Today would have been my dad’s 110^th birthday. He lived less than half that long. What he might have accomplished with a few additional years!

I’ve written quite a bit about him over the years. Here’s something I don’t think I’ve written. I mentioned that after he graduated from law school jobs were scarce so, instead of looking for a job, he went to Europe for a year. How he afforded it is a story in itself.

As he traveled he collected his thoughts in a journal. I had known about the last journal of his trip since I was a youngster but it wasn’t until my mom died and I was going through the contents of the family home and cataloguing them that I learned that all of the journals were there. When he filled each journal he mailed it to his mom and, after his mom died (I was just a baby then), he dumped the journals into a box and, ultimately, the box made its way to the rafters of our garage where it sat untouched over a period of 40 years.

Now I have all of the journals here. They’re in horrible condition but I have them. I really need to go through them, read them, and figure out a way of preserving them.

There must be as many predictions of the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections as there are predictors. Some think the Democrats will retain control of both houses of Congress, some think that the Republicans will take control of both houses, some think the Democrats will hold the Senate but lose the House, and every other imaginable permutation. Although it’s just about four weeks until the election, I think it’s too early to tell and the reason it’s too early should make everyone feel uneasy.

I think the outcome is all but completely dependent on events, events over which no political party or candidate have much influence at this point. Inflation. Crime. The prices of oil. The war in Ukraine. The situation in the Middle East. The situation in the Far East. A litany of countries including all of those mentioned in my earlier post.

And those are just the known unknowns. There are also the unknown unknowns. All of these events are influential in any election but I think events will shape this one more than any other of my recollection.

The only thing I can say for sure is that I won’t vote for any Illinois legislator or official who supports the SAFE-T Act. With 100 of 102 county states attorneys opposed to it, it’s obvious that regardless of what you may think of cash bail, the law is seriously flawed. Onw the things that bugs me about it is that it’s so racist. It will almost certainly increase violent crime in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Illinois pols should do the courageous thing and fix it before the election rather than waiting until they’re safely re-elected. My previous state representative voted against it; my present state senator voted for it which leads me to the conclusion that he’s an idiot. His campaign spots provide supporting evidence.

As the latest entry in the Predator what we’re now calling “franchise”, Prey is mildly entertaining. It does have some twists that set it apart.

It is a prequel and takes place in 1719, probably in what will become Wyoming primarily among the Comanche people. Like practically all film treatments of Native American life, it is highly romanticized. For me that was actually the most entertaining part of the movie—the detailed, close-up, reverent look at late Neolithic culture.

It was also what was most distracting to me. I don’t believe there were any actual Comanche in the cast. To my eye they appeared to be heavily Europeanized people from the Southwest or the Northeast. Couldn’t the director have gone to Oklahoma where, to the best of my knowledge, most Comanche can be found today for casting? In for a penny in for a pound it seems to me. I don’t see a great deal of difference between the cast they used and casting Italians, Greeks, and Jews as they did in the 40s and 50s. Note to Hollywood: Native American peoples look as different from one another as Swedes to from Greeks. Saying “Native American” is like saying “European”.

Among the Native Americans of the plains, the young woman who played the lead was old enough to have been married and had a couple of kids rather than being off hunting. Willing suspension of disbelief I guess.

One last point. I believe that by 1719 the horse had become an important part of the Comanche way of life. You would not have known it from this picture. Maybe it’s supposed to be a mythologized version of how the Comanche got horses. Again to the best of my knowledge the Comanche were the foremost horse breeders and handlers among Native American peoples.

I recommend seeing it. It’s predictable but pretty good fun.

We presently face multiple threats. Consider:

From Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks on September 30:

We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people.

and from President Joe Biden’s remarks on October 7:

“First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” Biden warned during remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York where he was introduced by James Murdoch, the youngest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, according to the pool report.

He added: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

What presently presents the greatest threat of nuclear war?

1. Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine
2. Kim Jong Un attacking South Korea
3. Iran attacking Israel
4. A preemptive strike by Israel against Iran
5. China attacking Taiwan
6. India attacking Pakistan or vice versa (update)

My own view is that there is presently a substantial threat of Russia, the U. S., or both backing themselves into a nuclear conflict.

On Tuesday we boarded the dogs. On Wednesday we flew to California on urgent personal business. On Thursday we discharged our personal obligations. Yesterday I flew back to Chicago. Today I picked up the dogs from the kennel and have been tending them. They were quite glad to see me.

In case you’ve been wondering where I have been. Normal programming should resume tomorrow.

In comments there were some questions raised about Illinois’s resources. Unknown to most people Illinois does produce oil and refines oil. It also mines coal. It still produces iron and steel. Unlike many states it could be self-sustaining. That would be a very different Illinois than the present one.

The states are all interdependent. As I documented in comments, some states draw directly on the rest more than others. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the states that are heavily subsidized directly by the rest tend to be gaining population while those that aren’t subsidized directly as much tend to be losing population.

My own view is that states like California, Florida, and Texas need to be spending a lot more on disaster preparedness than they are at present. I mind subsidizing very poor states like, say, Mississippi less than I do subsidizing rich states like California. Heading off a possible retort California is both the richest and the poorest state in the Union. It has more billionaires than any other state but it also has more poor people than any other state.

BTW there are states both Red and Blue, e.g. West Virginia and Vermont, that have no billionaires.

I’m reading lots of breathless predictions these days. Putin is on his way out. Russia is on the verge of collapse. The Ukrainians will retake Crimea.

I don’t know if any of them are true or even credible. I do think that, if Ukraine retakes Crimea, Putin will be out and Russia will collapse into multiple squabbling land-locked statelets.

Sevastopol is practically Russia’s only deep water warm water port. Without it Russia will be crippled—that’s why Russia moved to take it in 2014.

I don’t know about any of these predictions. I do think that nuclear war is about as likely as Ukraine retaking Sevastopol.

The flood plain of the Mississippi has some of the most fertile, easiest to till land in the country. People build there for because it’s desirable.

But there are risks as well. The Mississippi floods. Sometimes it floods a lot; sometimes just a little. You never know.

When you subsidize building in the flood plain, that is to say when the federal government provides flood insurance at less than the cost that would be demanded by private companies, it encourages people to build in the flood plain.

That isn’t fair. Practically by definition those who don’t build in the flood plain are subsidizing those who do.

I wanted to take note of Sean Trende’s interesting analysis of the prospects for the midterm elections at RealClearPolitics. The graphic above, illustrating Joe Biden’s vote share by Congressional district in the 2020 general election, was “sampled” from that post.

The vertical red line illustrates Mr. Biden’s percentage of votes received nationally. Note the “significant valley right at the national average”. What that tells us is that in the districts Biden won he won by considerably more than his national average and in the districts he lost he lost by considerably more. Shorter: the districts are polarized. That’s a consequence of gerrymandering, both by Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s a telling quote:

But one consequence in the near-elimination of swing districts is that there are substantial “levies” on either side of the valley. The levy on the Democrats’ side is particularly steep. So in a universe where Republicans win the popular vote by four points, sweeping all of the districts that Biden won with 54% of the vote or less, the levy would break and the Republican majority would jump from 232 seats to 245 seats. Winning by six points leads to smaller gains as we work down the other side of the levy, leading to a majority of 252 seats. Of course, these are approximations; Republicans would probably win some seats beyond Biden +10 and lose some where Biden performed worse in this scenario. This is just to illustrate how the playing field works.

There’s a similar “levy” on the Republican side as well, although the slope is much gentler. Recall that sweeping the districts that were 52% Biden or less yields 224 seats, while sweeping those that were 51% Biden or less yields 219 seats. Winning the 50%-Biden-or-less seats would give Republicans 206 seats. If the cutpoint were 49% Biden or less, Republicans would win 198 seats. Note the asymmetry. Even with a cutpoint of 47% Biden or less, Republicans would get 191 seats to the Democrats’ 244. In other words, because of the different placements of their levies, Republicans could lose the popular vote by around ten points and have more seats than Democrats would have if Republicans won the popular vote by six points.

I found that an interesting analysis.