Saturday, October 31, 2026
Friday, October 30, 2026
Update
It is raining in the desert as I write this. We've had thunder and rain all morning. I'm wondering if the super El Niño currently influencing our weather is going to bring us a relatively rainy winter?
Mind you, "relatively rainy" wouldn't be rainy elsewhere, it would be more or less normal. But here on the eastern edge of the Mojave, where we normally get next-to-no rain, several good rainstorms would be an unusually wet winter.
One thing is for sure, the 90-100 degree days of early autumn are behind us. We will have highs in the 60-70s for the next couple of weeks. Pleasant weather when others are cold is why we've here. A web cam shows our part of WY has already had a dusting of snow.
Have a Happy Halloween tomorrow night, with more treats than tricks. Our next big milestone is Election Day on Tuesday, followed by Thanksgiving on November 26, after which the Christmas decorations go up.
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We were in a medical office earlier this week, scheduling a future appointment. The pleasant young woman suggested December 7, and the other DrC interjected "the Day of Infamy."
The young woman looked nonplussed so I prompted "Pearl Harbor Day" to which the other DrC added "a day that will live in infamy." We might as well have been speaking Mandarin, for all she understood.
We oldsters live in a different reality, for sure. Not much US history is being taught nowadays.
GOP … Hard to Poll
Wednesday we wrote about polling difficulties, today brings another article about this phenomenon. It reports the Washington Post and the George Mason U. polling outfit set out to look at Kansas voters’ views about the senate race in their state.
They found Democrats willing to talk to their interviewers, Republicans not very willing. 32% of Democrats were willing to be interviewed, only 12% of Republicans would do so.
WaPo interpreted this disparity as reflecting GOP voter apathy, but then left-leaning WaPo would spin it that way. Red State, where the report appeared, chose to see it as GOP voters’ negative view of biased pollsters. This time next week we should know who was right and who was wrong.
One thing we know now, before the votes are counted. A 12% sample is much less likely to be representative of the whole than a 32% sample, much more likely to be an unrepresentative outlier subgroup.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Polling Is Hard
Why do polls underreport Republican sentiments and voting intentions? I just read an X post that made the following claim.
If you're not in my contact list, I'm not answering the call.
I know that's true for me, I'll bet it is true for many of us. No wonder pollsters have difficulty getting real people to answer their calls.
The area code associated with my cell phone number isn't reflective of either of my current home states. I no longer answer anonymous calls with that former area code, as they are almost always spam or wrong numbers.
If pollsters are using area codes to get representative samples, the probable millions of us who've moved in recent years and kept our old phone numbers further complicate their task.
The Enthusiasm Gap
President Trump holds rally after rally and they are packed with thousands of cheering supporters. Can any other living US politician do this, consistently draw huge crowds to political rallies? I believe the answer is no.
Donald Trump is the most charismatic practitioner in today's politics. Whoever is second - perhaps AOC - isn't close. What is on display is an "enthusiasm gap" between the two major parties.
The legacy media refuses to note the gap's existence and meaning. Given their leftward bias, they know the less said about it the better.
Ah, but you and I can note and cheer it, and we do.
Bolsonaro Loses
Earlier in the month I wrote about conservative Flavio Bolsonaro coming out ahead in a multicandidate race for Brazil's presidency, and facing a run-off against the socialist incumbent known as Lula.
As you may have read, earlier this week the run-off was held and Lula pulled off an upset victory. Whether he did so honestly is another issue, one about which I have questions but no knowledge.
This outcome runs counter to the movement to elect conservative national leaders that has swept Latin America. Expect Lula's Brazil to cozy up to China, Russia, India, etc. in the BRICS meetings.
How much the conservative leaders of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, etc. will be able to counter the region's largest nation and biggest regional market is unclear. Maybe not very much.
Later ... The Lula government is persecuting those who ran against them in the just-concluded election, intended to arrest and imprison Bolsonaro. He however has escaped Brazil and has arrived safely in Miami.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Communism ≈ Herpes
A quote I like a lot, from an on-line persona whose handle is Drunk Republican. Hat tip to Stephen Green blogging at Instapundit for the link.
Crazy, we thought this sh*t was over when the Wall fell. Turns out Communism is a lot like herpes; you can’t cure it, you can only treat the flare-ups.
The idea that humans can function like honey bees where every individual works selflessly for the collective good of the hive keeps cropping up. Even though it never works in practice.
A better non-human model for how humans cooperate might be a bison herd. We may hang out together but are individuals, not hive units.
It requires military-like regimentation to get us to sacrifice for the good of the group, and the threat of extinction to get us to accept that need. It isn’t our standard everyday species behavior.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Saturday Snark (a Day Late)
Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures
and its Comments section.
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