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There was a story about Trump and Barr planning 5 federal executions before Trump leaves. The headline and writer were all freaked out. My thought was...why only 5?
The weather on Thanksgiving was gray, gloomy, rainy, and cool. The food was delicious and plentiful. The company was bright, cheerful, loving, and delightful. Thanksgiving day was with son and his family, today was with daughter and hers. I am exceedingly grateful for all I am blessed to have in my life.
However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
So of the 1.4M PA mail ballots returned the total between Trump/Biden tabulated equals 2.5M.. and now the Elections Commission has scrubbed that from the record..
Finally listened to an AA podcast the other day. It was very good. The changing tone and inflection of her voice makes the meaning much clearer than the written word.
The Supreme Court: Congress, much less a tin horn Governor, shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...
Anyone else finding it harder and harder to search for articles on any search engine? I looked for a couple of reports today and was only able to retrieve versions from 'acceptable' sources, like CNN, USA Today, etc. I use Yippy, Duck Duck Go and Google. Our window for information seems to be getting narrower by the day.
Stevew suggests: However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
Sure. I'm not planning to limit any activities. Nor will I be getting the vaccine.
Wisconsin selected locations recount complete. 132 votes net addition to Biden. $3 million cost paid by Trump campaign.
You have to try to be this stupid. You bite on the stupid narrative pushed by the dnc/propaganda media. That this is about finding more votes. Nobody ever claimed that.
This is about invalidating an election of electoral college electors. Like the Pennsylvania legislatures is starting to implement. Take back the power to choose electors. Ditto, Georgia. The state cant certify to votes(because massive fraud) and the Legislature chooses electors.
Your stupid notion this is about recounts really defines your ignorance.
"STUPID? Tell that to the side that spent #3m not me. And look in a mirror."
You were in full support of spending $32 million of your grandchildren's money on the Mueller investigation. You probably would be in favor of spending even more to reinvestigate it. So yeah, you're stupid.
"However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?"
Indeed, nothing has ever really real changed. 6000 years ago everything was similar to today, just using different pronouns.
However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
I hope you’re right. But I see that the leftie trolls cannot resist taunting people, and if they are taunting folks to their face they way they are taunting people on Althouse comment threads then someone is going to start something and someone is going to retaliate and things will get really bad so fast no one will be able to control it. Once it starts who knows how it will stop?
In 2000, for Bush v Gore, there was not the same developed "Supreme Court Bar" that exists today. Gore's lawyer David Boies was a great, great advocate, but not a Supreme Court specialist. (And some thought it showed at his USSC argument.) 20 years later, there are lots of Supreme Court specialists, and it is competitive for paying cases. So you would have thought that the Trump campaign would have a specialist lined up ready for the publicity that would come of arguing his case live (by telephone). But I have heard nothing of such persons being retained. For the Third Circuit appeal they did not even have an appellate specialist (a much bigger practice than the USSC bar.) Even though Trump was proclaiming for the year that it would take fraud for him to lose, and that he expected the USSC, with 2, now 3, members he picked, to save him if necessary.
In 2000, for Bush v Gore, there was not the same developed "Supreme Court Bar" that exists today. Gore's lawyer David Boies was a great, great advocate, but not a Supreme Court specialist. (And some thought it showed at his USSC argument.) 20 years later, there are lots of Supreme Court specialists, and it is competitive for paying cases. So you would have thought that the Trump campaign would have a specialist lined up ready for the publicity that would come of arguing his case live (by telephone). But I have heard nothing of such persons being retained. For the Third Circuit appeal they did not even have an appellate specialist (a much bigger practice than the USSC bar.) Even though Trump was proclaiming for the year that it would take fraud for him to lose, and that he expected the USSC, with 2, now 3, members he picked, to save him if necessary.
Do you think the threats by lawmakers of civil sanctions and disbarment or the threats of violence from leftists has anything to do with lawyers not joining these legal efforts?
No, we're talking about top, top lawyers, who laugh at meritless sanctions motions. And there have been no reported threats of violence against law firms. They would have made the legal press, not just the darker reaches of social media. I think it is because they have looked at the records created in trial courts (now much more easily accessible electronically than 20 years ago) and see nothing to work with. (It is a common piece of advice to engage appellate lawyers at the outset in order to get advice on "making your record.") It might also be because they don't want to work with the client from hell. Although, to his credit, Trump has not turned on any of his lawyers--yet.
Sydney, a book I have recommended over and over is The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, which is a decade or two old (so uninfected with current woke religion silliness) and is a fascinating read. As I recall you are a physician so you will either particularly enjoy it or be annoyed by it. It's about a Hmong girl with a mental disorder (can't remember which; maybe schizophrenia?) and the mismatch between her culture's concept of mental illness and the American medical community's. It's well researched and gracefully written.
Another great favorite for tenderness, humor and storytelling power is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It's semiautobiographical and is the story of Dominican immigrant teenagers in New York in the seventies.
I am currently reading the following:
Saint-watching by Phyllis McGinley: witty and generous
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson: erudite common sense
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: this will be a long project
"However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?"
Not me. As I posted here recently, I think the next 4 years are going to make 2020 look like 'Happy Days.'
Probably the best compliment I have, or could ever, receive(d)-- I realized--was when Stephan Cooper said about 'ol Guild: his heart is in the right place.
If you like murder mysteries that take you to another place, the detective novels of Tana French are rollicking good reads. Set in modern Ireland.
The Saxon Chronicles series by Bernard Cornwell are also very fun to read. I've been reading them on the Kindle app on my iPad so I can flip between them and Google Maps so I can place all the events.
I reread A Confederacy of Dunces earlier this year and remembered how much I love it. I find it genuinely laugh out loud funny; it's not for everyone, but the dialogue is some of the best I've ever read.
The next two things on my to-read list are Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher; mentioned quite favorably on Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's podcast, and Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel. I've begun the latter and there were some political-ish comments that I did not care for; I'll give it another twenty or so pages before deciding whether to continue.
Good books . . . good books . . . let me ponder a while.
Finishing up "Captives" by Linda Colley. A bit abstruse in topic and approach unless you're very familiar with modern British imperial history, but an excellent academic work that shows why history needs constant re-vision-ing and how much can be gained thereby.
Jerry Brotton's "A History of the World in Twelve Maps" and Peter Francopan's "The Silk Roads" are similarly creative retellings but of much wider scope.
Someone mentioned The Queen's Gambit. Silly me, I was thinking it was like The Crone sorry The Crown. I'll probably never watch, but it suggests two further readings--Nabokov's novel "Defense" about a grandmaster driven mad by the game, and Martin van Creveld's "As I Please" blog, which has lately focused on feminism, including some remarks on the lack of sustained chess achievement on the part of the womenfolk.
He cites Dutch medievalist Johann Huizinga to the effect that in all known societies men retain a fascination with games through their lives, to a degree virtually unknown in women. That seems both intuitively and empirically true to me. Not that I recommend "Homo Ludens" unless you really need the extra credit.
I've slacked on fiction. The last novel I read was also the last one Philip Kerr published before his untimely death. It has the hallmark Bernie Gunther cynical idealist tone but the story is thin and predictable; multiple murders in Weimar Berlin with a subplot involving the making of the film "Metropolis" which is also the book's title.
Too many of the characters launch into encyclopedic monologues on events and people, to keep the story moving. Kerr really seemed to phone it in for some of the later Bernie mysteries.
Readering said... STUPID? Tell that to the side that spent #3m not me. And look in a mirror.
My post wasn't long, it raised the central salient objective of the Trump campaign. Something that even after I pointed it out, you are still clueless. Here's another lesson for you. I used the term 'stupid' and not ignorant. Ignorant is not knowing, we are all ignorant. Stupid means, lacks the capacity to learn. Stupid fits.
Anyone have any good book recommendations? Fiction and non-fiction.
Jim Butcher’s “Harry Dresden” series. Read in order. The “Mercy Thompson” series by Patricia Briggs. Also read in order. The Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold — again in order. Anything by Sarah Hoyt, but if you try her “Darkship” series then read it in order. I also love the “Monster Hunter” series by Larry Corriea, but you might prefer his “Grimnoir” series.
History book: "Escape from Rome" by Walter Scheidel. Why the Roman Empire never rebuilt itself after the Western Empire fell and instead we got the industrial revolution while the Chinese empires repeatedly rose and fell and remained essentially static in technology and economy.
WWII History: "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" by James D. Hornfischer. Great book about the last big Naval battle in WWII. The Japanese fleet attacked at Leyte Gulf and the only ships available were small escort destroyers, light cruisers and escort carriers. The Japs lost.
"Brothers in Arms" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jabbar's father severed in the 761st Armored Battalion. Saw action with Patton's division after D-day.
Biography: "Grant" by Ron Chernow. Ulysses S. Grant's life from birth to death, including his war and presidential years.
“Ignorant is not knowing, we are all ignorant. Stupid means, lacks the capacity to learn.”
If you’re doing definitions I need some help. What is it called when cult followers lose touch w/ reality?
Also, people here should be help Big M. He needs trigger warnings so he can go to a safe space. Comments here are the sorta things that could result in uncontrollable emotionalism if he experienced such in real life. Being a snowflake is a lifestyle choice. Not that there’s anything wrong w/ that.
Iowan2 I wrote a short post about how the Trump campaign spent $3 million for nothing. You wrote a longer post in response that used stupid 3 times at least while ignoring my only point.
As for your new point about state legislatures, I wrote nothing because I am a patient man. Let's just say, it's been almost a month. We'll see.
I like the other hornfischer one, which wasabout the naval conflict in the solomons, it makes the battles come alive until i saw in harms way, they were firing at short distances in the dark, where the radar doesnt provide more cover.
Mythinformed @Milwaukee Recount @MythinformedMKE · 7m Typical CNN. Ignoring the massive amounts of votes that can go before a court. Quote Tweet Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto · 2h New: Recount in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin (requested by Trump campaign) certifies 2020 election results with a 132-vote gain....for Biden
The Election Wizard Retweeted Robert Barnes @Barnes_Law · 1h Pennsylvania trial court rules the 2020 election was likely unconstitutional in Pennsylvania, and that gives state legislators power to choose electors.
RE what Walter posted, not only did the PA judge rule that the certification did indeed have to be stopped (and the Dems failed to take all proper steps of certification, including trying to certify only the President and VP races but nothing downballot), it actively does stop certification completely, the judge also ruled that the Trump team is likely to win on the merits of their argument that Act 77 which permitted no-excuse mail in balloting directly violated the PA constitution (which clearly lays out only 4 reasons someone may vote absentee, and COVID ain't on the list).
I was in serious despair after the 3rd district fiasco, but it looks like there remains an uncorrupted judge or two in my state, thank God. And this is a game changer. Hope lives again.
If it please the Professora : can you comment on how arduous is this process and any lessons you may draw for future for your own blog site? site migration notification by CTH
Let me second the recommendation for Butcher's Dresden Files. Here follows my review of the two most recent entries. (But you do need to read them all in order both because of the meta-plot, and so as to not miss many Crowning Moments Of Awesome).
After a long break, Chicago wizard, Harry Dresden is back, and things are going pretty well for him. He is rearing his daughter in secure surroundings, he has just learned his brother's SO is expecting and he will soon have a niece or nephew, and even though she is still healing from the near disaster of their last adventure, he now officially has a girl-friend. There may even be magical peace on the horizon, as the aquatic Fomor have accepted an invitation to peace talks to resolve their differences with the Chicago magic community.
So we have a nice little slice-of-life story, and the sun goes down on a peaceful city --- Oh, wait, I did say this was about Harry Dresden..
Of course things immediately go to pieces and Harry is torn between his family and his major loyalties as the situation descends into total war. Along the way, certain aspects of the End Game are teased for the first time, and Harry makes irrevocable decisions as the city of Chicago comes to arms, and has trans-Rubicon realizations of its own. Alliances are made and broken, good people die and, did I say "Chicago wizard, Harry Dresden"? Perhaps I should have said "Wizard of Chicago".
I highly recommend reading these two books in back-to-back. Peace Talks is a bit more like a long novelette, which serves to remind us of the situation at the close of the last, long-ago, Dresden book and ease us (and perhaps Butcher) back into his world. It has a main plot thread, but not a totally satisfactory resolution (when considered as a stand-alone) and melds seamlessly into the action of Battle Ground.
When considered as one book, this duology is very good, and spending time with Harry Dresden again is a welcome experience. I was once more struck, as I was at the climax of White Night, about how much better the people (or creatures) who throw in their lot with Harry become. He would certainly reject the notion, but there is something pure at his core, and he can inspire even ancient evils to act.. admirably.
The events here are traumatic enough that we get a nice little Christmas story as a bonus to send us out on a happy note.
1. BIDEN sexually assaulted his staff person Tara Reed. 2. BIDEN stated that people that give me money get first in line. 3. BIDEN passed laws that let MBNA bank charge 23% interest on poor people. 4. Delaware is the criminal that uses the state to enable cooperation to steal. most ompany's are registered in Delaware to take advantage of the corrupt laws. 5. BIDEB has lived a life of becoming rich in public service, how cool to be rich while saying we love the poor,
@320Busdriver said... So of the 1.4M PA mail ballots returned the total between Trump/Biden tabulated equals 2.5M.. and now the Elections Commission has scrubbed that from the record..
So Mr. Driver, how many dishonest poll workers did you spot while voting at your precinct this year? Last year? The same number that everyone reading this saw - none.
In Pennsylvania, it took 40,000 poll workers 3 weeks to count 6.92 million votes (92% of the expected total). So 20,000 Dems have been busy miscounting ballots. That is a huge conspiracy or just plain lies ginned up by friends of Driver.
FYI, the official numbers were 3,088 million mail ballots requested, 2,629 million returned as votes.
" .... using data provided by the CDC from the last 6 years, total deaths have remained relatively constant and increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population. The spikes in deaths in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been over 262,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the United States, yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity; they have only mirrored existing trends. In short, according to 6 years of data collected by the CDC, Covid-19 has not led to any significant increase in deaths.
"Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen."
"Anyone else finding it harder and harder to search for articles on any search engine?”
You could try Yandex. That gives different results. I think that we are in an era where we can’t rely on just one search engine anymore. Duck is based on Google, and it’s a little better, but the main difference is that it doesn’t keep user info. Google certainly has the power to game Duck’s results.
""Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen.”
Here we go, this is simply not true. Deaths have not remained relatively constant.
"only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths.” That was in a single week. Deaths have topped 2018 in every week since the pandemic started.
"increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population.”
Deaths have exceeded 2018 by around 2 standard deviations or more every week since the pandemic started. This is simply not due to population increase. For one thing, why does the population increase track the progress of the pandemic? It’s nonsense. The odds of deaths exceeded the 95% confidence interval by random chance in a single week is 20-1 against (could happen) the chance of deaths exceeding the 95% CI by random chance (random variability) for 20 weeks running is trillions to one.
"yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity”.
What data is this person looking at?
The writer also claims that it’s not believable that COVID could kill more people than heart disease, therefore it must not be. That’s like saying that it would be impossible for a pandemic to kill more people than heart disease. The writer does a lot of assuming what they are trying to prove.
As for percentage of deaths due to various causes, let’s use simple round numbers just for the concept, suppose that 50% of people who died died of heart disease every year and 50% of deaths were due to cancer in a long standing pattern. Then disease X comes along and kills 20% of those who died this year. All of a sudden only 40% of people are dying of heart disease this year, and likewise cancer . Does this mean, because the percentages of people dying went down for these stable causes of death that Disease X must not have killed anybody because those people would have died anyway?
Anybody with an open mind who is reading the above article should simply look at this graph. A quick look is enough to show that the article cited is mostly legerdemain disguised as logic. It’s enough to make me wonder if the writer was that stupid, or did they have bad intent?
The orange line is where natural variability is ruled out with 95% confidence. That’s why the line is there, and that’s why small variations from the average are not called “excess deaths.”
The same people who complain about the propaganda techniques used against Trump fall for them so easily when they baddly want to believe the results, even when the proof doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Undoubtedly bad actors have seized on the pandemic to further their goals. However, cui bono is not some kind of infallible rule of logic. In 1066 Halley’s Comet appeared and William the Conqueror used its appearance to convince his men that God wanted them to conquer England and the English probably though that the omen meant that their king would die, since that was a common folk belief about the meaning of comets. Doesn’t mean William the Conqueror summoned Halley’s Comet.
That graph does not prove what you think it proves. Nobody has ever said that mask mandates could stop the pandemic, just dampen it, resulting in fewer cases and fewer deaths. What happens if you continue the line upwards where that little jog happens when the mask mandate was instituted? There is a lot more area under that curve.
Studies that have looked broadly at mask mandates show that they reduce the growth of the pandemic relative to places where there is no mask mandate. Cherry picking one graph and making mathematically nonsensical inferences from it don’t change that.
Tim in Vermont, my problem with the tableau graph is it only goes back to 2017. there’s another micro data set out there showing the numbers of annual deaths back to 1950. And that seems to show an expected annual death rate being up in 2020, and going higher in subsequent years.
So I’ve been sort of looking at it also. And the question is how do you baseline what the expected deaths in 2020 are? How many years do you go back? Because the number of annual deaths has been increasing since a low in 2013, when adjusted for population size.
Dresden Files is awesome all the way through. Not many 15+ book series I've read through twice, but DF I've read three times and will probably do a 4th read when I retire.
Blogger iowan2 said... "Wisconsin selected locations recount complete. 132 votes net addition to Biden. $3 million cost paid by Trump campaign." The only explanation for the willful disregard of the will of the people Is that readering, being a lawyer, is in on the grift. If the situation was reversed readering et al would be screaming from the rooftops demanding a recount and an investigation. Because we all want free and fair elections. That would be fair, no? That would only be right, no? readering et al doesn't want those things. What does readering et al have to gain by not wanting free and fair elections? The continued flow of graft is what. Vote fraud on this scale requires corruption on an equal scale. Which means it's been going on for decades and is considered the normal way of doing the publics business.
“My problem with the tableau graph is it only goes back to 2017”
Counts of deaths in the most recent weeks were compared with historical trends (from 2013 to present) - CDC website
If you are going to make a population growth argument for the ‘apparent’ excess deaths, you are going to have to explain how it follows the progress of the pandemic as reflected in the trend of test results so closely? I guess that one of those “infinite improbability engine” from Hitchhiker’s Guide could have passed near here, but that seems unlikely. If that’s what happened, then the answer is 42.
Pants reports: I reread A Confederacy of Dunces earlier this year and remembered how much I love it. I find it genuinely laugh out loud funny; it's not for everyone, but the dialogue is some of the best I've ever read.
And now Carter Page is suing the FBI swamp dwellers, McCabe, Stroke, etc., for 75 million. And he's not suing them as part of the FBI, but as individuals, which is allowed when those individuals act "in reckless disregard for the truth", which we all know they did.
This could easily lead to more Obamagate prosecutions. He's even suing to get corrections made to the Horowitz report.
Man, yesterday was a serious darkest-before moment, but feeling pretty good this dawn!
And, by all means, read The Gulag Archipelago if you haven't already. Or, if you have, then read it again [both Gulag and Confederacy are listed on my profile's favorite book list]. I usually avoid books written after 1980 or so. Most modern literature is crap.
All the money and all the lawyers of Don the Con could not save him from the majority of voters who said you are fired. And for all the claims of fraud and fixing, I suggest you volunteer to work the polls or be an observer, as so many honest citizens have done this year which seems to have been an honest election that only under counted a few hundred votes for Biden here in Wisconsin.
A Pennsylvania state court Judge has issued a preliminary injunction preventing Pennsylvania from taking any further steps to perfect its certification of the election,
Look at this. Not looking for a few more votes here and there. Just toss the results, and affirm the power of the State Legislature to choose Electors. Of course since November 4th, the dnc/propaganda/scribes have been obsessing about "not enough fraudulent votes to change the vote totals" When the play has always been to involve the legislative branch exercising its constitutional power. The Propaganda machine always pushing the narrative to confuse the leftist.
Blogger Sydney said... Anyone have any good book recommendations? Fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction; Andrew Wareham who has series of historical novels including British Navy in Napoleon times and in the Boxer Rebellion. He is an economic historian and has an excellent series on the rise of industrial England that begins with "The Privateersman," which tells how a young man first got a fortune, then the rest of the series is about the industrial revolution.
Another good series is about the Royal Flying Corps in WWI.
Nonfiction; Andrew Roberts' biography of Napoleon is excellent. So is the Grant biography. Grant and Sherman's Memoirs are worth reading. I read Grant's when I was in college. Times change.
In a per curiam decision, the Court first ruled 7–2 (Justices Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting), strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. Specifically, the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. - Wikipedia
It’s funny that the first article that “Siri” suggested that downplayed the equal protection argument said only three justices bought the equal protection argument. It’s almost like mockturtle has a point that the search engines are manipulating results.... Naaah!
"A few years ago, I read a book on paper. I'll have to get this one.”
I once read a book that made the argument that the Dark Ages in Europe started because the Muslims had cut off Europe's papyrus supply from Egypt. Kind of the equivalent of an EMP attack on a modern society today. Paper seems only to have appeared in Europe around the 11th century. The Romans used papyrus. I don’t vouch for it, it just seemed like an interesting theory.
“FYI, the official numbers were 3,088 million mail ballots requested, 2,629 million returned as votes.“
I stand corrected then.. I was repeating what PA state senator Doug Mastriano had posted. Unfortunately he is not a sharp official.
So Mr Fly, it does not change my assertion that there were fatal flaws in this election and that Democrats cheated in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philly, and Atlanta to drag a sorry ass corruptocrat across the finish line. Biden underperformed Clinton in every metro except those 4. Say nothing of bellwether states and counties and the outcome of House races.
As to what I experienced on Election Day in WI. Wife and I worked the polls and asked our precinct Captain when we arrived if we were to ask voters to lower their mask to determine a match with the photo ID. We were told “absolutely not to do that”.
I filed an affidavit stating what we were told. Have a nice day!
It will be interesting to see how the SCOTUS rejects the exact same argument that it once accepted 7-2, with only the hyper partisan RGB and Stevens dissenting.
gadfly is, as lefties keep doing repeatedly, conflating ballots *requested* with ballots *sent out*. The 1.8 million figure cited by Giuliani was sent out, not requested. Why gadfly thinks citing the number requested undermines anything Giuliani said is a mysterious puz... hahahahah, sorry, couldn't keep a straight face on that one.
By the way, mockturtle, yes, I noticed a few days ago that even duckduckgo was giving biased results. The day of the PA Senate hearing, I tried like five different ways to search for video of the hearing. Most results were completely unrelated and the few that were were 30 second clips of Guilini's dye drip. It was chilling. We are entering China levels of information suppression.
From tim in vermont's CDC data we can see that deaths were below expectations in 2018 and 2019. Those people are destined to live forever, according to tim in vermont.
The yellow line is not “expectations,” it's a confidence interval (CI) that marks the line where it’s 95% likely that deaths above that line are not due to random variation in the deaths. Seriously Berkel. If anything, the excess deaths number is underestimated out of caution.
How many statistics courses have you taken? because this kind of stuff is in every one of them.
Maybe it's the search I did, but Yandex gave me many sites from the far alt.right that other search engines try to suppress. Not sure that's actually a good thing.
Er sorry, it may have been the initial press conference I was looking for when I got those weird results (thats when the dye thing happened).
Checking what duckduckgo says about their methods, they supposedly do not use Google search results at all... but they do use Bing results, which I wouldn't expect to be much better than Google.
Blogger Michael K said... "I once read a book that made the argument that the Dark Ages in Europe started because the Muslims had cut off Europe's papyrus supply from Egypt
Interesting theory. Vellum was used for a while and lasts a thousand years. Half the copies of Gutenberg's Bible were on vellum." One of the reasons Arab and medieval libraries had so many scribes was because papyrus wasn't archival and books had to be constantly copied. Velum was excellent but was expensive and in limited supply. When rag paper was introduced into Europe from China through Venice the distribution of knowledge really took off. That and the printing press.
Regarding the "Harry Dresden files," a few years back I was buying the latest book in Barnes & Noble, and the checkout clerk told me that she had glanced at the first page of Blood Rites, book 6 in the series, and she was hooked. The opening lines are:
"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.
My boots slipped and slid on the tile floor as I sprinted around a corner and towards the exit doors to the abandoned school building on the southwest edge of Chicagoland."
Before the end of the page he is battling demon-monkeys who can throw globs of fire.
Four times, four states, where live video of MSM sources on election night captured votes being subtracted from Trump's total and the same number added to Biden's total:
(I am editing and redrawing all the illustrations a new collected edition of John McConnell's 4 volumes on Statistical Process Control and Quality. Also took several statistics courses as an undergrad and grad student.)
I've not read the report so have no comment on the math. I also don't present myself as being especially knowedgable on statisics
I was curious why they pulled the article. Was it pulled for bad statistics/data/math? Or for political reasons.
NOTE: Currently listening to Tim Pool as I type this. He is discussing why it was pulled. He researched it on Wayback and found it was only posted for about 45 minutes>
Here's what the Newsletter says:
"Editor’s Note: After The News-Letter published this article on Nov. 22, it was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data” has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic."
I just want to point out that that last post at 11:02 am isn't just a smoking gun of massive coordinated voter fraud. It's live video of the perp on video shooting the gun, with frame by frame footage of the bullet leaving his gun and striking the targets, while the perp cackles and monologues his entire evil plan.
The discussion of whether or not there was massive voter fraud is over. There literally can't possibly be more definitive evidence of fraud than those videos.
Period.
It's over.
Trump won. The election was stolen outright. Tens of thousands of votes being switched from Trump to Biden was on video that very same night. And there isn't a single honest person who can see those videos and deny it now.
There is no way that a Biden presidency will be accepted peacefully anymore. None.
Just watch the scrolling vote counts in these clips:
Sorry, Birkel. I didn’t realize that it’s an “appeal to authority” to point out that confidence intervals are covered in any introductory class in statistics. If you have never taken one, that should be a clue that maybe you should do more reading before commenting on the interpretation of statistics. If confidence intervals strike you as some kind of exotic construct, like penumbras in the constitution, I don’t know what to say. Without an understanding of them, you have no hope of understanding these issues you are trying to discuss.
"has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.”
I saw the tweet. I thought it just compounded Johns Hopkins’ mistakes, and was probably written by a PR flak who didn’t understand the issues.
If you care to read the report on the webinar and to rebut any of the criticisms I have made, I would have plenty happy to hear such like. All we seem to have so far is analysis by ideology and inference by suspicion of motive. None of that has any bearing on the issues I have raised here.
That poet could not know A time like this And yet he cursed his day Better than this.
Is time then a falling slide, Poet and knave bruised On a dumb rocky mountain side? Then what we have we lose.
Still, what has been has been: That from beauties flesh was born Some marvellous, flesh tearing form Still finds its somewhere reflective dream.
.II.
Or do we but count the corn, Watch the rats’ numberless dawn, Hear the room tying rain, See ragged faces painless pain?
We always do that, The prisoner and the rat Eyeing their despair; Or in the day Where in we might say “Here is the wrong, stupid lair.”
It’s hard to keep eye fixed ahead When there’s but counting of the dead.
.III.
“Enough fools for us all!” Democrats say: Thus they have built their day – To confound the strong and the good Idiots for a guard they’ve stood Sweating, breaking out loud.
What poet can pierce that crowd? .IV.
Over the hill more might be seen: You watch the Tower beaten in dream You who see the living die.
Over that crowd beaten eye There’s but the canopy of lead: Let the dead bury the dead.
A thin, weeping mist squeaks along the grass Shrouding the bulbous shadows of mice Again busy building a new home: The aching legs, tired of their twenty four hour fit, Throw the gauntlet of choice to the brain, The tired arm annoyingly nags to be parted: On the aged bench, wet and dulled in the rain, When the years have marked me, Will pleasure replace this pain? Could I say: “Here I have lived.”?
Scuttling like some odd, savage animal Through the unbrushed matting of motorway grass I am already sick of my naturalness, Of my cowardice, my stopping Before the butt beating guards And my inability to come down to mortality. Somehow the sweated fever of my youth May seem peculiar to one, a shameful perversion, An indescribable immorality, that which is not done. Always that which is not done, always the odd sharpness.
.II.
Crying like a baby among friends At the dullness of their desire I’m the odd one here I feel. So much hope, so much happiness In its failure: why this contentment? Contentment breeds inaction, Contemplation, love of the lines, An artist eye and moribund stare.
Sometimes, a rabbit among stalks, I wallow in the dough Of unfulfillable desire: I admit it and this is a sloth.
But one face of benediction was turned And then I was happy? Involved in oblivious activity, Is this without blindness?
.III.
Her benediction was not Always so bright: Not the polish of the mirror Or intenseness of light But a sense in which I was too inattentive to stare.
Crawling from the womb I was shut in its sack, Carried, it seems, through A few hundred years, I was always tempted To crawl right back Dulled in parties with Talk and whisky and beers.
I was so wrong From the beginning It makes me laugh.
But triumph in defeat I am no Christ.
.IV.
Everything seems beautiful: Should I not be more radical? Should I not spit and curse Like a saint? Call for the end Of everything that’s not vital Or not coloured most vividly?
Things are ugly, too, But what is ugly will Dully reflect the whole, Is, somehow, a more tempered beauty.
Even in the blackest pit I carried my mirror, Dashing with light The groaning of its roots.
.V.
Sick of my love of the game I smack him round the chops…
Too much akin, too much revealed, Perhaps my ambition Will take the Devils part:
Who will be my parricide? Who wants to peer in the bone?
Let’s dig at the pate Of this smug fellow’s devil To find if the old sixes are there.
Funny the Devil without draws Being dragged down the stare.
Nativity “Notre crime est del’homme” Lamartine. ‘L’homme.’
Everything stained: The tea stains the cup, The cup stains the counter, the foot stains the snow, The moon stains the air. Everything said. I am told this is not an original thought. Below, what was forgotten and cold, As if it were not merely, actually true, There was a birth, the unthinking was done And this messy mix of snow and blood Produced a word that meant ‘goodbye’ or ‘hello’, Unsorting a chaos into ‘this one and that’ And saying “Insofar as I am here, that is there.”
Or if they are ‘mad’, we are ‘mad’, since Neither they nor we can prove the obvious: That Johnson kicked a stone but Berkeley Was already dead, that the delusion suffices To make a few words bring a cup of tea And that, without God, preserving the hollow Takes so long to say, everyman Could seek to find Putrefaction of his mother, Of his brother, of his kind.
I have you, therefore, above my desk, A smile which distinguishes nobody, The tasted, tasteless essence ‘Of that forbidden tree’ The heart is not willing to forsake: For what is knowledge but love Repelled by the Other, Broken back, angular, Reflecting merely surface. And yet strangely, somewhere beneath Being does speak to being. That uncounted kernel of one.
I have you, therefore, always within reach: No, I would say ‘inside’ if to perceive Brought the soul from the body Reduced to viscera, lung and bone. And that smile always a dawn Barely perceptible (Or is it the twilight of the east, A star which leads To the seemingly humble Centre of things?) Self secluding, occluding Almost everyone, perhaps everyone.
It is the silence that focuses everything: From where, two, one, alone, being calls for Being.
A Sundays gentle cycle through seas of empty streets Shadowing the shadow of Paul. We are expecting death, September’s enervation as yet unyellowed, A stilled silence at the grieving bed.
Or the hidden poor that scuttle out of view, the boxed porter, Trader, shopmen with wives babed, again gestating. The desperation of pubs bellowed by tongues of swollen want, The dissipation of drunks, sickened
By that tumbled sense of all in one oned on Saturday, Now stirred to listless cry of child, distorted hand of care. On the makeshift carpet of grass men and women quiesced By capital poison of fat and food.
An empty hall of towered streets, sepulchre of feet’s Ghostly echo, the solitary essence of crowd, work, money, The staccato knock of question and frigid stone. Lost the prepared confusion of route,
The lanes that rebelled to be straightened, Wrens Imperfect gloom twisted to a bridge and Thames.
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140 comments:
There was a story about Trump and Barr planning 5 federal executions before Trump leaves. The headline and writer were all freaked out. My thought was...why only 5?
And my D wife, who hates Trump, yet has some sanity, said she was fine with it and wished the number were higher.Now that is my kind of D!
Any time anyone writes an assessment of the state of journalism generally, it should be mentioned that they said Epstein killed himself.
The weather on Thanksgiving was gray, gloomy, rainy, and cool. The food was delicious and plentiful. The company was bright, cheerful, loving, and delightful. Thanksgiving day was with son and his family, today was with daughter and hers. I am exceedingly grateful for all I am blessed to have in my life.
However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
So of the 1.4M PA mail ballots returned the total between Trump/Biden tabulated equals 2.5M.. and now the Elections Commission has scrubbed that from the record..
What could that mean? Seems straightforward.
I wouldn't trust the PA Elections Commission to count their own buttcheecks with a handcount.
But then, that's just me.
Wisconsin selected locations recount complete. 132 votes net addition to Biden. $3 million cost paid by Trump campaign.
Finally listened to an AA podcast the other day. It was very good. The changing tone and inflection of her voice makes the meaning much clearer than the written word.
Blogger Freeman Hunt said...
Any time anyone writes an assessment of the state of journalism generally, it should be mentioned that they said Epstein killed himself.
Your full of Soup
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-jeffrey-epstein-kill-himself-60-minutes-investigates-2020-01-05/
Yes and that wouldnt fly in a grisham novel, heck even in a sherlock episode.
Makes perfect sense
https://mobile.twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1332504173338832898
The Supreme Court:
Congress, much less a tin horn Governor, shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...
One of the Popes to the NYT:
Not so fast.
Anyone else finding it harder and harder to search for articles on any search engine? I looked for a couple of reports today and was only able to retrieve versions from 'acceptable' sources, like CNN, USA Today, etc. I use Yippy, Duck Duck Go and Google. Our window for information seems to be getting narrower by the day.
Hey. Why not make Trump president emeritus.... until our representatives can figure out what the heck happened?
"All The News That's Approved To Print"
Stevew suggests: However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
Sure. I'm not planning to limit any activities. Nor will I be getting the vaccine.
Omg
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2020/11/27/no-shame-pbs-hack-hails-biden-cabinet-avengers-saving-us-all
Wisconsin selected locations recount complete. 132 votes net addition to Biden. $3 million cost paid by Trump campaign.
You have to try to be this stupid. You bite on the stupid narrative pushed by the dnc/propaganda media. That this is about finding more votes. Nobody ever claimed that.
This is about invalidating an election of electoral college electors. Like the Pennsylvania legislatures is starting to implement. Take back the power to choose electors. Ditto, Georgia. The state cant certify to votes(because massive fraud) and the Legislature chooses electors.
Your stupid notion this is about recounts really defines your ignorance.
In case any plans to travel internationally
https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/presentations/travel-pass/
your vaccination will be required.
"STUPID? Tell that to the side that spent #3m not me. And look in a mirror."
You were in full support of spending $32 million of your grandchildren's money on the Mueller investigation. You probably would be in favor of spending even more to reinvestigate it. So yeah, you're stupid.
Yeah, I did poorly in high school art. So stupid, I guess.
"However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?"
Indeed, nothing has ever really real changed. 6000 years ago everything was similar to today, just using different pronouns.
6 billion years ago today, same thing.
And, Jesus is Hitler because they both pooped.
However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
I hope you’re right. But I see that the leftie trolls cannot resist taunting people, and if they are taunting folks to their face they way they are taunting people on Althouse comment threads then someone is going to start something and someone is going to retaliate and things will get really bad so fast no one will be able to control it. Once it starts who knows how it will stop?
In 2000, for Bush v Gore, there was not the same developed "Supreme Court Bar" that exists today. Gore's lawyer David Boies was a great, great advocate, but not a Supreme Court specialist. (And some thought it showed at his USSC argument.) 20 years later, there are lots of Supreme Court specialists, and it is competitive for paying cases. So you would have thought that the Trump campaign would have a specialist lined up ready for the publicity that would come of arguing his case live (by telephone). But I have heard nothing of such persons being retained. For the Third Circuit appeal they did not even have an appellate specialist (a much bigger practice than the USSC bar.) Even though Trump was proclaiming for the year that it would take fraud for him to lose, and that he expected the USSC, with 2, now 3, members he picked, to save him if necessary.
Anyone have any good book recommendations? Fiction and non-fiction.
Check out the NY Times Best books of the year. 5 fiction, 5 non-fiction
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/books/review/podcast-10-best-books-2020.html
It includes part 1 of the projected 2-part autobiography of a recent commander-in-chief.
Johns Hopkins study shows new breakthroughs massively reduced Pneumonia and Cardiovascular disease deaths in the United States in 2020.
Is there another possible answer to why all other deaths were so much lower than 2018 and that total death rates were relatively similar?
readering said...
In 2000, for Bush v Gore, there was not the same developed "Supreme Court Bar" that exists today. Gore's lawyer David Boies was a great, great advocate, but not a Supreme Court specialist. (And some thought it showed at his USSC argument.) 20 years later, there are lots of Supreme Court specialists, and it is competitive for paying cases. So you would have thought that the Trump campaign would have a specialist lined up ready for the publicity that would come of arguing his case live (by telephone). But I have heard nothing of such persons being retained. For the Third Circuit appeal they did not even have an appellate specialist (a much bigger practice than the USSC bar.) Even though Trump was proclaiming for the year that it would take fraud for him to lose, and that he expected the USSC, with 2, now 3, members he picked, to save him if necessary.
Do you think the threats by lawmakers of civil sanctions and disbarment or the threats of violence from leftists has anything to do with lawyers not joining these legal efforts?
stevew said...
However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?
Do you know what the difference is between a high trust society and a low trust society is?
Readering,
The same 3 specialists that won Bush v gore on 14A will be there for arguments.
Robert's, Kavanaugh and Coney.
Do they need others?
Don't worry. Trust Trump. He's got this.
John Henry
@Sydney
I love anything by Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore. You can do a quick search to see if their style suits you.
No, we're talking about top, top lawyers, who laugh at meritless sanctions motions. And there have been no reported threats of violence against law firms. They would have made the legal press, not just the darker reaches of social media. I think it is because they have looked at the records created in trial courts (now much more easily accessible electronically than 20 years ago) and see nothing to work with. (It is a common piece of advice to engage appellate lawyers at the outset in order to get advice on "making your record.") It might also be because they don't want to work with the client from hell. Although, to his credit, Trump has not turned on any of his lawyers--yet.
Sydney, a book I have recommended over and over is The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, which is a decade or two old (so uninfected with current woke religion silliness) and is a fascinating read. As I recall you are a physician so you will either particularly enjoy it or be annoyed by it. It's about a Hmong girl with a mental disorder (can't remember which; maybe schizophrenia?) and the mismatch between her culture's concept of mental illness and the American medical community's. It's well researched and gracefully written.
Another great favorite for tenderness, humor and storytelling power is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It's semiautobiographical and is the story of Dominican immigrant teenagers in New York in the seventies.
I am currently reading the following:
Saint-watching by Phyllis McGinley: witty and generous
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson: erudite common sense
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: this will be a long project
What's everyone else reading?
Ok, John Henry! Just like Judge Stephanos Bibas, whom Trump appointed to the Third Circuit.
"However this election settles out I expect a return to normal(ish) activity and behavior in 2021. Kinda thinking we might just skip ahead. Any takers?"
Not me. As I posted here recently, I think the next 4 years are going to make 2020 look like 'Happy Days.'
Probably the best compliment I have, or could ever, receive(d)-- I realized--was when Stephan Cooper said about 'ol Guild: his heart is in the right place.
WOW.
THat isn't something that happens every day.
If you like murder mysteries that take you to another place, the detective novels of Tana French are rollicking good reads. Set in modern Ireland.
The Saxon Chronicles series by Bernard Cornwell are also very fun to read. I've been reading them on the Kindle app on my iPad so I can flip between them and Google Maps so I can place all the events.
I reread A Confederacy of Dunces earlier this year and remembered how much I love it. I find it genuinely laugh out loud funny; it's not for everyone, but the dialogue is some of the best I've ever read.
The next two things on my to-read list are Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher; mentioned quite favorably on Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's podcast, and Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel. I've begun the latter and there were some political-ish comments that I did not care for; I'll give it another twenty or so pages before deciding whether to continue.
Good books . . . good books . . . let me ponder a while.
Finishing up "Captives" by Linda Colley. A bit abstruse in topic and approach unless you're very familiar with modern British imperial history, but an excellent academic work that shows why history needs constant re-vision-ing and how much can be gained thereby.
Jerry Brotton's "A History of the World in Twelve Maps" and Peter Francopan's "The Silk Roads" are similarly creative retellings but of much wider scope.
Someone mentioned The Queen's Gambit. Silly me, I was thinking it was like The Crone sorry The Crown. I'll probably never watch, but it suggests two further readings--Nabokov's novel "Defense" about a grandmaster driven mad by the game, and Martin van Creveld's "As I Please" blog, which has lately focused on feminism, including some remarks on the lack of sustained chess achievement on the part of the womenfolk.
He cites Dutch medievalist Johann Huizinga to the effect that in all known societies men retain a fascination with games through their lives, to a degree virtually unknown in women. That seems both intuitively and empirically true to me. Not that I recommend "Homo Ludens" unless you really need the extra credit.
I've slacked on fiction. The last novel I read was also the last one Philip Kerr published before his untimely death. It has the hallmark Bernie Gunther cynical idealist tone but the story is thin and predictable; multiple murders in Weimar Berlin with a subplot involving the making of the film "Metropolis" which is also the book's title.
Too many of the characters launch into encyclopedic monologues on events and people, to keep the story moving. Kerr really seemed to phone it in for some of the later Bernie mysteries.
Well, look at the time.
Narr
Wiedersehn!
Readering said...
STUPID? Tell that to the side that spent #3m not me. And look in a mirror.
My post wasn't long, it raised the central salient objective of the Trump campaign. Something that even after I pointed it out, you are still clueless. Here's another lesson for you. I used the term 'stupid' and not ignorant. Ignorant is not knowing, we are all ignorant. Stupid means, lacks the capacity to learn. Stupid fits.
Anyone have any good book recommendations? Fiction and non-fiction.
Jim Butcher’s “Harry Dresden” series. Read in order. The “Mercy Thompson” series by Patricia Briggs. Also read in order. The Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold — again in order. Anything by Sarah Hoyt, but if you try her “Darkship” series then read it in order. I also love the “Monster Hunter” series by Larry Corriea, but you might prefer his “Grimnoir” series.
Intuitively the idea of "oh repetition wins because ya know subconscious" and indeed it works.
When the Althouse gov tribe and Althouse prog tribe combine uh oh.
Ban umbrellas. Some ass claimed ownership of a woman because of that umbrella.
Wind, rain, and shine, that umbrella she enjoyed it, by August she was [[man's]].
History book: "Escape from Rome" by Walter Scheidel. Why the Roman Empire never rebuilt itself after the Western Empire fell and instead we got the industrial revolution while the Chinese empires repeatedly rose and fell and remained essentially static in technology and economy.
WWII History: "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" by James D. Hornfischer. Great book about the last big Naval battle in WWII. The Japanese fleet attacked at Leyte Gulf and the only ships available were small escort destroyers, light cruisers and escort carriers. The Japs lost.
"Brothers in Arms" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jabbar's father severed in the 761st Armored Battalion. Saw action with Patton's division after D-day.
Biography: "Grant" by Ron Chernow. Ulysses S. Grant's life from birth to death, including his war and presidential years.
“Ignorant is not knowing, we are all ignorant. Stupid means, lacks the capacity to learn.”
If you’re doing definitions I need some help. What is it called when cult followers lose touch w/ reality?
Also, people here should be help Big M. He needs trigger warnings so he can go to a safe space. Comments here are the sorta things that could result in uncontrollable emotionalism if he experienced such in real life. Being a snowflake is a lifestyle choice. Not that there’s anything wrong w/ that.
Iowan2 I wrote a short post about how the Trump campaign spent $3 million for nothing. You wrote a longer post in response that used stupid 3 times at least while ignoring my only point.
As for your new point about state legislatures, I wrote nothing because I am a patient man. Let's just say, it's been almost a month. We'll see.
Blogger anti-de Sitter space said......What is it called when cult followers lose touch w/ reality?
In Scientology, they call it Going Clear
I like the other hornfischer one, which wasabout the naval conflict in the solomons, it makes the battles come alive until i saw in harms way, they were firing at short distances in the dark, where the radar doesnt provide more cover.
Mythinformed @Milwaukee Recount
@MythinformedMKE
·
7m
Typical CNN. Ignoring the massive amounts of votes that can go before a court.
Quote Tweet
Jim Sciutto
@jimsciutto
· 2h
New: Recount in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin (requested by Trump campaign) certifies 2020 election results with a 132-vote gain....for Biden
Blogger anti-de Sitter space said......What is it called when cult followers lose touch w/ reality?
Liberalism? Progressivism? Just spitballing here.
Paying 3 mil for two counties vs Stein's whole state recount at 2 mil suggests a very targeted form of inflation. Expensive plexiglass!
I guess tin can didnt appeal as much. Since i hadnt read morrison i didnt know the sea component of the solomons could be so gripping.
On a lighter note im reading the first of the cormorant atrike works by galbraith ie rowling. And an old joseph finder spy thriller zero hour
The Election Wizard Retweeted
Robert Barnes
@Barnes_Law
·
1h
Pennsylvania trial court rules the 2020 election was likely unconstitutional in Pennsylvania, and that gives state legislators power to choose electors.
I glanced at her 4th entry, so then i decided to go back to the beginning.
The interesting part about that last one is the mercenary and what he has also been involved with in the past.
I genious.
RE what Walter posted, not only did the PA judge rule that the certification did indeed have to be stopped (and the Dems failed to take all proper steps of certification, including trying to certify only the President and VP races but nothing downballot), it actively does stop certification completely, the judge also ruled that the Trump team is likely to win on the merits of their argument that Act 77 which permitted no-excuse mail in balloting directly violated the PA constitution (which clearly lays out only 4 reasons someone may vote absentee, and COVID ain't on the list).
I was in serious despair after the 3rd district fiasco, but it looks like there remains an uncorrupted judge or two in my state, thank God. And this is a game changer. Hope lives again.
@narciso - I am on the fourth Cormoran Strike novel. (And I have the fifth ready to go.) I am a fan.
Affectations, personas, I'm gonna start more forwardly have to start takin' 'em on.
Law profs ought to know way more about exploiting others for personal gain.
They ought be considered spoiled as any fraud rightly considered strict.
If it please the Professora : can you comment on how arduous is this process and any lessons you may draw for future for your own blog site?
site migration notification by CTH
Let me second the recommendation for Butcher's Dresden Files. Here follows my review of the two most recent entries. (But you do need to read them all in order both because of the meta-plot, and so as to not miss many Crowning Moments Of Awesome).
Peace Talks (Dresden Files Book 16) by Jim Butcher
Battle Ground (Dresden Files Book 17) by Jim Butcher
After a long break, Chicago wizard, Harry Dresden is back, and things are going pretty well for him. He is rearing his daughter in secure surroundings, he has just learned his brother's SO is expecting and he will soon have a niece or nephew, and even though she is still healing from the near disaster of their last adventure, he now officially has a girl-friend. There may even be magical peace on the horizon, as the aquatic Fomor have accepted an invitation to peace talks to resolve their differences with the Chicago magic community.
So we have a nice little slice-of-life story, and the sun goes down on a peaceful city --- Oh, wait, I did say this was about Harry Dresden..
Of course things immediately go to pieces and Harry is torn between his family and his major loyalties as the situation descends into total war. Along the way, certain aspects of the End Game are teased for the first time, and Harry makes irrevocable decisions as the city of Chicago comes to arms, and has trans-Rubicon realizations of its own. Alliances are made and broken, good people die and, did I say "Chicago wizard, Harry Dresden"? Perhaps I should have said "Wizard of Chicago".
I highly recommend reading these two books in back-to-back. Peace Talks is a bit more like a long novelette, which serves to remind us of the situation at the close of the last, long-ago, Dresden book and ease us (and perhaps Butcher) back into his world. It has a main plot thread, but not a totally satisfactory resolution (when considered as a stand-alone) and melds seamlessly into the action of Battle Ground.
When considered as one book, this duology is very good, and spending time with Harry Dresden again is a welcome experience. I was once more struck, as I was at the climax of White Night, about how much better the people (or creatures) who throw in their lot with Harry become. He would certainly reject the notion, but there is something pure at his core, and he can inspire even ancient evils to act.. admirably.
The events here are traumatic enough that we get a nice little Christmas story as a bonus to send us out on a happy note.
I eagerly await the next installment.
"Any time anyone writes an assessment of the state of journalism generally, it should be mentioned that they said Epstein killed himself."
The deep state does not need to hide now, they want more embassy parties with canapes and champagne. Biden will hide the truth. Perverts will rule us.
Delete Comment From: Althouse
Blogger Josephbleau said...
1. BIDEN sexually assaulted his staff person Tara Reed.
2. BIDEN stated that people that give me money get first in line.
3. BIDEN passed laws that let MBNA bank charge 23% interest on poor people.
4. Delaware is the criminal that uses the state to enable cooperation to steal.
most ompany's are registered in Delaware to take advantage of the corrupt laws.
5. BIDEB has lived a life of becoming rich in public service, how cool to be rich while saying we love the poor,
Jo Bden the Jo Ho. Show me the money. China got money? Biden got China love.
Although, to his credit, Trump has not turned on any of his lawyers--yet.
How many of his lawyers have turned on him?
The Pennsylvania proposed resolution could be modified just a little to be applicable to Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.
Seems the unconstitutional changes in voting procedures ordered by governors and judges threw chaos into the system.
Nice article you have written thank you for sharing your valuable post. you should find the Best MPSC Coaching Institutes in Andheri.
@320Busdriver said...
So of the 1.4M PA mail ballots returned the total between Trump/Biden tabulated equals 2.5M.. and now the Elections Commission has scrubbed that from the record..
So Mr. Driver, how many dishonest poll workers did you spot while voting at your precinct this year? Last year? The same number that everyone reading this saw - none.
In Pennsylvania, it took 40,000 poll workers 3 weeks to count 6.92 million votes (92% of the expected total). So 20,000 Dems have been busy miscounting ballots. That is a huge conspiracy or just plain lies ginned up by friends of Driver.
FYI, the official numbers were 3,088 million mail ballots requested, 2,629 million returned as votes.
Pants, when you finish "Gulag Archipelago" donate it to the nearest Bernie Bro. They won't read it but they will know you have.
" .... using data provided by the CDC from the last 6 years, total deaths have remained relatively constant and increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population. The spikes in deaths in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been over 262,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the United States, yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity; they have only mirrored existing trends. In short, according to 6 years of data collected by the CDC, Covid-19 has not led to any significant increase in deaths.
"Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen."
Count me as shocked.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/new-study-exposes-alleged-accounting-error-regarding-covid-deaths
"Anyone else finding it harder and harder to search for articles on any search engine?”
You could try Yandex. That gives different results. I think that we are in an era where we can’t rely on just one search engine anymore. Duck is based on Google, and it’s a little better, but the main difference is that it doesn’t keep user info. Google certainly has the power to game Duck’s results.
Ah yandex you know their suffix ru, you know who was involved mark warner i cant make this up.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/the-week-in-pictures-tryptophan-edition.php
""Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen.”
Here we go, this is simply not true. Deaths have not remained relatively constant.
"only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths.” That was in a single week. Deaths have topped 2018 in every week since the pandemic started.
"increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population.”
Deaths have exceeded 2018 by around 2 standard deviations or more every week since the pandemic started. This is simply not due to population increase. For one thing, why does the population increase track the progress of the pandemic? It’s nonsense.
The odds of deaths exceeded the 95% confidence interval by random chance in a single week is 20-1 against (could happen) the chance of deaths exceeding the 95% CI by random chance (random variability) for 20 weeks running is trillions to one.
"yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity”.
What data is this person looking at?
The writer also claims that it’s not believable that COVID could kill more people than heart disease, therefore it must not be. That’s like saying that it would be impossible for a pandemic to kill more people than heart disease. The writer does a lot of assuming what they are trying to prove.
As for percentage of deaths due to various causes, let’s use simple round numbers just for the concept, suppose that 50% of people who died died of heart disease every year and 50% of deaths were due to cancer in a long standing pattern. Then disease X comes along and kills 20% of those who died this year. All of a sudden only 40% of people are dying of heart disease this year, and likewise cancer . Does this mean, because the percentages of people dying went down for these stable causes of death that Disease X must not have killed anybody because those people would have died anyway?
Anybody with an open mind who is reading the above article should simply look at this graph. A quick look is enough to show that the article cited is mostly legerdemain disguised as logic. It’s enough to make me wonder if the writer was that stupid, or did they have bad intent?
https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_11252020/WeeklyExcessDeaths
The orange line is where natural variability is ruled out with 95% confidence. That’s why the line is there, and that’s why small variations from the average are not called “excess deaths.”
The same people who complain about the propaganda techniques used against Trump fall for them so easily when they baddly want to believe the results, even when the proof doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
"Ah yandex you know their suffix ru, you know who was involved mark warner i cant make this up.”
You gotta throw everything in the pot and make up your own mind. No search engine can be trusted.
Its a russian connected server. I havent tried it.
These rules are not about public health, its about furthering schwabs goal, crushing sme's driving all but certain activities under ground.
Carrying over from the cormorant strike discussion
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/holliday-grainger-do-i-get-on-with-tom-yeah-do-i-fancy-him-no-rcrmmvg6x
When the measures dont work, and make things worse you have to wonder:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ianmSC/status/1332387371308916737
Undoubtedly bad actors have seized on the pandemic to further their goals. However, cui bono is not some kind of infallible rule of logic. In 1066 Halley’s Comet appeared and William the Conqueror used its appearance to convince his men that God wanted them to conquer England and the English probably though that the omen meant that their king would die, since that was a common folk belief about the meaning of comets. Doesn’t mean William the Conqueror summoned Halley’s Comet.
Granger was also in the borgias which was sourced from il macchia their press person
That graph does not prove what you think it proves. Nobody has ever said that mask mandates could stop the pandemic, just dampen it, resulting in fewer cases and fewer deaths. What happens if you continue the line upwards where that little jog happens when the mask mandate was instituted? There is a lot more area under that curve.
Studies that have looked broadly at mask mandates show that they reduce the growth of the pandemic relative to places where there is no mask mandate. Cherry picking one graph and making mathematically nonsensical inferences from it don’t change that.
Tim in Vermont, my problem with the tableau graph is it only goes back to 2017. there’s another micro data set out there showing the numbers of annual deaths back to 1950. And that seems to show an expected annual death rate being up in 2020, and going higher in subsequent years.
So I’ve been sort of looking at it also. And the question is how do you baseline what the expected deaths in 2020 are? How many years do you go back? Because the number of annual deaths has been increasing since a low in 2013, when adjusted for population size.
Dresden Files is awesome all the way through. Not many 15+ book series I've read through twice, but DF I've read three times and will probably do a 4th read when I retire.
People are the virus, soon truth will be
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cp190eDFltU
If you've ever thought "I'd love to go back in time and blow people's minds with my incredible knowledge" ...
Indeed e plebnista
Blogger iowan2 said...
"Wisconsin selected locations recount complete. 132 votes net addition to Biden. $3 million cost paid by Trump campaign."
The only explanation for the willful disregard of the will of the people Is that readering, being a lawyer, is in on the grift.
If the situation was reversed readering et al would be screaming from the rooftops demanding a recount and an investigation. Because we all want free and fair elections. That would be fair, no? That would only be right, no? readering et al doesn't want those things. What does readering et al have to gain by not wanting free and fair elections? The continued flow of graft is what. Vote fraud on this scale requires corruption on an equal scale. Which means it's been going on for decades and is considered the normal way of doing the publics business.
“My problem with the tableau graph is it only goes back to 2017”
Counts of deaths in the most recent weeks were compared with historical trends (from 2013 to present) - CDC website
If you are going to make a population growth argument for the ‘apparent’ excess deaths, you are going to have to explain how it follows the progress of the pandemic as reflected in the trend of test results so closely? I guess that one of those “infinite improbability engine” from Hitchhiker’s Guide could have passed near here, but that seems unlikely. If that’s what happened, then the answer is 42.
This is more like the mutant star goat that drove the middlemen im that planet to flee. They not the apes are our ancestors.
If that’s what happened, then the answer is 42.
I always thought it would have been funnier if the answer was 43. (Same question.)
We are the cow that wants to be eaten
Readering was Ribas involved in arguing 14A before the Supremes in Bush v gore?
Barrett Roberts and Kavanaugh were.
That's why it may matter. Not because of who appointed them.
It matters because 1) they understand the argument better than most 2) presumably they are pre-inclined to support it.
John Henry
Bowing down first
https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/89532/iran-statement-spokesperson-killing-government-official-and-several-civilians-absard_en
Pants reports: I reread A Confederacy of Dunces earlier this year and remembered how much I love it. I find it genuinely laugh out loud funny; it's not for everyone, but the dialogue is some of the best I've ever read.
I found it hilarious and my mother did, too.
And now Carter Page is suing the FBI swamp dwellers, McCabe, Stroke, etc., for 75 million. And he's not suing them as part of the FBI, but as individuals, which is allowed when those individuals act "in reckless disregard for the truth", which we all know they did.
This could easily lead to more Obamagate prosecutions. He's even suing to get corrections made to the Horowitz report.
Man, yesterday was a serious darkest-before moment, but feeling pretty good this dawn!
The corporatist RESET
If you had told me a month ago that I would enjoy a book about the history of textiles, I would have laughed at you.
I am currently about 40% into Virginia Postrel's "the Fabric of Civilization" and, wow! What a book.
I am completely engrossed in it. She makes the case that string, or thread, is perhaps mankind's most significant achievement.
After the intro chapter she has chapters on fiber (cotton, woll, flax, silk, etc) thread, cloth, dye traders and more.
Fantastic book.
Last night I spent a half hour with my phone on micro view studying the weaves of various cloths. I'd never noticed the differences in weaves before.
Fascinating topic and Postrel is a superb writer.
John Henry
And, by all means, read The Gulag Archipelago if you haven't already. Or, if you have, then read it again [both Gulag and Confederacy are listed on my profile's favorite book list]. I usually avoid books written after 1980 or so. Most modern literature is crap.
Two other recommendations recently read are Kurt Schlichter latest Kelly Turnbull novel Crisis. The other 4 are superb as well.
Mission by Robert matzen which I discussed the other day. A bio of James Stewart focusing on his war service.
John Henry
All the money and all the lawyers of Don the Con could not save him from the majority of voters who said you are fired. And for all the claims of fraud and fixing, I suggest you volunteer to work the polls or be an observer, as so many honest citizens have done this year which seems to have been an honest election that only under counted a few hundred votes for Biden here in Wisconsin.
A Pennsylvania state court Judge has issued a preliminary injunction preventing Pennsylvania from taking any further steps to perfect its certification of the election,
Look at this. Not looking for a few more votes here and there. Just toss the results, and affirm the power of the State Legislature to choose Electors. Of course since November 4th, the dnc/propaganda/scribes have been obsessing about "not enough fraudulent votes to change the vote totals" When the play has always been to involve the legislative branch exercising its constitutional power. The Propaganda machine always pushing the narrative to confuse the leftist.
Gore's lawyer David Boies was a great, great advocate, but not a Supreme Court specialist.
The same David Boies who was the lawyer for the Theranos scam. He was in charge of intimidating would be whistleblowers. Great advocate.
the majority of voters who said you are fired
No, majority of votes with no evidence of how many came from live voters.
After the intro chapter she has chapters on fiber (cotton, woll, flax, silk, etc) thread, cloth, dye traders and more.
Fantastic book.
A few years ago, I read a book on paper. I'll have to get this one.
And of course we should all re-read 1984 and Brave New World to prepare us for the coming years. I would also highly recommend The Bible. :-)
Blogger Sydney said...
Anyone have any good book recommendations? Fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction; Andrew Wareham who has series of historical novels including British Navy in Napoleon times and in the Boxer Rebellion. He is an economic historian and has an excellent series on the rise of industrial England that begins with "The Privateersman," which tells how a young man first got a fortune, then the rest of the series is about the industrial revolution.
Another good series is about the Royal Flying Corps in WWI.
Nonfiction; Andrew Roberts' biography of Napoleon is excellent. So is the Grant biography. Grant and Sherman's Memoirs are worth reading. I read Grant's when I was in college. Times change.
A few years ago, I read a book on paper. I'll have to get this one.
Obviously, this was a book on the history and making of paper.
From the whole Bush v Gore kerfuffle:
In a per curiam decision, the Court first ruled 7–2 (Justices Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting), strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. Specifically, the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. - Wikipedia
It’s funny that the first article that “Siri” suggested that downplayed the equal protection argument said only three justices bought the equal protection argument. It’s almost like mockturtle has a point that the search engines are manipulating results.... Naaah!
"A few years ago, I read a book on paper. I'll have to get this one.”
I once read a book that made the argument that the Dark Ages in Europe started because the Muslims had cut off Europe's papyrus supply from Egypt. Kind of the equivalent of an EMP attack on a modern society today. Paper seems only to have appeared in Europe around the 11th century. The Romans used papyrus. I don’t vouch for it, it just seemed like an interesting theory.
Blogger gadfly said...
“FYI, the official numbers were 3,088 million mail ballots requested, 2,629 million returned as votes.“
I stand corrected then.. I was repeating what PA state senator Doug Mastriano had posted. Unfortunately he is not a sharp official.
So Mr Fly, it does not change my assertion that there were fatal flaws in this election and that Democrats cheated in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philly, and Atlanta to drag a sorry ass corruptocrat across the finish line. Biden underperformed Clinton in every metro except those 4. Say nothing of bellwether states and counties and the outcome of House races.
As to what I experienced on Election Day in WI. Wife and I worked the polls and asked our precinct Captain when we arrived if we were to ask voters to lower their mask to determine a match with the photo ID. We were told “absolutely not to do that”.
I filed an affidavit stating what we were told. Have a nice day!
It will be interesting to see how the SCOTUS rejects the exact same argument that it once accepted 7-2, with only the hyper partisan RGB and Stevens dissenting.
gadfly is, as lefties keep doing repeatedly, conflating ballots *requested* with ballots *sent out*. The 1.8 million figure cited by Giuliani was sent out, not requested. Why gadfly thinks citing the number requested undermines anything Giuliani said is a mysterious puz... hahahahah, sorry, couldn't keep a straight face on that one.
By the way, mockturtle, yes, I noticed a few days ago that even duckduckgo was giving biased results. The day of the PA Senate hearing, I tried like five different ways to search for video of the hearing. Most results were completely unrelated and the few that were were 30 second clips of Guilini's dye drip. It was chilling. We are entering China levels of information suppression.
From tim in vermont's CDC data we can see that deaths were below expectations in 2018 and 2019.
Those people are destined to live forever, according to tim in vermont.
The yellow line is not “expectations,” it's a confidence interval (CI) that marks the line where it’s 95% likely that deaths above that line are not due to random variation in the deaths. Seriously Berkel. If anything, the excess deaths number is underestimated out of caution.
How many statistics courses have you taken? because this kind of stuff is in every one of them.
I once read a book that made the argument that the Dark Ages in Europe started because the Muslims had cut off Europe's papyrus supply from Egypt
Interesting theory. Vellum was used for a while and lasts a thousand years. Half the copies of Gutenberg's Bible were on vellum.
Maybe it's the search I did, but Yandex gave me many sites from the far alt.right that other search engines try to suppress. Not sure that's actually a good thing.
Er sorry, it may have been the initial press conference I was looking for when I got those weird results (thats when the dye thing happened).
Checking what duckduckgo says about their methods, they supposedly do not use Google search results at all... but they do use Bing results, which I wouldn't expect to be much better than Google.
Blogger Michael K said...
"I once read a book that made the argument that the Dark Ages in Europe started because the Muslims had cut off Europe's papyrus supply from Egypt
Interesting theory. Vellum was used for a while and lasts a thousand years. Half the copies of Gutenberg's Bible were on vellum."
One of the reasons Arab and medieval libraries had so many scribes was because papyrus wasn't archival and books had to be constantly copied. Velum was excellent but was expensive and in limited supply. When rag paper was introduced into Europe from China through Venice the distribution of knowledge really took off. That and the printing press.
Regarding the "Harry Dresden files," a few years back I was buying the latest book in Barnes & Noble, and the checkout clerk told me that she had glanced at the first page of Blood Rites, book 6 in the series, and she was hooked. The opening lines are:
"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.
My boots slipped and slid on the tile floor as I sprinted around a corner and towards the exit doors to the abandoned school building on the southwest edge of Chicagoland."
Before the end of the page he is battling demon-monkeys who can throw globs of fire.
"Paper" by Mark Kurlansky. Also I liked his books "Cod" and "Salt" among others.
Narr
He's a good choice
Four times, four states, where live video of MSM sources on election night captured votes being subtracted from Trump's total and the same number added to Biden's total:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/four-videos-four-states-votes-switched-live-tv-away-president-trump-biden/
Narr,
Just looked for Mark Kurlansky on Amazon. He looks very interesting. I put Salt in my Samples pile.
Re Cod: John McPhee wrote a book called "The Founding Fish" and before I read it I assumed it was about cod.
Turned out to be about shad and the importance of the fish to early America.
Joseph Mitchell, a New Yorker writer from the 40s to 60s wrote several pieces about shad. A very interesting fish.
Mitchell is a terrific writer. I have a couple of his collections.
John Henry
How many statistics courses have you taken, Tim?
(I am editing and redrawing all the illustrations a new collected edition of John McConnell's 4 volumes on Statistical Process Control and Quality. Also took several statistics courses as an undergrad and grad student.)
I've not read the report so have no comment on the math. I also don't present myself as being especially knowedgable on statisics
I was curious why they pulled the article. Was it pulled for bad statistics/data/math? Or for political reasons.
NOTE: Currently listening to Tim Pool as I type this. He is discussing why it was pulled. He researched it on Wayback and found it was only posted for about 45 minutes>
Here's what the Newsletter says:
"Editor’s Note: After The News-Letter published this article on Nov. 22, it was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data” has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic."
There's more at the link
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19
John Henry
I just want to point out that that last post at 11:02 am isn't just a smoking gun of massive coordinated voter fraud. It's live video of the perp on video shooting the gun, with frame by frame footage of the bullet leaving his gun and striking the targets, while the perp cackles and monologues his entire evil plan.
The discussion of whether or not there was massive voter fraud is over. There literally can't possibly be more definitive evidence of fraud than those videos.
Period.
It's over.
Trump won. The election was stolen outright. Tens of thousands of votes being switched from Trump to Biden was on video that very same night. And there isn't a single honest person who can see those videos and deny it now.
There is no way that a Biden presidency will be accepted peacefully anymore. None.
Just watch the scrolling vote counts in these clips:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/four-videos-four-states-votes-switched-live-tv-away-president-trump-biden/
Oh, bother, tim in vermont. When you appeal to authority and hold yourself out as the authority it is unfortunate.
Imagine your surprise.
Sorry, Birkel. I didn’t realize that it’s an “appeal to authority” to point out that confidence intervals are covered in any introductory class in statistics. If you have never taken one, that should be a clue that maybe you should do more reading before commenting on the interpretation of statistics. If confidence intervals strike you as some kind of exotic construct, like penumbras in the constitution, I don’t know what to say. Without an understanding of them, you have no hope of understanding these issues you are trying to discuss.
"has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.”
I saw the tweet. I thought it just compounded Johns Hopkins’ mistakes, and was probably written by a PR flak who didn’t understand the issues.
If you care to read the report on the webinar and to rebut any of the criticisms I have made, I would have plenty happy to hear such like. All we seem to have so far is analysis by ideology and inference by suspicion of motive. None of that has any bearing on the issues I have raised here.
Poet.
.I.
That poet could not know
A time like this
And yet he cursed his day
Better than this.
Is time then a falling slide,
Poet and knave bruised
On a dumb rocky mountain side?
Then what we have we lose.
Still, what has been has been:
That from beauties flesh was born
Some marvellous, flesh tearing form
Still finds its somewhere reflective dream.
.II.
Or do we but count the corn,
Watch the rats’ numberless dawn,
Hear the room tying rain,
See ragged faces painless pain?
We always do that,
The prisoner and the rat
Eyeing their despair;
Or in the day
Where in we might say
“Here is the wrong, stupid lair.”
It’s hard to keep eye fixed ahead
When there’s but counting of the dead.
.III.
“Enough fools for us all!” Democrats say:
Thus they have built their day –
To confound the strong and the good
Idiots for a guard they’ve stood
Sweating, breaking out loud.
What poet can pierce that crowd?
.IV.
Over the hill more might be seen:
You watch the Tower beaten in dream
You who see the living die.
Over that crowd beaten eye
There’s but the canopy of lead:
Let the dead bury the dead.
I could write poetry - easy - like riding a bike - but what would the point?
Hitchhikers monologue.
.I.
A thin, weeping mist squeaks along the grass
Shrouding the bulbous shadows of mice
Again busy building a new home:
The aching legs, tired of their twenty four hour fit,
Throw the gauntlet of choice to the brain,
The tired arm annoyingly nags to be parted:
On the aged bench, wet and dulled in the rain,
When the years have marked me,
Will pleasure replace this pain?
Could I say: “Here I have lived.”?
Scuttling like some odd, savage animal
Through the unbrushed matting of motorway grass
I am already sick of my naturalness,
Of my cowardice, my stopping
Before the butt beating guards
And my inability to come down to mortality.
Somehow the sweated fever of my youth
May seem peculiar to one, a shameful perversion,
An indescribable immorality, that which is not done.
Always that which is not done, always the odd sharpness.
.II.
Crying like a baby among friends
At the dullness of their desire
I’m the odd one here I feel.
So much hope, so much happiness
In its failure: why this contentment?
Contentment breeds inaction,
Contemplation, love of the lines,
An artist eye and moribund stare.
Sometimes, a rabbit among stalks,
I wallow in the dough
Of unfulfillable desire:
I admit it and this is a sloth.
But one face of benediction was turned
And then I was happy?
Involved in oblivious activity,
Is this without blindness?
.III.
Her benediction was not
Always so bright:
Not the polish of the mirror
Or intenseness of light
But a sense in which
I was too inattentive to stare.
Crawling from the womb
I was shut in its sack,
Carried, it seems, through
A few hundred years,
I was always tempted
To crawl right back
Dulled in parties with
Talk and whisky and beers.
I was so wrong
From the beginning
It makes me laugh.
But triumph in defeat
I am no Christ.
.IV.
Everything seems beautiful:
Should I not be more radical?
Should I not spit and curse
Like a saint? Call for the end
Of everything that’s not vital
Or not coloured most vividly?
Things are ugly, too,
But what is ugly will
Dully reflect the whole,
Is, somehow, a more tempered beauty.
Even in the blackest pit
I carried my mirror,
Dashing with light
The groaning of its roots.
.V.
Sick of my love of the game
I smack him round the chops…
Too much akin, too much revealed,
Perhaps my ambition
Will take the Devils part:
Who will be my parricide?
Who wants to peer in the bone?
Let’s dig at the pate
Of this smug fellow’s devil
To find if the old sixes are there.
Funny the Devil without draws
Being dragged down the stare.
If you understand anything, Anne, sweet Anne, I'm a bs er, if that's possible, but this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG6sXLQwlJU
Nativity
“Notre crime est del’homme” Lamartine. ‘L’homme.’
Everything stained: The tea stains the cup,
The cup stains the counter, the foot stains the snow,
The moon stains the air. Everything said.
I am told this is not an original thought.
Below, what was forgotten and cold,
As if it were not merely, actually true,
There was a birth, the unthinking was done
And this messy mix of snow and blood
Produced a word that meant ‘goodbye’ or ‘hello’,
Unsorting a chaos into ‘this one and that’
And saying “Insofar as I am here, that is there.”
Or if they are ‘mad’, we are ‘mad’, since
Neither they nor we can prove the obvious:
That Johnson kicked a stone but Berkeley
Was already dead, that the delusion suffices
To make a few words bring a cup of tea
And that, without God, preserving the hollow
Takes so long to say, everyman
Could seek to find
Putrefaction of his mother,
Of his brother, of his kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOnXe8ttmjY
Her Smile
I have you, therefore, above my desk,
A smile which distinguishes nobody,
The tasted, tasteless essence
‘Of that forbidden tree’
The heart is not willing to forsake:
For what is knowledge but love
Repelled by the Other,
Broken back, angular,
Reflecting merely surface.
And yet strangely, somewhere beneath
Being does speak to being.
That uncounted kernel of one.
I have you, therefore, always within reach:
No, I would say ‘inside’ if to perceive
Brought the soul from the body
Reduced to viscera, lung and bone.
And that smile always a dawn
Barely perceptible
(Or is it the twilight of the east,
A star which leads
To the seemingly humble
Centre of things?)
Self secluding, occluding
Almost everyone, perhaps everyone.
It is the silence that focuses everything:
From where, two, one, alone, being calls for Being.
The City.
A Sundays gentle cycle through seas of empty streets
Shadowing the shadow of Paul. We are expecting death,
September’s enervation as yet unyellowed,
A stilled silence at the grieving bed.
Or the hidden poor that scuttle out of view, the boxed porter,
Trader, shopmen with wives babed, again gestating.
The desperation of pubs bellowed by tongues of swollen want,
The dissipation of drunks, sickened
By that tumbled sense of all in one oned on Saturday,
Now stirred to listless cry of child, distorted hand of care.
On the makeshift carpet of grass men and women quiesced
By capital poison of fat and food.
An empty hall of towered streets, sepulchre of feet’s
Ghostly echo, the solitary essence of crowd, work, money,
The staccato knock of question and frigid stone.
Lost the prepared confusion of route,
The lanes that rebelled to be straightened, Wrens
Imperfect gloom twisted to a bridge and Thames.
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