“Learn to Code”…Still a Dem Thing

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In early 2020, Joe Biden advised coal miners facing unemployment to learn to code, saying:

Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!

I critiqued this ridiculousness in my post Shovel That Code.  (Does Biden think that coal miners stoke furnaces?…That stoking furnaces is a big factor in today’s job market?)

Comes now Obama associate Rahm Emmanuel, with precisely the same advice to unemployed retail workers.

There’s going to be people, like at J.C. Penney and other retail [outlets]. Those jobs are not coming back.  Give them the tools, six months, you’re going to become a computer coder. We’ll pay for it, and you’ll get millions of people to sign up for that.

There is not an infinite demand in the US for entry-level programmers.  Much offshoring of programming work is taking place…see my post about telemigration…and automation of programming work, which has been happening since the introduction of assemblers and compilers in the mid-1950s, is ongoing.

In my post about Biden’s learn to code comment, I said:

Can you imagine what these people would do to the economy if they ever achieved the degree of power that they so avidly seek?

We may find out, although hopefully the Senate will provide some degree of sanity check.

 

 

The Simple Act of Counting

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Apparently, election officials in numerous American states find it challenging to perform the simple act of counting. Surprisingly, Florida is not one of those states, because after the embarrassing “hanging chad” election of 2000 they cleaned up their act (a process seemingly initiated by Jeb Bush in 2001). So here’s a proposal for Republicans, independents, third parties, and even some Democrats to rally around: clean and fair elections from sea to shining sea. Instead of eliminating the Electoral College, institute an Electoral Kindergarten where election officials can learn to count. As states under Republican leadership start to routinely and transparently report election results immediately upon the polls closing, whereas unreformed states continue to take days (and even then under a cloud of suspicion), Republicans can make a straightforward offer to voters: elect us in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and Nevada (etc.) and we’ll put in place an election system you can count on. Simple enough, eh?

Five Years is Enough Waiting

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On October 8, 2015, Glenn Reynolds’ USA Today column featured a proposal that people in states receiving a large influx of immigrants from other US States work up a “welcome wagon” that would be “Something that would explain to them why the place they’re moving to is doing better than the place they left, and suggesting that they might not want to vote for the same policies that are driving their old home states into bankruptcy.” That was sound advice. Professor Reynolds suggested that some of the money bags supporting the GOP get behind the effort.

So what’s happened over the last five years? Here’s Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit Blog, currently the latest mention of the welcome wagon proposal on November 5, 2020, “Someone still needs to implement my Welcome Wagon Project.”

Five years of waiting for someone else to pick this up is enough.

I’ve cracked open a new email address, welcomewagon@citizenintelligence.org and am giving the project a free three month trial. If you are interested in participating, drop me a line.

“THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS A STORY OF LOVE VS. HATE”

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There is a lot of truth in this column:

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden are not the stars or antagonists in this tale. Their supporters are.
 
A blind unconditional love of their leader fuels the energy and action of Trump supporters. They risk their health (maskless rallies), reputation (accusations of racism and sexism) and safety (social media and Antifa harassment) to stand with their hero.
 
A blind unconditional hatred of President Trump fuels the energy and action of Biden supporters. Their leader’s ideas, policies and resume are irrelevant. Biden is a tool to kill the Trump presidency. Nothing more.
 
[. . .]
 
A reliance on hate and an absence of love inevitably spark widespread corruption.
 
This is my problem with The Resistance, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the far Left and their pervasive anti-American sentiment. There’s no love. It’s all hate.
 
Hate cannot sustain life, liberty, freedom and a pursuit of happiness.
 
As much as President Trump’s public behavior and narcissism annoy me, I’ve never questioned his love of America.

Worth reading in full.

It Isn’t That Bad, Really

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Some unsolicited thoughts on this election. I’m not one that plays politics too much, just a guy running my business trying to do my best.

Trump is probably going to lose is my gut at this point (but he could very well still pull this out). I’m not one that is all “bring in the feds” in most situations, but we need a federally standardized election system. This business of seeing the number, then back counting as many ballots as you need like in Michigan and Pennsylvania to fix the result is insane. Lets assume for a moment that there is exactly zero vote fraud. The current system where some states can count their ballots in five minutes and some take six days simply makes some people believe that their candidate got heisted, and they will never believe otherwise. Of course there can be fraud if this is moved federally, but I feel that if we just simply said “this is the machine, this is how you vote, if the vote isn’t here by 8pm on election day, too bad so sad”, well, how hard could this really be. I understand that these different states having different chaotic systems is a feature to some, not a bug.

Outside of Trump maybe losing, the Republicans pretty much crushed it with everything else (making the obvious fraud above even more ridiculous). State houses were held/improved upon, the House had unexpected gains, and fancy pants Nancy is going to have her hands full with her cadre of idiots making all sorts of insane demands. The Democrats will 100% screw up whatever they do. The Senate will probably end up R, also good.

The markets have shown over the past few days that a divided government is a good one for business.

If anyone believes a political poll on anything, well, I don’t know what to tell them. Those businesses should all never be patronized again and should just close up shop. 100% worthless.

Prediction: If he wins, Biden will either resign or be 25th amendmented by the midterm election. Is anyone going to really start asking him questions about foreign policy or…anything?

Prediction 2: Republicans take the House in 2022, and will make (potentially) Harris’s life super fun if they keep the Senate.

That’s about all I’ve got and all I have time for (see aforementioned business). OK, let me have it in the comments.