News of the Week (October 27th, 2024)

Posted on October 27, 2024 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for October 27th, 2024


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Early Voting In Nevada 2024 (Week 1)

Posted on October 26, 2024 by The Political Hat

     It’s hard to compare 2020 with the current one because it occurred during the Covid lockdowns, and I am hesitant to draw comparisons between 2020 and 2024. 2022 used the same new way of voting as is being used now.   While the raw numbers are a poor comparison, the relative percentages can show, between the two parties, which is doing better and which is doing worse.

     With the first week of early voting over in Nevada, the GOP has a total voter lead of ca 6.2%.   In ’22 after the first week of early voting, the Democrats had a lead of ca 3.1%. All but two rural counties have turnout above ca 30% so far, with Nye County reporting ca 42% turnout! The in person early vote to mail ballot vote is close to 5:6.   Democrats still lead Clark County, but by only 5972 votes. The GOP has a lead in Washoe County by 4306. With the rurals being a GOP blowout, the Nevada GOP has a statewide lead of 29,142.

     The GOP’s lead with in person early voting is at ca 24.6% compared with ca 18.7% at this point two years ago. The Dems mail ballot lead (which includes ballots dropped off at early voting sites) is only ca 10.0%, down from ca 16.9% at this point two years ago. #NVpol

     Clearly, Nevada Republicans have gotten over their allergy to early voting. However, their in person and mail percentage of the total vote of ca 51.3% and ca 31.3%, respectively, is only a slight improvement over 2022 percentages of ca 50.3% and ca 29.9%, respectively.

     The dearth of Democratic turnout, especially in Clark County, combined with decent turnout for non-partisan and 3rd Party voters is a bad sign for the once vaunted Harry Reid Machine. They need the numbers to massively improve during the rest of early voting and/or do ahistorically well on Election Day. There is no evidence to suggest that that is likely.

     The Democrats in Nevada should be hitting the panic button over their anemic turnout. Yes, the GOP’s election day turnout may end up smaller, but with the very early mail ballots being so low, they can’t count on the late arriving mail ballots to save even than. The Dems in Clark county may have been caught flatfooted, but they still have the resources to cajole plenty more ballots, if the voters are just reluctantly there. This can not be chalked up to just GOP transplants from California moving to Nevada.

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Free to Choose Friday, Revisited (Part 9)

Posted on October 25, 2024 by The Political Hat

     With the Presidential election but a couple of weeks away, this is a good time to revisit Milton Friedman’s ten-part Free to Choose each Friday before the election as a reminder of why politically good sounding policies are often bad economics.

     The ninth episode: How to Cure Inflation

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Quick Takes – Madness Of The California Legislature: Speeding Cars Beep; Taxpayer Funder Union Dues; Doubleplusungood Deepfakes

Posted on October 24, 2024 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: What’s more crazy than a California Governor? The California Grand Soviet, of course!

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     If you speed, the California legislature want to remind you that you are being naughty, over and over again.

“[A] new driver safety law passed the California legislature. Senate Bill 961 requires every passenger vehicle of the 2030 model year and beyond to “utilize a brief, one-time, visual and audio signal to alert the driver each time the speed of the vehicle is more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.” Passing the Assembly 42–12 and the Senate 26–9, the only thing that stands between S.B. 961 becoming law is Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. Once the bill becomes law, violations would not carry mere civil penalties but ‘would be punishable as a crime.’”

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A Stopped Clock, Once Again, In California

Posted on October 23, 2024 by The Political Hat

     Like an alcoholic having a “moment of clarity”, once again a the state of California has somehow passed bills that do something good and positive… which is a very, very rare occurrence for the California Grand Soviet Legislature. It happened not just once, but somehow twice!

     The first is a protection of a consumers neural data.

“The new bill amends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which grants consumers rights over personal information that is collected by businesses. The term ‘personal information’ already included biometric data (such as your face, voice, or fingerprints). Now it also explicitly includes neural data.

“The bill defines neural data as ‘information that is generated by measuring the activity of a consumer’s central or peripheral nervous system, and that is not inferred from nonneural information.’ In other words, data collected from a person’s brain or nerves.

“The law prevents companies from selling or sharing a person’s data and requires them to make efforts to deidentify the data. It also gives consumers the right to know what information is collected and the right to delete it. ”

     While this may seem like a solution to a yet non-existent cyberpunk dystopia, it is the type of forethought that California stumbles into less frequently than a nut found by a blind squirrel with epilepsy.

     Another bill has already resulted in a win for consumers.

“Steam, a digital PC game store, now says you’re buying a license to a game and not a product, not long after California signed a new law requiring digital stores to make this change.

“While the new law, AB 2426, won’t go into effect until 2025 – Steam has made the change already to their global digital store, the largest digital PC game on the planet.

“‘A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the new disclaimer says when making purchases on the platform. The disclaimer also has a link to the Steam subscriber Terms & Conditions.

“The new law will prohibit online stores from using the words ‘buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.’

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Values Matter

Posted on October 22, 2024 by The Political Hat

     Sometimes it seems that the politics of both the Left and now the Right are based upon foreign ideology imported from Europe that developed there after America severed it’s “shared history” nearly a quarter of a millenium ago. But even before that, America derived much of its heritage from England and the Anglosphere. While America is the most worthy inheritor of that civic and cultural heritage, it developed as separate and distinct from the continental Europe beginning ca a millennium ago.

     Nigel Farage, who led the UK Independence Party and now Reform UK, reminds us of that special inheritance that has broken the constraints of blut und boden.

     Perhaps, there is hope for the rest of the Anglosphere.

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The Election As A Game Of Chicken

Posted on October 21, 2024 by The Political Hat

     Your humble author has noted repeatedly this year that the Presidential race seems less of a campaign to win than a game of chicken, with each side trying to be as bad as possible while still remaining second worst. The problem with this strategy is that once you’ve won, you’ve ceased to be the second worst option.

     This is perilous at best.   Most election years for Republicans after Trump became President resulted in either subpar election results overall, or even absolute disasters. The one exception was the 2021 off year elections in Virginia and New Jersey where Trump was not a factor. This year, Trump, as of the writing of this post, is likely favored to win a second and non-consecutive term.

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News of the Week (October 20th, 2024)

Posted on October 20, 2024 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for October 20th, 2024


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Free to Choose Friday, Revisited (Part 8)

Posted on October 18, 2024 by The Political Hat

     With the Presidential election but a few weeks away, this is a good time to revisit Milton Friedman’s ten-part Free to Choose each Friday before the election as a reminder of why politically good sounding policies are often bad economics.

     The eighth episode: Who Protects the Worker

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Quick Takes – Deathpod: Dead In Switzerland; Forrest Corpse; Arrested For Gawking

Posted on October 17, 2024 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Well, it certainly ain’t pod racing.

     First, a little soylent scene:

     Carrying on…

Death, Rx

     The already infamous “suicide” pod, where a person gets inside and pushes a button to die, has been used for the first time.

“The ghoulish Australian ‘doctor‘” Philip Nitschke has long been obsessed with making suicide readily available to anyone who wants to die. Indeed, years ago, he told NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that he wanted what he called “peaceful” suicide pills sold in supermarkets, even to ‘troubled teens.’

“Nitschke also sold plastic suicide bags in Australia (which I helped cause to be outlawed when I busted him for his ghoulishness in the national media there in 2001). Subsequently, he traveled the world teaching how-to-commit-suicide classes and starred at international death-movement conventions. Awful.

“More recently, Nitschke made world headlines in the assisted-suicide-boosting media for inventing a “suicide capsule” that asphyxiates the suicidal person with nitrogen. At first, Swiss authorities said it would be legal, and then they backtracked.

“Legal or not, it appears the capsule was used by an American woman to become dead in Switzerland.”

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