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My voting experience...and some thoughts

I was wavering this morning about actually not voting. Reports in my area, for early voting centers, were almost universally multiple hour lines. And then this morning I woke up to pictures of my hometown voting center having lines wrapped around the building. I've been pretty outspoken about my disdain for both sides right now, and for both leading candidates. So the long lines were ample reason to sit it out.

But that wasn't sitting well with me. Voting is a civic duty, and my parents have instilled in me a pretty strong sense for that duty.

So, Facebook posts led me to a church a town over from me, that supposedly had short lines. Turns out, the lines were very manageable, and the wait wasn't overly long!

I was kinda pissed that the machines wouldn't let me write in Curt Cignetti for every race. I know he'd struggle to make the meetings, but he'd be a GREAT school board member for my school system!

As I witnessed the voting volunteers helping a disabled person more comfortably vote...and patiently helped an older voter figure out the machines, and the process to submit the votes...I was forced to lament the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of volunteers today, on both sides of the aisle, that are infinitely better people and better choices than many of the people on the ballots they're helping everyone cast today... But despite that frustration with the choices, I walked away proud that I did my duty. And I was comforted that, despite all the warnings, the BS fear mongering, from both sides...that we have the best, safest, and most fair election process in the world. Whoever wins today will have won. Some will try to cheat. Some will probably succeed, on both sides. But it won't decide the election.

I'll be surprised if we know tonight who won. But when we do know, I hope the losing side handles themselves with an ounce of the integrity that these volunteers are.

D1Baseball's top 100 program rankings...

D1Baseball just finished their top 100 program rankings. These are current PROGRAM rankings and don't take in consideration of previous seasons. Their ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years. Here are the B1G rankings for those teams that made the list:

OSU - 91st

Iowa - 72nd

Washington - 70th

Illinois - 54th

Michigan - 44th

Nebraska - 43rd

Maryland - 42nd

Indiana - 41st

UCLA - 40th

Oregon - 38th

As expected, the warm weather schools led the way with the top 10 programs being: FSU - 10th, Texas - 9th, Miss. St. - 8th, Texas A&M - 7th, Virginia - 6th, Arkansas - 5th, Vanderbilt - 4th, Florida - 3rd, Tennessee - 2nd, and LSU - 1st. A team of interest is Louisville at 18th.
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About that Iowa poll...

Lets shake things up a bit, I love this shit...

So the gold standard for statewide polling in Iowa is Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. So it's shocking that in the last day or two they have released their latest poll which shows Harris trailing by 4 pts 47-43 in Iowa. But what's most shocking is that this exact same poll in June had the race at 50-32 Trump over Biden.

This is their first poll since June,and it's easy to see that Harris has turned this race on it's head. To the extent I place any importance on polls, it's when a quality poll shows a huge shift in momentum in it's results from one point to another. So this would qualify as something to keep an eye on...

A couple of possible indicators to watch for is if the camapigns own internals line up with this public poll. If they do, then we may see a trip by possibly Walz or at least one of the surrogates to the Hawkeye state.We just saw an example of this when Doug visited the Villages in FL. Some polls in FL have the race considerably closer than expected and apparently the campaign's own polling indicated a surrogate trip would be worthwhile...

One thing FL and Iowa have in common is an abortion measure on the ballot. Trump can lie all he wants about everyone wanting Roe to be overturned and "sent back to the states, but the reality is in every state where the preservation of abortion has been on the ballot post-Roe, including KS,MT,KY,OH etc... the pro abortion measure has passed. And not only won, but won handily. I don't expect 2024 will be any different...

It will be interesting to see if Trump determines a need to sink $$ into Iowa. In the end Both Iowa and FL will likely be closer than expected, but Trump will win. However if Trump truly lads Iowa by only 4 points that is very damaging to any aspirations he might have elsewhere in the Midwest.

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Sam Harris on Why He's Endorsing Kamala Harris

This is, of course, sensible and well thought out. I like Sam Harris a lot and whenever I see him in interviews or listen to his podcast, I often find myself agreeing with what he's saying. And his point about where he believes Harris stands on immigration, defunding the police, funding gender reassignment surgeries for imprisoned inmates and COVID conspiracies is spot on, IMO. All those things are boogeymen/strawmen arguments that no one actually takes seriously, save for people buying into the fear mongering from right-leaning campaigns. For what it's worth, a lot of the essay I linked above encapsulates why I voted for Harris.

Here's his case FOR Harris, which he admittedly spends little time on. It's definitely worth reading the whole essay linked above. It's short:


The positive case for Harris is simple: She will be a normal president, surrounded by normal experts, seeking normal political ends. The scientists she consults will be real scientists. The doctors, real doctors. Her administration will not be a 4chan thread come to life. Her foreign policy will not be made in consultation with podcasters who hock gold, ivermectin, and MREs. The notion of banning some vaccines will not receive serious consideration. Grifters and lunatics like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens won’t be short-listed for weekends in the Lincoln bedroom. The final stage of her campaign wasn’t organized and funded by an increasingly erratic billionaire who hallucinates about the strategic replacement of white America, and she will owe him no debt of gratitude. The positive case for Harris is easy to make: She is a sane public servant who will be committed to the rule of law and the betterment of our society.

RFK Jr. as health czar--- he wants to eliminate all "toxins", starting with fluoride

As a medicinal chemist, I deal with the concept of toxicity every day. Simply put, the concept of toxicity is meaningless without an association with a dose. The old saying (from the physician Paracelsus, in the 1500s!), is “it is the dose that makes the poison”. Everything is toxic at some dose: salt, sugar, baking soda, vinegar, tabasco sauce, aspirin, and even pure water. That doesn’t mean that each of those substances should be banned. Certainly, some things are toxic at even vanishingly small doses (many of the components in tobacco smoke, for instance), and so the logical recommendation is to avoid tobacco smoke (even secondhand smoke) completely. But that is not the case with most things, including fluoride.

I am not a dentist, but evidence shows that at the doses present in drinking water and toothpaste, it has clear benefits without measurable adverse effects. It’s why at my alma mater (Indiana University) chemists and dentists together invented fluorinated toothpaste in the 1950s, licensing the patent rights to Proctor and Gamble, who gave us Crest. 70 years ago, the clinical trials run in Bloomington Indiana showed a 30% reduction in cavities. Such studies have been validated over and over again, not just for toothpaste but also for fluoride added to public drinking water at a defined low dose.

This is another case where science is true, whether you choose to believe it or not.

RFK Jr. is a bigger quack than any duck.

Michigan Tale of the Tape … IU:9 top 10 rankings to Mich:1

Indiana 8/10Michigan NR
AVGNCAA
Rank
CategoryNCAA
Rank
AVG
476.28Total Offense127299.4
191.930Rushing Offense62165.1
284.319Passing Offense128134.3
46.62Scoring Offense11621.0
261.03Total Defense47345.1
72.61Rushing Defense23109.3
188.428Passing Yards Allowed95235.8
13.77Scoring Defense5723.3
1.1110Turnover Margin102-0.56
.50573rd Down Conversion Pct69.400
.588484th Down Conversion Pct8.769
.9448Red Zone Offense96.810
.84265Red Zone Defense44.806
2294First Downs Gained119143
13714First Downs Allowed82173
4.8924Fewest Penalties/Game104.44
31:1142Time of Possession6030:28

TopTendiana

Yesterday #9windiana became a reality, not just a t-shirt in Spartyville. In a few hours TopTendiana will also manifest in space and time.

10 Texas A&M lost
11 Clemson lost
11 Iowa State lost 😃

The way has been paved. Can they jump any higher? 8 Notre Dame and 9 BYU did not play. I would put Indiana ahead of the Irish for sure, they lost to a MAC team. BYU has been impressive but I would still give the nod to the Cigniana Hoosiers. 🚬

Will the voters agree? Meh, it's getting late in the season so things are less fluid. It could happen but I'd be a little surprised.

This absolutely won't happen but you can make the argument to put Indiana ahead of Penn State and Tennessee, which would put us in 6th. Again I'm not predicting it but a rational case can be made imo.

Thoughts?
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