote on January 6th. However, at this point various organs of the press such as the _New York Times_ are declaring that the Trump/Pence ticket has essentially won. The next four years are going to be a pretty horrific one for my country, even if the short-fingered vulgarian crashes and burns as President, being absolutely, utterly unqualified for the office, and gets replaced by the differently-horrific Vice-President Pence. Serious damage will be committed by one or both of those persons to the US Supreme Court, whose near-term fate was probably the most-vital issue in this election cycle. The Republican Party (no party of mine) gets further confirmed by this election outcome into a path of long-term self-destruction that its now-neutered party leadership have long warned against and tried to avert. (See the 2013 so-called Autopsy Report for details (http://goproject.gop.com/). The election of this emotionally volatile, short-attention-span buffoon and Dunning-Krueger poster child is best seen as a spasm of pique by a large segment of the electorate against 'the establishment' -- putting in power someone with no experience and absolutely no plan, just a bad attitude, a bunch of empty slogans, and no credibility whatsoever except with his pal Putin and the other dictators he admires. He pretty much stands for everything I oppose: provincialism, misogyny, xenophobia, religious bigotry, economic protectionism, and identity politics. And, just as in the George W. Bush years, once again I stand to need to keep apologising for my country every time I go abroad. I think I need a really tall drink.
Hi Rick, On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 7:16 PM, Rick Moen via luv-talk <luv-talk@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Serious damage will be committed by one or both of those persons to the US Supreme Court, whose near-term fate was probably the most-vital issue in this election cycle.
I find this strange. I have never heard from fights over appointments for German courts. This includes the Federal Constitutional Court which can declare bills as unconstitutional. The judges are not put into place to play politics. They are only called to ensure the constitution is not tarnished by laws made by elected parliamentarians. The United States are more than 200 years old and even precede the French Revolution. It sometimes looks like a medieval organisation which missed more than 200 years of modernisation. Just take the Electoral College. You can see them coming from all over the country riding their horses, taking the coaches, after weeks of travel reaching Washington D.C. so they can vote for president. The amendment about gun laws come from the same time and mindset. The reluctance to adjust the political system to a changing world seems odd to outsiders.
He pretty much stands for everything I oppose: provincialism, misogyny, xenophobia, religious bigotry, economic protectionism, and identity politics. And, just as in the George W. Bush years, once again I stand to need to keep apologising for my country every time I go abroad.
The society has forgotten to have a story for the workers in old-fashioned professions generations made a living from. You can see it here. What is the message for the Ford employee leaving the factory in Geelong now? The heavy lifter is ambassador in America now. It is their fate, He just told them. On the "Left" you have people like the leaders of the Catholic shoplifters' union which for decades believe it is more important to influence Labor to keep and make laws against abortions and gay rights, then to look after workers. The later ended up as thousands of underpaid working bees for Coles and Woolworth, undermining the award system and establishing a culture which became even more toxic at franchises like 7-Eleven or Caltex. We will see what comes out of the Andrews plans for the time after Hazelwood. At least it did get some attention it seems. I did not have much fun reading American literature lately. E.g., years ago I read "American Rust" by Philipp Meyer. It was pretty depressing, as much as the title already indicates. Here we are not there yet, it seems. But we should be careful not to sink further. The Sanders and Corbyns seem to pick up what was abandoned by the Clintons or New Labor under Blair long time ago. It is telling that they are discredited as not electable by the established politicians in their parties. Maybe just reflect on the fact that Hillary Clinton lost this election, not Bernie Sanders, and the leaders of the Democrats did their best to prevent him from running. With regards Peter
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