Post #4811 J: Ron Paul; This Week's Presidential Debate; Blog Statistics; Lockdown Diary

 Ron Paul's "Stroke Incident"

I think all of us know and fear strokes. I may be showing my age here,  but beloved "Grandma Walton" Ellen Corby, who won 3 Emmy awards playing the role, suffered a stroke in the mid-70's, and it affected her performances post-recovery. Other prominent victims include legendary actor Kirk Douglas.

Strokes occur in different forms of severity, including mini-strokes; in fact, there were unconfirmed rumors that Trump suffered a mini-stroke over the past year, including possible symptoms like balance issues coming off planes, slurred words, struggles drinking from water bottles, and an unexplained visit to Walter Reed hospital.

Doctors will often look out for stroke factors as we age, keeping an eye out for factors like bad cholesterol and maybe advising supplementation of statins and/or a daily aspirin.

Ron Paul this past week was doing a live feed during his signature daily Liberty Report video clip, something I've embedded in my daily miscellany posts probably dozens of times, when he reportedly started slurring words and talking incoherently. I haven't heard Dr. Paul or his doctors explicitly confirm these rumors, some based on the observations of medical professionals.

Ron Paul sent out a cheery thumbs up from his hospital room. Quite often hospitals will admit suspected victims for observation after an incident to ward off a follow-up, more catastrophic stroke. 

My best wishes to Dr. Paul and his family, and I wish him a fast, full recovery. 

 

I'll Be Watching This Presidential Debate

I won't commit to watching it live, but I'll probably write a one-off post on the debate. I never did review the 2016 Clinton/Trump debates as I had intended to do, in part because I loathed both candidates and didn't have a high regard for Trump's debating skills. I still don't like his skills. But with about 5 weeks left in the campaign, Trump is in deep trouble. (Yet you'll see some right-wingers on Twitter insisting an imminent Trump landslide is imminent. There must be some powerful drugs on the market.)

If you look at the pairwise matchup, according to RCP, Biden holds a 7-point advantage, just shy of the "magic" 50 number. This is significantly higher than Clinton's roughly 3-pt. advantage, although I do expect Trump to close the gap somewhat. The point is that Biden's edge is beyond statistical error, and things like Trump's unlikely run of photo finishes in 2016 (WI, MI, and PA) are highly unlikely this election. The Democrats are largely united behind Biden, Trump has not dealt well with the coronavirus crisis and soft economy, Trump now has a record to defend, has high unfavorables, and his job approvals have been consistently and uniquely below-average his whole term. On RCP's no-tossup map, Biden leads 353-185,  and since June, this map has hardly budged, and what more recent momentum seems to exist is more to Biden's advantage, flipping North Carolina, OH, and Congressional districts in Nebraska and Maine (which allows a share of state votes on the district level). The no-tossup map shows no Clinton states going for Trump, while Biden takes away AZ, FL, MI, PA, WI, OH and NC, plus TX and GA are within upset range. It's not locked in but close.

Trump's best short to reverse his fortune seems to be the national debates, including the one this Tuesday. I fully expect Trump to try to put Biden on the defensive, e.g., the Hunter Biden/Ukraine kerfuffle, arguing that Biden has a socialist agenda, trying to link him to the post-Floyd riots and looting, tying him to failures in the Obama Administration. etc. Presumably Biden's handlers know that and are preparing him accordingly. Biden knows he has higher favorables and wants to appear as likable Uncle Joe, contrasting Trump's bullying character with humor and grace. Biden will almost certainly drill down on Trump's failed leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, his erratic leadership in dealing with allies overseas, his oversteps in executive orders, reinvention of "emergencies", diversions of funds, his cruel family separation policies at the border, etc. Moderator Chris Wallace will try to keep the debate on track, but expect both candidate to resort to rehearsed soundbites and try to work in their talking points.

Incidentally, I'm still waiting for Maryland to deliver my mail ballot so I can cast my Presidential vote for Dr. Jo Jorgensen.

Record Year For the Blog

I've already published more posts this year than any year prior to 2016. With just over 3 months left in the year, I'll likely top 500 posts, a record number, and will probably publish post #5000 by spring next year. The reader statistics still suck with maybe 6 posts over the past week reaching double-digits, an informal target, and it's unlikely I'll reach last month's aggregate readership.

At least that's better than my collapsing Twitter statistics. I haven't had a 1000+ impression day all month, while this summer my top 20 tweets each surpassed that number. Now part of the story is that I was ill for a couple of weeks, and quite frankly most trends bore me. The Trump Derangement Syndrome/Trumpkin tweets are tedious. Of all things, my music-related tweets are outperforming my political ones.

Lockdown Diary

Libertarians, and especially Tom Woods, seem fixed on progressive authoritarianism during the COVID-19 crisis, and rightly so. One recent example was a visiting attendee to a junior high Ohio football game who reportedly has asthma and resisted a mandate to wear a mask was tased and arrested. This is totally insane. Less than 3% of the population have been officially diagnosed with the virus, I have not heard any evidence that the woman was symptomatic, was coughing, sneezing, etc. 

My local Walmart continues to inch its way back to normalcy. Last week I noticed the long wrap around line to the entrance was finally taken down; this week I noticed the 6 foot apart circles for waiting into self-checkout were also gone. 

The latest stats from WashPo appear below. Whereas cases remain much higher than the May/June figures, they seem to be declining to the 40-48K level from recent 50+ thousand levels. And deaths appear to be declining from daily 1K+ levels. Hospitalizations continue to trend lower.

In the past week in the U.S....

New daily reported cases rose 10% 

New daily reported deaths fell 35.8% 

Covid-related hospitalizations rose 0.1% Read more

Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 5.4%.

The number of tests reported rose 13.7%