The Amazing Mr. Trump.

I had a friend who had this amazing ability to instantly recognize a person's weakest point and rapier rhetorical ability to exploit it. He left his victims bleeding to death on the floor before they felt the thrust.

I was at a professional basketball game with another friend, Ron. Far down below us in the cheap seats sat Greg in the expensive seats. Greg was only about seven rows from the court. It was a wonderfully exciting game that went back and forth, back and forth. With about two minutes left one of the officials made a "block" foul call on one of the home team's players. It was a terrible call, a truly egregious refereeing error, it was clearly a "charge" on the opposing player and 15,000 people saw it. The arena roof practically blew off with outrage from the fans (It really was a terrible call). That was the most outraged I ever remember hearing a sports crowd. It was momentarily scary.

Moments later there was a timeout and predictably the arena calmed down noticeably. Some people resumed their seats. As NBA refs do during timeouts one stood near the foul line by one basket and one stood near the foul line by the other basket. The ref who made the egregious block call stood at the end of the court where Ron and I, and Greg below us, had our seats.

In the quieting arena as people were sitting back down, I saw Greg stand up and begin pointing and screaming at the official. He leaned forward as he did it. "Look at Greg!" I nudged and yelled to Ron. Maybe five seconds after I had first noticed the harangue, the official...turned his head toward Greg.

Now, understand: The officials are trained to ignore the fans. If they reacted to every fucking drunk (Greg had a beer in his other hand.) fan going nuts on them, there would never be a completed game!

But Greg was different. He wasn't just a drunk, outraged fan, he was drunk, outraged Greg. And he had gotten to the official. What you are thinking now, I thought for a brief instant then: Drunk, outraged Greg had dropped a multitude of f-bombs on the official, the officials can and have in the past had similar drunk, outraged spectators ejected from the arena.

But this was Greg. Greg had not f-bombed the ref. And the ref did not eject Greg.

"That's right, it's ME! They teach you in zebra school to ignore the fans but you KNOW you blew that call!  How do you think Grant Long's glasses got knocked into the second row! Now you've got A MINUTE AND A HALF to call a make-up!"

Everybody had seen the erroneous charge. What Greg had instantly recognized in his opponent, the ref, was that the ref also saw that his call was erroneous. And Greg had appealed, loudly and aggressively, to that, to the ref's reason, to his ability to perceive, and to the ref's conscience. 

After 2-3 seconds the ref turned his eyes away from Greg and resumed his stoic pose and the timeout ended. The other team inbounded the ball. The ball-handler advanced the ball to mid-court, there were some hometown defenders within his zip code but no closer and...TWEET! The ref, the same ref, pointed at the innocent offender, put his hand on the back of his head to signal a charge and pointed the other way to indicate change of possession.

After the game, Ron and I went down below to find Greg. He told us what he had said to the ref, verified by a third friend who had invited Greg to the game, and verified by other spectators who had come up to Greg to congratulate him. One man had said, "Sir, I would like to thank you for personally winning this game."

That story is 100% true. In my car yesterday I was having an imaginary conversation with Ron. In this imaginary conversation we were talking about Donald Trump and I said "Trump has this sixth sense, like Greg, to instantly see a person's weakest point and to hit it." and then reminded him of the game and other Greg stories.

I have been reading, on fivethirtyeight and other places, how professional pencils do not understand the Republican establishment's passivity toward Trump. They hate Trump, they fear lasting damage to the party from Trump, but they,-Mitt Romney, the Bushes, the RNC head, other Official
Republicans-have not uttered a discouraging word.

There are various theories. That there is a, or a continuation of a, populist revolt within the GOP, either solely Trump-centric or a mutation of the Tea Party movement; that Official Republicans don't want to anger Trump into making a third-party run which would doom the official Republican candidate in the general election; that they think the professional pencils are overrating the Trump danger, that not one ballot has been cast yet; that they don't know what to do, nor what to make of Trump, they just don't know. And today, maybe previously, I don't remember, but today it sunk in, on fivethirtyeight, somebody threw out that maybe Official Republicans are afraid of Trump, they see what happened to John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ben Carson, what is happening to Jeb Bush, Trump has poked his rapier at Chris Christie and Ted Cruz, too, and they don't think it's such a great idea to take Donald Trump on head-on! From a purely political point of view, can't blame them for that. They don't want to be left bleeding and dying on the floor.

But there is also the theory of centrifugal force, that the GOP establishment doesn't have the power to prevent a Trump nomination, it is too fragmented, there are multiple loci of power-evangelicals, the Tea Party, libertarians, the establishment-and the idea that the party can just turn on an auxiliary power source is, today, a myth. There's no there, there.

The undersigned does not have a comprehensive Theory of Trump to present, I am a bit puzzled, too. I have not been as nonchalant about Trump as Nate Silver has been, I have written that there is something going on with Trump that is unusual, that cannot be explained by analogies to George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, there are somethings, plural, going on, only a few that I am confident about, that are not explained, nor are they explainable in my opinion, by historical analysis. They are ahisotical and Trump is sui generis.

I do think that the one theory that best explains the passivity of the GOP establishment, official and unofficial, is fear. The most unbloodied candidate so far is the one who from the beginning has refused to go after Trump, Ted Cruz. And, my God, Trump has skeletons in his closet! So did my friend Greg! I don't think anything explains people not rattling Trump's skeletons as well as does fear. You attack Trump, just like if you wronged Greg, not only will you be left for dead by his counter-punch, but, magically, he will also develop an exosleleton of Teflon.

When rigorously honest social scientists issue predictions there is often less there than meets the eye, the qualifiers and margins of error and nuance hollow out meaning. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight is a rigorously honest social scientist-like being and he distills his post yesterday thusly:

I think Trump’s more likely than not to underachieve his national polls once people get around to voting in the early states, but I don’t expect his numbers to fade to zero. Perhaps he has [Pat] Buchanan’s constituency of 15 to 20 percent of the Republican electorate, plus another 15 to 20 percent of bandwagon voters that will join him or leave him at any given time.

lol. Let's attempt to quantify those modifiers and put meaning back into Silver's summation:

"I think"=50%+1 probability.  
                                                  } < 34%*

"More likely than not"=50%+1.

"Perhaps." Hmm, that sounds even squishier. "Perhaps" is like "maybe," the realm of equally likely outcomes. What the hell is the dictionary definition of "perhaps?" Une momento, por favor....Si: "possibly but not certainly." "Possibly" is a dirty word in court. You can't say "possibly." "Possibly" cannot be quantified. Should we be this rigorous in parsing Silver's words? The case for "Yes": In the sentence before he used more quantifiable terms, "I think" and "more likely than not." The case for "No": That would drain fun from this exercise. HELD:

"Possibly"=50%.

So, in Silver's opinion, there's an even chance Trump's "true" pool of potential voters is between 30%-40%. More importantly, according to Silver, there is a better than even chance that the vote for Trump will be less than his average 34% current polling number, the two sets of numbers being consistent. Therefore, it seems reasonable to quantify Silver's prediction for Trump's vote as 30%-34%.

30%-34% is a lot! That's a lot in a race with ten candidates. Silver does not do a similar analysis on the others, nor even on those below Trump but with 10% or more polling support, Cruz, Rubio, Carson. We can rigorously presume that those Lesser Three are left with 70% of the vote to divvy up. If they divvied it up equally (which they won't) each would receive </=23% of the vote since 100%-30%=70% which divided by 3=23.3%.

30%, say, to 23% puts the Lesser Three within striking distance of Trump. The Greatest of the Lesser Three, say Cruz, is mathematically guaranteed to have more than 23% of the vote, putting him even closer to Trump, in Silver's opinion.

Fun, no?


*RealClearPolitics average of polls.

“I get asked all the time: ‘Well, are you like your brother? Are you like your dad?’” I know there’s a real fascination about this. Let’s just — let me get this out of the way: I love my mother more than my dad.”

-Jeb?, Londonderry, New Hampshire, January 7.

"Jeb Bush Is Now Republicans' Least Favored Candidate"-Vocativ.

graph: Washington Post.

I see...Boy, that cloud cover is pretty dense...There are some clear patches where I can see all the way down though and I see Jeb! is done, "stick a fork in him," "the fat lady has done sung," it's over.

Oh! It's Friday knight.

#Spaceyinspace.

Sure! Why not. A Kevin Spacey hoodie good luck charm. Makes perfect sense. That explains it.

Seeking the Soul.

Captain Chaos

Well, Jeb Bush was right about this: Donald Trump has been a chaos candidate -- for almost everyone involved in the 2016 contest. He created chaos in Bernie Sanders' backyard yesterday; he brought chaos into Hillary Clinton's campaign, raising an issue (Bill Clinton's past with women) that few had been willing to touch in quite some time; he introduced chaos for Ted Cruz, knocking the Texas senator off message with the "birther" issue for multiple days; and he's produced chaos within the entire Republican Party over the last six months. If you want to know why this 2016 presidential campaign has been so crazy, bizarre, and unpredictable, you can thank one person for that -- Donald Trump.-NBC News

The stark contrast between the souls of China (survival) and the United States (pursuit of happiness) knows no better example than in the two civilizations' views of chaos. It is anathema in China but in the United States it is something that has to happen sometimes and it is tinged with thrill. "Disruptive innovation" is a quintessentially made-in-America concept that could never be "outsourced" to China.

BENHARRIS @PUBLOCC
hi hows your day going

@xijinping

BENHARRIS @PUBLOCC

Panthers won. Knew that would make you happy. Does Ms. Peng know any British nationals who drink too much and are allergic to poison just asking. 

Krugman...Can you imagine Paulie at a time like this?...Could somebody check with Bellevue to see if that padded cell is about ready?

"China markets face make-or-break day as policy dumbfounds."-Reuters

Ooh, Xi, that's gotta hurt.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese markets face a day of high drama as share trading resumes with no automatic mechanism in place to restrict selling and the world watches to see if Beijing will allow its currency to fall yet further.

"And the world watches." The world's watching, Xi, don't look dumb...founded.

The New York Times headline:

A New Economic Era for China Goes Off the Rails

Xi, you are going off the rails, Xi.

At every turn, the president’s efforts to manage the economy, market and currency have been undercut by global headwinds and haphazard policy making, and initiatives this week have been particularly discordant.

Xi, "haphazard"+"discordant"="going off the mag-lev rails"="dumbfounded," Xi.

Bloomberg:

China Flip-Flops on Stock Crash Rule and Adds to Chaos

They call him Flipper, Flipper, dumber than bag o' rocks.

What's the dirtiest word in the Chinese language? "Chaos."

Reuters, NYT, Bloomberg. That's three strikes, Xi.

Xi Jinping: Can't spell LOL if you spot him the "O" and the "L."

Seriously, that is such consensus of opprobium that I wonder if Zhongnanhai might not step in and replace Xi. He never seemed the sharpest tack in the box and this truly appears to be disastrous incompetence.

"BREAKING NEWS"-Reuters.

Iraqi men arrested in Houston and Sacramento on terrorism charges, both came to U.S. as refugees: FBI.

Ooh, Obama, that's gotta hurt.

7:30 pm ET, Florida "Panthers" at Ottawa "Senators."

7:57 pm. Text message from son:

First two shots on goal by cats are GOALS! 2-0 within 10 seconds!!!
Hahahahaha amazing! Two shots on net. Two goals. 
Sorry. Two goals within EIGHT seconds of each other ;)

7:58 pm, reply:

YOU'RE FRIGGING KIDDING ME!!!!!!!

7:59, son:

Hahaha INFRIGGINCREDIBLE

          

...?

That is disgusting. It looks like two eels mating. David Beckham's proposed new soccer stadium in Miami. Eels United.

The Unbearable Weirdness of Whiteness.

It occurs to me that the mental disease or defect denominated here as "weirdness" is a particular affliction of the White species of Americanoids.

                                                        James Tracy.

Really, if that guy was Black he'd be doing life for Existing while Black. He's Al Sharpton with bad hair.

Ward Churchill.

Stubborn Giant Walrus Trying to Cross California Highway.

Rachel

Dolezal.

David Brooks. 

Melissa Click.

Founding Fathers.

Prince George's First Day at Pre-School.

Hello, Booger.

Happy boy. Look at his eyes lighting up.

The whole family seems happy, the Duke and Duchess, the Prince. In every picture of them I can call to mind, they're smiling if not laughing. What a tremendous image they present of the kingdom. They are perfect.

University fires professor who says Sandy Hook was a hoax-Washington Post

That sounds like cause!

James Tracy, a professor who wrote that the mass killing of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was an elaborate, staged hoax designed to pass gun-control legislation, has been fired from his job at Florida Atlantic University.

To pass gun control legislation, huh Jimbo? Huh. Jimbo's shootin' with some blanks there, seems to me, it does. 

Let's see what other nuggets we have here:

University officials began the termination process last month, after parents Lenny and Veronique Pozner wrote an opinion piece in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "It's been three years since we last embraced our precious little boy, Noah," they wrote. "At six-years-old, he was the youngest child murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School."

The Pozners added that "to our horror, we have found that there are some in this society who lack empathy for the suffering of others. Among them are the conspiracy theorists that deny our tragedy was real. They seek us out and accuse us of being government agents who are faking our grief and lying about our loss."

It occurs to me that Americans are a weird people.

"Tracy even sent us a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived, that we were his parents, and that we were the rightful owner of his photographic image," they said. "We found this so outrageous and unsettling that we filed a police report for harassment. Once Tracy realized we would not respond, he subjected us to ridicule and contempt on his blog, boasting to his readers that the 'unfulfilled request' was 'noteworthy' because we had used copyright claims to 'thwart continued research of the Sandy Hook massacre event.' "

"James Tracy was scheduled to teach three classes during the upcoming Spring semester. Alternative instructors will be assigned to teach those classes."

What did James teach? Pray tell.

Tracy "teaches courses examining the relationship between commercial and alternative news media and socio-political issues and events," according to Florida Atlantic's website, with expertise in "media history and analysis, political economy of communication."

Thank you.

Global Stocks Extend Rout With Commodities as Soros Sees Crisis-Bloomberg

I'm still perfecting the backflip out of bed. Almost there, almost there.

The Asian financial markets are not so limber these days neither:


“China has a major adjustment problem,” [See? It needs an adjustment.] George Soros said Thursday at an economic forum in Colombo, Sri Lanka. “I would say it amounts to a crisis. [I wish he would not say that.] When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008.” [I wish it didn't remind him of that. I wished a major adjustment by the chiropractor would have China doing backflips again. But I fucking guess not.]


Chinese policy makers’ growing tolerance for a weaker yuan is being seen as a sign they are struggling to revive an economy that’s the world’s biggest user of energy, metals and grains. Those concerns helped wipe $2.5 trillion [A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money, you feel me?] off the value of global equities in the first six days of this year as North Korea conducted a nuclear weapons test and relations soured between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

hi

THIS is the University of Pittsburgh.

Annabelle–  ‏@annabelleracey

Officially accepted to the University of Pittsburgh, and am more than emotional about it. #dreamschool #H2P 

                                                   

Annabelle, you are chosen for the most inspiring college campus on earth. Keep your lights by the Cathedral of Learning for it is the University of Pittsburgh, the golden light on the hill. H2P! H2A!

Jamie Dixon and the Mystery of Pittsburgh-Solved?

No. 24 Pittsburgh holds off Georgia Tech 89-84


The Panthers have reinvented themselves in their third year in the ACC, entering the poll for the first time since February, 2014 thanks to their hot start. Coach Jamie Dixon has ditched the staid and static style that marked their successful run in the Big East and opted for a more fluid, up-tempo approach. Pitt came in averaging 85 points -- its best mark through 13 games in Dixon's 13-year tenure...-ESPN

I'll be darned.

http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2013/03/seeking-soul-jamie-dixon-and-mystery-of.html

Been a doggone good year for panthers all around, I'll tell you that.

Search keyword today:

-barack obama looks depressed

"Supermassive Black Hole Found Burping Close to Earth"-I4U News.

hi

In the last 24:

Entry	Pageviews
Russia	52
United States	42
Germany	7
United Kingdom	7
Canada	2
China	2
France	2
Australia	1
Kazakhstan	1
Romania

Harder to make a correlation over 24 hours between countries of pageviews and two posts but these two have the hallmarks of Russian readership, they are old and they are personal:

"BY WRITING, SO MUCH SUFFERING DISAPPEARS" Apr 29, 2010	1
Piercings Aug 28, 2009	1

If they think they are getting to me. Well, they are.

Florida "Warriors"?

I don't know what has gotten into the water in sports around the world. Chelsea from champs to chumps, Lei...Leicester, Kansas City "Royals," Carolina "Panthers," G----- S---- "Warriors."

The dadgum Florida "Panthers" just won their tenth game in a row.

Ladies and gentiles, I have seen this team with my own 20/400 eyes. I have seen them live and in person six times spanning the last two seasons, all wins by the way. I passed on passing judgment until the last game I saw, against Ottawa. And then, I said to my offspring: "They don't have elite players. Except for [goaltender Roberto] Luongo and [ancient Jaramir] Jagr, they're not very good." And that was after their fifth win in a row. Now it's ten.

W
   T
     F

I just don't see it. But then, I'm legally blind.

Stupid Art.

Scots have a reputation for being a bit "near" with money, no? So when "Creative Scotland" awarded £15,000 ($22,050) to an artist to live in Glasgow for a year, thus birthing the artwork "The Glasgow Effect," well you can imagine.

You don't have to imagine. Take it from a native Glaswegian and the "funniest woman in Scotland," Janey Godley:

"My nephew Rob is here. If he stood up and pulled a jumper over his head and said it was art, how could I tell him it's not? But I tell you what I won't be doing: giving him 15,000 to keep it up!"

"Glaswegians are the first people to take the mick out of themselves. We're the first people who say, 'Look at us. We're crazy. We're mad.'"

"She's [artist Ellie Harrison] taking 15,000 to live within the city limits, like it's some kind of avant-garde Hunger Games."

"I'll give you 10,000 if you can keep her in your city."

Seeking the Soul of Barack Obama.

President Obama made a very moving, heartfelt-tearful at times-speech today announcing the executive action he is taking to curb gun violence. No "cool," detached Obama here-there never has been on this issue-he deeply feels. Here's the link to the video. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/05/obama-announces-gun-control-plans-i-believe-in-the-second-amendment.html

This is a screenshot from my phone, my phone autocorrected "lardass" and put "Kardashian"....hahahahaha
-Text message from my son just now.

My, astonished, reply:

:o That's unbelievable. I have written that Kim Kardashian's ass should replace Pluto as the 9th planet. I didn't know she had so general a reputation for being a lardass. And mine didn't auto-correct to Kardashian?! I DEMAND Apple fix this bug in my phone!

Line forms on the right.

"A major new work by Bob Avakian"-Revolution Books.

Revolution Books features Avakian's books and films, a forty-year body of work representing the most advanced scientific theory and leadership for an actual revolution for the emancipation of humanity: A new synthesis of communism.

J-E-T-S SUCK, SUCK, SUCK!

And now some professional tackle football schadenfreude. Going into yesterday, the final day of the regular season, the New York "Fast Planes" were prohibitive favorites to make the National Concussion League playoffs for the first time since like 1968. Only one of two things had to happen to make it official. One, New York had to beat Buffalo, who had already been eliminated, or the Pittsburgh "Stillers" had to lose at Cleveland. So of course, the jet hit the air pump and neither thing happened, the former in inexplicable fashion except this is the "Jets." Reaching deep in their assholes to snatch out their inner incompetence is a "Jets" exclusive. Happy New Year, "Jets."