November 9, 2020

At the Monday Night Café...

 ... you can talk 'til dawn.

114 comments:

Lawrence Person said...

Enjoy today's election fraud update.

Whiskeybum said...

OK math nerds - let’’s get a conversation going about Benford’s Law.

I’ve seen dozens of references to this since election night. I was unfamiliar with the concept, so I watched some general YouTube videos about it. I followed the math - I understand the concept/math now. Done.

Now - applying it to the election. Does anyone out there in the commentariat have a link to actual election data showing the evidence for fraud (i.e., an actual analysis with real data, not just a claim that someone has looked at the data? (after all, we don’t want to be like Democrats with a bunch of unsubstantiated claims)

I would like to see the following:

1. Benford’s law applies to certain types of data sets. I’d like to see a demonstration or explanation that the election data is such a data set that is applicable.

2. I want to see Benford's law applied to the in-person voting, which most of us at this time assume is not fraudulently manipulated. Benford’s Law in this case should show a “normal” un-manipulated case (backing up point #1).

3. I want to see the Law applied to the cases where fraud is suspected. I want to see how ‘out of whack’ it is. There must be something akin to a normal distribution statistical confidence interval in the data. How far off does the data set have to be from the ideal case to indicate fraud with a high level of confidence?

I think that this could be a powerful tool in at least indicating that there is some data manipulation going on, even if it does not indicate The who/how of the situation. Step one in my opinion is to make clear that something is wrong with the reported results, regarding which the MSM repeatedly prevents any discussion.

BUMBLE BEE said...

IF YOU HAVEN"T DONE SO, Watch Tucker Carlson show tonight. The BEST analysis of voter fraud.

Clyde said...

Salted Caramel Crown Royal and egg nog. A sprinkle of nutmeg on top.

You're welcome!

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Spoliation of evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding.

Would the refusal of PA to segregate the late ballots constitute
spoliation?
Would all the late ballots then be deemed spoiled?

---

Unity Through Conformity
...conformity through punishment
"A time to heel"

Michael K said...

Chuck and a few other lefties here want official court filings. Here's one.

STATEMENT OF AMICUS INTEREST AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT*

Ohio is not here because it objects, as a policy matter, to absentee voting. To the contrary, “[t]here is nodispute that Ohio is generous when it comes to absentee voting—especially when compared to other states.” Mays v. LaRose, 951 F.3d 775, 779–80 (6th Cir. 2020). Ohio’s interest in this case also has nothing to do with any abstract concern about counting ballots received after Election Day. In fact, Ohio itself counts absentee ballots received within ten days of Election Day, as long as those ballots are postmarked by the day before Election Day. Ohio Rev. Code §3509.05(B)(1).

Ohio is interested in this case because reversal is crucial to protecting the Constitution’s division of authority over state election laws. The United States Constitution says that “[e]ach State shall appoint” electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Art. II, §1, cl.2 (emphasis added). The Pennsylvania legislature directed that electors for the 2020 election would be chosen through votes cast in person and by absentee ballot. But it expressly mandated that absentee ballots would count only if received by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Pet.App.16a (quot- ing 25 P.S. §3150.16(a)). Instead of respecting that decision, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court rewrote state law, ordering election officials to count ballots—including ballots with no postmarks or illegible postmarks—received within three days after Election Day.


Hmm.

stephen cooper said...

(a) I think Trump is going to win big time on the legal challenges that are supported by Daubert worthy examinations of the statistical anomalies in Philadelphia and several other largely Roman Catholic big cities in the Midwest (well, in Wisconsin anyway).

(b) I Honestly feel sorry for Hunter Biden, lots and lots of rich dudes have kids who go balls to the wall to exploit their position and exploit people (Falwell, Reagan, and every Bush you have ever heard of all had male children who were total fuck-ups (we don't talk about the female children because when they fuck up, nobody notices ---- but that is what it is)) , but the only ones - the only male children of politicians - who get in deep trouble, real trouble, for acting like little Hunter did are the ones whose parents wind up pissing people off in a big big way, like little coup leader memory neighborhood Biden just did. I absolutely guarantee you Hunter felt dread at every step Biden took towards his potentially successful coup leadership. I guarantee you that Hunter wanted his disgusting dad to retire as an obscure former vice president.

Don't believe me?

Well, you should.
I know these guys, and I know what they are like.

stephen cooper said...

And... Real Clear Politics just put Pennsylvania into the undecided category.

I know what is going on.
I am not worried about a country with so many honest people in it.

stephen cooper said...

With every day that goes by, "president elect" Biden is looking more and more like clueless and witless "coup leader Biden".

I'm Not Sure said...

"Don't believe me?"

I believe you. Has Hunter given the money back, or is he just feeling dread over getting caught?

Clyde said...

Hannity just announced that AG Barr is having the DOJ investigate election irregularities.

stephen cooper said...

No, the dread is not about being caught - Hunter was caught a long time ago. And I am not one of those people who think he did anything all that bad ---- I don't believe the wilder accusations. But I do believe that he violated a few legal boundaries. And I have little doubt that he knows that he has been caught.

The dread is knowing that the people who know they can't get Joe - who, if he is inaugurated, is going to be immediately despised, even by many people who voted for him, as the first phony president we have ever really had (Kennedy was like that too, but Kennedy at least campaigned hard) -- the dread will be knowing that the people who have righteous contempt for your dad, the selfish careful little old man who made you rich, can at least get at you, his much much less careful son, and knowing that your dad is senile and your dad's friends are slobberingly ready to throw you to the wolves.
All of his dad's friends care nothing about Hunter.
It isn't fair, and if I were him, I would move to England, the way Harry and his concubine moved to California. Lots of old criminals move to another country to live out the rest of their lives, hoping that the law in their own abandoned country has better things to do than pursue an expatriate.

If I were Hunter, I would really get the heck out of Dodge, like as of yesterday. His dad is gonna throw him to the wolves (and if he doesn't, well, I will be glad to see that. But he is gonna. I understand human nature too well to think he won't).

Milwaukie guy said...

I haven't been reading Althouse for a few weeks, it seems like. The excitement of the election has given way to disappointment, skipping TV news and sticking with the Hallmark for now.

But, I'm starting to bestir. Ace had a report about the big drop in Fox News ratings. I'm like, here it's been a week and I haven't joined to boycott yet.

My email to Fox:

"I guess this should go to Tucker Carlson and Brett Baier.

"I used to keep CNN on like an airport lounge to get the "middle" view and watched Brett and the Chris Wallace show regularly. Early 2017, I switched to Fox News all day. M-F, I'd leave you on ev even if I left the house, from the Sandra Smith morning show to Tucker Carlson. Tomorrow I'm cancelling my cable. I have watched Fox News for the last time. I'll stream OAN, Newsmax and the Hallmark. I've already got the Amazon Prime.

"Goodbye forever. I'll miss seeing some of you on the TV."

Maybe I should have added, FU, it's war.

Rory said...

I'm thinking of hosting some video conferencing for extended family over Thanksgiving. It seems like Zoom has a free service, but you have to set up a new meeting every forty minutes. They also seem to have a thirty-day free trial for their basic pay service. Is there a service out there that does a no strings service for one-time use?

J. Farmer said...

It's pretty obvious that any close outcome would have engendered this response on either side. The political parties are not primarily driven by differences in ideology or policy but by mutual hatred. It's not enough that the other side be wrong; they must be evil, too. Claims of illegitimacy are part and parcel of this dynamic, whether it's hanging chads in Florida, Diebold machines in Ohio, being born in Kenya, or working for the Russians.

I don't have any objections if the administration wants to investigate the elections before conceding. But I have little doubt that if the situation was reversed and Biden was refusing to concede an election and alleging fraud, the comments here would like very different.

narciso said...

So dominions board includes obamas eu ambassador and fcc chair william kennard

Vance said...

Rory: if everyone you want to have on has an Apple device or access to one Facetime is free. It is likely better than Zoom, plus it doesn't dump your video to China for privacy theft unlike Zoom.

narciso said...

Rcp never put pennsylvania on the board

Vance said...

Farmer: who in their right mind would think that Trump would cheat to beat Biden? Who's Biden's hardcore "we must have him!" constituency?

This election solely turned on Trump: no one voted for Biden. Either you voted for Trump or you hated him and voted against him.

Everyone knows Biden is senile and several even know he's a Chinese puppet. Most of the left doesn't care.

I'm Not Sure said...

"If I were Hunter, I would really get the heck out of Dodge, like as of yesterday. His dad is gonna throw him to the wolves (and if he doesn't, well, I will be glad to see that. But he is gonna."

I see your point. Hard to argue with that.

narciso said...

Disclosure how does it work


https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-jon-meacham-biden-speechwriter

Gospace said...

Google Meet is incredibly easy to use and set up. And if you’re using Chrome as your browser is already ready to go.

narciso said...


Details here

https://mobile.twitter.com/bridgietherease/status/1324990070869291008

J. Farmer said...

@Vance:

Who's Biden's hardcore "we must have him!" constituency?

Black women.

This election solely turned on Trump: no one voted for Biden. Either you voted for Trump or you hated him and voted against him.

I've said numerous times before that the Democrats would vote for a ham sandwich over Trump. That they are motivated by rapid hatred for Trump is part of my point. For at least the last quarter century, there has been an hysterical opposition on the left to Republican presidents and an hysterical opposition on the right to Democratic presidents. This usually includes a lot of conspiratorial thinking, notions that the president is illegitimate in the position, that the president is controlled or working for the benefit of shadowy foreign interests, and has a radical ideology and agenda that is an existential threat to the country.

And for the 25 years that these two have been screaming at each other and warning that the fate of the nation hangs in the balance, the US continued straight down the neoliberal path it had already been on.

Todd Roberson said...

Anyone here read the "Biden Plan" for COVID? I did.

Other than calling for a(n) (unenforceable) mask mandate can anyone tell me it's different than what's already being done?

That insufferable pseudo intellectual Buttigieg was on the Sunday morning shows stumping for the "Biden Plan."

No specifics other than ...you know ...SCIENCE!

Michael K said...

Another one for Chuck.

An election fraud lawsuit was filed today in Detroit. It is supported by affidavits by eyewitnesses who describe systematic voter fraud. The lawsuit seeks an order requiring preservation of evidence:

pic.twitter.com/Eym0WItLF7

— Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) November 9, 2020

More from Jessy Jacob affidavit claiming she was instructed to improperly pre-date absentee ballots and not to look at signatures. I’ve reached out to Detroit and Sec. of State for response. pic.twitter.com/5jSk5rTia9


Farmer, aside from impeaching Clinton, which was a mistake, the GOP has mostly rolled over for the Democrats for 25 years. The exception, before Trump, was 1994.

Big Mike said...

The Devil is down in Georgia, and he's looking for elections to steal.

Alas, Charlie Daniels has gone, just when we need his fiddle.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

The timing of Covid, the bogus impeachment, years of "Russia Russia Russia" -

The new world order is evil. From China to Democrats - the gift.

That the d-party cannot give us someone like Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard or even E Warren ( all way too left for me) - is telling. I'd be happy with an honest Democrat party. That's not what we have with Joe Biden.

Biden. for crying out loud it's so freaking obvious that the oligarchs and world order string pullers wanted this corrupt old crook. Keep it in the old family. Watch - Pelosi and Clinton. Watch.

Howard said...

Barr putting the Deep State DOJ staffers on the fraud case is great news for Biden.

stephen cooper said...

narciso - you are missing the point dude.

by a lot.

kind of disappointing, I thought you and me were the only people here who used to buy the old Miami Cuban daily papers, I remember that ONCE A WEEK there would be a column about old Cuban poets, some of them (not all but some) actually talented poets -----I REMEMBER do you?

Go back to point (a), and ask yourself what happened today with RCP and Pennsylvania, and why it is important.

Trust me, there was a turning point, I am sorry you missed it

LA NUESTRA ULTIMA ESPERANZA ESTA LA INJUSTICIA DE DIOS

Chennaul said...

Read pages 5-10 of this.

https://townsquare.media/site/656/files/2020/11/election-crimes-lawsuit.pdf

Michigan former assistant attorney general acting an observer in the Detroit area during the count, we probably saw some of the fallout of this as it might be the same location that cheered when Republican people were thrown out of the counting area.

This explains what might have proceeded that.

narciso said...

We are fighting against principalities and powers of the air, however this is their external manifestation.

narciso said...

Would any of these character, hesitate to throw us to the lions, or crucify us for our faith, what they call hate.

That woman went after the knights of columbus.

narciso said...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/republicans-begin-filing-fcc-complaints-networks-falsely-claim-joe-biden-president-elect/

Howard said...

Stephen Cooper disappointed in Narciso's rendition of his Sancho Panza.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

Farmer, aside from impeaching Clinton, which was a mistake, the GOP has mostly rolled over for the Democrats for 25 years. The exception, before Trump, was 1994.

The GOP rolled over for Obama?

narciso said...



Repeat once more

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0k91MbDlFOA&t=19s

narciso said...

Largely, in nclb in the hud reforms that led to the subprime crisis. Those are just two examples

stephen cooper said...

Narciso - well, today the Twitter trending highlights switched from " who will the new white house pets be" to "get updates on the Pennsylvania vote count". So there's that, too, on top of what I said earlier about our honest little friends at RCP.

Please, my friend, trust me when I say what I say.

That being said, trust me on this too ---- almost none of us (including me) are qualified to fight with the principalities and powers, we only are qualified to fight against our own sinfulness.

Well there are some exceptions.

I have met one or two of them, great folks, fun to be around, but they had an easy life compared to the life you and me have led. God loves us all and God knows how special each of us is.

Don't get mad at me for knowing that. I know it, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN I KNOW WHAT GOD KNOWS.

All it means is I trust God's promises. God has not let me down yet. AND NEVER WILL LET ME DOWN.

narciso said...


Indeed

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.biblegateway.com/passage/%3fsearch=Romans%2b3:10-17&version=NIV&interface=amp

mockturtle said...

On Sheryl Atkisson's website: Michigan Fraud Claims/Affidavits"

Political Junkie said...

This will not happen, but it is Solomonic. I am not a lawyer.

USSC produces a 9-0 opinion, written by ACB, with no concurring opinions, holding the following:

1.While there are serious statistical fraudulent findings, and various real world troubling findings, the USSC declares the election is over (the lawyers here can find what to rest their position upon) and Biden is the winner. They reference 2000 and mention this somehow balances things out.
2.USSC declares mail in voting illegal and disallowed in all scenarios. Only in person voting is allowed.
3.USSC declares voter registration must be completed a certain number of weeks before an election, to ensure the accuracy of the registered voters. Thus same day voting is eliminated.
4.USSC declares photo ID is required for all voting. No exceptions.

I think this would put to rest any court packing ideas (as the D's and L's would be mollified by ACB writing the opinion giving the presidency to Biden), and it would also give a lot of things to the right.

Of course it will never happen.

What do you think?


stephen cooper said...

Howard I am much more humble than you think.

I am no Don Quixote.

Some day everyone who has ever met any of us will meet us again, in a place where we are honest, and free of fear, and anxious to say the truth.

God loves us even more when God realizes how difficult it is for us to be honest.

IT IS HARD TO BE HUMAN, it is hard to be honest, it is hard to remember to care about what is true and what is not true.

Don't hate on me for knowing that, and don't insult my friends.

wild chicken said...

"And for the 25 years that these two have been screaming at each other"


So, since Rush? Fox? Gingrich? Or since the internet?

Maybe we were better off before all the info.

Political Junkie said...

#3 should say same day registration is eliminated. Sorry.

mockturtle said...

I'm certainly weak on legal issues but shouldn't the AG of each state in question be on the hook for the legitimacy of elections in his/her state? Why should it be necessary for Trump to finance lawsuits? Not a rhetorical question, I really want to know.

mandrewa said...

For Whiskeybum, and anyone else that is interested.

If you own a copy of Mathematica, which I don't have at the moment, it probably already has the code written to apply Benford's Law. And once you get that function I suspect you can just plug in any dataset and see what the Benford function says without necessarily understanding how it works.

Now lets admit that this is just a bit dangerous because when people don't understand the underlying ideas they can sometimes make terrible mistakes.

But even so, you can probably safely use this without understanding all of the details.

And if you have a statistical background and you do understand the details, well then of course there's no problem.

But here's a discussion of Benford's Law from the Mathematica team:

Wolfram MathWorld: Benford's Law

And here is an even better example.

See Wolfram Demonstrations Project: Benford's Law and Data Spread

That demo will work on your laptop. It's a little slow on my machine, but somewhere Mathematica, maybe it's on my laptop, is running and producing the graphs. This demo is applied to something like 50 different datasets looking for the Benford distribution and finds it in all of them. But none of the examples happen to be election data.

I think in fact the Benford Law code is actually in that demo and if you have Mathematica, you can download the demo and see the code and start using it. (But I'm not totally sure of this.)

And if you are unfamiliar with Mathematica, it's going to be a intimidating. But maybe I can help walk people through it, if anyone needs help.

I'm Not Sure said...

"What do you think?"

I think the main reason for opposition to #2, #3 & #4 is to make it easier to cheat.

narciso said...


And so it goes

https://www.steynonline.com/10749/election-day-plus-five

Chennaul said...

The GOP rolled over for Obama?

...........

They sure as hell rolled over for Kennedy.

stephen cooper said...

My last comment for the night.

Joe Biden has an eternal soul, but he is old, full of years, and trust me, he is a contented man. He has been a good father and a good husband, well, you can disagree, but he has good reason to think he has been a good father and a good husband. I know he is an evildoer, but I like to think that he does not know that.

But what about Hunter Biden? 10 years from now, he will either be a good Christian man, someone who knows THAT PEOPLE LIKE ME WERE PRAYING FOR HIM, or he will be a hunted desperate soul, afraid of his own shadow.

Look, I think Trump will be President for 4 more years. That being said, I could not tell you who was president 100 years ago or 200 years ago. I can tell you this though - if one of the Angels of the Lord appeared in my living room tonight, and asked me this ---- if you could choose between Trump being inaugurated next January because he won the vote, on the one hand, or choose that 10 years from now Hunter Biden will have found what we all seek, will have found our that God loves us all ----
As God is my witness, as all the thousands of angels who have said hello to me once in a while are my witness, as the Earth and the Universe are my witness ---
the soul of any one of us is infinitely more important than the success on this earth of any of us.
... nobody really is ever going to care about me and whichever Angel shows up in my living room, right?
feel free to think whatever you want to think about that.
Pray to God for those you love.

Howard said...

...and Tip O'neill rolled over for Reagan. Clinton gave the Republicans NAFTA GATT welfare reform in exchange for midnight basketball. The Dems rolled over for both Bush's Iraq Wars. Politics, like math, is hard. If you have a weak stomach, stay away from the sausage factory.

Chennaul said...

This part of Maricopa county claim is also interesting:

https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1550

They have testimony that the new to 2020 system gave almost 80% of Election Day voters problems at one precinct, then they show you that bleed through did happen even though the press has pooh- poohed it as The Grand Knowers of All Things. Think of that the media has pontificated and made fun of Republicans who said they had trouble with these ballots on a system

that was new to 2020. Looks like the paper for the ballots was too thin and you can see the bleed through that caused problems in one of the exhibits posted at the link above.

Chennaul said...

...and Tip O'neill rolled over for Reagan

................

Well ya, —Reagan— now that was a dude with a real mandate.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

My favorite flower is the daffodil.

narciso said...


Let the games begin

https://ricochet.com/822377/missouri-ohio-and-other-states-now-suing-pennsylvania-amicus-briefs-filed-with-scotus/

MalaiseLongue said...

@ stephen cooper: Tom Bevan reaffirms that RCP never had PA in Biden's column. What do you know that we don't? You are suggesting that there is something. What is it?

Whiskeybum said...

mandrewa @ 9:20

Thanks for your response to my questions about the application of Benford’s Law to the election results. I’d love to have a copy of Mathematica, but at $354, it’s a bit steep for me to purchase just for this one purpose. The actual math under Benford's Law isn’t really all that complex that a high-powered tool like Mathematica is probably necessary to use. However, my actual point is that having the tool is moot - I don’t have the actual raw election data, and even if I did and ran it through a tool like Mathematica, I’m not sure I would know how to interpret the results without learning a lot more details about Benford’s Law. If I would get a ‘positive’ result, am I 90% confident that some fraudulent data manipulation took place? 95% confident? 99.9%?

There are many people claiming online that analysis(ses) have been done on the election data - I’d just like to see one well done analysis with the data and the histograms, and a discussion of the confidence intervals. Anybody know where that can be found (I’ve looked but haven’t found it yet)?

Gahrie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Howard said...

Nixon had a huge mandate too, but he got rolled.

chuck said...

Informative discussion with Barnes.

mandrewa said...

Oh, and this is amazing. I found this on YouTube.

Robert A. Bonavito, CPA: How to detect fraud using Benford's Law

This was put up on YouTube about a month ago, and it's an eleven minute explanation of how accountants look at tax returns and internal corporate data using Benford's Law to look for fraud.

Apparently when people make up numbers, they usually make up numbers that violate Benford's Law. But when the universe 'makes up' numbers somehow whether it's tax data or even inventory counts, those numbers are going to follow Benford's Law.

And the very second comment on my YouTube screen was someone asking this CPA whether he would look at the election data and he responded and said that they have already been contacted and it's possible his firm will get involved.

stephen cooper said...

MalaiseLongue - the point is, RCP has been pressured to make the call, and still refuses to make the call. That is huge. Today was the day they were supposed to make the call, and they refused to. Probably not because they are honest people---- probably because they are dishonest people who see some advantage to their intellectual integrity to delay going along with the fraudsters - but there is a chance that today was the day they decided to be honest.

Scott Adams retweeted a specific post on this about 3 hours ago.

That is not important - what is important is that RCP held off, and is holding off, while Twitter trends are going crazy saying Pennsylvania is back in play.

That is all I know.

Look, there is going to be a physical count of mail-in votes that violate pre-election law in Pennsylvania but which were compliant with post-election law, nobody knows that number. IF the number is bigger than most people expect, Trump wins Pennsylvania and nobody will be able to challenge his victory, if the number is kept small by the fraudsters, well ....

On top of that, there are going to be challenges to the regular number of dead people votes in the urban counties centering on Philadelphia. Every 4 years those numbers have been at least in the thousands, maybe in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Nobody knows what those numbers were this year, we need skilled accountants to figure it out.

My best guess is that, in every election since WWII, there have been upwards of 30 thousand fake votes in Philadelphia. Why wouldn't there be? They have always gotten away with it ....

It has never mattered before, BUT it matters this year. The key question is, did the fake voters do enough to make their fake votes look valid, or did they fail ?

I do not want to sound like a partisan, but I am pretty much certain, morally certain as they say, that if only legal votes were counted, Trump would have won in an electoral landslide. But that is not the question before us. The question is, did the evil vote-stealers cover their tracks in a sufficiently professional way to fool the courts, who will eventually have to rule on it?

chuck said...

I’d love to have a copy of Mathematica, but at $354

There are free alternatives, for statistics R and Pandas are popular. Pandas is part of the Python scientific stack which is becoming dominant in the sciences. That said, the true difficulty is learning how to use these tools if you are unfamiliar with them.

Known Unknown said...

"In Wisconsin on election day before the polls opened, Republicans led Mail-in Ballots requested 43% to 35%, and Mail-in and early in-person ballots returned 43% to 35%."

Has this been confirmed?

mandrewa said...

After thinking about what I just saw on this video,

Robert A. Bonavito, CPA: How to detect fraud using Benford's Law

I'm a little worried. I know a lot of people don't understand the issue of sample size.

To do this correctly, we need not only Benford's Law, which is actually a simple function to implement -- it can be done on a spreadsheet -- but we also need another function or functions that tells the user how significant their result is. Or in other words, how certain can you be that the data is breaking Benford's Law. If you just have a small amount of data, that could happen by accident. You need to be able to assign a percentage saying how likely it is that the data you have is actually manipulated.

Obviously the more data you have, the more likely any violation of Benford's Law is going to be because of manipulation. But we need to be able to assign a specific probability for each data set.

I would guess that someone has already done all this work and has created such a function or functions, and it is just a matter of finding that paper that describes what would be so useful to have.

narciso said...

Richard pilger who covered for lerner, ashead of the political crimes sectio. Resigned

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

glitch (n.)
by 1953, said to have been in use in radio broadcast jargon since early 1940s, American English, possibly from Yiddish glitsh "a slip," from glitshn "to slip," from German glitschen, and related gleiten "to glide" (see glide (v.)). Perhaps directly from German.

1) a fault or defect in a computer program, system, or machine; Synonyms: bug.

2) a phony excuse used by Democrats when cheating to deny culpability

narciso said...

They had another glitch in wisconsin.

Narr said...

I had a phone convo with a friend and former colleague tonight, a serious patriot and idealist who hates "Trump and his fascist, Nazi supporters."

I told him I voted for Trump, and gave the reasons why, which I have posted here in various threads.

I mentioned Greg Gutfeld's interesting observation about the situation. If you really and truly thought Trump and his supporters were Nazis, why WOULDN'T you cheat your ass off?

This is where his idealism kicked in. After a pause he said no, he would not cheat even in a contest against Nazis, it would violate his own sense of ethics and the law.

Me, if I actually believed my opponent was a dangerous extremist who intended to murder me or people I cared about, I'd cheat at the very least.

Narr
I know 90%+ of Dims would too--my friend is an outlier

Big Mike said...

Only 4 Republican Senators have publicly congratulated Biden — Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse.

Lisa Murkowski is up for re-election in 2022. If Sarah Palin wants to primary her, I’m ready to donate the maximum.

Todd Roberson said...

Somebody should primary Murkowski's bouffant hairdo.

What a helmet head!

Unknown said...

I've been a little confused about the Electoral College. This is pretty clear:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-electoral-college-works-timeline-2020-8?op=1 Biden is NOT the President elect right now. I don't expect anything to change, but suppose he has a debilitating stroke or some other medical issue that makes him unable to serve, or he is charged with a felony.....

narciso said...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/breaking-exclusive-system-glitch-also-uncovered-wisconsin-reversal-19032-votes-removes-lead-joe-biden/?utm_source

Arashi said...

A couple of folks above were suggesting using zoom for a family get together for the holidays,but as zoom for free only runs 40 minutes another responded to maybe use facetime if everyone has apple devices. Facetime has problesm when you try and connect more than two people. A couple of friends and I have been doing virtual BNOs for the last few months and we have found that jitsi Meet (free) works pretty well for us - https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/. Try it out.

As for the rest of the curent krap storm - I am hoping there won't be any age restrictions for transit guards (I'm 68) in the new regime IF the steal stands and SLo Jo and Heels Up end up in the Whitehouse.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

“We’re going to wind up with a thousand court cases that cannot just be resolved by just going into the software and checking to see what happened, because it’s proprietary,”

In most elections, the intellectual-property laws that surround the machinery of America’s electoral system prove inconsequential in determining who won or lost a campaign, and software isn’t central to most contested-election scenarios, such as late-arriving ballots or issues with access to polling locations. But in instances where the vote tally itself is in question, analysts could need access to voting machines’ underlying code to determine if potential security flaws, errors or even purposeful tampering are behind the irregularities

for Dems, a glitch is a feature, not a bug, since it only breaks one way

...and maybe it was engineered to do so.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/03/2020-election-recount-ballot-machine-technology-law-433871

walter said...

C'mon narciso.
Wisconsin is squeaky (curds) clean! Evers even wears a coffee filter.

Clyde said...Hannity just announced that AG Barr is having the DOJ investigate election irregularities.
--
But, but..he wants to avoid looking "political".

J. Farmer said...

@Narr:

I had a phone convo with a friend and former colleague tonight, a serious patriot and idealist who hates "Trump and his fascist, Nazi supporters."

I'm more than willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but why do I never believe anecdotes like this?

I mentioned Greg Gutfeld's interesting observation about the situation. If you really and truly thought Trump and his supporters were Nazis, why WOULDN'T you cheat your ass off?

They thought that before the 2016 election Why was he permitted to when then? In 2004, Democrats had nothing but disdain and contempt for Bush, who they believed had "stolen" the 2000 election. Why was he allowed to win the election? A few tried to blame voting machine irregularities in Ohio, but the issue was quickly dropped.

Me, if I actually believed my opponent was a dangerous extremist who intended to murder me or people I cared about, I'd cheat at the very least.

Which just goes to show how cynically the word is used. It's one of those class of words we use in popular political discourse--like fascist, far, radical, socialist, communist, Marxist, isolationist, and pacifist--that really just means "some bastard I don't like."

walter said...

(Though, BLM sympathetics have apparently stormed a Burlington, WI school board meeting demanding "anti-racism" curriculum, likely scaring Robin Vos)

narciso said...

Um off the top of my head, they didnf have lockdowns that crippled the economy, soecially small business, massive mail votond a media even more in the tank.

walter said...

Kyle Becker Retweeted
Richard Grenell
@RichardGrenell
·
1h
Why isn’t this tweet fact-checked by @twitter
? Why are they so one-sided?!
Quote Tweet
PinkNews
@PinkNews
· 3h
Joe Biden 'almost certain' to make Pete Buttigieg America's first out gay cabinet official. Here's where he could land https://pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/09/pet
--
Sorry Rick,
It's like Repub white women aren't authentic.

mandrewa said...

Okay, I just saw another video from this CPA, Robert A. Bonavito, and I don't think he knows what he's talking about. Or maybe he's being deliberately deceptive.

The first and very obvious problem to my eyes is that he uses very small sample sizes in most of his examples. That is not the only issue, but it's enough. If you use a small set of numbers, like 58 numbers in the example I just saw, well of course you are going to get significant divergence from Benford's Law. That's entirely predictable. And I have to think that he actually knows that.

So I wonder if he is deliberately trying to spread misinformation.

And I guess I need to be paranoid. Why did this show up in my recommended video list from YouTube? Probably YouTube is looking closely at every video now that mentions Benford's Law. Possibly they are promoting this video from this CPA because it will remove credibility from the whole idea.

Anyway what he is doing is wrong. If he's actually doing this kind of thing on tax returns and corporate data with these very small data sets, then I think he's either a fool or running a con.

We should be looking for large sets of numbers. And the numbers we look for should go together. For instance all of the vote counts, including all of the intermediate vote counts, reported in a county over the course of the election. And that might be thousands of numbers. And if they add up to a good approximation of Benford's Law, then that probably means that this county overall was counting the votes.

But that doesn't mean that every polling station in that county was honest. So you would have to look closer at places where you think there might have been a problem. But if you don't have enough numbers to work with, then you can't come to a conclusion. Even if you have other evidence that there is trouble.

narciso said...

Hes illustrating how the principle works gah

Mrs. X said...

“They thought that before the 2016 election Why was he permitted to when [sic] then?”
They didn’t believe Trump was going to win and were shocked when he pulled it off. They didn’t understand the inaccuracies of the polling. This time, they knew that Trump had a loyal base—the Democrats had eyes to see those rallies—so they developed a more comprehensive fraud operation. They want to win, they believe they deserve to win and they don’t care how they do it. Maybe Republicans feel this way too and just can’t figure it out how to cheat successfully. I don’t think so but I don’t discount the possibility.

J. Farmer said...

Um off the top of my head, they didnf have lockdowns that crippled the economy, soecially small business, massive mail votond a media even more in the tank.

And yet Democrats widely considered the 2000 election "stolen," and Republicans laughed at them for it. And Democrats though the 2004 election was rigged by Diebold machines in Ohio, and the Republicans laughed at them for it. And Republicans claimed that voter fraud won Obama 2008 and 2012, and the Democrats laughed at them for it. And Democrats claimed that Russian hacking won Trump the 2016 election, and Republicans laughed at them for it. And now the Republicans are saying voter fraud won Biden the 2020 election.

Now I'm no mathematician, but there's certainly a discernible pattern here. One other interesting pattern is that all of these presidents, each of whom inspired rabid antipathy from the opposition, pursued policies within the post-Reagan neoliberal paradigm.

walter said...

Difference may be actual evidence of fraud/violations, vs partisan suspicions. We'll see.

J. Farmer said...

@Mrs. X:

They didn’t believe Trump was going to win and were shocked when he pulled it off.

I definitely agree with that. I only brought up 2016 in regards to the observation, "if you really and truly thought Trump and his supporters were Nazis, why WOULDN'T you cheat."

Maybe Republicans feel this way too and just can’t figure it out how to cheat successfully. I don’t think so but I don’t discount the possibility.

Voter fraud is one of those topics that is hopelessly complicated by the race question. Democrats claim that voter fraud measures are aimed at disenfranchising black voters, and important faction in the Democratic coalition.

J. Farmer said...

Difference may be actual evidence of fraud/violations, vs partisan suspicions. We'll see.

Indeed. Given the polarization of the country and the disruptions due to Covid-19, any close result would arouse suspicions.

Gospace said...

And Republicans claimed that voter fraud won Obama 2008 and 2012, and the Democrats laughed at them for it.

Funny, I don't recall that. I do recall thinking there were a lot of stupid people putting their trust in an empty suit. ANd as time went on, it became more apparent that Obama was someone's puppet. Likely Valerie Jarrett's. But was there a puppeteer behind her?

Biden is a puppet. In his prime, he would be his own man, but now? He's a puppet to be manipulated and used.

Thirdeyeadventist2020 said...

Jay Sekulow doesn’t seem confident of the outcome.

“I need to tell everybody this: that this is not a simple task. It’s a tall order. … It’d be a miracle, in one sense, because everything has to line up, but you don’t stop fighting until there’s a point where the courts rule against you.”

About reversing the result in favor of Biden, Sekulow was circumspect: “You have to line up a lot of dominoes, as we say, which would have to fall in the right direction for that to happen.”

J. Farmer said...

@Gospace:

Funny, I don't recall that.

How quickly we forget when ACORN was on the verge of stealing the election for Obama so that he could institute his radical communist/Islamist/Kenyan anti-colonialist agenda. Even McCain warned that they were "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Funny, I don't recall that. I do recall thinking there were a lot of stupid people putting their trust in an empty suit. ANd as time went on, it became more apparent that Obama was someone's puppet.

He was the puppet of the same force every president is a puppet of. The elite establishment. There's a reason banking and financial institutions generous contributors to Obama's campaign, and it wasn't because he was a radical communist. It's because he was a Clinton Democrat.

effinayright said...

stephen cooper said...
No, the dread is not about being caught - Hunter was caught a long time ago. And I am not one of those people who think he did anything all that bad ---- I don't believe the wilder accusations. But I do believe that he violated a few legal boundaries. And I have little doubt that he knows that he has been caught.
***************

You dimwit. Hunter got all that $$ because of his father who was wielding his power as VP.

His father is now hopelessly compromised with the Chinese and Russians for his crimes of taking their money to enrich himself.

They now control him.

LET THAT SINK IN.

effinayright said...

Political Junkie said...
This will not happen, but it is Solomonic. I am not a lawyer.

USSC produces a 9-0 opinion, written by ACB, with no concurring opinions, holding the following:

1.While there are serious statistical fraudulent findings, and various real world troubling findings, the USSC declares the election is over (the lawyers here can find what to rest their position upon) and Biden is the winner. They reference 2000 and mention this somehow balances things out.
2.USSC declares mail in voting illegal and disallowed in all scenarios. Only in person voting is allowed.
3.USSC declares voter registration must be completed a certain number of weeks before an election, to ensure the accuracy of the registered voters. Thus same day voting is eliminated.
4.USSC declares photo ID is required for all voting. No exceptions.

I think this would put to rest any court packing ideas (as the D's and L's would be mollified by ACB writing the opinion giving the presidency to Biden), and it would also give a lot of things to the right.

Of course it will never happen.

What do you think?
**********

I think you do not have the slightest clue as to what the Supreme Court does.

Not...the..slightest.

Kyzer SoSay said...

McCain was losing his marbles somewhat even back in 2008. The man ran an incompetent campaign, made several unforced errors, and did not enjoy strong base support.

ACORN was a threat, yes, but my concerns around it mostly centered on it's power growing once Obama took office. I was sure that Obama had 2008 locked up (I think Hillary might have too, had she won) against McCain - or, after Bush's second term, probably against nearly any Republican.

Most Republicans accepted Obama's 2 victories very normally. There were no loud accusations that fraud changed the overall vote. There were some accusations that fraud had occurred in various deep blue precincts and cities, but that's what you get when 102% turnout and all for Obama happens, or when Black Panthers stand watch outside polling places in full costume. People will complain about it, point out that big city machines are corrupt, and that's about it.

This time seems a lot different. There are so many things that don't add up and all of them in the key spots that Trump had won before. One thing that stands out to me is admittedly unscientific: the Bellwether counties. So many of them missed this year. Then seeing the long threads of Benford analyses on Twitter - some of them accompanied with links to the source files of data - and the pattern in those charts and graphs is plain to see. There's been other data graphs shared too, showing vote increases EoE from 16 to 20 that look awfully fishy.

Significant? I think so. Add in sworn affadavits from polling workers and volunteers and USPS employees alleging shady shit, sometimes with video evidence or other witnesses to back it up. Add in certain downballot mysteries, one of them being Milwaukee's various wards (although I believe the VA-01 alert ended up being a case of not-updated numbers - which might come with it's own set of questions). Add in the hiatus in counting votes overnight. Maria Bartiromo (among others) said she's never seen a stoppage like that, the counting has always continued as long as there were valid votes to count. Add in multiple vidoes and screenshots of random people looking up dead folks who've had ballots returned this year, or lists of voters with change-of-address conflicts. Maybe these were all caught and none got counted. I'm betting they did get counted.

Gahrie said...

If Trump eventually loses this race he should immediately start a campaign to pass and ratify a Constitutional Amendment setting up a rational and standard voting procedure that the states must follow. It should include the following:

All voters must be registered at least thirty days in advance of the election

All registered voters purged from the rolls after twelve years. Voter sent a reminder to their address of record that they must re-register.

All voting must be done in person on the day of the election except for diplomats and military serving overseas who may request and use an absentee ballot.

Voters must show a valid photo id when voting, all voting occurs via paper, bubble in ballots.

Voters dip their fingers in indelible ink after they vote. (No need for I voted sticker, everyone will see your finger)

Big Mike said...

So tell me Althouse, is the current political scene boring enough for you yet?

J. Farmer said...

@Kyzer SoSay:

This time seems a lot different.

Oh, I certainly agree with that. While the dynamic has been going on for many years, it has certainly intensified. It was evident in the previous administration. I thought Obama was a pretty mediocre president with an obsequious, fawning fanbase. But so much of the opposition from the right was unhinged lunacy. See, for example, Dinesh D'Souza's 2016: Obama's America. A mountain was made of every molehill, and it mostly had the effect of making Republicans look like desperate witch hunters. Sound familiar?

Another interesting dynamic is that this hysterical opposition has been targeted at presidents who have moved closer politically to the other side. Clinton moved the Democrats to the right as a New Democrat, Bush moved the GOP to the left as a "compassionate conservative," Obama continued the New Democrat coalition, and Trump moved the GOP to the left by embracing a populist message.

Humperdink said...

So I called my health insurance agent yesterday with an insurance question. She also happens to be our county Republican chairperson. She told me she was at the courthouse still counting votes. (NW Pa).

Rusty said...

Stephen Cooper said, " it is hard to be honest,"
Not really. Lying is hard. You have to keep lying. I learned as a teenager that it's a lot more fun to tell the truth in a way that you aren't believed. It has held me in good stead my whole life. The usual suspects lie out of habit even when they don't have to. When they get caught in a lie they act like you tricked them and then double down on the lie. You can see it here.

Big Mike said...

Farmer, you moronic imbecile, populism per se is neither left nor right. Trump’s populism is a populism pushing for more economic and personal freedom, which are are not exactly left-wing issues.

mandrewa said...

I've found a good source for doing the Benford Law analysis. He's Mark Nigrini, who has been using Benford's Law to identify white-collar criminals or problematic companies for a long time.

He has written several books on the subject. The most recent one is "Forensic Analytics, 2nd Edition". And he discusses this book and Benford's Law in a YouTube video released back in March of this year.

It's about 25 minutes long. See Mark Nigrini: Forensic Analytics Second Edition and I was so delighted to find that he talks about how you identify what is a significant discrepancy, and in the book I see there is a discussion of the effects of sample size.

In the video, he gives an objective definition of what is problematic and what is not.

And then just this morning he released another video showing the start of his analysis of the Maricopa County, AZ voting results (the final results and not the intermediates, and by the way we need to preserve this data before it disappears) and there does appear to be something going on. Of course this is just the beginning of a real study to try to figure
out what is going on just for that one county.

But he walks through step by step how to do this initial analysis with Microsoft Excel and where he got the data from and what he did exactly.

See 2020 Presidential election: Analysis of Maricopa County results using Benford’s Law and other tests

He also declared his intent to look at the Milwaukee data later this week.

Whiskeybum said...

Mandrewa - thanks for your subsequent posts regarding Benford's Law. I've also quickly come to the conclusion that you did regarding the NJ forensic accountant's error in using such a small data set to make conclusions. You have nine bins in the histogram to fill, and using 50-state data, that's less than 6 samples per bin. Benford's law is a law of large numbers, and that's just too small of a sample size for a good confidence interval.

I will definitely check out the videos you linked from Mark Nigrini, however, I'm still concerned about the other 'size' issue of the data: range or span of the data. Benford's law applies best to data that spans several orders of magnitude (e.g. four decades would probably provide good results). If we pick a state where we think fraud was likely, we could go to individual precinct data - that would satisfy the large sample size. However, precincts are set up to have roughly equal sizes of voters - it's not random, and it's not wide ranging. Also, within a given precinct, voters tend to vote with a nearly fixed spread, say, 40% Dem and 60% Rep. It tends towards 50/50, and again, is not random or providing a large span in the data. So, precinct size and voter patterns will definitely put a bias in the data that would seem to violate the tenants for Branford's Law to be valid.

I'm beginning to think that Branford's Law is not the way to go to show fraud in the election case. There are simpler things to look at, like large deviations from historic voter patterns, no down-stream votes, participation exceeding 100%, etc.

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

Farmer, you moronic imbecile, populism per se is neither left nor right. Trump’s populism is a populism pushing for more economic and personal freedom, which are are not exactly left-wing issues.

Trump's populism (the areas that set him apart from the other candidates) included attacks on trade liberalization, criticism of endless war, promising universal health coverage and vowing to protect Medicaid and Social Security from cuts or entitlement reforms. Those are all positions traditionally associated with "the left," and they have little to do with "more economic and personal freedom." Barriers to trade is the opposite of economic freedom. The only part of Trump's populism that is broadly considered on "the right" is immigration.

tim in vermont said...

NPR tl;dr: “The problem isn’t that the stories are untrue, it’s that they hurt Biden...”

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1326040885029646336

stephen cooper said...

Overnight Scott Adams took down the retweet about Real Clear Politics putting Trump in the toss-up category I referenced last night at around 8 or 9 pm, but Giuliani left his original tweet up (making the same claim).

The RCP owner put out a tweet stating that Giuliani's claim is false but the RCP owner's statement is that they never "called" PA for Trump, which is not the claim Giuliani made.

Anyway, the fact that Scott Adams took down the retweet, even if it is still arguably true, shows to me that Scott Adams is keeping up with these issues and it is worth checking out his take (for example, this morning he discusses the general lack of any statisticians publicly explaining that the Biden vote totals are not suspicious - and Adams speculates that the Biden supporting statisticians are experiencing flop sweat, which I think is a term from sports about how you sweat more when your team is losing more and more).

Jersey Fled said...

Political polling is dead.

From Axios:


Forget the “shy Trump voter” narrative. Before the election, pollsters were worried that perhaps some Trump voters surveyed were simply too embarrassed to tell people that they were voting for him.

The real problem is even worse. Virtually every poll did not survey enough Trump supporters, period — meaning there’s a huge sampling error the industry needs to reckon with.

“We’ve been struggling with this issue and we keep trying to fix it and it’s not totally working,” said one worried pollster who did not want to be named for fear of ruining his industry.

It’s called “non response,” meaning pollsters are not getting enough Trump voters to even participate in a survey and answer questions.

Whiskeybum said...

J. Farmer said...

Trump's populism (the areas that set him apart from the other candidates) included attacks on trade liberalization, criticism of endless war, promising universal health coverage and vowing to protect Medicaid and Social Security from cuts or entitlement reforms. Those are all positions traditionally associated with "the left," and they have little to do with "more economic and personal freedom." Barriers to trade is the opposite of economic freedom. The only part of Trump's populism that is broadly considered on "the right" is immigration.

Disagree (mostly) with your points:

1) Trump's approach with trade was to get more favorable trade agreements where historically the US is on the short end. He used restriction in trade as the 'stick' to negotiate better agreements. This is not the same thing as strong, permanent protectionism.

2) Criticism of endless war does tend towards a left view of 'absolutely no reason for wars', but I think the majority of conservatives nowadays view the ongoing wars, and in particular, military occupations, as a drag on our military, economy and political energy.

3) Promising universal health coverage - this is a Trump stance? You'll have to educate me on that one. While Trump/Congress didn't do much in this arena, they did manage to eliminate the mandate. I don't see how that counts as a progressive stance.

4) Protecting against Medicare/SS reforms. Here I would mostly agree with you that this is a typical left stance. However, even conservatives are wary of this because, depending on the way that it's done, the reforms could make matters worse.

In all of these cases, it's the details that reflect how 'left or right' the stances are.

Narr said...

Farmer, I just arrived at your questioning of the post I made about my friend who hated Trump and "his Nazi fascist supporters."

If you doubt the absolute veracity of what I reported, within the hour of ending the call,
then you can fuck yourself.

I do not post lies about my conversations with friends. My friend has been mentioned before, a PhD historian and archivist, enlisted veteran and member of the IRR, and a serious and earnest patriot. He is a self-described lefty, in fact he said so again last night.

So anyway, wiseass, what about the conversation do you find implausible? What set your BS detector off?

The rest of your comment is so wide of the point I was making that I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt.

Narr
Also, fuck yourself

J. Farmer said...

@Narr:

Also, fuck yourself

Lighten up, Francis. There's a reason I prefaced that single sentence with, "I'm more than willing to give the benefit of the doubt..." That is, I certainly take you at your word even if such anecdotal conversations sound a little too pat to me. Perhaps it's a consequence of having read too many Peggy Noonan articles in the past.

Narr said...

Yeah Farmer, blame Peggy Noonan ;)

I have no need to make up friends and conversations. The friend I quote is one of a baby handful of people whose calls I take or return promptly. He loves a robust disputation more than I do, maybe even as much as you do, and we have many of them, but we're alike in reacting ill to implications of untruthful testimony.

Narr
His name isn't Pat either

gadfly said...

We need to keep facts aligned in cases where they have gone askew. In Georgia, both parties are preceding to do the runoff required by the actual vote counts for Georgia US Senate on January 5, 2021.

Meanwhile GOP senate senatorial candidates and office holders are carrying on about "Stop the Steal" election results - with not a single piece of evidence to prove that the state vote count was suddenly illegal. Yes, Trump-influenced crooked politics are "still crazy after all these years."

To hell with the 15,000 underpaid and overworked election workers who diligently did their jobs over the past week and now some are extended with the recount required by law. These "crooks and liars" just don't know how or when stop their "lawbreaking" - which so far involves the false claim that a worker threw away a ballot (which turned out to be a crumpled instruction page tossed into a waste basket while a GOP co-worker took a video and sent it on its viral way on twitter).

Next we will see GOP Senators Loeffler and Perdue refuse to give up their current Senate seats even after the recount remains "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be." Amen.

J. Farmer said...

@Narr:

but we're alike in reacting ill to implications of untruthful testimony.

Sure you are.

Narr said...

So we discussed, my learned but often stubbornly opinionated friend and I, the manifestations or consequences of Trump's supposed racism and bigotry on say, foreign relations and commitments. At some point in the back and forth I posed this--

If Trump or any other president was to announce the pullout or drawdown of forces from some quagmire/shithole place that is gaining us nothing, on arguably defensible geopolitical grounds but throws in, "and besides, the place is full Black people/Muslims. Yuck" would that affect his (my friend's) judgement of another citizen or voter who supported the Prez without any distancing from the ad-lib?

He answered almost immediately that it would. That's what an idealist he is!

Funny how one thing leads to more on the theme. After several months of mentioning this joint to my wife, and some of our escapades here, she sat down to see what Blogger was about. She's all over FB and the other stuff, but this is not her territory or her interests. As we chatted about the portal, and the former ad-partner that was such a hassle for the Prof, and my long phone convo with my friend, and scrolled through some posts and comments, I realized that she had no idea what was on my profile, so I showed her that, and how easy it is to edit etc, and how many times it had been looked at (not a hot item, many of the visits my own of course, to see).

Counting my friend, my wife, and my brother (who I conversed with after seeing him outside the house, fully and expensively masked, when I drove home from a doctor's appointment this morning), I have talked about Trump the racist and dictator, enabler of white supremacists, isolationist warmonger, failed bidnessman, failed president, the DS, Russian Collusion and all that stuff, with people who disagree with me about almost all of it, so much in the last 18 or so hours that my face hurts.

Narr
No, really