I don’t pay attention to minutiae sometimes, but here’s something relevant:

«In the 1960 presidential election, the results in Hawaii were too close to call. Richard M. Nixon was leading John F. Kennedy in the state by just 140 votes, and there was a recount of the whole state. The recount was ongoing as Republican electors met in the state to cast their votes for Nixon, and Democratic electors met and cast their votes for Kennedy, in case he was declared the winner. (He eventually was.)

Legal experts say there is a major difference between what happened then and in 2020: The results in Hawaii were legitimately in question, while Trump’s legal challenges had already been dismissed or soon would be.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/20/fake-electors-charges-trump-2020-election/

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/8/20/23835730/supreme-court-optimism-democracy-moore-milligan-talevski

«The strongest case for optimism about the Supreme Court, in other words, boils down to eight words: We can beat them at the ballot box.

And then we will replace them.»

https://wondermark.com/c/939/

I should have blogged this forever ago (and maybe I did).

Every time I see “Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University” quoted somewhere:

«Thomas called his girlfriend over to check his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

But no, he was correct – he’d spotted a basic error in the spreadsheet. The Harvard professors had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation (of average GDP growth in countries with high public debt).

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark were missing.

Oops.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22223190

I’m sure that guy triple-checks his spreadsheets now, but still….

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-economy-debt-slowdown-recession-622a3be4

«At those rates, China would fail to meet the objective set by President Xi Jinping in 2020 of doubling the economy’s size by 2035. That would make it harder for China to graduate from the ranks of middle-income emerging markets and could mean that China never overtakes the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, its longstanding ambition.»

No one who has read Why the West Rules – For Now would get smug about this.

Here’s something for the white people among us: more efficient use of tax dollars.

«In the past 10 years, 270 million euros were spent on the construction, purchase and renovation of housing as part of the “Housing First” programme. However, Juha Kaakinen points out, this is far less than the cost of homelessness itself. Because when people are in emergency situations, emergencies are more frequent: Assaults, injuries, breakdowns. The police, health care and justice systems are more often called upon to step in – and this also costs money.

In comparison, “Housing First” is cheaper than accepting homelessness: Now, the state spends 15,000 euros less per year per homeless person than before.»

https://scoop.me/housing-first-finland-homelessness/#:~:text=In%20the%20past,person%20than%20before.

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-imports-auto-parts-face-scrutiny-under-law-chinese-forced-labor-2023-08-17/

Ok, now it gets more real. Higher car prices or human rights?

Hang on, I’m thinking….

Bad news for Florida Man

“After almost two years as a conservative rallying cry, Republicans may finally be over the war on woke.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republican-presidential-candidates-woke-iowa-ron-desantis-vivek-ramaswamy_n_64dfd0c4e4b0dd561030ebce#:~:text=After%20almost%20two%20years%20as%20a%20conservative%20rallying%20cry%2C%20Republicans%20may%20finally%20be%20over%20the%20war%20on%20woke.