ON MATTERS OF DUBIOUS INTEREST
There is no way to ignore Trump, but you can work around him. This seems to be what the world is finding. A personal answer might be: rediscovering connections to the significant people and circumstances that were part of one’s life history, reaffirming your values. For me this meant recognizing how I sustained myself for 91 years in this strange world. I tried various roads to avoid the sinkholes. Continue reading “After Trump, Making Connections”
The Perpetrators
“I’m not a doctor, I just play one for HHS.” ―RFK, Jr. to J. Goodman.
“The treatment for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.” ―RFK, Jr. Continue reading “Quotations to Think about in Perilous Times”
Today they put the King on his high chair behind the Resolute Desk. They told him to look resolute and concerned. They also forgot to change his diapers and he smelled awful. This morning they gave him the measles vaccine, and he screamed bloody murder. In his need for constant attention, he has made himself King. Later he said, “We’re taking all the dog and cat turds out of the sandbox. Musk is in charge of that.” Continue reading “The Child King”
Boredom is beautiful, a necessary component of human existence. Like good food, too much can be harmful. Like marijuana, take your boredom in small doses. Being bored for a whole day is way too much. Boredom teaches us what’s important. Seen reflectively, it can inspire us. Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” Continue reading “Boredom and Its Variations”
Some of us remember that great movie, Dr. Strangelove (1964), in which Peter Sellers can’t restrain his impulse to give the Nazi salute. It looked like Elon was overtaken by the same urge, and he even turned around and gave it twice. Continue reading “Elon Appeared Sixty Years Ago”
I thought I’d reprise an old post to respond to some of the current doom and gloom. Here’s “Who Cares? 2.”
The old Gershwin song goes this way:
Let it rain and thunder,
Let a million firms go under.
I am not concerned with
Stocks and bonds that I’ve been burned with!
Continue reading “A Thought Post-New Year’s Eve”
Short-term memory loss can be a horrendous pain in the ass that most of us, young and old, have endured. It gets worse as you age. I’ve written about this before, but it’s usually been in a partial, piecemeal way. I’ll give it another shot, while using some of my more brilliant former insights into how memory works―or breaks down for old people, as it did for Joe Biden. Continue reading “The Trials and Tricks of Memory”
Well, I passed on Thanksgiving with friends this year because I had just endured a medical test and wasn’t up to an afternoon social affair. As always, there is the grand tradition to celebrate and gather with others, but there are plenty of good reasons―like mine―to stay home. Continue reading “Thanksgiving? Or Not?”
moment of silence for 9/11 victims
Despite the furor about his recent appointments, Trump hasn’t changed all that much. He still executes the same performance at rallies, peddling the same bullshit but more so. He feels invincible, I think, but many of us feel outrage fatigue. We are tired of his unpredictability and bored with his schtick.
It’s going to be neurotic and tense for gringo transplants. We probably have much the same reactions here as our U.S. counterparts, at least so far. The difference is that we have a partial refuge from the madness here. And most of us here are older, which may give us a different perspective. Continue reading “Living in Mexico under Trump”
We news junkies seem to be vastly dependent on polling in this most fraught of elections. That’s a big mistake. As has been many times demonstrated, the polls often conflict and are thus wrong. The “why so?” is complicated, as Robert Kuttner explained in The American Prospect. He cites Michael Podhorzer,
who astutely points out that all polling is “opinion journalism.” Why? Because pollsters make assumptions about who is a likely voter and how to weigh or overweigh different demographic groups. “The ‘opinions’ are not about issues or ideology, but about methodological approaches.”
There is a long history of presidential polls being wrong, some of which is explained here. The pattern has remained unchanged for about a hundred years. The polls now predict no better than they did then. Even so, the polling practice has proliferated. It’s a business, after all, and following polls can be addictive.
Last month, Pew came out with a study, “Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024.” It’s a little more positive than I’ve suggested, maybe because Pew is a major pollster. A big problem, they say, is predicting who will actually vote.
Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections, despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.
Nate Cohn in a recent NY Times post says, “The newer opt-in [online] pollsters haven’t fared any better,” and newer ones keep popping up. So Why are they doing no better than traditional polls? The problem is, as always, “how to find a representative sample without the benefit of random sampling, in which everyone has an equal chance of being selected for a poll.”
Instead, the internet has made things messier and more difficult. So many problems in verifying the data, and so few solutions. I found another fascinating study that illustrates a difficulty other than what the critics have been talking about. Axios summarized it this way: There are stark gaps between what Americans say they think and what they really think about hot-button political issues.
I think the findings from that new study are amazing. To wit, how the general public [61% of all Americans] misrepresents its views:
You can check out more of these results here (scroll to Key Findings). If indeed valid, what these outcomes plainly mean is that nearly all public opinion polling sampling may be invalid. Can pollsters ever really discover how people are going to vote?