Rain Gryphon

So, how do people think the French election will play out? I have to concede that Macron is the favourite, but I don't think he's in nearly the commanding position that most analysts have him. If you look at it as left vs. right, then Macron ought to win a landslide victory. I don't think that paradigm is valid anymore. I know that for myself, an ardent supporter of Trump, had the election worked out to, say, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz vs. Bernie Sanders, I'd quite probably have gone for Sanders, just because the political establishment that has existed since FDR has failed so completely to address my needs.

It's interesting to note, when I look at the positions of the candidates in the primaries, how many of them, even ones I'd call hard left, are advocating French sovereignty over globalism. From the maps, it's also interesting to see in how many districts Melenchon, a sovereignist, came in second.

This will be an interesting election, I expect Macron to win, but I shall be both unamazed and delighted if Le Pen pulls off an upset. We shall see.


Edit: And ZOMG did she just get off a shot! "Either way, France will be run by a woman - me, or Merkel".

2016 began in such black, seemingly-hopeless despair, and look how it ended! Nothing is ever without hope.

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So, before even taking office, Trump has cost Mexico 3600 jobs, $1.6 billion in investment, and knocked quite a bit off the value of the peso as well. I suspect that over the coming weeks, the $12 billion they're eventually going to pay us for that wall is going to begin to look like more and more of a bargain.

And, even as we type, it looks like he's working hard to ruin another deal for them! Yeeehaw!!

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I fear it speaks to the diligence of my housekeeping that I'm missing a salad plate, and have no clue where it might be.

So, the jolly Russians are drilling down through two miles of ice to get at bacteria that no-one has been exposed to for millions of years. What could possibly go wrong?

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Woohoo! Kenyatta wins the Kenyan election! This pleases me on several levels. First, unlike Odinga, Kenyatta hasn't declared his pathological hatred of gay people. Secondly, it provides potential embarassment for the ICC, which is always a good thing.

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On a whim, I bought frozen pizza, which I usually don't anymore. It's Freschetta's Harvest Supreme pizza. Damn, that's a good frozen pizza!

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Papal Conclave starts Tuesday.

Wall Cat is Watching You Vote!

I lawled....

I just got back from voting in the primary/issues election. As seems always to be the case in a non-Presidential year, it was basically a matter of walk in, startle the bored poll workers to wakefulness, and vote all alone in a room full of machines. They need to have a "frequent voters" line in Presidential years, where the folx who show up for every election can go right to the front and not have to wait two hours. I think some people are honestly unaware that there's anything besides who gets to be President that you *can* vote on.

The questionably-designed electromechanical machines that were purchased for the 2004 election are gone, having been used exactly two times. I wonder what we paid for those, and if we were able to foist them off on anyone, or just had to eat the cost. I picture those ending up in Iraq or someplace :) In their place we now have touchscreen machines. The great virtue of these is that as you make your choices, every action is recorded by an impact printer on a little paper roll that moves past in a window on the front, where you can inspect it. The voting machine stores votes in electronic memory for quick counting, but also provides a human and machine readable audit trail with the paper tape. It's my understanding that Ohio bought these for every county, so we'd all have the same machines, and they'd all be auditable.

While I never bought into the theories about 2004 being a rigged election, it's not a healthy state of affairs when a substantial portion of the electorate doesn't trust the results. Hopefully these will help with that.