Posts Made By: James Brown

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

I get lots of cuts myself due to my profession, and I try not to pick at them because they itch when they scab up.

I had no idea internet trolls cut themselves!  Seriously, I spent the last 25 years of my career using a computer daily, often for many hours a day, and I do not remember a single cut.   Maybe you need a new mouse or keyboard?

Originally Posted by Jim Moscheck

Had a truly remarkable day. Went to the top of Mauna Kea which is the most sacred place in all of Hawaii. I swear I could feel my wife’s presence as we were gaining altitude. Our tour guide was awesome and Deb would have loved his spirit. He said we were lucky we had such a clear day, yesterday you couldn’t even see Mauna Kea and he even played island reggae music when he wasn’t talking, which Deb would have also loved. We started out at Rainbow Falls. We went through 10 of the 11 micro climates on the way up. Not to mention seeing all of the great telescopes up there. 

It was the highlight of all the other amazing highlights of my trip and in the last port of call to boot. ❤️

Now the long voyage across the rest of the Pacific and we’ll be back in Seattle next Thursday morning. 

The trip was a healing experience for me in many ways. Still miss my wife like crazy, but I’m learning to deal with the grief and loneliness. I even think she may have had something to do with the beautiful weather. It can be windy and cold up there but I was in shorts and a t shirt and very comfortable. Sure wish I could have gone back up tonight to do some observing, but that will have to wait for my return under a moonless sky. And I will return as I liked it so much here.

Thanks for the report, I am very happy for you!

Originally Posted by Maurice Clark

This one is a 2.5 second exposure using a 35mm f/2.8 Carenar lens. showing the comet above the neighbour's house. Since the Moon was so bring it was not worth heading out of town to a dark site, so just used the camera in my driveway.  Maybe Saturday night will be darker.

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi Maurice and friends:

It has been beautiful tonight and last night.  Tsuchinshan-atlas has been naked eye and big!  I captured a bunch of images with my deep sky camera last night and should be able to process them tomorrow.  Processing comets is a challenge!  Stay tuned.  With any luck, I'll have a really nice composite, since the comet set to the SSW of us, right over a nice mountain.

Jim

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Rich's response to Rod pretty much had it all. Projection, insults, name-calling, shoot-the-messenger, a call out, etc. Amazingly, he squeezed all that into only a few one-sentence paragraphs.

By the way, Rich, the quote "suckers and losers" has been corroborated by John Kelly. You know, the retired four-star Marine general who was Mr. Trump's White House chief of staff. You truly have to be Trump's boot-licker to claim that John Kelly is lying.

In this case James, it appears to me the Atlantic is the one most likely to be lying.  

"The Atlantic, using anonymous sources, wrote that Trump disparaged murdered Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen & ordered Mark Meadows not to pay for her funeral. Guillen’s sister Marya is defending Trump’s treatment of her sister & her family, and Mark Meadows is denying the story."   https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1848831417012392116.html  (emphasis mine)

Mayra Guillen, the murdered specialist's sister.  As quoted above and here: 

"Wow.  I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.  

https://x.com/mguilen_/status/1848824382572900374

Mark Meadows, who is the only source in the room at the time willing to use his name:  "Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false.  He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family."

https://x.com/MarkMeadows/status/1848827404145336321

Ben Williamson, Meadow's aid:  "On the left: I sent Atlantic a comment saying President Trump “absolutely did not say that,” referring to the alleged comments about Ms. Guillen they printed.  On the right: Atlantic translated that comment to “didn’t hear Trump say it."  Treat this dishonest piece accordingly.”  (JB comment:  you can see this sleight of hand right in the Atlantic article.)

https://x.com/_WilliamsonBen/status/1848848591961338197

Maybe the anonymous source allegedly relied on by the Atlantic has the story right.  I doubt it.  I think that this is another example of activist "journalism: that among many other instances of overreach to defeat Trump will guarantee a Trump victory.

The Atlantic audience is possibly universally Harris-voting audience.  The reaction to this hit piece is being amplified far and wide.  It is not a good look 13 days from the election.

Jim

Originally Posted by James Brown

In this case James, it appears to me the Atlantic is the one most likely to be lying.  

"The Atlantic, using anonymous sources, wrote that Trump disparaged murdered Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen & ordered Mark Meadows not to pay for her funeral. Guillen’s sister Marya is defending Trump’s treatment of her sister & her family, and Mark Meadows is denying the story."   https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1848831417012392116.html  (emphasis mine)

Mayra Guillen, the murdered specialist's sister.  As quoted above and here: 

"Wow.  I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.  

https://x.com/mguilen_/status/1848824382572900374

Mark Meadows, who is the only source in the room at the time willing to use his name:  "Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false.  He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family."

https://x.com/MarkMeadows/status/1848827404145336321

Ben Williamson, Meadow's aid:  "On the left: I sent Atlantic a comment saying President Trump “absolutely did not say that,” referring to the alleged comments about Ms. Guillen they printed.  On the right: Atlantic translated that comment to “didn’t hear Trump say it."  Treat this dishonest piece accordingly.”  (JB comment:  you can see this sleight of hand right in the Atlantic article.)

https://x.com/_WilliamsonBen/status/1848848591961338197

Maybe the anonymous source allegedly relied on by the Atlantic has the story right.  I doubt it.  I think that this is another example of activist "journalism: that among many other instances of overreach to defeat Trump will guarantee a Trump victory.

The Atlantic audience is possibly universally Harris-voting audience.  The reaction to this hit piece is being amplified far and wide.  It is not a good look 13 days from the election.

Jim

There is more.  

Guillen family lawyer Natalie Khawam:

"After having dealt with hundreds of reporters in my legal career, this is unfortunately the first time I have to go on record and call out Jeffrey Goldberg@the Atlantic: not only did he misrepresent our conversation but he outright LIED in HIS sensational story.
More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillen’s murder… for cheap political gain.

I would like to also point out that the timing of this “story” is quite suspicious, as this supposed conversation that Trump had would have occurred over 4 years ago!
Why a story about it now?!

As everyone knows, not only did Trump support our military, he also invited my clients to the Oval Office and supported the I Am Vanessa Guillen bill too.

I’m grateful we were successful in getting bipartisan support of the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act, and because of everyone’s hard work and efforts our service members now have more protections and rights while serving our country."

https://x.com/WhistleblowerLF/status/1848865275955056983

Again, all credit to Jerry Dunleavy.  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1848831417012392116.html  I pretty much cut and pasted his rebuttal here and above.  Jim

I am at peace with the likelihood of Trump's reelection, even though I did not vote for him.  (We voted a couple days ago using Colorado's brilliant mail-out, drop-off system.)  Trump has the momentum, and his favorability rating has amazingly almost caught up with Harris's.   Ill conceived and unsourced hit pieces like this are partially to blame.  This Atlantic article reeks of desperation.   J

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I'm not a fan of the Atlantic and was not defending its hit piece. It is a known fact that John Kelly corroborated the story. I said little more than that as much.

Understood.  I am attacking only the Atlantic, not you.  To be fully transparent, I am also signaling the flaws in the Atlantic piece and my concern about "activist" journalism to Rod, whom I think is too susceptible to this sort of thing.  Nothing of a magnitude like Rich of course, but a little bit.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I don't think these hit pieces provide more than red meat for the faithful on both sides.

Regarding the election, despite recent polls, it's still pretty much a coin toss. I'm similarly at peace if Trump wins. We survived him for four years; we'll survive it again. The hyperbolic doomsday commentary from both sides is bombastic and untrue. And as you have pointed out many times, the system is more robust than one man. I do dislike the people who will ride in on his coattails, though, to implement their agendas and ideologies, and I hope we don't have a real national emergency again under his watch, should he win.

It is absolutely a coin toss.  As of this morning Nate Silver's model has it 53/47 in Trump's favor, which is 50/50 in any rational person's book.   It seems to me, based upon polls and the tone of recent news articles, that Trump has the "momentum" even though momentum is possibly not a thing in politics.

One thing is absolutely true in 2024 - a systemic polling "near miss" in any candidate's favor means that candidate wins.  The polling underestimated Trump in '16 and '20.  Have they made corrections?  Have they overcorrected?  Time will tell.

p.s. on edit:  D pundits seem to become morose after a slight set back in the polling.  R pundits seem to become jubilant in view of an insignificant lead.  This is just  an off-hand comment about the natures of D and R pundits.  Silver had a blog post mentioning this.  https://www.natesilver.net/p/when-you-should-panic-about-the-polls

Originally Posted by James Brown

It is absolutely a coin toss.  As of this morning Nate Silver's model has it 53/47 in Trump's favor, which is 50/50 in any rational person's book.   It seems to me, based upon polls and the tone of recent news articles, that Trump has the "momentum" even though momentum is possibly not a thing in politics.

One thing is absolutely true in 2024 - a systemic polling "near miss" in any candidate's favor means that candidate wins.  The polling underestimated Trump in '16 and '20.  Have they made corrections?  Have they overcorrected?  Time will tell.

p.s. on edit:  D pundits seem to become morose after a slight set back in the polling.  R pundits seem to become jubilant in view of an insignificant lead.  This is just  an off-hand comment about the natures of D and R pundits.  Silver had a blog post mentioning this.  https://www.natesilver.net/p/when-you-should-panic-about-the-polls

Speaking of polling near misses - Silver just dropped a blog post about this literally right now.  This might be paywalled?  https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-harris-could-beat-her-polls

Originally Posted by James Brown

Speaking of polling near misses - Silver just dropped a blog post about this literally right now.  This might be paywalled?  https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-harris-could-beat-her-polls

The money quote, "Most of the column is about how Kamala Harris could beat her polls — or Donald Trump could beat his again. One thing that might be counterintuitive is that even a normal-sized polling error — polls are typically off by around 3 points in one direction or the other — could lead to one candidate sweeping all 7 key battleground states. In our simulations yesterday, which account for the possibility of a correlated polling error, the most common outcome was Trump winning all 7 swing states: this happened 24 percent of the time. And the next most common was a Harris sweep, which occurred in 15 percent of simulations..."

I subscribed to Silver's Substack by the way, I really enjoy his analytical approach.  

https://www.natesilver.net

https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-harris-could-beat-her-polls