Way back in the 50s and as Lex would say, “when I was a wee nubbit”, we had a Beagle named Sam. And like most Beagles, he loved to roam whenever the chance presented itself, such as a front door not closed fast enough. When that happened, the task to retrieve him fell upon me. I would chase him down the street of our Studio City neighborhood and at that young age learned there was only one thing that he liked even more than roaming – food.
USA
Schadenfreudelicious
Two weeks and a bit more after election day, and the meltdown, panic, and dismay among the progs, the establishment media, and the entertainment world continues. I’m taking an unworthy pleasure in reading reports of panic and back-biting among partisans of the Harris/Walz camp and the noisy laments of their cis-gender or bi significant others. I’m also taking a savage pleasure in reading about or viewing evidence of the dismayed realization among the managerial class in certain industries dependent economically on the choices of the general public – that conservatives and Trump voters buy shoes, too. Also movie tickets, newspaper and magazine subscriptions and other consumer goods.
2024 Election Plus/Delta
Pluses: admittedly much the shorter list, but we did resolve a few things.
- Thanks mainly to vote shifts in California and New York, the popular vote outcome was not at variance with the Electoral College vote, and it wasn’t particularly close (over 4-1/2 million votes).
- Largely as a result, the losing side, and VP Harris herself, have indicated cooperation with formal certification and transition processes.
- Harris is gone. She’ll get a chunk of money for a book and retire to the lecture circuit.
- Walz, same, and given the likelihood that he would have been a 21st-century version of Henry Wallace, with Chinese instead of Soviet agents in his inner circle, that might be more important than getting rid of Harris.
- Taking a somewhat longer view, Trump is gone too (perhaps not a much longer view; see the final Delta item below).
- By extension, there is some chance that ’28 will not have the electorate choosing between a crook and an idiot for President.
- Whatever one may think of prediction markets, and there are arguments on both sides regarding their functionality, the biggest prediction market of all, the US stock market, was forecasting a Trump victory all year (not coincidentally, the same thing happened in 2016).
- By the way, the media will actually report negative economic news now.
- I could have put this in either category, but I’ll leave it here: your Cluebat of the Day is a reminder that Trump is as old as Biden was in ’20, and notwithstanding some of my more apprehensive items below, to expect anything much of him is a waste of time.
- Likely continuation of relatively good space-industry policy across Administrations, which should be the only thing that matters several decades from now.
With Dread and Foreboding
So, how do I regard Election Day, looming up in two weeks? With dread and foreboding, to be absolutely frank – no matter who is declared victorious. It’s absolutely guaranteed that all flaming hell will break out in either case; either within hours/minutes, or in days/weeks.
If the Trump/Vance ticket sweeps to an unmistakable, unarguable landslide well beyond any means of the Democrat Party to fraud – the anti-Trumpists will be insane with baffled fury. The national media establishment will look like Wily Coyote after one of his Acme gadgets explodes – and the entrenched bureaucracy crusted like layers and barnacles all over the various federal government departments … they will see the end of their comfortable gravy train. Ruin, disgrace, impoverishment, possibly criminal charges. The Deity knoweth and the various conservative-sympathetic bloggers and commenters, to include many fellow Chicagoboyz essayists and frequent commenters, remember very well how blatantly they played dirty pool the last time around. What would they venture this time against the Great Orange One, the avatar of their doom … Political assassination? Of him, or any of his allies? At the height of what some commenters have termed a second civil war? Like Lincoln, at the hands of an angry partisan of the losing side? Sadly. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibility. This will be bad. Very bad.
When The Bough Breaks
I have so far in life been sufficiently fortunate never to have been caught in a full-frontal weeks-long, totally-life-destroying national disaster. But I have been on the fringes of several brief national disasters; the earthquake that hit Sylmar in 1971, a massive typhoon that hit Northern Japan in the late 1970s, a horrendous rainfall in late 1998 which put a lot of South Texas floating down various rivers and creeks, another rainstorm a few years ago which flooded out the small Hill Country town of Wimberly, and an early spring snowstorm which dumped almost a foot of snow on South Texas, snow which stubbornly remained for most of a week, featuring freezing temperatures which knocked out both power and water in much of metro and suburban San Antonio. My parents’ retirement home in Northern San Diego County was destroyed in a massive wildfire in 2003. I also was on-line and paying attention to disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, to the fires that destroyed Paradise, California, and Lahaina, Hawaii …