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Imagemaxomai

Finding God in a Dog

"I'll never listen to what Slade says."

House passes $95B foreign aid package for Taiwan, Ukraine, Israel.
dog
Imagemaxomai
April 20th, 2024

NYT reports:

The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.
In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.

The conventional wisdom is that Johnson and other Congressional leaders saw intelligence estimates indicating that the US will be involved in a nasty ground war in Europe in five years if we don't stop Russia in Ukraine. 

My guess? The Kremlin's check bounced.

Tick Tock, Sleepy Donnie. Full panel of 12 jurors and 6 alternates seated for New York Fraud Trial.
dog
Imagemaxomai
April 19th, 2024

AP reports:

A full jury of 12 New Yorkers and 6 alternates has been seated in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, setting the stage for opening statements next week in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

Meanwhile Donnie is falling asleep in court, every day now, and someone set themselves on fire outside the courtroom for reasons unknown. ABC News is chalking it up to mental issues, but who knows?

Predictions for 2024
dog
Imagemaxomai
April 19th, 2024

(Reposted here from a December 28, 2023 post to post.news, which is shutting down)

And now, here are my predictions for 2024. Informally, I'm calling 2024 The Year of Finding Out, where a lot of questions about American Democracy are going to be answered for the duration. But what does that mean in detail? Here's how I think it will turn out.

1) Donald Trump will be convicted on multiple felony counts.
2) Joe Biden will win re-election.
3) Democrats will win barely enough seats to control the US House.
4) Right wing parties will have win enough seats in the June EU Parliamentary Elections to form a governing coalition.
5) Ukraine will negotiate a peace with Russia, which will include ceding to Russia a land bridge to Crimea.
6) Israel will all but annihilate Hamas by mid-Summer.
7) Venezuela will invade Guyana, dragging Brazil into a war.
8) The Supreme Court will split the difference on gun rights, ruling against the bump stock ban (Cargill v Garland) but in favor of forbidding gun ownership by persons subject to a domestic violence restraining order (US v Rahimi).
9) The permanent injunction on Oregon's Measure 114 will be overturned on appeal.

Let's go over these one at a time.

1) Donald Trump will be convicted on multiple felony counts.

Last year I predicted that he would be indicted. This year I'm predicting that Trump's legal strategy - which is to try to delay his trials so that they can't finish until after the 2024 election - will fail, and that he will be duly convicted on multiple felony counts before the general election.

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This is goodbye...and hello.
dog
Imagemaxomai
December 29th, 2016
Well folks, it's time for me to retire from LiveJournal. It's been almost 14 years and thousands of posts, and I've lasted here longer than a lot of people, but this place isn't what it used to be.

I am going to continue blogging, however, on Medium. It doesn't give me the same level of control as LJ, but it does give me the sense of community that has all but disappeared from LJ outside the Russophone world.

I hope you'll join me there, or on Twitter.
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2016 Predictions Scorecard (UGH)
dog
Imagemaxomai
December 28th, 2016
Current Mood:
pensive pensive
This was a terrible year for just about everyone and everything, and that includes my predictions for this year. That said, I did better this year than last, scoring 6 out of 14 correct predictions. Let's go through what I predicted for 2016, where I was right or wrong, and why.


  1. Hillary Clinton will be elected President of the United States --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    This seemed like a slam dunk given the polls at the time, and the dynamics of electoral politics since 2006. So what happened?

    The Clinton campaign blames the Comey letter to Congress for shifting undecided voters to Trump. Post-election polling shows about half of Clinton voters blame Russia, because Russia hacked the DNC and the Clinton campaign (which is supported by the intelligence community including the FBI), and also because they believe Russia somehow changed the vote tally (a hypothesis for which there is no supporting evidence).

    I think what really happened is simpler and more prosaic and depressing. The DNC and the Bill Clinton people resorted back to their old ways and fucked up a perfectly winnable Presidential race, a la Al Gore in 2000.

    In particular, they fucked up on messaging. Most of their television ads were about what a horrible person Donald Trump is, rather than why Hillary Clinton should be President. They adopted a slogan, "Love Trumps Hate," that once again made Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, the center of attention. Everyone involved in the campaign --- and I mean, everyone from the lowest level canvassing and phone banking volunteer to the candidate herself --- needs to go back and re-read George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, which spells out in plain terms why this is an inexcusible fuck-up.

    That's just one way in which the campaign fell apart. There's dozens of others, from not bothering to engage the Democratic apparatus in Madison, WI, to presuming Pennsylvania was safely in their column, to continually writing off the Bernie people at an organizational level.

    The end result is a mess. Donald Trump is a thin-skinned, grossly incompetent President-Elect, whose actions post-election might have asuaged the investor class but have terrified and angered half the country at the same time that it has galvanized the white supremacist so-called "alt-right." He shows all the signs that his administration will be corrupt, brutally racist, and unrepentantly authoritarian and antidemocratic. There are even signs that he might be a Russian puppet.

    Trump is a weak PEOTUS in a lot of ways, but one that should not go ignored is his level of support. His approval ratings are at an historic low for Presidents-Elect. He has negative coattails such that the GOP lost House and Senate seats. And, his popular vote margin is at about negative 2.9 million.

    This gives the Democratic Party a narrow path to avoid extinction. It needs to win big in local and state races, and hold its ground in Congressional races, in 2018, if it wants a shot of winning the White House in 2020 or getting back control of Congress in 2022. Trump's unpopularity gives them a shot, and it's already produced results in the form of a flood of new volunteers and apparatchiks. What's needed to capitalize on this new blood is a return to the fifty state strategy espoused by Howard Dean in his tenure as DNC chairman.


  2. The Democrats will gain seats in the US House of Representatives, but nowhere near enough to take control in the next Congress. --- HAPPENED

    This actually happened, and it's one of the most underreported political stories of 2016.


  3. The Democrats will score a net gain of at least four US Senate seats, enough to control the Senate in the next Congress. --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    Long story short, Democrats blew a lot of easily winnable races by assuming that the Great Lakes states were in the bag.


  4. Kate Brown will be elected to finish her predecessor's term as Governor of Oregon. --- HAPPENED

    Oregon Democrats did worse this election season than expected, but Kate Brown won in a shoo-in. Dennis Richardson's win as Secretary of State should sound alarm bells for 2018.


  5. Augustus Invictus will NOT be Florida's next US Senator. --- HAPPENED

    In fact, Marco Rubio went back to run for his old seat, and won. That said, it might well have been that Augustus Invictus was simply before his time. The events of the next few years, and in particular, the success or failure of fellow authoritarian Richard Spencer in Montana, will tell us more.


  6. Tammy Duckworth will win the general election to represent Illinois in the US Senate. --- HAPPENED

    And so Barack Obama's Senate seat repeats the pattern in which it has been since Alan Dixon lost the Democratic primary to Carol Mosley-Braun; that is, switching parties every six years.


  7. Black Lives Matter will dominate the Presidential race --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    In fact, what dominated the Presidential race was two even bigger manifestations of America's deeply rooted racism: anti-Muslim and anti-Latinx sentiment espoused by Donald Trump. It's not going to get better without a lot of work.


  8. Gun sales will continue to reach new records; prices of both guns and ammo will increase. --- HAPPENED

    Gun buyers assumed that Clinton would win and kept buying guns in anticipation of a Clinton administration AWB. New records were met each month. Now that Trump is going to be in power, I expect the gun market, which is usually driven by fear and anxiety, to level off, even as it gains new customers on the left.


  9. ISIS will execute a Paris-style attack on the United States. --- HAPPENED

    This would be the Pulse Nightclub shooting of June 12th. This focused the gay rights movement briefly on the cause of gun prohibition. I suspect that's over now that there are bigger fish to fry.


  10. ISIS will lose half their territory between 1/1/2015 and 12/30/2016. --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    ISIS has lost territory, but only by about a quarter, not a half, as measured in square miles.


  11. Oil prices will go back up to $70/barrel this summer --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    In fact, OPEC kept the spigot open. Demand has increased thanks to the cheaper oil prices, and prices never got above $50.


  12. The Oregon Ducks will win the Alamo Bowl. --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    What should have been an easy game turned into a stunning, horrifying collapse, presaging a dreadful 2016 season. Cue sad trombone. I remain a fan.


  13. The Carolina Panthers will beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl --- DID NOT HAPPEN

    In fact, the Panthers played the Broncos, and lost. The look on Cam Newton's face when the clock expired says it all.


  14. The Chicago Cubs will return to the postseason. --- HAPPENED

    A lot sucked about 2016, but it had great sports stories. The biggest is that Leicester City, a perennial underdog in British soccer, won the Premier League championship for 2015-2016. A very close second to that is the Chicago Cubs coming back from three games down, and eeking out a tough, harrowing win in game seven, to win the World Series and end a 108 year championship drought.


Tomorrow, I will state my predictions for 2017. See you then!
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The Cranky Liberal's Case for Clinton
dog
Imagemaxomai
July 26th, 2016
Today the Democratic National Convention will vote on their candidate for President, and it's virtually certain that Hillary Clinton will win the nomination. Let me explain why she will have my enthusiastic support, even though I think she's far less than ideal.

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Live video of the Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine rally
dog
Imagemaxomai
July 22nd, 2016
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Michael Strickland and The Case That He's Been Over-Charged
dog
Imagemaxomai
July 9th, 2016
EDIT August 4, 2016: Strickland has since been indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of unlawful use of a weapon, 10 counts of menacing, and one count of disorderly conduct. I still think he's being over-charged on each count of unlawful use of a weapon, as per below.

As delighted as I am the Michael Strickland (of Laughing-at-Liberals and Asshole-who-pulled-a-gun-at-the-BLM-march fame) was charged with two counts of Unlawful Use of a Weapon, my guess is that he will almost certainly see those particular charges go away.

There are two ways one can commit Unlawful Use of a Weapon (per ORS 166.220):

1) "Attempts to use unlawfully against another, or carries or possesses with intent to use unlawfully against another, any dangerous or deadly weapon as defined in ORS 161.015"

2) "Intentionally discharges a firearm, blowgun, bow and arrow, crossbow or explosive device within the city limits of any city or within residential areas within urban growth boundaries at or in the direction of any person, building, structure or vehicle within the range of the weapon without having legal authority for such discharge."

He didn't discharge his firearm, so (2) is out, leaving (1). And that's where it gets interesting. The prosecution has to argue that Michael Strickland either (a) carried a firearm with the intention of using it unlawfully, or (b) that he attempted to use it unlawfully when he pulled it. Now, they have to demonstrate mens rea, or intent. And that's going to be a pain in the ass.

If I had to guess, if the prosecution is serious about arguing their case, they will focus on the fact that Strickland had five extra magazines on him (for a total of about 80-100 rounds, including the ones in his gun), and argue that was excessive. But given the other charges (menacing and disorderly conduct), this looks like the prosecution over-charged him for being a troublemaker. As much as I despise Michael Strickland, that kind of behavior from a prosecutor can't stand. I doubt a judge or jury will disagree, even in liberal Portland.

As usual, IANAL, I just obsess over this stuff.
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Most Sanders supporters will eventually come around to back Clinton.
dog
Imagemaxomai
May 28th, 2016
Recently a friend of mine asked:

"But do you really think even if the DNC makes this compromise that Sanders supporters will vote Blue in the General Election?"

My answer is, yes, because part of that deal will be that Sanders rallies his supporters behind Clinton.

Sanders supporters talk a big game about how they won't back Clinton even if Sanders tells them to do so, but we can also look at a similar situation that happened in 2008 and see how those sentiments will eventually play out. Let's check polling data for how Clinton supporters (so-called PUMAs) felt about Obama at this time in the 2008 elections versus how Sanders supporters feel about Clinton now. A CNN exit poll conducted in May 2008 indicated that Clinton supporters would support Obama over McCain by 48-34. Gallup polled the same group before the Democratic Convention and found that support for Obama had improved to about 70%. By the time the convention was done it was over 80%. We can credit Clinton's "No Way, No How, No McCain" speech for that ten point rise. Eventually Clinton supporters backed Obama over McCain, 83-17.

As of this week, Clinton has 69% support amongst Sanders supporters, and their underlying sentiments are mostly hostile towards Trump. Sanders's job of getting his supporters to back Clinton is somewhat easier than Clinton's job was getting her supporters to back Obama. If we presume that Sanders knows (a) he won't be the nominee and (b) his legacy will be in how he makes the Democratic Party more progressive, then it's reasonable to assume that he'll conclude that a Clinton Presidency is better for his legacy than a Trump Presidency, and that he will, therefore, be one of Clinton's best advocates during and after the convention.
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Why I think Al Franken should be Clinton's VP candidate
dog
Imagemaxomai
May 24th, 2016
For a long time now, progressive Democrats like me have hoped for a Clinton-Warren ticket to storm its way to the White House in 2016. Unfortunately, Harry Reid has put the kabosh on that. His reasoning is as follows: if the VP is a Senator from a state with a Republican Governor, that Governor is likely to pick a Republican to replace the VP-elect, leaving Democrats at a disadvantage for winning back the Senate, even should they win the White House.

So, with those hard criteria in mind, if Clinton is going to pick a sitting Senator for her VP nominee, who should she pick? The ideal candidate would be a popular progressive from a purple state with a lot of electoral votes, who can also stand up to the pressures of a Presidential campaign. That's quite an ask, but I think we have three good candidates for the job: Mark Warner, Claire McCaskill and Al Franken. Of those, Al Franken would be, by far, the most popular choice, and I think it makes the most sense for Clinton to give him the opportunity.

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Comments
  • maxomai
    Imagemaxomai
    27 Jul 2015, 15:48
    2016 Presidential Cattle Call, Republican Edition
    But your analysis that he says what the other candidates just think is wrong.

    I agree that such an analysis would be wrong. But that's not what I said. What I said was:

    While others try to appeal…
  • maxomai
    Imagedondodson
    27 Jul 2015, 14:35
    2016 Presidential Cattle Call, Republican Edition
    I have not yet picked a candidate to support, but I'm leaning towards Walker or Cruz. I'd be happy with Rubio too. I don't have much use for any of the others.

    I think you right to say that Trump is…
  • maxomai
    Imagearchmage
    21 Jul 2015, 00:55
    Monday Miscellany!
    Witch house and associated stuff turns out to be good music for when I'm working and can't afford to be too distracted. Of course, I switch between that and heavy dubstep, so take that as you will.
  • maxomai
    Imagemaxomai
    20 Jul 2015, 16:42
    Saturday Miscellany!
    I think that language escaped me because I wasn't aware that was an issue.

    I know other persons are taking Sb's words as a policy statement that it is permissible to promote the Motta-Gunther AA at…
  • maxomai
    Imageparadoxosalpha
    20 Jul 2015, 15:39
    Saturday Miscellany!
    You seem to read Sabazius' statement a little differently than I do. To me, the most novel and interesting language was regarding "dues-collecting front groups," which implicitly makes two points:…
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