I Already Had a Working Title for My Saturday Column ...

... but Ryan Bourne & Sophia Bagley at the Cato Institute got to that title first. And did a great job with the topic, too.

By Saturday, I may have moved on from the topic anyway, since the whole thing is quickly sinking in the news cycle.

So, while I'm here anyway, let me just ruminate (my ruminations, as usual, may end up in a column if I'm still seeing Internet chatter about this by Saturday):

I love the idea of "surge pricing" everywhere, especially restaurants.

Yes, really. 

One reason is that when I get food "out," it's usually during off-peak hours, when places aren't very busy. I hate, hate, hate sitting in a drive-thru line or waiting at a counter forever. If I see that a place has a big line, I go somewhere else.

The flip side of "surge" pricing is "dynamic pricing" in the other direction.

Hypothetically, let's say that the base price of  a burger is $5 (these days, you don't get much of a burger for that, but like I said, this is a hypothetical).

During "surges" -- times when a major employer has a shift change and a bunch of people are wanting an easy dinner on the way home, or a concert or sporting event nearby just ended and all the drunks and stoners have the munchies -- it goes up to six bucks. Those who aren't willing to cough up an extra buck disappear and the drive-thru line doesn't stop moving. Everyone saves time, and the joint doesn't lose money.

During "dead times" -- when business is slow but not slow enough to justify being closed -- the price drops to four bucks, attracting enough people like me to keep the money coming in, and to actually sell the stuff that's made in quantity and sits under a heat lamp for x minutes before it's thrown in the trash for a complete loss, etc. I'd say the "dynamic" aspect on that might actually be "whatever meal prices keep the fryer going at a steady pace instead of having a bunch of wilted fries going in the garbage." Some customers save money, and the joint still makes money (maybe not as much, or maybe as much -- the fries in the garbage are a cost that gets cut, and they'd be paying staff to be there and utility bills to keep the oil and the grill hot anyway).

Don't like the "surge" price of something? No biggie. Instead of waiting, and making everyone else wait, go somewhere else where people are willing to wait rather than pay the higher price, or drop by the nearest grocery store and grab a salad kit or microwave lasagna for less than the "normal" price of the burger.

Wordle 985 Hint

Hint: GIF or JPEG is probably OK, but YHVH's second rule forbids graven.

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First Letter: I

Election 2024: How Many Voters Can Biden and Trump Afford to Lose?

Going by NBC News's figures as of the time I write this, Joe Biden won yesterday's Michigan Democratic presidential primary with only 81% of votes cast. 13.2% of primary voters chose "uncommitted," while 5.8% chose Marianne Williams, Dean Phillips, or write-in candidates.

Per the same figures, Donald Trump won the GOP primary with only 68.1% of the vote to Nikki Haley's 26.5% and 13.4% for "uncommitted" and all other candidates.

If significant numbers of either candidate's party's voters stay home, vote third party or independent, or worst of all (mathematically, that is) go for the other party's nominee come November, that candidate's in a hurt locker.

Both of them are, or at least should be, in "stop the bleeding" mode.

I suspect the Democrats are in better position to put pressure on the wounds than the Republicans are, even if they're not willing to do the obvious thing and talk Biden down off the nomination ledge and replace him with a "lighter baggage" candidate, for two reasons:

• Since Biden is actually president, he can do things instead of just talking shit about doing things. He could push forward with the de-scheduling of cannabis. He could find a way to show enough backbone against Netanyahu to get pro-Palestine Democrats back on his side but not so much that pro-Israel Democrats run for the exits. That kind of thing.
• On the Republican side, the "action" variable is with Congress, where it's always a "herding cats" proposition at best, and where at present it's a "keep the shit-talking presidential candidate's base happy and hope for the best" thing, and virtually guaranteed to not bring any voters who aren't still with them back to them.

But, I could be wrong.

Wordle 984 Hint

Hint: To prepare eggs this way, you'll need some mayonnaise, mustard, and paprika.

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First Letter: D

Wordle 983 Hint

Hint: Tom Paine's was common; Cole Sear had six of them.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 982 Hint

Hint: Do you play Wordle frequently? If so, today's Wordle describes your Wordle habits. 

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First Letter: O

Election 2024 and the Chick-fil-A Index

Quoth David Von Drehle in the Washington Post on January 16, concerning the GOP's Iowa caucuses:

Huge margins among sparse populations gave Trump an appearance of invulnerability. But the closer the race drew to a population center -- someplace big enough to have a Costco or a Chick-fil-A -- the weaker he appeared. Haley, the preferred candidate of never-Trump Republicans and independent voters, actually beat the former president in multiple precincts of Des Moines, Iowa City, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and so on. Recent history teaches us that this year’s general election will be won or lost on precisely that ground, not in farm country but in the Chick-fil-A precincts. In these places, Trump’s turnout was unimpressive, bordering on weak.

When I look at the New York Times's precinct map for South Carolina's GOP primary yesterday, then goof around with Chick-fil-A's restaurant locator, concentrating on areas in South Carolina, it seems to me that the same phenomenon shows up.

So, here's the big question:  Will suburban Republicans who preferred Haley to Trump in the primary turn out for Trump in November? Or will they stay home, or maybe even throw in with Biden? In swing states, the answer to that question could determine the outcome.

Wordle 981 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is about forgery --  of metal, not checks.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 980 Hint

Hint: If you hate rats and/or love children, don't stiff this guy after agreeing to pay him for a job.

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First Letter: P

Concerning "We The People"

The US Constitution was ratified by 1,071 voters out of a population of not quite four million (3,929,214 "inhabitants," as of the 1790 census). That's about three one-hundredths of one percent.

Even if we exclude women, children, slaves, and others barred from voting from our definition of "the people," and just accept that the "free white males of 16 years and upward" were somehow empowered to speak on their behalf, that latter number comes to 813,365, from among which the ratifiers comprised a whopping 13 one-hundredths of one percent.

I submit that the first phrase of the Constitution -- "We the People of the United States" -- is a blatant lie, and everything after it is thus highly suspect.

It's kind of like the phone calls I get telling me that my computer has been compromised and that I should give them access to it to fix the problem. I'm really not so sure that I'm actually talking to someone from Microsoft or Apple.

Now assume that the people calling me, even if they are who they say they are, have been dead for 200-odd years, and haven't the slightest idea what kind of computer or operating system I'm running, but tell me they should get to take control of it "on my behalf," and it starts getting weird IMO.

Wordle 979 Hint

Hint: For some reason, today's Wordle creators had trouble getting their act together.

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First Letter: A

Wordle 978 Hint

Hint: Like water with deuterium (rather than hydrogen-1) atoms.

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First Letter: H

Update On Those Aforementioned Medicals ...

My lung function test yesterday came out even better than the one a year ago. The doctor did prescribe me an albuterol inhaler because I very occasionally have an annoying wheeze, but other than that it was "continue not smoking, and if you want to lose weight concentrate on resistance instead of just aerobic exercise and add protein to your diet. I asked him if that meant I could tell Tamara I am no medically required to eat a ribeye each day, and he said "if you can afford that, go for it."

Tamara had her basal cell carcinoma removal this morning. Took a couple of hours, because they basically scrape a layer off, freeze it, look at it, and repeat until they dont' see any cancer cells in the latest layer. She's doing fine.

I haven't decided yet whether I've skipped a Garrison Center column and will be back tomorrow, or whether I'll get a late one out today and push tomorrow's to Friday. Probably the former, since I was "out of the office" for about four hours today (and that or a little more yesterday) and need to get caught back up on Rational Review News Digest. I think I may go web shopping for a decent weight set at a decent price as well.

The Only Way to Prevent Julian Assange and Other Political Prisoners from Getting Navalnyed ...

... is probably to make credibly clear that if it happens, the lives of all those responsible in any way, shape, manner, or form for their deaths (including by incarcerating them and/or keeping them incarcerated) are forfeit.

If Assange, or Ross Ulbricht, or any of a number of others, die in prison, the question is not whether they were intentionally killed, or whether they were just allowed to be killed or to die.

When someone gets put in a cage, all persons (up to and including POTUSes who don't pardon them) responsible for them being in that cage are also jointly and severally responsible for what happens to them there. They are, as demonstrated their actions, imminent and credible threats to the life, liberty, and property of anyone they approach, and should be treated as such.

Wordle 977 Hint

Hint: Solving today's Wordle is like working at a construction site.

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First Letter: B

In Which I Like Britishisms and Sometimes Adopt Them

I've been watching Peter Jackson's Get Back, which follows The Beatles through their recording of the album Let It Be and preparation for what turned out to be their final live performance.

At some point when rehearsals are breaking up for the day, someone asks one of them (I think Billy Shears, who by then had been pretending to be Paul McCartney for several years) what time to be set up for the next day. The reply: "George has a medical tomorrow ..."

I love the way Brits shorten phrases to single word summaries.

So, I've got two medicals today, and Tamara has one tomorrow. That's the Britishized summary.

The details are:

• Today I've got a lung function test (needless IMO -- last time I did it I scored in the 99th percentile for my age group; I've since stopped smoking, and last week's chest CT says that some of my stuff is getting better and that the stuff that was never going to get better is at least not getting any worse) and an appointment with a pulmonologist, who will presumably tell me to continue not smoking and come back in a year.
• Tomorrow, Tamara has outpatient surgery to remove a basal cell carcinoma.

Which means there may or may not be a midweek (today or tomorrow) Garrison Center column. I've got to head out in a couple of hours and don't really have anything coming together yet (I'm writing this post to see if that helps with the writing flow).

We'll see.

Wordle 976 Hint

Hint: One of these is just like another, and can be struck to shed light on the answer to today's Wordle.

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First Letter: M

Wordle 975 Hint

Hint: Are you sure you want the solution to today's Wordle? Consider the cost.

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First Letter: P

Concerning That Gigantic Trump Bank Fraud Verdict

I don't really have any strong opinions on it, but I do have a strong opinion on one of the defenses deployed by Trump and by some misguided advocates (including at least some libertarians) against it.

That defense, in libertarian terms, is "no victim, no crime." Or, in detail, "the loans were repaid, the banks didn't lose money, therefore no victim and thus no damages."

That particular defense is 100%, unalloyed, puredee (yes, that's a real word) horseshit. Here's why:

• Banks base their lending decisions on, among other things, the value of collateral. Not just decisions to loan or not loan, but decisions on how much interest to charge, whether to require additional collateral, etc. By lying about the value (and in at least one case the composition -- he described a 10,000 square foot apartment as a 30,000 square foot apartment) of the collateral, Trump damaged the banks by getting artificially lower interest rates and/or by artificially putting less encumbered collateral within their prospective collections purview (and thus making that collateral available for use in other prospective loan scams with themselves or other banks as prospective victims). 
• While bank reserve requirements are insanely loose -- banks can effectively loan huge amounts of money they don't have -- at the time the scams took place such reserve requirements did exist (they were reduced to zero during COVID, but the scams took place prior to 2019). Which means there was some marginal amount of money that other people were prevented from borrowing because Trump fraudulently borrowed it. Those defrauded prospective borrowers were not presented as victims in the case, but they were.

Was the verdict too large? Too small? Politically motivated rather than based on the facts of the case? I can see arguments for all those claims. But the claim that there were no victims doesn't pass the laugh test.

Wordle 974 Hint

Hint: An oaky Tennessee variant of this terrain feature gave America the atomic bomb and some musical Boys.

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First Letter: R

Wordle 973 Hint

Hint: I like to think of today's Wordle as describing any of 150 selections from King David's mix tape.

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First Letter: P

The Case for Separation of School and State, Summarized in Two Positions from One Politician

Helen Qiu, February 13: "When I am elected, I will honor school choice and allow the tax dollars you pay always stay with your child. School choice is the way to lift up education in America!"

Helen Qiu, February 15: "Not like that!"

You can have actual school choice or you can have taxpayer-funded education where politicians get to pre-screen the choices and "allow" you to pick from the options they're OK with. You can't have both.

Wordle 972 Hint

Hint: Even where cannabis is legal, I've noticed users still tend to refer to their collection of it using today's surreptitious-sounding Wordle.

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First Letter: S

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?

Well, I didn't reduce yesterday's blog post on cognitive impairment, but I did reuse and recycle parts of it for today's Garrison Center column.

I occasionally do that when I have writer's block and need to "phone in" something, anything for a column. Other times, I do it when I think maybe I struck a little vein of gold and should mine it some more, or at least haul the nuggets to a busier marketplace. This was an instance of the latter case.

Wordle 971 Hint

Hint: Lt. Colonel Kilgore's was yellow; Fred Jones's is orange.

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First Letter: A

There Is a Fourth Option

Connor Echols, writing at Responsible [sic] Statecraft:

Israel’s finance minister has blocked a major U.S. shipment of humanitarian aid meant to feed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip .... The news comes just days after President Joe Biden issued a memorandum in which he committed to enforce a little-used provision of U.S. law that bans Washington from giving security assistance to states that block U.S. humanitarian aid. ... Biden now finds himself in a bind: He can ignore the memo and anger his allies in the Senate; cut off military aid to Israel; or issue a waiver that would allow shipments to continue while conceding that Israeli actions are contrary to U.S. law.

It seems to me that Biden has an additional, unmentioned option:

Notify the Israeli regime that the humanitarian aid will be delivered, and that unless Benjamin Netanyahu wants a bunch of dead IDF troops added to his problems, he should probably order those IDF troops out of the way.

Personally, I oppose any US regime involvement in Middle East wars at all, but if the US regime is going to be involved that is one of its options.

Election 2024: Demonstrating Cognitive Non-Impairment Should Be a Campaign Event!

Millions of Americans seem to -- justifiably -- believe that both of the two leading candidates for president this year suffer from significant cognitive impairments.

Both of those candidates have insisted otherwise, of course. And both of those other candidates have cited privately administered exams/evaluations as "proving" otherwise.

If they're not lying, there's an easy way to prove it:

Just undergo the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

Live-streamed (and, of course, publicly archived for those who can't watch in the moment).

Make it a campaign event!

The MoCA offers a maximum score of 30 points, with a score of 26 or higher considered "normal."

In the run-up to the event, solicit donation and support pledges for "passing" with a score of 26 or higher, perhaps with bumps for each point above the threshold and/or for doing particularly well in any of the six portions of the test.

The assessment only takes ten minutes or so, but you'll probably want to pre-record some intro/outro material and such, and perhaps talk to streaming services with low video time limits about making exceptions. If you think you can pass this thing, you're definitely going to want it on Tik-Tok (if you don't, you're by definition either cognitively impaired or just not very bright).

Coming at it from the other direction -- the voter viewpoint -- you should make it clear that any candidate who won't do this doesn't deserve, and won't be getting, your vote.

Wordle 970 Hint

Hint: Go after today's Wordle like a bird of prey -- claw your way to the solution.

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First Letter: T

One Thing I Didn't Expect While Watching Super Bowl LVIII ...

... was to enjoy Usher's halftime show as much as I did.

He had two things working against him where my preferences are concerned:

1. Nothing against his music, but it's just really not my cup of tea; and
2. He's not an exceptionally hot female

But it was, IMO, the best halftime show since Shakira and J-Lo four years ago (music only slightly more in my wheelhouse, but it broke my exceptionally hot female meter), which was better than several before that. It was just as ... busy... as The Weeknd's routine in 2012 or Rihanna's last year, but not as ... haughty.

Maybe it was the segment where everyone was on roller skates that clinced the deal for me. I can't really explain why I dug the whole thing, but I did.

Wordle 969 Hint

Hint: Go away! No, really -- just get out of here!

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First Letter: S

What An Odd Argument to Make Agains a Law

US Senator JD Vance opposes the current bill providing US foreign aid to Ukraine.

So do I.

I oppose it because I don't like the US regime stealing wealth from the productive sector workers who create it and transferring it to affiliated/proxy gangs for use in murdering members of opposing gangs and/or civilians who happen to be on all those gangs' claimed turf.

He opposes it because he supports electing a president who would break a law and who might get impeached for breaking a law.

If Mr. Vance doesn't believe that laws passed by Congress should be enforced, including against presidents who violate those laws, why the hell did he bother running for US Senate?

In Which I Revise and Extend a Comment ...

... on my most recent Garrison Center column.

The original comment:

I woke up with a conspiracy theory this morning: The "deep state" wants to just come out and get its freak on in full public view. 

That's why it's offering us the "choice" between a houseplant and a rabid hamster this year ... so that when it steps into the open and rules openly instead of through the puppet show, many will actually be grateful for being "saved."

The extension/revision:

"Conspiracy theories," or something resembling them, often pop into my head.

I normally discount them, and you should too. Like most "conspiracy theories," they're not really theories, just hypotheses that would only be testable in the form of them coming to pass in very specific and clear ways.

The specific timbre of my own personal "conspiracy theories" tends toward the notion that we're being shown certain things -- on the orders of, or at least at the suggestions of, shadowy power elites -- for the purpose of preparing us to accept things resembling those things.

A couple of variants regarding cinema:

We're being shown lots of entertainment about alien encounters, alien invasions, etc., because something like that is coming, because THEY know it is coming (they've detected or encountered, and perhaps even talked with, the aliens), and because THEY want us to have prior frames of reference to fit it into when it comes.

Or, we're being shown lots of stuff about simulated reality because we are in fact living in such a reality and THEY have the proof, or at least evidence that tends to prove, it.

So in this variant, some very powerful shadowy cabal -- the THEY who rule the US and who probably have since November of 1963 if not before -- have decided that it's time to dispense with all the "democracy" pageantry and bring their dictatorship into the open.

For which purpose they've had their toy "political parties" increasingly putting forward two-way contests that no one sane would really like either fake "side" to win. Like Clinton v. Trump 2016, Biden v. Trump 2020, and Biden v. Trump 2024.

The idea being to bring in a "man on horseback" or something of the sort and have a large portion of the populace be actively grateful for having been "saved" from a system that no longer "works" in favor of one that allegedly does "work." Making the trains run on time, that kind of thing.

The power of "conspiracy theories" is that they offer seemingly plausible answers to vexatious questions.

The pitfalls of "conspiracy theories" are that they tend to fade from believability under even the most basic Occam's Razor or Hanlon's Razor scrutiny, and that attempts to lend them an air of testability usually require making up fake supporting facts in the absence of real supporting facts. Not all  "conspiracy theories," mind you. Just most of them.

But anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this morning.

The Real Super Bowl MVP ...

... was Harrison Butker, not Patrick Mahomes.

13 of the Chiefs' 25 points came off of Butker's foot, not off of Mahomes's passing arm.

He also scored 14 of the Chiefs' 26 points in the AFC wild card game versus Miami. If not for him, the Chiefs wouldn't have advanced to the divisional or conference games, let alone to the Super Bowl

Yeah, I know it's a team effort. But when one guy scores more points than the rest of the team combined in big games, the "Most Valuable Player" tag shouldn't be going anywhere else.

Wordle 968 Hint

Hint: That Marco Polo story is a tall tale -- today's Wordle was probably Mediterranean in origin.

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First Letter: P

A Hopefully Helpful Piece of Advice

If you want or need to get from Point A to Point B and have any transportation other than helicopter, use that other transportation option.

I've been on many helicopters, and I've only been in one crash, but that one crash -- with, fortunately, no injuries because when or more one of the many things that has to happen to keep a helicopter in the air stopped happening, it had just taken off, wasn't very far up, and hadn't developed any forward speed/momentum -- was more than enough for me to realize that they're just not really very safe.

Are there situations where a helicopter makes more sense than ground or fixed-wing aircraft transportation?

Sure. Military applications and "air ambulance" services come to mind.

Getting from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to attend the Super Bowl doesn't. It's a four-hour drive in a car, or a one-hour-and-15-minute commercial flight.

While it's statistically safer to travel by helicopter than by car in terms of deaths per hour traveled, think at the margin: If you get in a serious accident by helicopter or by car, which one are you more likely to surive with minor injuries versus getting killed or severely injured?

If I ever get on a helicopter again, it will be for some specific purpose that a car, bus, train, or airplane won't fulfill. I'm not saying it has to be a life or death situation, but it has to be something I really want to do and can only do by helicopter. Maybe that's just because I don't find helicopters that exciting now, having spent many hours in the air on them, maybe not, but either way that's my position.

For Some Reason Last Week Was A Hard Writing Week For Me

I mean, I got the job done at a basic level, but didn't really get up to much beyond those bare basics. It's been four days since my most recent non-Wordle-hint post, and that's why.

The one exception to "only bare basics" was a Yelp review of DJ's Cast Iron Burgers. Not a particularly well-written review, but after scooting across town to try the place (because I had writer's block so why not?), I thought I should do one.

Anyway, hopefully this week will be better for writing, especially after the Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-21 in the Super Bowl this evening. Yep, that's my prediction.

Wordle 967 Hint

Hint: If you use all six guesses and still haven't solved today's Wordle, today's Wordle is when you'll solve today's Wordle.

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First Letter: N

Wordle 966 Hint

Hint: If today's Wordle was lunch, it would be deeper if you used oil, less fatty if you used air.

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First Letter: F

Wordle 965 Hint

Hint: Flexibility is usually helpful in solving puzzles, but you won't want to bend while working on today's Wordle.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 964 Hint

Hint: Don't let today's Wordle put you in yours.

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First Letter: P

Well, That Explains A Lot

Once the Washington Commanders were out of NFL playoff contention, there was some talk that their offensive coordinator, Eric Bienemy, might get time off to moonlight with his former team, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Instead, the story went, the Commanders screwed him around and over, keeping him occupied instead of letting him get some work. Then instead of hiring him as head coach (after they fired Ron Rivera), they picked someone else ... and fired Bienemy.

Which sucks for him, and the Commanders.

If you can have Eric Bienemy working for your team as offensive coordinator, or better yet head coach, and you pass on the deal, you don't want to win football games. It's a Talleyrand "worse than a crime, a blunder" decision that teams keep making every time he's available and looking for work.

The standard explanation for why he hasn't been hired as a head coach yet is that he "doesn't interview well." Well, so what? He wins football games. And that's what matters from pretty much every angle, including a team's financial bottom line. Winning teams sell tickets. Winning teams sell merch. Winning teams get the plum game slots for prime time TV, which sells more tickets and sells more merch.

Passing on the opportunity to bring Eric Bienemy onto your team is like Patrick Mahomes turning up free agent somehow and the best offer any other team comes up with is "yeah, we could use him on our practice squad as the third string backup."

But, it seems, the stories weren't quite completely true. Fox News reports that Bienemy drove to Baltimore and advised KC's offense before the AFC championship game.

Which, to me, explains much of why the Chiefs outperformed their earlier play and rolled on to victory and a Super Bowl berth.

If the Chiefs are smart and no other team has the front office gray matter to snap Bienemy up as head coach, they should bring him back as offensive coordinator with a huge raise and a tacit promise that when Andy Reid retires, Bienemy moves into the top slot.

The Best Way to Handle Trump's Immunity Fantasy?

The first thing I thought when I saw that the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals smacked down Donald Trump's broad immunity claims was "finally -- this thing is probably over."

I've seen a lot of commentary about how SCOTUS should unanimously rule against those claims when it gets to them, but my opinion was (and remains) that it should just deny certiorari with neither delay nor comment.

On yesterday's episode of Serious Trouble, Josh Barro and Ken White discussed the possibility of denial of cert, and there's some good stuff in there.

Why should SCOTUS refuse to even hear the appeal?

Well, the place to start from is the fact that Trump's claims are entirely, completely, and without exception meritless. There's simply no plausible case under the Constitution, in subsidiary law, in the surrounding facts, in history, or anywhere in the real world that the rest of us live in that getting elected president makes one subsequently immune to prosecution for crimes.

Why did Richard Nixon want a pardon from Gerald Ford? Because he didn't want to be prosecuted ... and he could have been prosecuted.

Why did Bill Clinton agree to surrender his license in a deal to foreclose the possibility of prosecution? Because prosecution was possible.

Trump is not special. The law applies to him. He's not magically immune to criminal prosecution just because he was president.

That's just a fact, and it's the only way SCOTUS could come down on the subject without applying clown makeup, rubber noses, giant shoes, and multicolored wigs before ruling. They don't want to do that ... and they probably don't even want to imply that they might do it.

The up side to SCOTUS taking the case would be that by dismantling Trump's bizarre claims in detail rather than just ignoring them, the court would be opening up the whole can of worms regarding ever-expanding presidential claims of power and authority. Over the last century or so, the president has become an absolute monarch in all but name, albeit only for four-year periods.

But the political class -- or at least the members of the political class who have ordered, justified, and carried out e.g. drone strikes on American citizens, or who hope to someday do so -- probably doesn't consider that an up side.

Election 2024: The Only Thing Haley Has Left (Or, Really, Ever Had At All)

In yesterday's Nevada presidential primary, GOP side, Nikki Haley lost.

She didn't lose to Donald Trump, who didn't participate.

The GOP had a primary and a caucus. Candidates could only participate in one. The caucus, not the primary, selected delegates to the Republican National Convention, but since the caucus was pre-rigged to preclude any possibility of a non-Trump victory, Haley decided to use the primary to make a statement, presumably by winning it.

She didn't get to make that statement. She lost not to Trump but to "none of these candidates," a ballot option required by Nevada election law.

Instead, she got to preemptively make the only statement she's ever really had the ability to make truthfully, albeit preemptively and with effect -- possible, but not guaranteed effect -- only in the future.

Quick recap: She came in third in the Iowa caucus. She came in a distant second in the New Hampshire primary. She got embarrassed in the Nevada primary. She'll almost certainly be crushed in her home state (South Carolina) primary. If she keeps running for the GOP nomination, she'll keep on getting the "bug on the windshield of a speeding car" treatment.

But her main argument for nominating her has always been "I can beat Joe Biden -- Donald Trump can't."

If she's wrong, her political career is over (and has been over ever since she declared for the GOP nomination, if not before).

If she's right, she's Cassandra, and the statement she's preemptively making (with an eye on 2028) is "I told you so. You wouldn't listen, but I told you so. Ready to listen now?"

As a betting proposition, she's better off remaining "in the race" than dropping out.

If her claim that Trump can't beat Joe Biden is wrong, she's already lost pretty much everything she had to lose. It's not going to get any worse for her as political career futures go.

If she's right, staying in makes a future win more likely by letting her continue to get that message out to people who aren't supporting her this time, by keeping faith with her current supporters so that they remain supporters, and by using the time and money available to her to build durable campaign organizations in all those upcoming primary states -- campaign organizations that can be reactivated four years from now instead of having to be rebuilt from scratch.

Wordle 963 Hint

Hint: If doing Wordle is like a wedding, today's Wordle is like the reception. You follow?

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First Letter: A

F**king Copyright ...

I'm ready to move on from -- which is not anything like the same thing as having fully mastered -- Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to his Philosophical Investigations.

Since the former was published in 1921 (in German) and 1922 (in English), it's in the public domain and available cheaply (IIRC, I paid $1.99 for a Kindle edition).

Since the latter was published in 1953, it's still under copyright and costs $35-50 in dead treet format. While there are a number of guides, notes, introductions, etc. available in Kindle format, the book itself doesn't seem to be. And since I prefer to "read" philosophy by having my Echo Dot read it to me.

First World problem, I guess. But annoying. Maybe I'll renew my long-expired public library card if it's available there.

Wordle 962 Hint

Hint: When you've got two things to choose from and can only have one ...

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First Letter: W

Neither Especially Positively Nor Negatively Impressed ...

I had occasion last night to consume fast food from a fairly limited range of options (due to geographic considerations -- we were in a particular area) and decided to give Burger King's new Candied Bacon Whopper a try because, well, bacon.

I didn't hate it.

I didn't love it either.

It's a Whopper. Generally speaking, I consider that a decent fast food burger. Not my favorite, but not hated.

It comes standard (I didn't do a custom order) with candied bacon, sweet bacon jam, crispy onions, garlic aoli, lettuce, and tomatoes.

I removed the tomatoes because I don't like tomatoes on burgers. If I'd noticed that it came with them, I would have done a "hold to tomatoes" custom order.

After that, it was basically a Whopper that was just too sweet to be distinctive. The crispy onions, which I'm usually not a fan of, were inoffensive but not especially noticeable. I couldn't taste the garlic aoli at all. So, a Whopper with lettuce and some very, very, very sweet baconstuff -- so sweet that it didn't strike me as bacon at all, just sweet stuff.

My disappointment was not immeasurable, nor was my day ruined. But if I had it to do over again, I'd have just ordered a regular old Whopper.

But if you like your burgers with sickly-sweet stuff on them, you might want to give it a try.

Wordle 961 Hints

Hint: Sailors and Marines on a single naval vessel attempt to do this to boarders; the US Constitution empowers Congress to call forth the militia to do the same with invasions (real invasions, not just people traveling without getting Greg Abbott's permission first).

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First Letter: R

Wordle 960 Hint

Hint: Trimming this late at night could get you conscripted into an unanticipated adventure.

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First Letter: V

Wordle 959 Hint

Hint: When considering the likely scope of today's Wordle, think small.

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First Letter: M

Wordle 958 Hint

Hint: There's one in the Rock of Ages. Some people have them in their chins.

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First Letter: C

Election 2024: Things You Should Not Do If You Want Your Favored Candidate to Win a Presidential Election

There are lots of them, but this one just moved to the top of the list:

Vow to wage "holy war" on the most popular person in the world if she once again does a thing she's already done once before, when she was a little bit less popular than she is now.

Election 2024: A Perennial Problem Biden Has Less of, or Trump Has More of, Than Most

Longstanding political maxim: Every presidential election is a referendum on the incumbent.

If it's an incumbent president running for a second term, it's a referendum on him (or perhaps, in the future, her).

If it's an "open" election, it's a referendum on the outgoing president by proxy, the proxy being his party's new nominee (who often has been vice-president for four or eight years).

Joe Biden has that problem: The 2024 presidential election is a referendum on him, his policies, whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, etc.

BUT!

Normally that problem redounds to the benefit of the non-incumbent challenger. He or she has no past presidential record to defend, just future policies to promise and the ability to selectively compare himself or herself to the more popular past presidents of the same party.

This year, we effectively have two incumbents.

Yes, Donald Trump has been out of office since 2021, but he's been president before, so he has a record up for a second referendum.

Furthermore, he's remained by far the most dominant voice for and of his party. He exercises considerable influence over, and can be tagged with, pretty much everything his co-partisans in Congress have done (and all the bizarre stuff his endorsees did in 2022 to destroy a supposedly inevitable "red wave") while he's been on vacation.

It's not that Biden doesn't have a "referendum on the incumbent" problem. But the differential between him and his challenger on incumbency problems is much smaller than usual.

Wordle 957 Hint

Hint: Unless there's been some kind of terrible mistake, you won't find today's Wordle in a coffin.

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First Letter: A

Thanks For Asking! -- 02/01/24

You've got questions.

The good news: I've got answers.

The bad news: They won't necessarily be the answers you think you want. I may be incorrect, and it could get weird.

But hey, ask me anything (yes, anything) in the comment thread below this post, and I'll answer you there or linked from there.