Don't Count Your Chickens

The Perplexing Case of the Undecided Voter

Chances are that, like David Sedaris, you're perplexed by those unsure who to vote for in 2024. Here's how he describes the undecided voter: "To put them in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ 'Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​' she asks.​ 'Or would​ you prefer the platter of sh-t with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?' To be undecided in this election is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked." Maybe the method of chicken preparation is a determining factor for some, but political operatives from the two campaigns are a lot less focused on the dwindling (and yes, perplexing) number of those who are undecided between Trump and Harris and more focused on the bigger prize: Winning over those who are undecided about voting at all. Ron Brownstein explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Undecided Voters Are Not Who You Think They Are. "Persuadable voters get the most attention from the media, but campaigns recognize that irregular voters can loom much larger in the outcome—especially in presidential elections when more of them ultimately participate." These aren't the voters the media tends to focus on. They're not the ones we see interviewed in small town diners. They might not even have decided whether they want to go to the diner in the first place. (If they do, I'd recommend the chicken.)

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Manhattan Transfer

If you know an FBI agent in NYC, try to be as supportive as possible. Chances are they've been extremely overworked lately. Well, specifically the FBI units focused on NYC Mayor Eric Adams and his administration. (Probably known around the office as The Adams Crime Family.) Those investigations have gone to the top as "New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on five federal charges related to bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals." Adams insists he did nothing wrong and won't resign. I imagine pressure might alter that stance, and in New York, the governor can remove a mayor from office when criminal charges are brought. Gothamist: What happens if Mayor Adams resigns – or refuses to leave City Hall?

+ You can read the whole indictment here. It includes gems like this: "At on epoint during her voluntary interview, the Adams Staffer excused herself to a bathroom and, while there, deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate with ADAMS, the Promoter, the Turkish Official, the Airline Manager, and others." Others may or may not refer to the Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens, Two Turtle Doves, a really disturbing text exchange with Mark Robinson, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

+ The Adams administration "is reeling from multiple high-level resignations and at least four federal probes." Here's the latest from NBC.

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Ready, Willing, and Enabled

"Like many of the women who say they were assaulted while working for the luxury department store, she recalls the doctors who carried out intimate medical examinations on staff. Others describe the personal assistants who summoned them to Fayed and the security guards who protected the apartment where he carried out many of the attacks. 'There was a whole system to facilitate this,' says Dean Armstrong KC, one of the barristers representing some of the alleged victims." Harrods' Mohamed Al Fayed is accused of being serial sexual predator. Like other high profile monsters, he couldn't have done it alone. BBC: How Fayed built a corrupt system of enablers to carry out his sexual abuse.

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The Ring of Firefights

"The immediate trigger and goal of the war was a Hamas-Iranian interest to scuttle the Biden team’s diplomatic initiative to forge Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia into a ring of peace. The Iranian-Hamas counterstrategy was to ignite a ring of fire around Israel, using Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq and West Bank militants armed by Iran with weapons smuggled through Jordan. The Iranian strategy is exquisite from Tehran’s point of view: Destroy Israel by sacrificing as many Palestinians and Lebanese as necessary but never risk a single Iranian life. The Iranians are ready to die to the last Lebanese, the last Palestinian, the last Syrian and the last Yemeni to eliminate Israel (and distract the world from the Iranian regime’s abuses of its own people and imperialist control over Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria)." The question is not really whether Iran (and its backers) are responsible for the chaos in the Middle East. The question is how Israel should respond. "The problem for Israelis and the Jewish people is that while the Netanyahu government was right in its diagnosis that this was a war of annihilation, it refused to conduct it in the only way that could hope to bring success." Tom Friedman in the NYT (Gift Article): Why Everything Is Suddenly Spiraling for Israel. One could argue that things are spiraling for Hamas and Hezbollah (and even Iran) as well. They're certainly spiraling for Hezbollah's leadership. But they're also spiraling for innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Here's the latest from BBC.

+ The wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine are part of a much bigger proxy fight that, along with our upcoming election, could determine much about how the world looks in coming decades. Russia has secret war drones project in China, intel sources say.

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Extra, Extra

Helene: The eye of Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall Thursday night. The storm is both strong an extremely large. Here's the latest from CNN.

+ Open Wallet: "In the span of just a few hours yesterday, the public learned that Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer and the most important leader at the company besides Altman, is departing along with two other crucial executives: Bob McGrew, the chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, a vice president of research who was instrumental in launching ChatGPT and GPT-4o, the 'omni' model that, during its reveal, sounded uncannily like Scarlett Johansson. To top it off, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is planning to turn away from its nonprofit roots and become a for-profit enterprise that could be valued at $150 billion." The Atlantic: OpenAI Takes Its Mask Off. (You didn't need the assistance of a warehouse of supercomputers to see this coming.)

+ Punching Down: "States that passed anti-transgender laws aimed at minors saw suicide attempts by transgender and gender nonconforming teenagers increase by as much as 72% in the following years." Political hate speech and policies are not victimless acts.

+ Arrested Development: "Twice in the same week in May 2023, Oakland County Sheriff’s deputies restrained and put 10-year-old Caleb Killingsworth in the back of a patrol car. The second time, Caleb, an autistic child who weighed less than 90 pounds and stood less than 5 feet tall, according to his mother, was restrained on the ground and then handcuffed. The fifth grader came away with scrapes on his face." An investigation from Detroit Free Press: Calls to cops show specialized schools in Michigan are failing students, critics say.

+ Sportsless: "It’s been a slow death, like going to the doctor and being told you have two years to live. There have been so many losses in Oakland, and I think this is the bottom." The two years (it's been more like a decade) is up as of this afternoon. Oakland says goodbye to major professional sports with A's final game.

+ Framed: "The world's longest-serving death row prisoner was acquitted on Thursday, more than half a century after his murder conviction, when a Japanese court ruled that evidence had been fabricated." At this point, he has been in jail so long that age and ailing health prevented him from being in court to learn the outcome of his retrial.

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Bottom of the News

Everything is political. Even dessert. A Pennsylvania bakery known for its election cookie poll is swamped with orders. (If I lived in a swing state and had to put up with the nonstop ads, I'd probably need to eat about hundred of these a day to cope...)

+ Some shots from the comedy wildlife photography awards.