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The Butterfly Effect – Bush vs. Gore revisited – politicalbetting.com
The Butterfly Effect – Bush vs. Gore revisited – politicalbetting.com
The year 2000 is perhaps best remembered in the UK for the Millenium Dome, the fuel protests and Y2K. For the US, it would be their first presidential election of a new millennium.
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This time round, the members of legal team which represented Bush sit in the majority in the Supreme Court.
There's very little doubt indeed in whose favour they'd place their thumb on the scales.
I am VERY curious to see how legacy media sanewashes Trump’s performance tonight where he told people to vote on January 5 then stood on stage while music played for 30 minutes because he didn’t want to take more than a few questions from people at a Town Hall.
And the follow-on question: Does America want President Vance?
I think its invocation more likely than not, if Trump is re-elected.
And in many respects (basic administrative competence, for example) Vance is potentially more dangerous.
Firstly, it is looking like Florida could be repeated in 5 or more states making the outcome genuinely uncertain with multiple variables.
Secondly, MAGA and Trump have got rid of a lot of good Republicans who, in 2020, did their jobs correctly in the main. The jailing of one who didn't last week was timely.
Thirdly, the Trump campaign has hyped up the distrust of the "deep state". People are far more reluctant to agree the facts are the facts than they were in 2000.
Fourthly, the gamesmanship in disqualifying voters for spurious reasons and the partisan limitations of polling booths in opposing areas is much higher.
Finally, each side is utterly convinced that a win by the other is the end of the United States as they know it which is a rationale that can bring people to do stupid things.
The failure by both sides to sharpen up and improve both the counting and regulation of the election over the intervening years is a time bomb that almost went off in 2020 and is very likely to go off this time.
Leon in particular rightly called out Biden. But not Trump for some reason…
Sort of early 80s Soviet Union, or decrepit Franco Spain. Trump gets the glory, others get the power, win-win.
Wow -- this was weird. Trump wrapped up his "town hall" in Oaks, Pennsylvania, after just a few questions, and right after he said he would take a few more questions. More music then played while Trump stood around on stage. Deeply bizarre scenes.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1845978409257607408
Follow the thread...
A miracle health intervention that has been shown to drastically improve health, which has led to the first fall in age-adjusted US obesity rates in decades. And this government decides to focus its use on the least rather than most productive members of society, while lecturing the rest not to be fat.
Lecturing doesn’t work. Our microbiomes and metabolisms have been fecked by Monsanto, Caryle, Tate & Lyle and the rest. If the US can get 1/8 Americans on Ozempik than so should we.
But it would, I guess, depend on how tractable a semi-gaga Trump might be.
NYT write-up of Trump being weird last night.
Employment status will not be part of the prescription decisions.
In the meantime, the election is what I'm betting on.
I've made the prediction; make of it what you will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X2vU1sULDQ
Jim Justice is almost certainly WV's next senator. If he shows up to work is another question.
Sources say Justice is chronically absent. Some are concerned for his health + doubt he’ll regularly show up to votes
That'll matter in the Senate. A lot
https://x.com/UrsulaPerano/status/1845495283439816865
It's all priced in and will have no bearing on his vote.
You genuinely don't think the 25th will be invoked but I appreciate it was thrilling for you to write that it might be.
Incidentally good economic news today on employment.
BBC News - Slowing wage growth raises hopes of rate cut
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3w7dqn454o
Given current rates of childhood obesity, we will end up medicating millions of children at massive cost just to help them resist the addictive poison food manufacturers put in their products.
NHS spending will just continue to grow, especially if Ozempic has long term health implications or the other effects of crap food is not mitigated by it. A typical case of privatise the profits, nationalise the costs.
If it was this it sounds sensible, if a bit nanny state-ish, and hence my question as to how the lifestyle change mandate would work.
If not, then yes indeed it is ridiculous political messaging.
That doesn't seem daft to me. It's exactly the kind of calculation NICE makes when assessing if the NHH should pay for new treatments.
https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/news/rcpch-responds-latest-childhood-obesity-figures-england-202223#:~:text=The prevalence of obesity in,higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Employment status will not be part of the prescription decisions.
Its potential impact on employment is, of course, a factor in deciding whether or not the NHS provides it.
Not sure I can entirely agree with the praise of Al Gore for not contesting. That kind of thing works if there's a half decent chance the other side might do it too. Even in 2000, the republicans were the party of Cheney, Rumsfeld et al... I worry Gore might have encouraged the anti democratic tendencies we see in todays republican party.
BBC News headline: "Jobless could get weight loss jabs to return to work"
And what about all the MAGA Republicans who turn up on January 5th only to discover that the election already happened?
Might earlier government funding have made a difference ?
Google is ordering multiple SMR's from Kairos Power, and in doing so has become the first tech company to commission *new* nuclear reactors for its datacenters. Kairos will 'develop, construct, and operate a series of advanced reactor plants' and then sell the power to Google.
https://x.com/AndrewCurran_/status/1845921113941180662
The Kairos molten salt reactor is an interesting new technology (the concept has been around for some time).
"Jobless could get weight loss jabs to return to work".
If employment status is irrelevant, which I can well believe it would be, then this headline is Ridiculous Political Messaging. But @Foxy says no, it's a great idea. Which suggests that it has substance. Which would mean that employment status would be relevant.
Probably cult members overwhelmed by the emotion of seeing the anointed one.
I would suspect that the jabs would have more effect on reducing such cases in the early stages. So not so much the people who have been housebound for a decade as the people heading that direction.
I agree it now all comes down to turnout, unless either of the two candidates self-destruct.
Watch Donald Trump ATTEMPT to answer this question about helping small businesses.
It’s WILD. 😳
Putting this man in charge of our nation is an even WORSE idea than it was in 2016 or 2020.
Watch.
https://x.com/NickKnudsenUS/status/1845993371908886880
Once again - I would like to see a Vitality style trial. Tangible incentives for exercise and health stats. A few free cinema tickets and even the Office I Never Exercise guy was taking the dog for extra walks…
Unlike this scumbag - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroworld_Festival_crowd_crush
ETA we should also note an increase in those reported as underweight.
The cynic in me suggests the recent drop in obesity might be due to the cost of living crisis - poorer people are twice as likely to be overweight.
And this shows the problem with much of the commentary on TwiX and from the United States generally. Much of it is so partisan as to be useless at best, if not actively misleading.
You don't like the headline, and clearly haven't fully absorbed the story beneath it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjd54zd0ezjo
The distinction between an individual prescription decision, and the general decision to provide a treatment on the NHS is entirely clear.
The announcement, if you haven't yet worked it out, concerns a trial period of prescribing the medication, partly funded by the manufacturer:
..The plans announced at the summit will include real-world trials of weight-loss jabs’ impact on worklessness, the Telegraph reported.
A study by Health Innovation Manchester and Lilly will examine whether being put on the drugs will reduce worklessness and the impact on NHS service use, and will take place in Greater Manchester...
You don't have to be out of employment to be in the trial - but the progress of those who are will be included in the analysis of the trial results.
The Lilly investment goes beyond the trial itself.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-collaboration-with-largest-pharmaceutical-company
To some extent the Hilary Clinton campaign and Democrat party did the opposite to Gore. The lesson they took from Bush / Gore was not that the honourable thing to do is to concede and go and do something worthy / or make a pretty dull film (delete according to your prejudices). But instead that the Republicans will keep fighting until the end. Bush was/may have been the loser but simply didn’t consent to it - he brazened it out until Gore folded.
So in 2016 Democratic Party cast aspirations about the legitimacy of the Trump election and didn’t stop after the inauguration. Some of the chat about Russia inevitably was about that (although it remains my view that Trump is and was Putin’s preference and make of that what you will). The Democrats (or some of them) didn’t consent to the result. They couldn’t believe Trump could have won legitimately so there must have been something afoot.
Trump in 2020 and everything since then was simply an upping the ante. Almost “you think you Democrats can go low, just a look at the depths I can reach.” What that means for 2024 who can tell. In a country divided with no side giving an inch and a real risk of neither loser conceding gracefully, where do you go next? In an ideal world one side should get such a thumping any questioning of the result can be seen for what it really is being a sore loser. But it isn’t shaping up like that.
Democracy without loser’s consent, on all sides, is a dangerous place to be.
"Jabs for jobs".
Up there with Brown's "Gulags for slags".
Only a few thousand indie voters can save the US now.
It's not just crap food though, it's also car-induced inactivity.
But he ain't far off.
It may well be in Trump's interest to quickly and publicly accept defeat - in return for a presidential pardon for his various crimes.
Thing is, most people who aren't desperately trying to prove a point on the internet will look at the headline and think Lab wants to give fat unemployed people free Ozempic.
Ridiculous Political Messaging.
If the USA wanted to do one thing to improve its election counting then banning late arriving votes might be top of the list.
There's also a federal quango or two that interferes. For example, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission helps states comply with the federal Help America Vote Act and adopt minimum standards on voter education, registration, and ballots.
So it's basically a classic American mess, like so much else the product of trying to patch an 18th century constitution to meet the very different concerns of the 21st. States do the work within minimum federal standards, subject to federal scrutiny. Similar to education, highways, law enforcement and much else.
@normative.bsky.social
There’s an old story I’ve thought about often in the Trump Era. Two farmers are observing that after days of torrential rain, the river is close to overflowing its banks. “Do you think it will keep on like this much longer?” one asks nervously. “No, it’s sure to stop tomorrow,” the other replies.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social
“How can you be so certain?” the first farmer asks. “It certainly doesn’t look like it’s letting up.”
“It HAS to stop,” replies his friend reasonably, “because if it didn’t the river would overflow.”
I think something like this is hugely distorting our politics. America is the land of freedom and democracy; we don’t elect despots. So if a major party candidate with coin-flip odds of winning SOUNDS like he’s promising despotism… well that can’t be right. It must be a joke or something.
https://bsky.app/profile/normative.bsky.social/post/3l6i6uta7lc2i
Tbf to Milei I don’t know if he’s a grifter.
Alex Salmond died while opening a bottle of ketchup, an eyewitness has claimed.
The former first minister of Scotland collapsed and died aged 69 on Saturday, shortly after delivering a speech at a conference in North Macedonia.
Mark Donfried, the director of the Academy for Cultural Diplomacy, said attendees were having lunch at the meeting in the historic lakeside city of Ohrid when Mr Salmond died.
“He came together with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, also from the Alba Party in Scotland, and they were eating,” he told Times Radio.
“Later on, Tasmina told me she was having trouble opening the ketchup and she reached over and said: ‘Hey, can you give me a hand?’ And he was helping her with that when literally he fell back in his chair, totally out of the blue, without warning.
“Next to him was the former chief executive of the stock exchange of Cyprus, and he basically took him in his arms. He was convinced, he told me later, that immediately he was unconscious. So we don’t think Alex actually suffered any pain, thank God. He felt his heart and he couldn’t feel the heart rate then.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/14/alex-salmond-died-while-opening-bottle-of-ketchup/
Michigan is also for the first time allowing in person early voting after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2022.
I suppose an analogy could, vaguely, be the introduction of VAR. At some point you have to draw a line and allow the inefficiencies of the prevailing system to run otherwise it becomes impractical. Four regions were requested for a recount (and apparently wouldn't have affected the result), whereas the whole state would have changed hands.
I don't disagree that there are inefficiencies in the US voting system, not that I am aware of the details and I suppose given that it is the world's only superpower (just about) and it happens every four years, maybe VAR should be introduced for every throw in and corner.
It would likely save the NHS billions and also avoid all that absurd fuss that people seem to make about individual choices and whatnot.
As far as Clinton is concerned, it's important to note that she conceded the election, and did not contest it.
Her ongoing objection was to the alleged illegalities around Trump's campaign. Even had he been successfully impeached, there would still have been a Republican president. No Democrat argued otherwise.
Perhaps we could nationalise Hello Fresh and Gousto and use them to deliver to each family what we think they should have over a week to maintain a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle and ban Deliveroo and Uber Eats.
Could work.
More that I seem to recall there was a group of Democrats who think Gore erred in conceding. They think he should have, somehow, dug his heals in to make sure all the votes were all counted.
As the header shows there is reason to suspect Gore could have taken the state. The Republicans stood strong. They had no interest in letting the recount finish because of the risk of Bush’s lead being overturned. They brazened it out and made it clear they wouldn’t back down. Gore blanched, and perhaps in the interests of the country, conceded.
An example might be particular allergies, or special diets which schools cannot meet - our system will address needs, but often not until there is wider evidence.
An example is that since at least the 1990s moderate or low-carb diets have been used to control blood sugar levels in diabetes; the mechanism is that blood glucose levels are proportion to carbohydrate intake (subject to possible variation around other factors, such as time of day).
But the "Healthy Diet" has not acknowledged this, and it has taken decades for the system to get on board with this; the mechanism for *that* is that specialists, researchers or enthusiasts notice what works for their patients, and then it soaks into the system through trials, small clinics, conferences, and then becomes the standard when evidenced at scale, then goes back the other way as 'approved' - subject to checks and balances.
That's just how it works sociologically, so there need to be grey edges and loopholes.