Josh Stein, (D) is way ahead of Robinson and his campaign reportedly leaked the story. It must be bad, as I could see the replacement candidate making that race much closer.
Hoo boy. Looks like things are going to get interesting. For the Trump campaign to exclude him from events with Trump and Vance sounds pretty serious. Hmmmmmm.
Here is a video by Meidas Touch, which I usually don’t pay much attention to because they’re so loudly anti-Trump and gloat over every time he has a misstep but they have the whole story here.
He'll be on the ballot one way or the other, so if he withdraws, the Democratic candidate effectively runs unopposed?
I don't see where that helps the situation, from the Trump point of view. He could neither win nor lose. At least if he doesn't withdraw, he still has a chance of winning.
Either way he would drag down the R ticket?? Maybe I'm missing something.
According to the article, if he withdraws the NC GOP Executive Committee would name a replacement and any votes cast for Robinson would go to the replacement candidate.
Reminds me of something that happened in the race for Senator from Illinois years ago. Jack Ryan, the Republican running against Barack Obama, ended up dropping out of the race due to a sex scandal that involved him and his ex-wife (an actress who appeared in one of the Star Trek series, but she's not the one who looked bad in the scandal). Not really the worst kind of sex scandal because something didn't actually happen, but weird enough so he had to drop out. The replacement chosen by the GOP lost to Obama, who gained his springboard to the presidency. Hard to say if the outcome would have been different had Ryan stayed in the race or had the details not come out due to the release of some custody documents in their divorce records. But it sort of shows how effects of things that happen in election campaigns can cascade and affect future elections.
Daughter A texted me this morning asking me to overnight mail her birth certificate to her. (There was only one copy in her file, suggestion that she actually has a copy but doesn't know where it is, but that's neither here nor there. Maybe the Coast Guard or UNC-Charlotte kept it.)
She can't get a Pennsylvania driver's license without her birth certificate.
She was born in Texas. She could order a new copy from Texas Vital Records, but it was faster for me to get it out of my file and mail it.
I suspect that, even if she had been born in Pennsylvania, the state would not be able to provide her birth certificate to one of its own agencies, because incompetence.
On this day in 1796, President George Washington's farewell address was printed in the Daily American Advertiser as an open letter to American citizens. The most famous of all his "speeches," it was never actually spoken; a week after its publication in this Philadelphia newspaper, it was reprinted in papers all over the country.
Now only eight years old, the Constitution was in danger, Washington feared, of falling prey to the whims of popular sentiment. In 6,086 words, his address seeks to encourage the nation to respect and maintain the Constitution, warning that a party system — not yet the governmental standard operating procedure — would reduce the nation to infighting
I listened to Roger Pielke on The Remnant Podcast, and I am now signed up for his “Honest Broker” Substack. I believe he has a podcast by the same name. The problem we have with so many things is that Chicken Little syndrome, “the sky is falling.” It reminds me of those old films about pot, where they showed people experiencing hallucinations. The government goes for the most frightening messaging, and then people start to realize they aren’t telling being honest. Now, we are being told that we need to accomplish things within a ridiculously and impossibly short timeframe in order to save the planet. This never works, and yet they keep doing it.
I'm waiting for the drought afflicted areas (where people shouldn't be living anyway) to center their gaze upon all that delicious water in the Great Lakes, and begin political organizing to build a pipeline to the golf courses of Phoenix and Vegas. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Great Lakes Alliance, etc., etc.... That doesn't mean big money won't try to do a Chinatown. I have an old acquaintance whose career at Bechtel was in the pipeline engineering division. He said the engineering has been complete for 30 years and they're just waiting.
My dad always talked about how much better off we are living near the Great Lakes because of the water. And, of course, places that are basically deserts, and where people want to live for who knows why, exactly, are going to try to find ways to get some of that water. Ultimately, it’s always about money, and bad players.
Here in The People's Republic of Evanston, "climate goals" are being written into all manner of city ordinances, with the apparent overarching goal being satisfying Byzantine Fed requirements for grants and loans to facilitate writing climate goals into all manner of city ordinances.
A thought on science and politics. When Ketanji Brown Jackson went through confirmation hearings, she said Black physicians had a lower mortality rate with black babies than did white physicians. It was a study published in a reputable journal, PNAS. But there’s more to the story. And I don't mean that in a good way.
When I (and other academics) do research, much of what we study has multiple explanations. So we often use variables in our studies that have been tested before. We run an analysis with those in our model, and then we add our variables we collected that we want to test. We call the first model the "control" model, as we're trying to see what new explanations can occur, on top of what has already been found.
In my field, when we study firm performance we control for firm size and firm age, as both have been shown to affect firm performance. So if my model has an adjusted R-squared of 30% and I don’t control for firm size and age, some of that 30% could probably be explained by size and age. By including them, we see how much new explanation is a result of the new variables.
Prior studies have concluded infant mortality rates are influenced by birthweight. Low birthweight babies have a higher mortality rate than do higher birthweight babies. And, as an aside, black babies in general also have a higher likelihood of being low birthweight than white babies. Because of how serious low birthweight is to child mortality, those babies are often assigned to specialists immediately, who are more often white than black.
The original study DID NOT control for low birthweight! Someone else recently replicated the study, but added in baby birthweight. The overall model fit improves (which we’d expect), but the racial difference in the physician treating the baby goes away.
I’m more concerned about the fact I haven’t seen one bat this summer. They used to fill the skies at dusk. I’ve only seen three monarch butterflies. There’s a golf course up north full of milkweed. One would think the monarchs would be thick up there. Not anymore.
Have only seen two Monarchs this summer. We always let the milkweed in our fence lines and other places grow when we trimmed, and often had numerous Monarchs hanging around. This year I haven't seen but a couple or three milkweed plants on my whole place. Not sure what's up with any of that.
You got that right. I used to sit on my roof and see hundreds of bats. Now, maybe one or two a week. I think it's all part of the insect ecosystem collapse.
There's talk that in a few days Earth will have a 2nd moon. I mean in space, not in front of a frat house when one of the bros has had too much to drink.
It's unclear if the 2nd moon will escape into orbit (most likely) or will crash in Washington DC, AKA "SMOD 2024 voted!" moon. It's unlikely, but one can hope...
Good morning. No rain here until next week (maybe). The mothership is reporting on the Fed’s cutting interest rates and its possible relationship to the color of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s tie (no, really).
We got a few showers from the unnamed tropical system from the Carolinas, but it wasn’t enough to reverse the drought effects, much less replenish any ponds or streams.
Good morning. Upper 80s here today. shrug. Indian summer? Blackberry summer? Whatever.
It's back to the office today to process more online voter registrations. I had my arm twisted to continue our college football pool -- 10 games (mostly SEC) straight up, with closest on the Titans game total score as the tiebreaker. $1 each for a pot that often is in single digits. But, it's fun, I reckon.
I've listened to about half of the Free Press podcast on Hez-a (no boll) this morning. Informative.
I love watching football, but I still don't understand how football pools work. I don't know how to play poker either, and I'm still trying to understand what "the over under" means.
My brother would study the stats in the newspaper (originally) or eventually online, and then assign points to "handicap" the different teams in their matchups each week. I think it's pretty much what Jay explained below.
I never knew which team was any good, so I would kind of pick them at random and still win occasionally. One of my church friends had to be in a "fantasy sports" league with her husband and sons, and she often won with her totally arbitrary selection of players. It really annoyed the male participants, but she told them it was their fault for not having friends who would do it with them.
Over means you are predicting if the game score will exceed a certain number, or it can mean the winning team will win by more than that number. Under is better it won't.
For example, the over on the recent Notre Dame/Purdue game was 49 points. To win you either bet Notre Dame's margin of victory would be 50 or more (it was); or you'd bet that Purdue wouldn't lose by more than 48 points (49 would be a "push", no one wins or loses).
Why do they offer over/under? To get more people to bet. Who in their right mind would have bet on Purdue to win outright against Notre Dame? But you might bet they can keep the loss closer than 49 points.
A bookie's goal is to get an even number of bets on both teams; they make their money "on the rake" (they keep a few percent of the winning bet as their own).
Sometime I'll share the Christy gambling story I shared with her parents. I thought it was funny.
Good morning. In our reading materials, it is not unusual for a writer to conclude that it is not only possible that all the worst-case possibilities will occur, but that there are even worse possibilities that might happen. Therefore, it is essential to believe that the End is Nigh, but not to take practical actions (replace coal and oil with natural gas and nuclear power) that could make a significant difference.
I’m all for nuclear, and then someone tells me it’s really expensive to get one of those plants up and running. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to be a problem that we’re spending all kinds of money on EVs and charging stations that people are not flocking to buy, and therefore, use. It always has to happen right now. I also agree with you re natural gas. What is our problem?
It is expensive to build and initialize a nuclear power plant, even without all the unnecessary obstacles. However, every other option is expensive, too.
They recommissioning the Palisades nuclear plant in Covert Michigan. It was built in the 60’s, it ran fine for its projected lifespan. They shut it down for several years now they’re putting it back together and it’s gonna be generating power.
“In order to ensure the survival of life on earth, we’re going to ban all human activities that contributed to that, starting with energy and food production.”
“Wait, what are we going to do for energy and food?”
“I said ‘Shut up!’ Can’t you see I’m busy here trying to banish our way to averting theoretical disaster? There’ll be time to figure that out once we’v eliminated all the bad things! Now get out of my way!”
Even human burial (or other disposition) practices can be relevant to The Climate, but we can't have simple and resource-conserving burials, because reasons.
I worry about the effects of the chemicals in my toenail clippings going into the groundwater. So, I keep them in recycled paper bags beside my bed. I have 42 now.
I'm tired of you climate deniers devaluing my strict adherence to only cardboard Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese containers! I'm serious about this! The world depends on our decisions!
Are daily weather reports part of CSLF? Chicago here.... with weather like those in Santa Barbara wish they had. What's really different is the Big Pond is still in the 70's. In the early AM, water temps are warmer than the air...and the swimming has been glorious.
There’s always a weather report, so go for it! I’m only a couple of hours north, and it’s been a little warmer. However, we aren’t living right on the lake. But, the mornings are very cool, and it’s wonderful going out to feed horses in the morning because they love that cool weather!
https://www.carolinajournal.com/robinson-under-pressure-to-withdraw-from-gubernatorial-race/
Here's an interesting bit of what looks like it's about to be local news for LucyTrice and me.
Josh Stein, (D) is way ahead of Robinson and his campaign reportedly leaked the story. It must be bad, as I could see the replacement candidate making that race much closer.
Hoo boy. Looks like things are going to get interesting. For the Trump campaign to exclude him from events with Trump and Vance sounds pretty serious. Hmmmmmm.
Here is a video by Meidas Touch, which I usually don’t pay much attention to because they’re so loudly anti-Trump and gloat over every time he has a misstep but they have the whole story here.
https://youtu.be/0vxoJxOd51E?si=tzbBO1ZMPKjbee1_
Just don’t watch it while having your supper.
He'll be on the ballot one way or the other, so if he withdraws, the Democratic candidate effectively runs unopposed?
I don't see where that helps the situation, from the Trump point of view. He could neither win nor lose. At least if he doesn't withdraw, he still has a chance of winning.
Either way he would drag down the R ticket?? Maybe I'm missing something.
The adult movies news came out awhile back.
According to the article, if he withdraws the NC GOP Executive Committee would name a replacement and any votes cast for Robinson would go to the replacement candidate.
That's interesting. Could they get someone normal?
The most likely choice would be one of the other primary candidates, Dale Folwell or Bill Graham.
I voted for Folwell in the primary. He seemed normal. (Famous last words ...)
I don't remember if I voted for Folwell or Graham.
Normal.....yes.....normal.....sigh.
Don't know. Maybe it will really be something.
Reminds me of something that happened in the race for Senator from Illinois years ago. Jack Ryan, the Republican running against Barack Obama, ended up dropping out of the race due to a sex scandal that involved him and his ex-wife (an actress who appeared in one of the Star Trek series, but she's not the one who looked bad in the scandal). Not really the worst kind of sex scandal because something didn't actually happen, but weird enough so he had to drop out. The replacement chosen by the GOP lost to Obama, who gained his springboard to the presidency. Hard to say if the outcome would have been different had Ryan stayed in the race or had the details not come out due to the release of some custody documents in their divorce records. But it sort of shows how effects of things that happen in election campaigns can cascade and affect future elections.
I remember that. The Obama campaign petitioned to have the documents unsealed because it was essential for democracy or something.
It looks like the Robinson "dirt" is bad talk on the interwebs. People are so dumb on the interwebs.
One of my friends joked that the scandal was that Robinson had praised South Carolina barbecue, which is actually funny.
Mediaite is hyperventilating over it, too.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/just-in-trump-pick-for-north-carolina-governor-under-pressure-to-withdraw-over-looming-bombshell-regarding-activity-on-adult-websites/
He has Covid sounds better than he threw his back out.
Daughter A texted me this morning asking me to overnight mail her birth certificate to her. (There was only one copy in her file, suggestion that she actually has a copy but doesn't know where it is, but that's neither here nor there. Maybe the Coast Guard or UNC-Charlotte kept it.)
She can't get a Pennsylvania driver's license without her birth certificate.
Can the state not produce a certified copy?
She was born in Texas. She could order a new copy from Texas Vital Records, but it was faster for me to get it out of my file and mail it.
I suspect that, even if she had been born in Pennsylvania, the state would not be able to provide her birth certificate to one of its own agencies, because incompetence.
It’s been my experience that government offices work extremely poorly with each other. And I’ve seen it from the inside out.
There's hope for the environment AND modern civilization AND environmentally conscious people who love beef!
https://newatlas.com/environment/cow-burps-methane-clay/
Cut and pasted from The Writers Almanac....
On this day in 1796, President George Washington's farewell address was printed in the Daily American Advertiser as an open letter to American citizens. The most famous of all his "speeches," it was never actually spoken; a week after its publication in this Philadelphia newspaper, it was reprinted in papers all over the country.
Now only eight years old, the Constitution was in danger, Washington feared, of falling prey to the whims of popular sentiment. In 6,086 words, his address seeks to encourage the nation to respect and maintain the Constitution, warning that a party system — not yet the governmental standard operating procedure — would reduce the nation to infighting
I listened to Roger Pielke on The Remnant Podcast, and I am now signed up for his “Honest Broker” Substack. I believe he has a podcast by the same name. The problem we have with so many things is that Chicken Little syndrome, “the sky is falling.” It reminds me of those old films about pot, where they showed people experiencing hallucinations. The government goes for the most frightening messaging, and then people start to realize they aren’t telling being honest. Now, we are being told that we need to accomplish things within a ridiculously and impossibly short timeframe in order to save the planet. This never works, and yet they keep doing it.
Reefer Madness. A true cult classic.
That’s the one! Didn’t one teen look in the mirror and see a werwolf? And they wonder why people are skeptical.
I'm waiting for the drought afflicted areas (where people shouldn't be living anyway) to center their gaze upon all that delicious water in the Great Lakes, and begin political organizing to build a pipeline to the golf courses of Phoenix and Vegas. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Great Lakes Alliance, etc., etc.... That doesn't mean big money won't try to do a Chinatown. I have an old acquaintance whose career at Bechtel was in the pipeline engineering division. He said the engineering has been complete for 30 years and they're just waiting.
Waiting like thirsty vultures.
My dad always talked about how much better off we are living near the Great Lakes because of the water. And, of course, places that are basically deserts, and where people want to live for who knows why, exactly, are going to try to find ways to get some of that water. Ultimately, it’s always about money, and bad players.
Here in The People's Republic of Evanston, "climate goals" are being written into all manner of city ordinances, with the apparent overarching goal being satisfying Byzantine Fed requirements for grants and loans to facilitate writing climate goals into all manner of city ordinances.
A thought on science and politics. When Ketanji Brown Jackson went through confirmation hearings, she said Black physicians had a lower mortality rate with black babies than did white physicians. It was a study published in a reputable journal, PNAS. But there’s more to the story. And I don't mean that in a good way.
When I (and other academics) do research, much of what we study has multiple explanations. So we often use variables in our studies that have been tested before. We run an analysis with those in our model, and then we add our variables we collected that we want to test. We call the first model the "control" model, as we're trying to see what new explanations can occur, on top of what has already been found.
In my field, when we study firm performance we control for firm size and firm age, as both have been shown to affect firm performance. So if my model has an adjusted R-squared of 30% and I don’t control for firm size and age, some of that 30% could probably be explained by size and age. By including them, we see how much new explanation is a result of the new variables.
Prior studies have concluded infant mortality rates are influenced by birthweight. Low birthweight babies have a higher mortality rate than do higher birthweight babies. And, as an aside, black babies in general also have a higher likelihood of being low birthweight than white babies. Because of how serious low birthweight is to child mortality, those babies are often assigned to specialists immediately, who are more often white than black.
The original study DID NOT control for low birthweight! Someone else recently replicated the study, but added in baby birthweight. The overall model fit improves (which we’d expect), but the racial difference in the physician treating the baby goes away.
Bad science annoys me.
Thanks, Jay. I hate it when people reach conclusions based on ignorance, in general.
I’m more concerned about the fact I haven’t seen one bat this summer. They used to fill the skies at dusk. I’ve only seen three monarch butterflies. There’s a golf course up north full of milkweed. One would think the monarchs would be thick up there. Not anymore.
Have only seen two Monarchs this summer. We always let the milkweed in our fence lines and other places grow when we trimmed, and often had numerous Monarchs hanging around. This year I haven't seen but a couple or three milkweed plants on my whole place. Not sure what's up with any of that.
You got that right. I used to sit on my roof and see hundreds of bats. Now, maybe one or two a week. I think it's all part of the insect ecosystem collapse.
For the bats, could be white nose fungus. It was or has been catastrophic for their populations.
There's talk that in a few days Earth will have a 2nd moon. I mean in space, not in front of a frat house when one of the bros has had too much to drink.
It's unclear if the 2nd moon will escape into orbit (most likely) or will crash in Washington DC, AKA "SMOD 2024 voted!" moon. It's unlikely, but one can hope...
My dad would have liked that one!
Good morning. No rain here until next week (maybe). The mothership is reporting on the Fed’s cutting interest rates and its possible relationship to the color of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s tie (no, really).
We got a few showers from the unnamed tropical system from the Carolinas, but it wasn’t enough to reverse the drought effects, much less replenish any ponds or streams.
Good morning. Upper 80s here today. shrug. Indian summer? Blackberry summer? Whatever.
It's back to the office today to process more online voter registrations. I had my arm twisted to continue our college football pool -- 10 games (mostly SEC) straight up, with closest on the Titans game total score as the tiebreaker. $1 each for a pot that often is in single digits. But, it's fun, I reckon.
I've listened to about half of the Free Press podcast on Hez-a (no boll) this morning. Informative.
https://www.thefp.com/p/hezbollahs-pagers-and-walkie-talkies
My brother used to run a football pool for a dozen or so family members and coworkers. I think the buy-in was $2/week.
I love watching football, but I still don't understand how football pools work. I don't know how to play poker either, and I'm still trying to understand what "the over under" means.
My brother would study the stats in the newspaper (originally) or eventually online, and then assign points to "handicap" the different teams in their matchups each week. I think it's pretty much what Jay explained below.
I never knew which team was any good, so I would kind of pick them at random and still win occasionally. One of my church friends had to be in a "fantasy sports" league with her husband and sons, and she often won with her totally arbitrary selection of players. It really annoyed the male participants, but she told them it was their fault for not having friends who would do it with them.
Over means you are predicting if the game score will exceed a certain number, or it can mean the winning team will win by more than that number. Under is better it won't.
For example, the over on the recent Notre Dame/Purdue game was 49 points. To win you either bet Notre Dame's margin of victory would be 50 or more (it was); or you'd bet that Purdue wouldn't lose by more than 48 points (49 would be a "push", no one wins or loses).
Why do they offer over/under? To get more people to bet. Who in their right mind would have bet on Purdue to win outright against Notre Dame? But you might bet they can keep the loss closer than 49 points.
A bookie's goal is to get an even number of bets on both teams; they make their money "on the rake" (they keep a few percent of the winning bet as their own).
Sometime I'll share the Christy gambling story I shared with her parents. I thought it was funny.
O/U is oddsmakers' best guess at total points scored. You bet on more or less points
Good morning. In our reading materials, it is not unusual for a writer to conclude that it is not only possible that all the worst-case possibilities will occur, but that there are even worse possibilities that might happen. Therefore, it is essential to believe that the End is Nigh, but not to take practical actions (replace coal and oil with natural gas and nuclear power) that could make a significant difference.
I’m all for nuclear, and then someone tells me it’s really expensive to get one of those plants up and running. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to be a problem that we’re spending all kinds of money on EVs and charging stations that people are not flocking to buy, and therefore, use. It always has to happen right now. I also agree with you re natural gas. What is our problem?
It is expensive to build and initialize a nuclear power plant, even without all the unnecessary obstacles. However, every other option is expensive, too.
They recommissioning the Palisades nuclear plant in Covert Michigan. It was built in the 60’s, it ran fine for its projected lifespan. They shut it down for several years now they’re putting it back together and it’s gonna be generating power.
That’s my thought, as well. I’d rather spend the money and take the time on something we know works.
“In order to ensure the survival of life on earth, we’re going to ban all human activities that contributed to that, starting with energy and food production.”
“Wait, what are we going to do for energy and food?”
“I said ‘Shut up!’ Can’t you see I’m busy here trying to banish our way to averting theoretical disaster? There’ll be time to figure that out once we’v eliminated all the bad things! Now get out of my way!”
Even human burial (or other disposition) practices can be relevant to The Climate, but we can't have simple and resource-conserving burials, because reasons.
Open Air Sepulcher
He liked the idea of being among trees
looking down on him
with compassion,
knowing that
the fungus under him, that like himself was not understood
in any comprehensive manner,
that extended in all directions
communicating with the forest above it,
would understand and take care of him like it took care of
all the other stuff that died in the forest.
He liked the idea of being broken down,
dissolved,
absorbed and distributed
to the trees that needed all the help they could get.
.......Kurt
I think the turkey vultures might have a thing or two to say about this.
Exactly. "Give my nutrients to the trees, and let me be forgotten."
Cremation requires burning at high heat; that is, the release of greenhouse gases!
True. There are also issues with particulate emissions.
Speaking of cremation, check out the “Noble” podcast. 😳
I worry about the effects of the chemicals in my toenail clippings going into the groundwater. So, I keep them in recycled paper bags beside my bed. I have 42 now.
Wait ... cat video!
Wow, toxic toenails
Thousands will die from poison
Wait, cat video!
Mummification ftw!
I'm tired of you climate deniers devaluing my strict adherence to only cardboard Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese containers! I'm serious about this! The world depends on our decisions!
Oh! Wait! ... cute TikTok.
Pah! Polystyrene is an invention of the gods.
Are daily weather reports part of CSLF? Chicago here.... with weather like those in Santa Barbara wish they had. What's really different is the Big Pond is still in the 70's. In the early AM, water temps are warmer than the air...and the swimming has been glorious.
There’s always a weather report, so go for it! I’m only a couple of hours north, and it’s been a little warmer. However, we aren’t living right on the lake. But, the mornings are very cool, and it’s wonderful going out to feed horses in the morning because they love that cool weather!
I’m over in southern Sconnie, we need rain!
Yeah...dry here too. Per my usual method, I let the lawn puke out but my drip irrigation on the vegetables is working great.
Could be a rare active fire season this year. Some trees are shedding leaves ahead of schedule. Usually we’ve got fall colors around mid-October.
Greta Thunberg frowns in your general direction.
I wonder what’s happened to her? I know she’s still out there!
Greta's been a busy girl...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68749936
https://metro.co.uk/2024/09/04/greta-thunberg-arrested-handcuffed-pro-palestine-protest-21544513/?ico=more_text_links
She’s going to be one of those kids who will eventually fade away. Her parents have done her no favors, and nor has the press or the politicians.
I saw her speaking out in support of Palestinians early in the war…seems like she was one of the “We are Hamas” characters. Yeah, I’ll listen to her.🤭
How do these people manage to keep themselves so entrenched in a single idea?!
She's still doing that. "The Omnicause" includes supporting Hamas and Iran.
that's FUNNY!
HOW DARE YOU! 😡
(I'm sorry they don't have an angry but pasty white face emoji)...
We really, really need one.
https://youtu.be/d2FEYxkpCQ8?si=vzHRtepOv8YMJ7dk
😂 Thank you!
That made me snort laugh.
That was clever.
love, Love, LOVE it.
My mother would say, "Your face will freeze like that."