Mass murder: Big government is a force multiplier for evil.

Governments with guns are the top killers. Rogue individuals slay dozens, sometimes hundreds, and with 9-11, the tollran into the low thousands.    But the millions and tens of millions are caused by governments with guns.  Governments are the force multiplier of evil.   These are not the deaths in defense of Motherland and Fatherland.  They are the internal butcheries and starvations of Pol Pot and Mao, of the Armenian genocide and the millions who perished in the Ukraine under Stalin.

The article by BOOKWORM is provocative.  "Because government is a force multiplier for evil, a vote for the small government candidate is a vote for good."  Everyone wants the government to do something about something and that includes conservatives who want values protected and activists who want pipelines stopped.  These "somethings" should be tested at the smallest local level possible and viewed as experiments.  A vote for small government is a vote for good government.

Two clicks for US 2016.

First click this graphic to follow all US delegate races at Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight site.  The interactive graphic,  one for each presidential candidate, shows each one's progress, noting every caucus and primary date, how many votes are at stake and a calculated capture number per state per candidate needed to win the nomination.  Second, click to the Horse Race live blog at Breitbart which links every few minutes from about 8 a.m. EST to breaking US election stories from all over the map.  Except for opinion pieces and voting night tallies, you may not need anything else to stay on top of the news.

The Fivethirtyeight home page adds vote junky anlaysis to the stories you read on an election night.
The sample below is from the interactive graphic for Donald Trump, highlighting what's at stake for him on March 15th.

Electability Poll Hogswallop'

Head to Head polls make screaming headlines.  Trump loses to Clinton, Sanders, Cruz and even Rubio.   The winning margin in past US presidential elections is inside the margin of error of many past polls.  See the data.    "Loses by 2"   "Wins by 3" in head-to-head are close to meaningless remarks at this stage and verbiage promoting such freakily scandalous and stunning news qualifies for hogswallop.

The data in 2012 shows Romney within a percent of two of Obama right up to election night.  He wasn't a loser until that final Tuesday. The second chart shows the percent of the popular vote that went to the winner in recent presidential campaigns. Apart from a couple blowouts with Reagan, Johnson and Nixon, many races are close and indeterminate until voting day.  The first chart is from Real Clear Polling and the second from Wikipedia.

Happily Married

True love is one of those impossible things that can be believed six times over before breakfast.  See the Alice quote below.  Grownups organize life around "I" this and "You" that but toddlers are truly alive before that.  At a later age, from that same nature comes "Being in love" as male and females of the species.   Who we are is the superstructure and what we are is the matrix.  They work by different rules and have different goals.   They don't have to make harmonized sense all the time.  Just go with it and blink past the funny spots.  Which brings me to being happily married:

Happy and hamming it up

I wake in the morning and hold my wife very close to me, feeling her breathe as she falls back to sleep. The In Love matrix bubbles up with the same old thoughts:  "You are so beautiful.  You are soooo beautiful.  I love you. My darling, my beautiful darling. You are mine.   I will always be good to you". And on and on.

The superstructure that runs the show by day is thinking about making breakfast and designing roof trusses, about men and women at the square dance last night.  The matrix continues to bubble up, "my darling, adorable and precious, what a miracle".  The superstructure decides it's morning and heads for the showers.   This is like having two (wonderful) kinds of life in a single vehicle.   You don't have to make sense of love.  Enjoy it and blink past the rest  ---the unreasonably pleased, driven and giddy interludes and the jealous and possessive moments incompatible with being a modern..


From "Through The Looking Glass":
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

THE OLD, OLD STORY:

The Colonel: "Yes, He was Senior Wrangler of his Year, and She took a Mathematical Scholarship at Girton; and now they're Engaged!"

Mrs. Jones: "Dear me, how interesting! And oh, how different their Conversation must be from the insipid twaddle of Ordinary Lovers!"

THEIR CONVERSATION

He: "And what would Dovey do if Lovey were to die?"

She: "Oh, Dovey would die too!"

Proof That Dem Hijinks Are Blocked By Voter ID.

Eight of the first sixteen primaries and caucuses added voter ID since 2010.    Democrat turnout with voter ID was down 37% and without voter ID was down 15%.  With the same rules, Republican turnout was up massively everywhere.  Check it out.  Reported first at Huffington Post.  Low enthusiasm for the Donkey people accounts for less than half the decline.  Bad behaviour by political operatives, now being stymied, accounts for the rest.  Voter ID is a low cost small government fix.  Makes me glad to live in Canada.

Super Tuesday Data Show Trump Wins Florida

NYT Upshot data show Trump did fine.  See persuasive chart of all four states last Tuesday.  Cruz soared and got his votes from Rubio's flameout.  Trump votes matched expectation.   

Cruz is going to scavenge Rubio's home state votes next Tuesday and let Trump romp home with 99 winner-take-all delegates.  We've read elsewhere that Cruz is okay with that, expecting Rubio to pull out leaving a two man race.

Minimum Wage Graphic To Torment Believers

If you don't read Small Dead Animals, here is the graphic you need to show people who believe $15/hour ought to be the minimum wage. and every job should get it.   They believe in magic boats.

Not a Typo: 14,000 wind turbines idle in US

When the subsidy's gone, the turbines are toast and there's no green cleanup squad.  Not hundreds but thousands are idle.  Read more at "American Elephant".
Excerpt:

"When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found. Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth’s bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea. Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down. They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them. The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time. When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants. Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable. With governments facing financial troubles, the subsidies are unaffordable. "

Re-stated:

They are rusting hulks and no environmentalists are willing to pay to scrap them.

They didn't earn their keep.

They killed thousands of raptors.

When wind power makes sense you will need no subsidy.

Monkeyi brain waves steer machines.

"Monkeys drive wheelchairs" - It's all over the internet this week. The new idea is wiring up not just one or two things but hundreds of nerve ends to capture complex signals, both to send and receive.  Duke University researchers passively pushed macaque monkeys through the grape reward pathway on fancy electric scooters.  The monkey brain waves were captured as they got close to the grapes.  Their own brain signals were later fed back to them to prompt those parts of the brain to fire up on their own.  The monkeys soon learned to amplify this and added distance-to-the-goal compensation too.

On line stories are mostly about quadraplegics getting a new lease on life.  What about the normal getting super abilities to do things remotely?  That includes work tasks.   There's a whole class of "handicapped" that we call senior citizens in care homes.   If old and infirm people (over 150 years old) move to their in-orbit weightless care homes to retire and have some brain implants too, what exactly distinguishes them from active people in their prime who get things done?
Link for video below.

Chimps share a stone throwing ritual belief, even when alone

These filmed chimpanzees share a symbolic behaviour.  They throw stones in a ceremonial way at a specific tree.  They throw these stones when no other chimp can see them.  The camera trap shows a succession of adult male and female chimps choosing a stone, looking around, then hucking it at the trunk and heading off.  Source: Scientific American

Vote Trump and His Daughter to the White House: Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt gives six reasons to vote Trump.  Ivanka Trump is number six.

"And, finally, sixth: Donald’s daughter and Svengali Ivanka is a smart, smart, smart lady with an extraordinary intellect and influence on her father. We get the GOP’s own Valerie Jarrett, only this one with a sense of America’s role in the world and the same resolve to succeed as Jarrett possesses."

It's not that Hugh would eagerly pick Trump and you remember Trump insulted Hugh after a "gotcha" interview back in September, but Hewitt has six good reasons to vote Trump:
The first three are the three supreme court judges he will probably get to nominate.  "Diane Sykes and Bill Pryor are two fine judges that Trump has mentioned as possible nominees and he made the right commitment on religious liberty to me on stage Thursday night."  Fourth, Donald is a builder and will rebuild the navy. Fifth, the rulers of China and Russia will think twice before crossing him.

"An extraordinary intellect and influence on her father". Hewitt has had her on his show.
Something to think about.
FDOTUS and executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

Two Clinton Funnies

h/t  powerlineblog
Security on a terrorist's iphone and who is Bill Clinton inclined to vote for?

Breitbart liveblogging the entire US election: "Horse Race Live Wire" is a new type of news.

Breitbart's "Horse Race Live Wire" page has over a 100 posts so far today, picking up within minutes all the political stories I've seen anywhere - the video clips - tweets - photographs - punditries - bon mots and scandals.  Reposted with links are all the stories that are making news in the primaries and caucuses including Bernie's and Hillary's doings.  Breitbart likes Trump.  Each day a new page is started with the "Horse Race Live Wire" theme.  Bookmark Breitbart and settle back.   During breaking news, the posts are minutes apart.   It's a new type of news.  I like it.

http://www.breitbart.com/
 

Last Minute Poll Trends In South Carolina

Chart from Real Clear Politics:

Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: The Vatican's is higher than the US-Mexico border.

The Pope made neẃs yesterday with his provocative mass at the Mexico-US border. I get the part about compassion for those who yearn for a better life but not for the right to break into someone else's place to get it.  His foray into US politics includes saying that someone who only wants to put up walls isn't a Christian.  It appears that only Donald Trump is the peg for that hole.  The Donald ripostes that the Pope should fear terrorists attacking the Vatican, as they have sworn they will.  John Nolte at Breitbart points out the Vatican is a walled city and far more secure than the US border with Mexico.

US Sidelined Or On Other Team in ME says Ambassador Crocker

Ryan Crocker who was the US Ambassador to Iraq in 2007 has this surprising report.  He's just back from a Middle East visit and the locals are debating two theories about the US:   One theory is that the US has been sidelined while Russia, Iran and Syria dominate.  The other theory is that the US is an active fourth member of the Russia-Iran axis.  Noteworthy for them is the US decision to fund Iran's hegemonic outreach by releasing billions.

Article at Power Line, "An Axis of Three or Four?"

Trump Presidency Guarantees Rebalancing Between Executive And Congress

The executive faithfully performs the will of congress, upholding the constitution but with discretion in times of war.   Trump, like Obama, thinks the President is the boss.  Unlike Obama, he won't get away with it.  Both sides of both houses of congress will unite to halter this populist parvenu.   This is the bedrock territory of DNCe and GOPe and they will defend it at last.

There have been decades of undeclared war at the president's discretion and that may not be cured, but fixing the balance between the Executive and Legislative branches will be front and center in 2016.

Source

White House Strategy Defeats US Military Tactics

Mark Moyar of the Hoover Institute exposes seven ways white house strategy has overridden and defeated US military tactics.  It's the president's prerogative to define strategy.  The article is the best review I've seen and covers Bush (43) and Obama's years. "Theories on democratization made Bush and Obama overly optimistic about the prospects for intervention in certain countries. " Missing only is the genius to explain how the White House should make better calls.

"When a country enjoys tactical military success as consistently as the United States, responsibility for strategic success must rest primarily with those who make strategy. The American military could be held culpable for recent strategic setbacks were it highly influential in the crafting of strategy. But its influence under the Bush administration was much more limited, and under the Obama administration its strategic advice has largely been ignored.

A review of America’s military interventions since 2001 reveals that seven broad errors account for America’s inability to turn tactical successes into strategic victories. These errors are described below. In every instance, the error was the direct result of presidential decisions on policy or strategy. Some of those decisions ran in direct contradiction of the military’s advice. The military can be faulted for some significant tactical errors, such as ignorance of counterinsurgency in the early years of the Iraq war and excessive reliance on population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine in the middle years of the Afghan war. But the military eventually corrected its major tactical problems, and none of those problems thwarted strategic success."

Super Delegates: "Where are Bernie's?" is the story.

News stories about Hillary having several hundred super delegates after the first two primaries are misleading.  Case in point, how did she end up with just 2 delegates more than Bernie if she has several hundred pledged super delegates?  The real story appears to be how little support Bernie Sanders has won, not how much Hillary Clinton has.

Some 4763 delegates are being picked for the nominating convention.  712 of those (less than 20%) are named in advance (super delegates).  They include "distinguished party leaders", senators, representatives, governors, and noteworthy party members. (See chart) As of today, Wikipedia reports 420 of those 712 have expressed a preference for Hillary Clinton but they may vote as they choose, unlike the delegates who are allocated from primaries.

When you read that Hillary has hundreds of delegates more than Bernie, this means she has about 10% of the convention vote preferring her to Bernie, a 10% that is free to change its vote.  How come Bernie Saunders doesn't have a roster of supporters too?  His independent, crusty style has cost him a network.

There's a reason why Sanders isn't getting the level of support Clinton is from Democratic Party leaders. While she has been a Democrat for decades, the same is not true for Sanders, who only caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. In fact, his Senate biography boasts that he is the "longest-serving independent member of Congress."

Not such a bad method either.  Super delegates don't stop change but they reduce the likelihood that small changes in the crowd's desire will steer the boat.  This is like following a four-year smoothed curve for a stock instead of following daily trading peaks and trenches.

Climate Change Science Not Settled Any More: Perfect Storm Of Hypocrisy.

Australian climate scientists about to lose their jobs suddenly discovered the science isn't settled.  The chief of Australia's science agency ( CSIRO) cited the success of AGW research as he announced a layoff of 300 now-redundant scientists to cover a $110 million budget hole.  The need for more science was rediscovered briskly.

“Climate science is not solved,” declared Todd Lane, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. “Most of the uncertainty in climate projections is due to uncertainty about the ways to represent physical processes in climate models.

Will Steffen, Emeritus Professor at ANU and a Climate Councillor at the Climate Council of Australia. "We absolutely need to know more about the basic operation of the climate system".

John Church, a CSIRO climate researcher since 1978 who anticipates losing his job. “There is a clear need for ongoing sustained and enhanced observations. The science community is actually struggling to address these issues.”

I called this "hypocrisy" in the lede unfairly.  The AGW triumphalism was the hypocrisy.  This is a return to a more normal scientific state where hypothesis leads to tests and everything settled is tested and retested as knowledge comes to light.  So I hope.