Reasons I find it hard to blame Hillary Clinton for her loss

It's not that I am exactly a fan of Hillary Clinton, but I couldn't really see the aged Bernie Sanders doing well in this election either; and I don't really know why the Democrats could not come up with a third, younger alternative.   But all of this post election analysis makes me feel sorry for Clinton when people start pointing the finger at her, for the following reasons:

*  as people now realise, the vote for Trump was not huge - it just happened in the right States;  

*  when it comes down to a matter of 100,000 or so votes in 3 states, then Clinton probably can plausibly site the Comey late intervention as a key factor - it clearly did influence polls close to the election; it may well have energised the turnout for the Trump vote, and suppressed the turnout for Clinton, just enough to swing it Trump's way;

*  by election eve, the near universal media opinion that, despite the FBI situation, Clinton was going to win may also have suppressed her voter turnout just enough to swing the election, too.  Why vote if she looks a certainty anyway?

*  it's not Clinton's fault she came down with mild pneumonia, sufficient to give the Right wing conspiracists video with which to run their ridiculous "she's about to die" propaganda.  The effect of Right wing media/social media information bubble is so important to where American politics are at the moment, and no one really knows how to overcome it.

*  the "deplorables" comment was not as bad as it was made out to be when the full context is read.  It was a mistake, but I find it hard to condemn her for it, given that the true argument is really only over the exact percent of deplorables in the Trump camp.

Things you probably didn't realise about the white female vote in the US

White Female Voters Continue to Support the Republican Party - The Atlantic

The flood of post-election analysis we are seeing is turning up some interesting stuff - such as the point made in this article that no one should really be surprised that white women didn't rush to support Hillary.  The fact is, as a group, they've been leaning GOP for a while now.

An interesting bit of activist journalism here

Do You Have Information About Abortions Trump May Have Paid For? Let Us Know.

Many people read Trump's non- answer to Maureen Dowd earlier this year as strongly indicating he has paid for a girlfriend, or wife, to have an abortion.  If he has, and a huge slab of his voting base were vehement pro-lifers, I think we have a right to know whether he has or hasn't, especially in light of his policy to now assist the restriction of abortion.

I suppose his dimwit followers might just forgive him, just as they have his history of adultery and fornication.  But Democrats forgive sexual indiscretion in politicians, too.  Maybe both sides take hypocrisy on abortion more seriously?

Krugman predicts

Interesting to note that Paul Krugman warns, as he did with Brexit, that people should not expect the US economy to tank in the short term just because of the Trump election.   In the long term - yes, sure, his policies are terrible in virtually all respects. 

But it can take a while for bad decisions to fully kick in with their economic effects.

So easily swayed

What a ridiculously gullible fellow Adam Creighton proves to be.  Heaps of empathy for women too, obviously.  (It's not the first time I've noticed his empathy issues, too.)

He's most interested in the one about the 11 herbs and spices...

Donald Trump is about to learn all of America's 'deep secrets'



(I bet I didn't get to make that joke first.)

Needs more analysis

I see that Right wing sites, and conservative Catholic blogs are crowing about Trump doing well with Catholics, although the current analysis is based on exit polls which, I thought, had been shown up again as not that accurate.  Anyway, this is despite evidence from before the election that Trump was not doing well with Catholics.

The Tablet provides a little bit more perspective - pointing out that Trump did well with white Catholics:

Actually, he did as well as Romney did with the white Catholic vote - something that I hadn't realised before.

But Hispanics - still a long way to go to convince a majority of them.

The Tablet also notes in another article that, when it comes to "liberal" referenda which the Church was against, they were still nearly all passed, which suggests that the power of the conservative Catholic vote is  not what Conservative Catholics think it's cracked up to be.

So, there is this ongoing difficult question of whether this Catholic vote is coming from mere "cultural Catholics", or actively practising ones.   There is strong evidence, of course, that a small minority of even Mass attending Catholics adhere to the Church's teaching on reproductive health;  despite pockets of Conservative Catholic leadership (Cardinal Burke has announced his pleasure at Trump's win, for example), there is a pretty good case that the congregations are quite liberal.   But it is not that easy to find research which differentiates between types of Catholics.

Hence, I would be interested to see more research on this topic. 

And on a final note:  look how consistent the Jewish vote is for Democrats in that graphic above.   Jewish neighbourhoods in the States are not going to be happy at the moment.  

A more modest suggestion for some on the electoral college

So, some on the Left seem to think they have a chance of convincing the Electoral College to not vote in Trump.  Vox explains in detail why this just won't happen - well, short of Trump doing his long mooted  shooting of a person in the street, I suppose; even then, who knows?   If it was a protester, his followers would probably forgive him.

Anyway, instead of trying to convince Electoral College members to refuse to vote him in, perhaps the Left should try to convince them of something less dire, but important to transparency in government.  That is, withhold their vote in the college unless he has first disclosed his tax returns.

Still pie in the sky;  but slightly less pie in the sky than what some want now.

Quantum consciousness, revisited

Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness? - The Atlantic

The shock election of Trump made me miss a pretty good article here looking at a relatively new suggestion (apart from the Penrose line) about how quantum effects could work in the brain. 

Weekend Photo 2

She had a bit of a dig in the garden this morning....

Weekend photo 1

The explanation:  I was having a beer at the Pig N Whistle yesterday, and spotted Thor at the bar.  Dr Strange was also there, but I didn't get a pic.

By way of further explanation:  the Supernova nerdfest was on at the Convention Centre next door.

An important point to remember

The electoral college system means that Trump actually won by the barest of margins.  As the Washington Post explains:

A tale of two movies

The election of Trump has made talking about movies seem like unimportant trivia; but I said in my 10,000th post that I wanted to write about two I saw last weekend.  And I should try to distract myself.  So here goes:

1.  Interstellar.

Look, I admit - with Matthew McConaughey (an actor I have never liked) in the lead, there was every chance I wouldn't like it.

But I was completely unprepared for the awfulness of this movie in every respect:

a.   (and this is where the main blame has to go) The Worst Script Ever Written For What Was Meant to be Serious, Adult Science Fiction.   I can just imagine the actors saying to their agent "Christopher Nolan?  Big budget outer space adventure?  Sign me up!", and then despairing when they actually read the lines they were supposed to deliver.

The dialogue was terrible, undeliverable in an convincing fashion by any actor - but with McConaughey doing his Texas drawl turn, it was unbearable.

And look, I'm no cynic about "love talk" in movies, and emotional scenes - I'm a Spielberg fan after all, and the endings of Ghost, ET and even Shakespeare in Love  reduced me to tears;  but the whole relationship stuff in this movie just rang false from beginning to end.

b.   apart from the lines, and clunky exposition (seriously, the old pencil through folded paper explanation for a wormhole just before they are about to enter the wormwhole?  Is Nolan surrounded only by Yes men?)  the whole concept of the story was so derivative and underwhelming.  It's a cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Who, but with none of the awe of the former and none of the emotional resonance of at least some of the Tennant episodes of the latter. 

c.  good direction?   I couldn't detect anything special.  Good visual effects?:  I was much more impressed with Gravity than anything in this.  Good music?:  it was continually invasive and preaching a seriousness that the story itself was failing to hit.

d.  Improbabilities in the story?  Well, I want to make the point that I am not really even emphasising these - I don't usually engage in hypothetical logic challenges to movies - such as why didn't they send in more probes instead of humans; and the whole "by his bootstraps" paradox of time travel.  That didn't matter to me - the movie was still bad enough on every other level that I am utterly surprised how it got any good reviews at all.

Jason Soon - didn't you make a positive comment about this movie?   It's off to the cinema re-education camp for you if you did.

2.   Dr Strange

Great fun.

As I expected, Cumberbatch and Swinton are just terrific.

I wanted to note in particular that I find Swinton almost mesmerising, at least in this type of role.  (I haven't really seen her in any lengthy part where she plays a normal woman - but as with her White Witch in the first Narnia movie, there is just something about her elocution and the features of her smooth, alabaster face that means I can't take my eyes off her for a second.) 

The script is very witty, the visuals are impressive (yes, Jason, even if Nolan first did folding cities first - he didn't do them in such an exciting fashion), and I liked how one oft-repeated effect - the portal with the residual fire sparks that would fall to the ground - was rather like how you would expect old fashioned magic to look - a bit different from the normal glowing rocks and holographic style effects.

As with Guardians of the Galaxy, parts of the movie had that retro 70's science fiction book cover palate about them, and I also liked the cleverness of the final battle being the reverse of (what I take to be) the typical ending of a Marvel movie.

The movie started very strongly in America, and around the world, although I wonder if depression at the Trump election might cause a bigger drop off in box office this week end than would otherwise happen?

And God knows, if the nation ever needed a real time bending superhero, it is now. 

In an attempt to cheer me up: rat tickling, revisited

What fun to be a rat-tickle researcher, hey?  As reported at NPR:

That's a part of the brain that processes touch, and when Ishiyama tickled the rats, it caused neurons in that region to fire. The rats also seemed to giggle hysterically, emitting rapid-fire, ultrasonic squeaks. Earlier research has shown rats naturally emit those squeaks during frisky social interaction, such as when they are playing with other rats.

Next, Ishiyama pretend-tickled the rats by moving his hand around the cage in a playful manner. Rather than withdraw, the rats sought more contact. Again, he saw the neurons in the somatosensory cortex firing, even though the rats weren't being touched. This suggested to him that anticipation of tickling could trigger the region of the brain that responds to touch — even without the physical stimulus.

Finally, Ishiyama stimulated the somatosensory cortex directly, by sending an electrical signal directly into the brain. The rats squeaked the same way, suggesting that this region really is the tickling epicenter of a rat's brain.

Actually, given that the research involved electrodes being stuck in their brains, I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the rats.  Now I'm feeling depressed again...

Excuse me while I talk to monty, again...

Monty, has this convinced you yet that you can only talk to unpleasant fools for so long before it makes you foolish for engaging with them - at least if the engagement is on the basis that you think you have any hope of changing their minds?

Look, I know you like to see some good in everyone, and there (nearly always) is.   But when pointing out their wilful foolishness is met with mere rudeness, disdain and a repetition of tribalism, there is no point.  It is no accident that any Left leaning or even centrist commenter gave up on the site years ago. 

I could go on and do yet another summary of how the blog is deeply offensive, if not dangerous, from the top down.  But you and my handful of long time readers have heard it all before.

What prompts me to write this time is that I reckon the reaction to Trump at the place should be seen as a reason why no right minded person can in good faith engage with them further.  There is, to my mind, simply no way to usefully engage with fools who, for mere tribalist reasons, are willing to overlook the character, behaviour and proposed policies of Trump.   This is unforgivable foolishness of a magnitude I could not formerly imagine - particularly coming from anyone (as many at the blog do) who professes a Christian faith.

We know the American Right was divided over Trump, and we have to give credit to those columnists who are now likely just as gobsmacked as you and I.  But the threads of Catallaxy are full of non-serious tribalists - long fooled on climate change; gullible on economics; sexist if not misogynistic; bigoted.   They are not for turning - or engaging with - if they cannot see the danger and foolishness of Trump and his policies.

Attack them by all means in other ways - but the one on one engagement - forget it, I reckon.

A Creighton fail

Global banks back in the firing line

Adam Creighton tries here to explain an important thing US Republicans are likely to do - reform banking regulations - but I honestly think he does a really poor and jumbled job of it.  

A genuine worry

It's really quite painful watching passionate, intelligent liberals on American TV, such as Stephen Colbert, trying to process how such an offensive man as Trump could win enough support to get over the line.  (Although remember, he did not win the popular vote: especially if you take the third party vote into account, a substantial majority of those who did vote were against Trump:

Nationally, third-party candidates did relatively well in this election. With most of the ballots now counted, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gained over 3% of the popular vote, and the Green party’s Jill Stein got 1%. Altogether, candidates who did not represent either of the two main parties got around 4.9% of the popular vote (in 2012, third-party candidates only managed 1.7%, and in 2008, 1.4%).

It’s easy to see why people point the finger at third-party votes. In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hasn’t called the result, Trump is ahead by about 12,000 votes. That’s significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. It’s a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.)

Anyway, I was watching this lengthy clip from Colbert's first post election show, and its clear he is emotionally upset about it all.  While there are many laughs to be had (I particularly like God's cameo near the end), watching it made me feel more anxious and depressed in sympathy with Colbert, even if, by confirming that the whole of the country hasn't gone nuts, it shouldn't:

I'm not the only one who blames Fox News

Simon Wren-Lewis writes:

mainly macro: Trump: Misleading the People: 

The story is in fact told better than I ever could by Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the Reagan White House and for George HW Bush, so I’ll just summarise it here. The story starts under Reagan, who provided pressure to withdraw the Fairness Doctrine, which was similar to what keeps UK broadcasters from being partisan. Initially that allowed the rise of talk radio, and then Fox News. Gradually being partisan at Fox meant misinforming its viewers, such that Fox viewers are clearly less well informed than viewers of other news providers. One analysis suggested over half of the facts stated on Fox are untrue: UK readers may well remember them reporting that Birmingham was a no-go area for non-Muslims.

But why is this causal, rather than simply being a mirror on the rightward drift of the Republican base? The first point is that there is clear evidence that watching Fox news is more likely to make you vote Republican. The second is that, like the tabloids in the UK, this propaganda machine can turn on party leaders and keep them from moving left. The third is that it is also a machine for keeping the base angry and fired up and believing that nothing could be worse than voting for a Democrat. It is Fox News that stops Republican voters seeing that they are voting for a demagogue, conceals that he lies openly all the time, incites hatred against other religions and ethnic groups, and makes its viewers believe that Clinton deserves to be locked up. Just as UKIP (and perhaps now the Conservative party) is the political wing of the tabloids, so Trump is a creature of Fox news.

Also worth remembering...

....don't bother, they're heeeeere

I knew a columnist would soon enough write along the lines of "if, like an arrogant teenager, the American GOP voting public thinks they know what's best, sometimes it's better to let them learn for themselves that they don't."  And here is that column from the Washington Post.

Of course, the thing that freaks out parents, half of Americans, and about 80% of the rest of the globe, is how much grief said teenager will cause everyone  in the process.

For a solid dose of pessimism, of course we can drop in on Andrew Sullivan, whose column "The Republic Repeals Itself" is as depressed as you would expect, but even he points out the obvious:

The only sliver of hope is that his promises cannot be kept. He cannot bring millions of jobs back if he triggers a trade war. He cannot build a massive new wall across the entire southern border and get Mexico to pay for it. He cannot deport millions of illegal immigrants, without massive new funding from Congress and major civil unrest. He cannot “destroy ISIS”; his very election will empower it in ways its leaders could not possibly have hoped for. He cannot both cut taxes on the rich, fund a massive new infrastructure program, boost military spending, protect entitlements, and not tip the U.S. into levels of debt even Paul Krugman might blanch at. At some point, a few timid souls in the GOP may mention the concepts of individual liberty or due process or small government or balanced budgets. At some point even his supporters may worry or balk, and his support may fade.

Actually, given that you can never tell what a bullshit artist like Trump is really thinking, and that the reality of the difficulty of governing is about to hit him like a bus (I thought he even had a look of worry on his face in his victory speech - his Ritchie Rich son* looked definitely regretful), I fully expect disappointment amongst his supporters to start building very quickly.   This is usually the case with politicians who are light on policy, but big on "hope and change".  (Yes, OK, Obama pretty much fitted that category, but did manage to be a competent and a good president.  But he was, at least, a politician who knew the ropes.   There is obviously no real reason to expect that the Hollywood scenario of an accidental president turning out to be great in the role and beloved of the people could happen with this buffoon.)

Perhaps the biggest worry, apart from Generals having to wrestle the nuclear codes out of his tiny fingers when an Islamic President mean-tweets him, is the likely clownish quality of the advisers and administrators he surrounds himself with.   But, I guess, as with Boris Johnson in the UK, give clowns actual responsibility and at least some of them have to change their rhetoric fast.  

And at the end of the day (gee, how am I managing to be quasi optimistic?) what everyone has to keep reminding themselves - both the doomsayers and the gloaters - is that in terms of popular vote, pretty much exactly half of the country rejected Trump.    Which doesn't seem to me to say much for fool Scott Adams - if being a "master persuader" means just influencing the small percent of the voting public that ever moves from one side to the other, it doesn't seem to be such an awe inspiring thing at all.  (Oh, and Scott, your young girlfriend is going to dump you soon enough, and you can go back to the comfort of your money and 4chan pals.)

* Didn't Trump indicate he would be in charge of cyber-security in his administration?