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Grandpa Trump as polls opened on Tuesday: “Greg Abbott has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election. He is an  exceptional   Governor and man. GET OUT AND VOTE FOR GREG — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”  Grandpa Trump later the same day as the returns showed Abbot losing:   “If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO [Republican In Name Only] in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost. He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”   The art of the flip-flop.

  From Kate Riga over at TPM: Democrats Could Nuke the Electoral College With their new trifectas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, Democrats could sign onto the National Popular Vote Interstate  Compact , in which states give their electoral votes to whoever wins the nationwide popular vote. All five of those states haven’t yet signed; the 19 that have possess 222 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. The additional states would activate the Compact. Some states might decline, bellyaching over losing their place of prominence in picking the president, but that would be irritatingly myopic: of the five presidents who won while losing the popular vote, four were Republicans.

  While there is much to celebrate, it's import to acknowledge that Trump still wields the veto robo-pen and that Democrats don't have enough votes alone to override. On the other hand, the got enough of a margin in the senate that Fetterman doesn't matter and they can control judicial nominations once the new senate is seated. Keep an eye out for an Alito or Thomas resignation between now and then. Trump will try to govern through executive orders and emergency orders. While those will be challenged, I suspect his SCOTUS will allow it.

  Politics ain’t beanbag. ~Finley Peter Dunne

Listened to a podcast interview with Tilly Norwood yesterday morning. Tilly is an AI creation, "an awareness project. A piece of art." Tilly is a manufactured illusion meant to approximate a human female. While I could only hear her voice, I certainly found her to carry the semblance of authenticity. Throughout the podcast, I kept thinking of Elizabeth Holmes. With her Steve Jobs black turtleneck, her artificially modulated baritone voice, her wide unblinking eyes and her head-nodding to signal sincerity, Holmes was a self-made piece of art, a human female meant to approximate a manufactured illusion of authenticity. Separating reality from fiction is getting harder and harder. https://www.tillynorwood.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawVVQA9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR-7MZlsE6zgeZZ-6Zu6tmwGsu2JVD0vh8eJ8n1dTSEVnum8JRatulFvMqJFIQ_aem_h1sReU-E3C5r14kBcDs57Q

There’s a lot of brouhaha surrounding the candidate Dan J. Sullivan. There are a couple of facts that need to be upfront in any rational discussion: 1. Even if the Democrats recruited Dan J. Sullivan because his name is similar to the incumbent Republican Senator, that’s not illegal. 2. The word “incumbent” appears on the ballot next to Dan S. Sullivan’s name, so there’s no reason to be uncertain which Dan Sullivant is which. 3. Alaska has ranked choice voting. Anyone who is genuinely confused can rank one Sullivan as their first choice and the other as their second choice. If none of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, the weakest candidate is eliminated and the second-choice votes on those ballots are redistributed to the remaining candidates. The process continues until someone has a majority. I’ll bet most Republicans know which Sullivan to rank first, so the few who are confused and illiterate but want the incumbent to win can just rank the Sullivans 1 and 2, and if the...