* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
DAYLOG MON 26 AUG 24: Rex Huppke of USA TODAY penned an editorial with a title that tells all: "DNC showed Harris campaign is dismissing the noise from Trump and pundits. It's working." Huppke said that the Kamala Campaign does call out ugly policy proposals churned out, wildly inconsistently, by Trump, but otherwise make him out to be "a washed-up clown".
As far as the press goes: "The same political press that sanitizes Trump's nonsense will turn to the Harris campaign and demand one-on-one interviews and press conferences and greater detail on the vice president's policy proposals. Her message in response seems to be something akin to: We'll speak on my terms, not yours, and we've already released more policy particulars than our opponent. The Kamala Campaign talks a lot and issues a stream of documents on everything important.
" ... I'm not in favor of politicians ducking the media. But what Harris is doing is not ducking. She's smartly seeking a level playing field from news outlets that have failed to accurately reckon with a congenital liar and, to quote Harris, an unserious man."
And another thing: Trump and Kamala are to debate on 10 September, but he's complaining because Kamala insists on continuous live mikes. That's a switch from the last debate; clearly, Kamala hopes to bully him, not the other way around.
DAYLOG TUE 27 AUG 24: Donald Trump's Federal trial for election fraud in the court of Judge Tanya Chutkan was delayed by the Supreme Court's confusing verdict on presidential immunity. Today, Federal Prosecutor Jack Smith re-introduced his indictment in the case, sanitized to conform to the directives of SCOTUS -- clearly tricky to do, but Smith can do the job.
* There's still some fussing about the Trump-Kamala debate on 10 September, concerning Kamala's insistence on open mikes. Trump always gaslights his debates, so it's not necessarily the case that he's looking for an out.
Besides, Trump is officially saying that's a show-stopper, but more quietly -- at least by his standards -- says he doesn't care. It appears it's the people around him who don't like the open mikes, since Trump's inability to behave himself will be more much more evident. In reality, it's unlikely the debate will amount to anything; it won't move the needle one way or another. It has nothing to do with what the campaign is all about.
* It seems that 2nd Gentleman Doug Emhoff's two grown kids, Cole and Ella, are to no surprise drawing intense flak from the MAGA trolls, with Ella -- who has a higher profile -- taking most of the heat. It was exactly what I expected.
That scenario sent me back about 50 years, listening to the radio in the dark in an almost-unfurnished apartment. A song came out, with the singer including a monologue. I didn't know who she was, still don't, but as best I remember it went:
"When I was a little girl, my mama told me: 'There are people who don't have anything, don't want anything, & don't want you to have anything either. Protect yourself.'"
DAYLOG WED 28 AUG 24: I was curious about Jack Smith's new indictment of Donald Trump on Federal election-stealing charges, wondering about the details. They've surfaced now, the first item being that the old indictment was junked & the new one approved by a new grand jury.
The new indictment discarded mention of Trump's effort to compromise the DOJ and put his stooges in charge, SCOTUS saying that couldn't be sorted out from the president's official duties. It also made little mention of the involvement of White House officials in the Steal.
Instead, the emphasis was on contacts between Trump and his minions outside the government -- and in one particularly interesting move, it pointed to Trump's attempts to interfere with state elections, which a president has absolutely no right to do. We'll see how it goes now.
* I've been very happy with the Kamala Campaign's "missing no tricks" efficiency, and in particular with the consistent approach of dealing with Trump as the mindless troll that he is. Trolls always want to control the conversation and lead it into confusion and chaos. The first rule is: Never argue with a troll. Call them out, mock them, laugh at them -- but always understand that what they are talking is meaningless trash, and should be treated as such.
* F-16s are in combat now in Ukraine, shooting down cruise missiles. Reports say Putin is sending 30,000 troops to deal with the Armed Forces Ukraine incursion into Kursk Oblast. I'm betting those troops will have a hard time of it. The predicate for this offensive was to have a lot of firepower, with precision munitions that the Orcs can't defeat any more. In addition, the supplies of weapons are increasing, and it will keep getting worse for the Orcs.
* Regarding the late Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot up a Trump rally, the FBI says his online activities suggest that he was just looking for some place to shoot up. There's a lot of suspicion that the event was staged, but the Trump gang is inept: they would get caught doing that.
DAYLOG THU 29 AUG 24: A Brazilian justice has told Elon Musk that his Xitter social-media service will be blocked in Brazil unless he complies with the court's moderation dictates. The Musk Rat has been consistently stiffing the court; patience appears to be running out. [ED: Musk did back u and the courts let him pass.]
* A few weeks back, we had a big hailstorm in NE Colorado that caused quite a bit of damage. I live in a duplex home; my neighbor told me that our roof was badly damaged and had to be replaced.
Huh? I went up topside and looked around, to find it the roof mildly bruised. I left my neighbor a note saying the roof was only 9 years old, and it used triple-thick "architectural" asphalt shingles, instead of the thin 3-tab shingles.
I wasn't thinking he would listen. Sure enough, today he came by to tell me the roof really was in bad shape, but the damage couldn't be seen. I thought to myself: If the damage is invisible, then how do they know? The conversation went downhill from there.
He told me that it was problematic to only re-roof half the house, to which I replied: "Not my problem." He rattled on, oblivious, and I finally cut him off abruptly: "Are we done now?!" That caught him short, and he backpedaled out of my space.
I got to wondering later: How did the roofers know about the invisible damage to the roof? Did they use dowsing rods? Then I got to wondering if any of them actually did -- scammers are fond of dowsing rods. However, I checked online, and it doesn't appear roofers make any use of them.
DAYLOG FRI 30 AUG 24: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were interviewed by CNN's Dana Bash yesterday, with the interview going very well for Kamala and Tim. Yeah, it was mostly political boilerplate, but it had its moments: when asked about some of Trump's rantings, Kamala simply laughed it off.
Longer answer: Trump can hike off Planet Earth. The legacy media sniped at the interview a bit, but the truth is that what the LM thinks is no longer important.
* Agitation on Spout seems to be at a high level at the moment, one item being the claim that the assassination attempt on Trump was fake, it was staged. The only reason to believe that is from various discrepancies in the story, but we get as much from any complicated event.
The problem with focusing on discrepancies in the story is that they can't be followed up to obtain useful leads. Conspiracy stories never have hard evidence; it appears conspiracy paranoids all graduated from Dunning-Krueger University. As of late, I've been quietly blocking a number of the noisier Spouters. It's for the best: I don't see them, they don't see me, everyone is happy.
AND SO ON: I kind of miss the public presence of Frau Merkel, once German's chancellor. However, she is getting a second life in a German TV, "Miss Merkel", in which she becomes an amateur detective like one out of Agatha Christie. Miss Merkel is played by actress Katharina Thalbach. Like Merkel, Thalbach is 70 and from former East Germany.
On being asked about the show, Frau Merkel just said her office staff were big fans. The books the show is based on were written by one David Safier, who came up with the idea in 2019, when Merkel announced her retirement. He saw a rerun of the old COLUMBO TV show at the same time, and the idea popped into place.
Safier says Angela Merkel makes for a consummate detective: "Merkel is highly intelligent, much more intelligent than other politicians. She is strongheaded. And, after 30 years in politics, she's used to dealing with sociopaths and psychopaths." Yes, since Merkel has a doctorate in physical chemistry with a focus on quantum chemistry, she comes across as brainier than most world leaders.
* In vaguely parallel news, a Taiwanese lad named Xu Ruixian got a public commendation for being part of a group of people who tackled a knife-wielding man cutting up people on a commuter train. Xu, who described himself as an "otaku" -- a hard-core anime fan -- said he was inspired to bravery by the example of Himmel, the hero in the anime fantasy adventure FRIEREN: BEYOND JOURNEY'S END. Xu said: "If Himmel was there, he would've done the same thing."
Xu suggested that identifying himself as an otaku would help improve the nerdy public image of anime fans. Photos of Xu accepting the commendation show him to be an appealingly baby-faced lad, with long straight black hair, wearing dark purple clothes with embroidered cuff patterns.
Incidentally, FRIEREN is a well-produced, easy-going anime series. Frieren was the elfin mage of the fantasy quest band led by Himmel, which defeats the Demon King. The skew in the story is that happened 80 years before the story takes place, 30 years after Himmel died. Frieren is a thousand years old and has an entirely different sense of time than humans; Himmel was madly in love with Frieren, but she didn't realize it until long after he was gone.
There are fun details in the series. She's on a quest with a teen mage and a teen warrior, retracing the steps of the quest 80 years earlier. The only baggage they have is a small lightweight suitcase that Frieren carries around. It finally becomes obvious that the suitcase is a portal into some extra-dimensional space that has the capacity of a warehouse. That turns out to be a fairly common fantasy-story prop.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 02 SEP 24: The media is running headlines: "Trump claims he had every right to interfere with election." Oh, more nonsense from Decrepit Donald, how tiresome. If any answer were needed, it would be: Your opinion doesn't count -- only the jury's.
The news made a bit of a fuss about Jeff Walz, Tim Walz's older brother, denouncing Tim and praising Trump. The brothers don't talk to each other any more. This is news? Not really.
* Thinking about the current state of the GOP, I recall thinking that the Republican National Convention would be a massive dumpster fire. As the date approached, however, I got to thinking it would be a whimper instead. That's what it was. Trump took over the RNC without any resistance. Today, there is no mention of the GOP except in the context of Trump.
Does the GOP have a future after Trump? I'm thinking it will survive as a small and shrinking fascistic organization, while the rest will either give up politics or become Center Democrats. How welcome they will be is another question.
DAYLOG TUE 03 SEP 24: The new movie REAGAN, with Dennis Quaid in the title role, is getting panned by the critics -- who call it a superficial hagiography, placing Ronald Reagan in a glowingly positive light. However, audience reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.
Well yeah duh. Only people who idolize Reagan would watch it in the 1st place. I admire Reagan in some ways, he had major virtues, & he had a public mandate for his conservative experiment. It terminated in Trump. Democracy in action.
DAYLOG WED 04 SEP 24: MAGA is making a fuss about Kamala saying she worked at a McDonald's one summer -- their trolling is getting that desperate. I would be very surprised to find out that someone as smart as Kamala would tell such a pointless lie.
It seems the Kamala Campaign's response is: Yes she did. -- and nothing more. Never let trolls control the conversation. If they insist on proof, they can chase it down themselves. She has nothing to prove to them.
* Under the category of: What is wrong with these people? -- from early 2022 to late 2023, a man from Queens named Ade Salim Lilly made over 12,000 threatening phone calls to politicians, calling from Maryland and Puerto Rico. He was finally busted in Puerto Rico, and has now been sentenced to 13 months in prison, followed by several years of probation. Come the Trump Revolution, and it seems to be heavily reliant on crank phone calls.
DAYLOG THU 05 SEP 24: The DOJ has now cracked down on a Russian disinformation effort named "Doppelganger", in particular targeting "fake news" website the ring had set up. There is the question of who besides trolls cares about the fake news these days.
The DOJ also went after Troglodyte Right online "influencers" going along with the Russian campaign. They insist that they knew nothing about the Russians, with some news media saying the influencers were "duped". Ridiculous -- they just didn't care who they were taking money from.
* Judge Tanya Chutkan is now performing pretrial hearings on Trump's election-fraud case, with Trump's counsel spinning their wheels and annoying the judge: No, you cannot use I'M RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT to defy this court.
On another front, legal advocates are working to get Judge Aileen Cannon taken off Trump's classified documents case. I find that puzzling: she threw the case out on flimsy constitutional pretexts, didn't she remove herself from it?
On still another front, Trump has been appealing to Federal court to get his conviction in the New York "hush-money trial" thrown out on "presidential immunity" grounds. This week, a Federal judge in Manhattan rejected the appeal. It seems Trump is trying again with another Federal court.
I got to wondering: If the appeals courts won't hear a complaint, can it still be escalated to the Supreme Court? Investigation reveals it can, but the odds are heavily stacked that the SCOTUS won't hear it, either.
DAYLOG FRI 06 SEP 24: Lockheed Martin just got a $4.8 billion USD contract for two production batches of GMLRS missiles. What is interesting about this is that GMLRS is GPS-guided and doesn't work in Ukraine because of Orc GPS jamming. I suspect these new rockets will not have that problem. What's changed? Nobody's talking. Not incidentally, reports say the Orc offensive from the Donbas appears to be bogging down. General Budanov predicted this. I think they're getting hammered with new munitions.
Also not incidentally, Ukrainians still complain about their Allies "drip-feeding" them weapons beKuZ sKeEreD uF esKaL@shun!!! The Allies were not prepared for this war and are playing catch-up; they fuss about "escalation" to seem stronger than they really are. In reality, the problem with weapons deliveries seems much more availability than restraint.
* As mentioned, this last week, Liz Cheney said: VOTE FOR KAMALA HARRIS. Even more interesting her dad, Dick Cheney, did so as well. A lot of the No-Compromise Left are contemptuous of GOP For Kamala, but they protest too much. I don't see the point of dumping on people who are, for the moment, working with us instead of against us. What happens over the longer run? I keep saying: I have no clear idea.
* Judge Juan Merchan had scheduled Trump's sentencing in his hush-money trial for 18 September. Today the judge, saying he didn't want to influence the election, put it off to late November. That's disappointing, but not surprising. Trump is a unique case. No worries, he's doomed; locking him up might even help him. Better to let him destroy himself in public. The presidential debate is on 10 September; the Kamala Campaign has agreed to muted mikes. Whatever, the debate makes no difference.
AND SO ON: Joe Biden's son Hunter was convicted on charges of obtaining a firearm while being a drug addict, with sentencing to take place after the election. He's also facing a trial in California on tax evasion charges. He's pleaded GUILTY now, so that trial may not happen.
He'd copped a plea early on in the investigation, but the judge threw out the plea deal, in effect rejecting his GUILTY plea. That being the case, he had to plead NOT GUILTY for his gun-possession trial. Why did he go back to a GUILTY plea? Possibly his dad stepping down from the presidential race had something to do with it; the Troglodyte Right has to reason to pick on Hunter any more. It is generally thought unlikely that Hunter, as a first offender, will face severe punishment. However, the courts have come across as vindictive against him, so we'll see.
It appears the House MAGA are still going through some motions of trying to impeach Joe Biden. It doesn't seem their hearts are in it, however. Hey, they literally have nothing better to do.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 09 SEP 24: It looks like the House MAGA are trying to game another government spending authorization. Since few people like government shut-downs and the like, I suspect they will back down, but we'll see. Not a great idea just before elections.
* Concerning Judge Juan Merchan's decision to put off Trump's sentencing until after the election: although there was some complaint, there wasn't the usual outrage, at least not on Spout. People are figuring out: That's how the Law works & we have to deal with it.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has now publicly announced that Ukraine is building underground munitions factories. They were obviously doing so, since everything in Ukraine is vulnerable to Russian missiles, but it was good to obtain confirmation. It seems many of the factories are being built in cooperation with Allied defense firms. Manufacturers don't want to build new factories at home that may be idle after the emergency is over; it makes sense to build in Ukraine instead.
News from the war is limited these days, but there's been talk of drones carrying "thermite" charges -- thermite being a mix of powered aluminum & rust that burns very hot and doesn't need oxygen. Thermite doesn't blow things up, but it's good for burning them down. It appears the Russians have copied the idea.
DAYLOG TUE 10 SEP 24: As mentioned yesterday, the House MAGA are talking about a government shutdown over funding, or something silly like that. Today Trump encouraged them to shut down the government -- with House GOP from swing states protesting loudly.
I find it unlikely that the House MAGA can get the votes for a shutdown. Alas, they've shown in the past that they can still bring the House to a dead stop. It's ridiculous: if House GOP have safe seats, the shutdown won't make them safer -- if they don't have safe seats, it will make them less safe. Shutdowns have never done them any good, but they are slow learners.
* Melania Trump is playing the paranoid card and saying there's more to the assassination attempt on her husband than the FBI is admitting. Oh sit DOWN, woman! Melania's hysteria will go nowhere, any more than will that of the Uncompromising Left who insist it was staged.
Trump and Kamala debate tonight. I'm expecting Kamala will do well and Trump will do poorly, but it won't matter, it won't move the needle on the election.
* I was poking around on Amazon and found ... credit card-sized Android smartphones. They were obviously made in China, with prices ranging from $50 to $200 USD. They were cute, but they screamed JUNK, and I had no use for one. I did get a cheap Samsung phone for carrying around the house -- I'm getting old, my memory's not so good, and it has tools to help. I have an older phone I have configured to make phone calls, but I decided it might be useful to have the new phone make calls, too.
I have a Google Voice number that I use normally, plus a regular phone number for the "other" smartphone, which has a SIM chip. I tried to make calls out on the new phone using the Google Voice number, but they went nowhere. I vaguely recalled I had to establish a setting someplace. The new phone, on checking, did have the Google Voice number established -- and then I finally found out I hadn't enabled wi-fi for phone calls, enabled it, and all was good.
In somewhat connected news, AFUkraine is using Steam Deck handheld game boxes to direct remote-control machine-gun turrets. I have a Steam Deck, it has processing power, nice display, plenty of game controls, it would do the job. It does run hot, so I turned down the GPU.
DAYLOG WED 11 SEP 24: The Trump-Kamala debate was last night. I didn't watch, but the judgement was that Trump got shut down bigtime. I caught the highlights the next day. It was as I expected. More interesting was the public feedback, MAGA complaining that Kamala was so nasty to poor little Trump. On the other side of the aisle, Stephen Colbert played up the win -- but could not resist taking cheap shots at Joe Biden while he was at it. I'm not forgiving Colbert now.
* Three Libertarian candidates got thrown off the ballot in Iowa on technical issues -- thanks to Republican efforts, the GOP realizing they would skim off their votes. Libertarians deny that they're extreme Right, but the GOP knows it perfectly well.
* Such a day today. Got some (expensive) dental work done this morning, then went and got flu / covid vaccinations, and bought kit for a house-painting project.
I inherited two IRAs from my late honored father after he passed in 2014, and I have to get a required minimum distribution from them every year. One was with an outfit named DA Davidson; I called them up, talked to them a bit, got the money in my bank account a few days later.
The other IRA is with ... Wells Fargo. I called them up last week, they cut out the RMD from the account, saying I should log in later and transfer the money. I get in this week and find out I have to fill out a PDF to do the transfer. It asked for a written signature. Did I need to download the PDF, print it out, scan it, then upload it again? I thought not, but WF rejected the form. I had a digital image of my signature; I found an online PDF editor named "SmallPDF", plugged in the signature, and uploaded.
I'll see if this works. Not only was nothing set up for convenience, but the WF secure messaging system does not keep a log of message transfers -- so I had to upload twice to make sure it went through. I am annoyed. Vaccine reaction might be aggravating it.
DAYLOG THU 12 SEP 24: With regards to Trump's drubbing in the presidential debate, a TikToker came up with a video in which he quoted Trump's comments, some of which were perfectly mad, using voices of characters from THE SIMPSONS. The TikToker was a very good voice actor. I replied to the posting of the video with a gif of two little dogs with party hats eating cake, with the caption: MORE PLEASE.
One of the issues that came up in the debate was, of course, gun safety. Kamala says she will push for sensible gun safety laws. Both Kamala and Tim Walz are gun owners, BTW; Kamala used to pack one when she was a prosecutor, and Tim Walz used to be an NRA fan. Not any more.
* Reports from Ukraine indicate that AFUkraine has refined the use of quadcopter drones in trench warfare. The drones can fly directly over trenches and drop bombs into them, and they can fly into the entryways of bunkers. Swarms of drones can wipe out a strongpoint.
DAYLOG FRI 13 SEP 24: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg -- yes, I have learned how to reliably spell that name -- was on FOX, which he seems to enjoy doing. Bret Baier asked why Elon Musk wasn't invited to a White House meeting on tailpipe emissions. Pete replied, deadpan, that electric cars don't have tailpipes. FOX ALWAYS their panties handed to them by Pete, and they never learn. No wonder he likes to talk to them.
* I've become fond of Google Assistant, finding it useful all day -- quick calculations, lights on and off, weather, and so on. Only problem was I using an old smartphone, always ON and on a stand, and that left something to be desired. Smartphones are not really designed for continuous operation, and they don't have good "ears" to pick up commands from across the room. I bought a cheap remaindered ChromeBook as a potential better tool, but didn't get anywhere with it.
About two weeks ago, I came across the obvious answer: Google Nest Hub smart speaker / display. It was only $107 USD all told, so I bought it. It was supposed to come in Monday, but it got here today, and I just had to set it up right away.
First problem: It came up in Chinese text, with Mandarin voice output. Instructions told me to download the Google Home app from the Google Store onto my smartphone. Second problem: I couldn't hook up Google Home with the app, until I figured out I had to use the smartphone camera to scan the barcode on the Nest Hub display. There was a barcode in the printed instructions, but it didn't work.
After that, configuration was no great problem. The Nest Hub's "ears" are much better, they haven't missed commands so far. It's in my bedroom / office, and it will pick me up even from the living room. Making "hands-off" phone calls is a lot more workable. I went purely digital with the phone -- with a Google Voice number -- a long time ago, but it hasn't been as convenient as a landline phone. Now it's more convenient. Anyway, now I'm back using Google Assistant as before, with only a few hours interruption.
Further tinkering gave me things I probably could have done before, but hadn't tried. "Hey Google, play Thelonius Monk's STRAIGHT NO CHASER." It gave me a YouTube music video of a Monk performance. Working from there, I figured I could get other YouTube videos: "Hey Google, find a video about configuring the Google Nest Hub." It gave me a set. I'll tinker with it some more until I run out of steam on that.
* It's Friday the 13th ... I got to wondering how often it happened, but on thinking it out, it's simple. There's a single 13th in every month, it can happen on any day, so it's like 7 months on average. MS Copilot verifies that.
AND SO ON: The Russians have been making considerable use of the Iranian Shahed-136 k-drone in attacks on Ukraine. It's slow and noisy, but very cheap, and the Russians are now building it themselves in a factory in Alabuga, Tatarstan. Incidentally, the factory is at present only assembling Shaheds from Iranian-supplied kits; the goal is to work up to 100% Russian-built Shaheds -- but examination of the factory operation suggests it doesn't have much potential, with the real goal being to soak Putin for money.
Anyway, Shaheds were originally sent in at low altitudes to evade radar, but the Ukrainians set up a network of thousands of smart microphones to detect and track the noisy k-drones -- which the Ukrainians call "mopeds" for the sounds they make. Ground-based mobile air-defense units take out the Shaheds, with weapons ranging from the excellent German Gephard (Cheetah) flakpanzer, with twin cannon, to pickup trucks with twin antique Maxim 1910 machine guns. Ukraine inherited huge stockpiles of Soviet weapons after independence, and there are probably a lot of old Maxims left. Even the Maxims are effective enough, with the mobile groups able to intercept more than 80% of the Shaheds.
That being the case, the Russians are now flying Shaheds in at several kilometers altitude, out of the range of the mobile groups. Although the Shaheds can be detected and tracked by Ukraine's radar network -- of which little is said or known -- missiles generally have to be used to shoot the k-drones down, and the drones are a lot cheaper than the missiles. That's led to schemes to use civil aircraft to shoot them down, but it seems the best option is the Mil Mi-35 "Hind" gunship helicopter -- which is well faster than the drones, and has a 23-millimeter cannon turret in the nose that can take out the k-drones easily. Probably the solution over the longer run are jet-powered drone interceptors, little robot jet fighters maybe like 3 meters / 10 feet long, armed with a rapid-fire machine gun, hunting with an infrared sensor.
In the meantime, Ukraine is also making use of its wide-area Pokrova electronic countermeasures network to confuse Shaheds with fake navigation signals. It's nothing unusual for Shaheds to come to rest in Ukrainian farm fields. They even get spoofed to head back to Russia, or end up who knows where. A good number of the Shaheds not shot down don't hit their targets.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MONDAY 16 SEP 24: Yesterday, Secret Service agents guarding Trump at his Florida golf course spotted an armed man and fired on him, chasing him off. The intruder was later captured, being one Ryan Wesley Routh. He'd spent the day lurking around the golf course, never got anywhere near close to Trump, and never fired a shot.
Routh has a long rap sheet, people who met him finding him wildly unbalanced, and had been a Trump voter -- apparently being turned off by Trump's contempt for Ukraine. Routh was a Ukraine War groupie and tried to sign up with AFU -- but AFU is very familiar with such losers and steers clear of them.
There's some talk that the "attack" was staged -- but I keep saying, the Trump Gang is inept, they'd get caught trying to be tricky. Trump is a trouble magnet; I'm not surprised such things happen to him, only that they don't happen more often.
* One Philip Bump, a columnist for WAPO, wrote an article pointing out that, over time, many of the felony charges against Trump have evaporated -- Bump saying that if Trump is elected in November, he could get rid of all the rest.
Too pessimistic? Yes, the legal hassles have been frustrating -- but Judge Chutkan's trial is moving again, the Georgia trial may be stalled but it is not dead, and the classified documents case has not gone away. Judge Cannon dismissed that case on the flimsiest constitutional pretexts. Jack Smith is appealing, and the dismissal may have been good news for him. Until Judge Cannon made a decision, he couldn't appeal, he was stuck with her. Odds are good the case will be resurrected, and it may well not go back to Judge Cannon. It will be good if it doesn't, but changing courts may mean more delay.
DAYLOG TUE 17 SEP 24: Pete Buttigieg sez of Trump: "Cats! Dogs! Geese! Laura Loomer! Look, now he's attacking Taylor! Like the last season of a show that gets canceled for getting over-the-top, and at the same time, boring."
"This election is about jobs, wages, climate, health care, abortion. Not his show. Your life." The polls keep saying the election will be close, but do the polls reflect reality? [ED: Unfortunately, they did.]
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been working on a "peace plan" to end the war in Ukraine. It's not quite finished yet, but American officials who are in the loop find the plan workable.
It hasn't been released; all that's known is that it makes no territorial concessions to Russia. Even if it remains unknown, having a reasonable plan where all the Allies know what they must do will go a long way towards ending the inevitable bickering over how to fight the war.
* In startling news, thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah militants were injured when ... their pagers exploded. It seems Hezbollah turned to pagers because they were hard to track, and the Israelis passed a booby-trapped batch onto them. Sounds like a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE caper.
DAYLOG WED 18 SEP 24: With regards to the news of Lebanon's Hezbollah being badly injured by exploding pagers, that's been followed up by a second attack using exploding handheld radios. Fingers are being pointed to Israel's covert Unit 8200 as the mastermind.
In Ukraine War news, Ukrainian killer drones struck a munitions depot in Tver Oblast, a few hundred kilometers westerly of Moscow, with earthquake-class detonations. As could be expected, AFU drone attacks continue to become more ambitious. I suspect the attacks use jammer & decoy drones to let the killer drones get through. On the Kursk front, AFU officials say the Orc counter-offensive has been halted, though the AFU is well outnumbered. That speaks of effective use of terrain and superior firepower.
DAYLOG THU 19 SEP 24: It appears that the AFUkraine strike on the ammo dump in Tver Oblast set off a fireball that could be seen with the naked eye from orbit. It seems the dump was hit with about a hundred drones. I'm thinking we'll see strikes like this every week or two. At least two more Russian ammo dumps were hit later in the week, though details haven't been mentioned.
* Regarding the Hezbollah's exploding pagers and walkie-talkies: now there's public worry about everybody's smartphones and such blowing up. Nah, if they're not packed with explosives, they won't do that. Lithium batteries can swell and torch up on occasion, but it's not an explosive process. I had a cheap Chinese phone that I was using as an always-on assistant -- until it stopped working. On inspection, the battery had swelled up and broken open the case.
* Voting in North Carolina now requires ID. UNC at Chapel Hill decided it was OK for students and employees to use their UNC One Card -- an ID app -- for voting. The state GOP sued, saying they had to show physical ID, but now a state judge told them to get lost.
The State Board of Elections had approved the use of the UNC One Card, but the GOP said the law didn't allow the SBOE to do that. Actually, the law is flexible on that score -- simply specifying a "card" and not saying it had to be a printed one -- and the SBOE has approved over a dozen different ID apps. When oh when will we have national digital ID?
* There's still talk these days of voters who are "undecided". Reality: anyone who can't see any difference between Trump & Kamala will never vote for Kamala. They're just not sure if they want to vote for Trump, and pretending that Kamala is an option.
DAYLOG FRI 20 SEP 24: Three Russian cosmonauts have now completed the longest stay ever on the International Space Station. I commented: "Possibly they were told they would be drafted if they returned to Earth."
* The exploding pagers that did such injury to Hezbollah were labeled as made by Gold Apollo of Taiwan -- with Hsu Ching-Kuang, the boss of the company, now in the hot seat, saying: "This is very embarrassing." Hsu said they were actually made by a Budapest-based company called BAC Consulting. Gold Apollo had an arrangement with BAC to allow it to obtain Gold Apollo pagers, and to use the Gold Apollo logo on its own pagers.
Investigation shows BAC is run by one Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono; its most recent published balance sheet had a bottom line of only $320 USD. Hsu says financial arrangements with BAC were "strange", with Gold Apollo being paid from a Middle Eastern bank. Barsony-Arcidiacono is apparently under Hungarian police protection, and no doubt is being asked many questions.
The exploding walkie-talkies were labeled as from the Japanese company Icom. Icom says that they haven't made the model in question for ten years, and they appear to have been knock-off production with the Icom label. Both Gold Apollo and Icom deny making the booby-trapped devices, and there's no reason to doubt them: anybody with the expertise and resources could buy up the devices and booby-trap them, or fake the devices completely. It seems unlikely the trail will be traced much further.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 23 SEP 24: The House GOP decided that forcing a government shutdown would be bad for them, and passed a continuing resolution to fund the government to ... 20 December.
Why such a short interval? Looks like they want to play further games after the election, when they'll know if they're going to be in charge or not. Hard to say what they'll do either way; they don't do things that make much sense, so they're hard to predict.
* Rex Huppke of USA TODAY commented: "Donald Trump's reelection campaign seems to now be 50% incoherent babbling and 50% profoundly racist lies, a mix that begs the question: Are Trump and his running mate JD Vance actually trying to win the election?"
He followed with a fake "campaign strategy" document that started out with: "We're doing great!" -- with Trump's VP candidate JD Vance "knocking it out of the park with the crazy stuff you've been saying about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio."
"Super smart, totally fake and mega-hateful nonsense. We love it. ... He has pushed forward with this inhumane, ginned-up story, likely helping us lock down the votes of men age 40 and over who [don't get] invited to family Thanksgiving dinners."
Then the document gave a "tip of the hat" to Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders for smearing Kamala Harris because she doesn't have any biological kids. "Nailed it, Sarah! With JD Childless Cat Lady Vance leading this effort, we have been able to alienate female voters at a rate we never thought possible. ... A quick note to all the women on the Trump campaign who are listening, remember you all signed an NDA."
Trump, for his part, continues to babble gobbledygook: "Is he making sense? Does he know what he's talking about? [Voters are asking themselves these questions] with just weeks to go before an election that we will say we won even if we don't win."
DAYLOG TUE 24 SEP 24: Nebraska and Maine are the only two US states that don't have a "winner take all" electoral policy: instead of one candidate getting all the electoral votes, the votes can be split.
Trump & MAGA were trying to convert Nebraska to a "winner take all" scheme; the state legislature didn't go along. There was much commentary that this was a close shave -- but Nebraska has only 5 electoral votes.
* Trump & his sidekick JV Dunce have been spreading vicious stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, leading to bomb threats and other harrassments. The Haitians have hit back, filing charges against the two.
IANAL, but it does sound like they have a case. It will be interesting to see if it makes it to court. I doubt it, but anything that makes life difficult for Trump & friends is OK with me.
DAYLOG WED 25 SEP 24: Soon-to-be ex-Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were complaining about Kamala Harris saying she wanted to get rid of the filibuster -- Manchin saying "it was the only thing that kept [the Senate] together."
History suggests it was the primary tool of GOP obstruction in the Senate. Manchin has an antique idea of "moderation" -- not realizing the Center has shifted Left, that DEI, LGBT & reproductive rights, climate-change action, sensible gun-control laws & ETC are Centrist now. Sinema, not incidentally, is harder to figure than Manchin. Lately she's been saying she's a libertarian; now it makes sense, she's just incoherent.
* I'd known that a "locate my phone" service was available for years, but never paid much attention to it. I got a new cheap phone for use around the house not long ago, and Google kept prompting me in notifications to try the locator.
I decided it might be nice to find the phone if I mislaid it, so I checked it out. All had to do was get into my phone settings and turn "Location" to ON, and then I could find the phone with a page in my Google account. I could set the phone to ringing so I could find it.
Since that phone is basically used around the house -- I don't use it to make roaming calls, it doesn't have a SIM chip -- it's unlocked all the time. I can remotely lock it by setting a password on my Google account, with the lock screen displaying my name and phone number.
It did have a provision for allowing a call to that number from the lock screen -- but since I don't have a SIM chip & the phone won't automatically link to wi-fi hookups elsewhere, that was no good. Could I really remotely lock it? It doesn't get out so much, so not such a problem.
DAYLOG THU 26 SEP 24: Sergei Sydorenko of UKRAINSKA PRAVDA conducted an interview with Professor Francis Fukuyama, a well-know political scientist. The interview was mostly interesting because Sydorenko kept pounding on the weakening of support for Ukraine in the USA. Sydorenko protested too much. There's considerable public indifference to the Ukraine War, but repetitive news does that -- and support is not flagging.
Today, Kamala Harris and Volodymyr Zelenskyy -- in the USA for the moment -- had a joint press conference, with Kamala emphasizing US support for Ukraine and blasting Trump's disgraceful proposals to end the war: "They are not proposals for peace; instead, they are proposals for surrender."
Not at all incidentally, the Kamala Campaign has been running ads blasting Trump's "disgraceful proposals" in swing states with large populations of Americans of Eastern European origin. Later in the week, Zelenskyy had a meeting with Trump, which went as well -- that is, badly -- as could have been expected.
* Regarding my adventures with phone location yesterday: it had a bit of fallout, in that Google decided to run a multi-factor verification check on me. That required sending a code to another phone with a "real" phone number, not a Google Voice number.
Not a problem, except that the "real" phone number Google had was long dead -- I think it was from when I gave up my landline phone in 2017. No worries, Google readily allowed me to change to my current "real" phone number, my phone with a SIM chip, and sent me the code.
I was relieved to find out about and fix a bug that had been sitting there for years. I could have found out about it under worse circumstances. The one phone that I have with a SIM chip is basically for ID -- I have an ultra-cheap Tello contract, costs $9 USD a month. My other phones are strictly on wi-fi.
* As of late, I've been downloading cartoons and such humor from Spout and sending them out on my private email lists -- one list for everyone, a sublist where I can make fun of Trump. The significance is that Spout is starting to develop a sense of humor ... it's onward and upward.
DAYLOG FRI 27 SEP 24: Trump is railing about Google supposedly suppressing favorable news stories about him, and threatening to sue. I commented: "More of the same. Possibly worse."
* Trump likes to bash China in his campaign appearances. Kamala is barely mentioning China. Makes sense: the USA is playing a tough game of cards with China, and doesn't want to show its hand. China is not really a friend to the USA but not really an enemy either, at least not yet, which makes diplomacy touchy.
* A 61-year-old Michigan man assaulted a mail carrier who was delivering a KAMALA FOR PRESIDENT mailer. The mail carrier pepper-sprayed the man, who was taken into custody by police. What IS wrong with these people?
* I have BBC.com in my newsfeed on Spout; I get articles on domestic British news, which I generally only half-understand. Today there was an article about the body of a man found in an industrial dumpster in Dublin (yes, != Britain, lest anyone get agitated).
There's obviously a story there, but I have no idea what it is, or if I'll hear any more about it. Sounds like the saying: "They have rules against this sort of thing! They have laws against this sort of thing! They make LOW-BUDGET MOVIES about this sort of thing!"
AND SO ON: It's been a while since I had an attack of hay fever, but ragweed counts are high in NE Colorado and making my life miserable. A mask helps, but only helps. While in bed, I tried using my topsheet as a filter, then a polishing cloth, but neither worked very well; I'd get up in the morning and have to painfully cough up pollen. The interesting thing is that I honestly feel crummy, beaten-up, and sick, like having a mild case of the flu. It will go away, but not at least for a week.
Pollen counts do tend to fluctuate during the day, so things are better at some times than others. I went to bed feeling worked-over on Friday night, taking two ibuprofen to mellow out a bit. When I woke up, however, I had simultaneous "charley horses" in both ankles, which was a new (and unpleasant) experience for me. I thought the ibuprofen had something to do with that, but checking around suggests it was dehydration.
Incidentally, the term "charley horse" for a muscle spasm has been around since the 1880s, having been invented by baseball players; it seems a "charley horse" is a lame horse. Anyway, my sense of taste and appetite are both shot, so I went to the super on Sunday morning and got some oatmeal and such -- it's all I can stand to eat.
* When I try to learn a new keyboard piece for my Yamaha, I cook up my own written score for it, usually from scores on the MuseScore website. That's not anything really sophisticated to do, it's a necessity when converting an ensemble or orchestral score to a two-handed keyboard score, and users like to make changes to suit their preferences. No two scores of the same tune on MuseScore are exactly alike, and sometimes they are very different.
Anyway, I draw the scores on my PC, and that leads to a problem: if I want to try something in my score to see if it works, I have to jump back and forth between the Yamaha and the PC, which is very clumsy. So ... I bought a cheap 32-key electric keyboard, on the "Lexington" label, with half-sized keys, for about $50 USD; it runs off USB power. I just got it and have been playing with it a bit. It's designed for little kids, but it seems likely to work very well for what I need it to do.
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