Election in Four Vote Batches

At midnight on November 3, Trump was leading in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  If he held these three states, he would win re-election.  The balance shifted in four discrete batches of votes.

At 1:34 AM on November 4, Georgia ran a batch of 136,155 votes.  Of these votes, 82.4% were for Biden and 17.6% were Trump.  That is a 107,040 vote margin for Biden.  As of this writing, he leads Georgia by 12,670 votes.  Hmm.

At 3:42 AM, a batch of 168,542 votes were run in Wisconsin.  Biden received 85.1% of these votes.  He thus gained 118,216 votes in the statewide race.  His margin of victory for the state is 20,608.  Hmm.

At 3:50 AM, a batch of 59,215 votes were processed in Michigan, 92% going to Biden.  At 6:31 AM, a batch of 147,226 votes were run, 95.9% for Biden.  Biden gained 185,069 in the race thanks to these two batches.  The margin for the state is 154,188.  Interesting.

Of course, this could totally be cherry picking.  The margin is always somewhere but this does make for some peculiar graphs:

This graph could just be a brilliant piece of propaganda but there are several such graphs.  Some Democrat should produce graphs from previous elections that have this same pattern so as to debunk this.  Failure to do so only makes it more suspicious.  The only counterargument I keep hearing is there is no widespread fraud.  All right.  Four instances is hardly widespread.  It doesn't need to be widespread to make a difference.  Assure me there isn't fraud in these four lopsided vote batches.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) and her husband are living a happy life when the Clemens brothers ride onto the scene.  Emmet (Ernest Borgnine), Rufus (Strother Martin), and Frank (Jack Elam) murder her husband and then gang rape her.  On their way out the door, they light the house on fire and leave her to burn.  Unsurprisingly, she escapes the inferno and swears vengeance.  Soon thereafter, noted bounty hunter Thomas Price (Robert Culp) comes across Hannie.  She hires him to teach her to shoot.  Though he advises her not to seek revenge, he agrees to train her and also take her to a gunsmith, Bailey, to make a revolver more suited to her.  Bailey (Christopher Lee) lives in Mexico and hosts the pair while Hannie is trained.  While they are with Bailey, some bandits attack.  Hannie finds herself unable to gun down a man who is about to kill her.  Again, Price advises her to abandon her plans for revenge.  Instead, the two part company though it is clear that he has fallen for her and she him.

Here is a Spaghetti Western with ketchup for blood and filmed in Spain.  The Clemens brothers prove to be hapless bumpkins who spend most of their time berating each other.  They're like the three stooges at times.  With the exception of their initial murder/rape/arson, these guys seem more like they are in some campy comedy western.  Very odd.  As a character, Hannie isn't well-developed.  If not for stupidity or outside intervention, she would have been killed by 2 of the 3 brothers.  Why is she so intent on letting them know she's after them or even scheduling where to meet.  Hey, they are wanted criminals; just shoot them without warning.

Mediocre.

How the West Was Won (1962)

The epic 1962 film is told in five parts, all following the Prescott family.

The Rivers (1839): Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) has decided to move west.  He sold his farm in the east, packed up his family, and boarded a boat on the Erie Canal in Albany, NY.  Soon, the family is rafting down the Ohio River in search of land to farm.  On the way, they meet mountain man Linus Rawlings (Jimmy Stewart) and have a run in with river pirates.  Zebulon and his wife drown in the river and their elder daughter, Eve (Carroll Baker) decides that this is where she will settle with Linus.  Her younger sister, Lilith (Debbie Reynolds), has no desire to farm and plans to return to the East.

The Plains (1851): Lilith, who showed a knack for singing, dancing, and just being entertaining during The Rivers, is now a professional entertainer in St. Louis.  She receives word that an admirer has left her a gold strike in California.  She decides to claim her gold mine and joins a wagon train headed to California.  The wagonmaster, Roger (Robert Preston), finds her attractive and pursues her.  Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck), a down on his luck gambler, had heard of her gold claim and is following to take advantage.  The journey makes him a better man and he weds Lilith.

The Civil War (1861 to 1865): Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to join the army and follow his father to war.  Eve tries to convince him to work for her sister in California but he's determined.  He joins and soon finds that war has no glory.  His father dies at Shiloh in 1862.  When the war is done, he returns to the farm to find his mother has died.  He declines his brother's offer for half the farm and stays in the army to go further west.

The Railroad (1868): The railroad is being built to join the east and the west.  Mike King (Richard Widmark) cares not a whit about anything but getting the railroad constructed as fast as possible.  It is left to Lt. Zeb Rawlings to try to keep the peace with the Arapaho.  He is helped in that task by Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), a man who used to trap with his father.  Eventually, King presses the Arapaho too far and Zeb can take it no more.  He resigns the army and rides out west.

The Outlaws (1889): Lilith is forced to sell most of her belongings in San Francisco as she is broke and Cleve has died.  However, she still has a ranch in Arizona and she knows just the man to run it: her nephew Zeb.  Zeb spent much of the intervening years as a marshal.  He has married and has 3 children.  A settled life appeals to his wife.  However, an old enemy, Charlie Gant (Eli Wallach) happens to be in Arizona and is keen on revenge for his brother's death at Zeb's hands.  Deducing that Gant has arrived to stage a train robbery, Zeb plans to be on that train to catch him in the act with the help of Sheriff Ramsey (Lee J Cobb).

At 2 hours and 44 minutes, it's a long film.  Some casting choices are goofy.  According to his tombstone, Linus Rawlings was born in 1810, meaning he was 28 or 29 when he met Eve in The Rivers.  In fact, Jimmy Stewart was 53!  Agatha Clegg has joined the wagon train to find a man in the west but is played by 60 year-old Thelma Ritter.  Optimistic.  Though I like Harry Morgan, he is totally overshadowed by John Wayne in their scene together.  General Grant should not be so overshadowed by a subordinate, even Sherman.  Someone with more star power should have been cast as Grant to balance out John Wayne.

This is a Western that covers all the bases: mountain men, buffalo stampede, railroads, Indian attacks, wagon trains, gambling on steamboats, train robbery, gun fights, romance, dancehall girls, and on.  Five movies in one which tie together neatly.  Entertaining from start to finish.  Thumbs up.

On The Rocks (2020)

Laura (Rashida Jones) thinks her husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans), is acting peculiar.  In fact, she suspects that he is cheating on her with his attractive co-worker, Fiona (Jessica Henwick).  She tells her father, Felix (Bill Murray), about her concerns and he immediately sets about investigating.  He is very soon certain that Dean is unfaithful and takes Laura on increasingly outrageous stake-outs to catch Dean in the act.  Along they way, Felix also flirts with every woman they meet and shows he is a charming though often unreliable man.  He had left his wife, Laura's mother, for another woman.

Murray is fun, but not really funny here.  The comedy is more of the ludicrous situation variety.  He's the center of attention because he is charming and talented, not because he is a barrel of laughs.  Rashida is a downer from beginning to end.  The very plot of the film makes it hard for her to be otherwise.  

When the movie concludes, it is just a letdown.  Maybe we could have had some father-daughter bonding in picturesque New York City with some other foundation than infidelity.  After all, Laura is a writer.  Maybe she could have been doing research when dad re-enters her life and joins in her project with passion.  As is, if felt like the director, Sofia Coppola, just wasted my time with a nothing movie that was only lightly flavored with Bill Murray comedy.

Skip.

Distant Drums (1951)

It is 1840 and Lt. Richard Tufts (Richard Webb) of the US Navy has been selected for a special mission with Captain Wyatt Quincy (Gary Cooper) of the US Army.  The assignment is to sail across Lake Okeechobee and destroy the fort of gunrunners who supply weapons to the Seminoles.  The joint operation is hugely successful and also saw the rescue of captives, among whom is Judy Beckett (Mari Aldon).  While waiting for the boat to come get them, a band of Seminoles arrive.  The heavy fire prevents the boat from coming to shore so Wyatt's company must flee into the everglades to avoid being overrun.  Now they must trek 150 miles through dangerous swamps while evading the Seminole pursuit.  The high stress flight is the perfect setting for romance between Wyatt and Judy.

Much like Seminole, this one is terrible on history.  The soldiers are wearing uniforms from the Spanish-American War (1898) rather than the Second Seminole War.  Though the Patterson revolver was available by now, the Peacemaker that Wyatt carries is decades in the future.  Nobody seems to be using muskets, which is the weapon of the day.  However, it does show some knowledge of the era.  Wyatt declares himself to be a Georgia Cracker and picks out Judy as one too.  The Seminoles are mostly played by Seminoles.  The navy and army did have joint operations and saw a crossing of the Everglades from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Seminoles were armed with rifles that were supplied by Spanish smugglers from Cuba.

The plot is good but the execution has much to be desired.  Like the love triangle in Seminole, this one is equally unsatisfying.  Judy has chosen Wyatt right out the gate and Tufts spends most of his time as a tag along character.  Why didn't he stay with his boat?  Of particular note, this is the movie that had the original Wilhelm Scream when a soldier was eaten by a crocodile, which has proven to be the most enduring part.  Unfortunately, sounds from an African jungle are played to set the mood.

Zachary Taylor, who gained his promotion to brigadier general thanks to the Battle of Okeechobee in 1837, is the commanding general here.  Yes, he really was the commanding general from 1838 to 1840, so this is accurate.  He earned his nickname of 'Old Rough and Ready' during his tenure in Florida.

As mindless popcorn fun, the movie is fine but don't think you have learned anything when the credits roll.

Seminole (1953)

The story opens with the court martial of Lieutenant Lance Caldwell (Rock Hudson), accused of murder and treason.  As such, the story is mostly a flashback.  It is 1835 in Florida and the Seminoles have refused relocation to Oklahoma.  Major Degan, commander of Fort King and a hero of the Creek War, intends to move the Seminoles or slaughter them.  Lt. Caldwell, newly arrived at Fort King and a native of Florida, suggested peace talks.  Furthermore, he is opposed to an assault against the Seminoles as the swamps will be difficult to navigate.  In no time, he and Major Degan have a contentious relationship.  Degan marches a detachment into the swamps, intending to make a surprise assault on the camp of Osceola (Anthony Quinn).  Of course, Osceola knew they were coming and set a trap, wiping out almost the entirety of Degan's troops (one supposes this was to represent the Dade Massacre that triggered the Second Seminole War).  While a wounded Degan is dragged to safety by Sgt. Magruder (a very young Lee Marvin!), Caldwell is captured by Osceola.  Soon thereafter, Osceola is summoned to a peace talk by Major Degan.  Osceola comes under flag of truce and is immediately imprisoned.

The movie doesn't know what it wants to be.  Is it an action-adventure film?  Is it a story of a love triangle?  Is it a historical epic?  It tries to be all of the above and fails.  There are a few action scenes, the battle in the Seminole village being the big one.  Not much action really.  Revere Muldoon (Barbara Hale) plays the love interest for both Caldwell and Osceola but there's no tension here since she has already chosen Osceola when the story begins.  This feels tacked on and could have been dumped in favor of more development of Osceola.  Much is made of his being a half-breed which is true but is not further explained.  As far as history, this story gets all the specifics of Osceola's life wrong but still has the gist of it.

Osceola was the son of a Creek woman of mixed heritage and a Scottish trader.  Though he is named John in the movie, his given name was Billy Powell.  He was born among the Creek in Alabama but he relocated to the Florida after the Creek War (1813-14) when he was only 9 or 10.  Despite being a Creek with mostly Scottish ancestry, he became a chief among the Seminoles.  He killed an Indian agent named Thompson in 1835 around the same time as the Dade Massacre, which began the 2nd Seminole War.  In 1837, he was summoned to a peace conference under flag of truce.  General Jessup had him arrested and imprisoned.  He died three months later in Fort Moultrie, South Carolina.

Anachronistically, both Degan and Caldwell are armed with revolvers in 1835 though Samuel Colt didn't patent his revolver until 1836.  The soldiers marched with their bayonets fixed which makes it very difficult to reload a musket.  There were many escaped slaves among the Seminoles, called Black Seminoles; none are to be seen here.  Rather than the fictional Kajeck (which isn't a Seminole name as far as I can tell), how about John Horse, a famous Black Seminole of the time.  Or what of Coacoochee or Micanopy?  Did the screenwriter read any sources before naming these other Indians?  Why not have General Jessup instead of the fictional Degan?  Why are there monkey screams in the background?  Someone grabbed jungle sounds from the shelf and thought that was appropriate.  Ha!

Entertaining film but terrible history.  I did like seeing Lee Marvin and James Best (best know for his role of Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard) early in their careers.

Ballot Breakdown

Here's what I want to know.  This should be available but I haven't seen it.  What portion of each vote type did the candidates get?  Who won the early voters at polling stations?  Who won the absentee ballot vote and what is the ratio?  Who won election day voters?  Who won the mail-in vote?

There are, as far as I know, 4 types of vote:

1. Early in-person voting at a polling station.

2. Absentee ballot - one that the voter had to apply to receive.

3. Mail-in ballot - one that was mailed to registered voters unsolicited.

4. In-person election day voting at polling station.

What is the breakdown between Trump and Biden of these various types of vote?  Heck, what proportion of the vote do each of these types of vote represent?  Are mail-in ballots 10% of the votes or 50%?  My preference is for in-person voting, ideally on election day.  I have the least confidence in unsolicited mail-in ballots.  If mail-in ballots change the result, I have serious concerns.

China, Russia, and who knows who else have databases full of American voter rolls.  What would prevent them from setting up a print shop and just churning out mail-in ballots with their preferred candidate and sending them in?  Sure, lots of them will get rejected and many will be challenged when the actual voter shows up and claims to have not voted.  But a lot will be accepted.  Wisconsin had 89% voter turn out.  Really?  That seems high.  How many of those votes were mail-in ballots?  I want to know.

The Kid Detective (2020)

Abe Applebaum (Adam Brody) is a detective in a small town.  When he was 13, he solved mysteries like the Scooby Doo crew.  He was a precocious kid who solved TV mysteries as soon as the eventual villain was introduced.  His office wall is covered with newspaper clippings of his great achievements.  His career nosedived when his secretary and secret crush, Gracie, vanished.  He never solved the case.  Nonetheless, he is still a detective.  Now 32, he is a bit of an embarrassment.  He still has the same office and solves cases like finding a lost cat.  However, a teenaged girl, Caroline (Sophie Nelisse), arrives in his office and hires him to solve a murder.  Her boyfriend was stabbed to death and the police have made no progress.  Abe jumps at the opportunity.  As Abe doesn't have a car, Caroline chauffeurs him around town in her car.

The comedy elements are rarely laugh out loud funny.  The humor derives from the ridiculousness of the situation and the seriousness of the characters involved.  Also, he is generally incompetent as an adult detective.  His clever tricks repeatedly bite him and he is shown to have implicated the wrong person in one of his famous cases.

Mediocre and slow, best avoided.

Synchronic (2020)

A man and a woman in a hotel room in New Orleans are sitting on a bed when they each take a pill.  Soon, both are hallucinating.  She finds herself in a jungle and sees a snake slithering toward her.  He finds himself falling from a great height in a desert sandstorm, grinning like an idiot while plummeting earthward.

Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are paramedics who have been responding to strange injuries.  In each case, they find some new drug called Synchronic is involved.  Then they respond to a couple in a hotel room.  The woman has been bit by a snake and her leg is swollen.  The man is found in pieces at the bottom of the elevator shaft.  Then Dennis' teenaged daughter, Brianna, vanishes and it turns out she took a dose of Synchronic.

Steve buys as much Synchronic as he can get his hands on and tests it while filming himself.  The drug sends him back in time for 7 minutes but where and when he goes is determined by his location.  Can he use the last of his supply to track down Brianna?

The movie had a lot of potential but never got there.  There is a lot of nonlinear story telling which just confuses the plot.  The score begins as heavy and oppressive, like this is some dark horror but mostly nothing happens until Steve starts experimenting.  Steve has a lot of backstory that doesn't add to the movie.

Mostly disappointing.  Skip.

Love and Monsters (2020)

In the near future, the earth is threatened by an asteroid.  The nations of the world respond by blasting it to bits with a barrage of missiles.  However, the resulting fallout has a mutating impact on many animals.  Much of the population is wiped out and the survivors live in bunkers.

Joel (Dylan O'Brien) was 17 when the disaster struck.  It is now 7 years later and he lives in a bunker but pines for Aimee (Jessica Henwick).  With great effort, he learned that she is in a bunker 85 miles away.  He decides it is time to be with her and sets out.  Being something of a bumpkin, he is nearly killed but for the intervention of a dog.  He adopts the dog or perhaps the dog adopts him.  They meet Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt), a pair who survive above ground thanks to certain rules which they teach him.

A rather comical take on the apocalypse, Joel takes the hero's journey where he starts as a bumpkin and ends as a leader.  He's still a bit goofy though.

Mindless popcorn fun!

Benford's Law

Though I took a lot of math and even a couple statistics courses, I was unfamiliar with Benford's Law.  Even having read it, I'm not clear on why the pattern holds.  However, the graphs are interesting and it is funny that every candidate follows the pattern except Joe Biden in certain key locations.  Is this just so much cherry picking?  Could easily be.  Have the Russians turned against Trump and now sided with Biden?  Doubtful.  An interesting read.

Joe Biden's votes violate Benford's Law

Against the Trend

For the last 120 years, if an incumbent president received more votes in his re-election campaign than he received in his election, he was re-elected.  In fact, if the incumbent president merely maintained 90% of his original vote total, he has always been re-elected.  Until now.

Here is a chart that shows only presidents who were elected and then ran for re-election, which is why Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, LBJ, and Ford are not included:

In 2008, Obama received 69.5 million votes but won re-election with 61 million votes.  By contrast, Trump won in 2016 with 63 million votes but lost re-election win 70.5 million (as of this writing) votes.  Joe Biden, who doesn't hold a candle to Obama in the charisma department, received 75 million votes.

Ruinous Election

Whoever wins this election will be illegitimate to much of the country.  Already the courts are involved, making this Bush v. Gore II.  There are enough irregularities that will only serve to confirm to Trump voters that he was right when he claimed it was a rigged election.  Changing election rules on the fly was doomed to create problems and the piles of mail-in ballots have slowed the counting.  It's Florida 2000 all over again but in multiple states.  This kind of disaster is how you ruin faith in elections.

Our voting system needs to be overhauled.  It has needed it for years.  One would think that after Florida 2000, something would have been done.  Nope.  20 years later and it has gotten worse.  Nevada can count billions of dollars in an instant but can't figure out millions of votes.  Of course, voting is a state issue.  Personally, I'd like to go back to a system where we have election day rather than election season.  No early voting, no mail-in ballots.

This is par for the course in 2020.  What a year.

A Campaign in New Mexico with Colonel Doniphan

In the wake of the war declaration on Mexico, the United States called up volunteer soldiers.  In St. Louis, Missouri, the 1st Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers was formed under the commanded of Colonel Alexander Doniphan.  Part of the Army of the West, commanded by General Stephen Watts Kearny, the regiment marched across Kansas and arrived at Bent's Fort in what is now Colorado.  From here, they crossed into Mexico and captured Santa Fe; not a shot was fired.  Kearny took only a portion of the army and continued westward for California while Doniphan marched south with plans to rendezvous with General John Wool in El Paso.  Just north of El Paso, the regiment met a Mexican force and the regiment had its first battle on Christmas Day of 1846.  Despite being outnumbered, they soundly trounced the Mexican troops and occupied El Paso.  After a month in El Paso, the regiment set out to meet General Wool in Chihuahua.  On the last day of February, the regiment met an army on the outskirts of Chihuahua and again emerged victorious.  The regiment occupied Chihuahua for two months before receiving orders to meet General Taylor in Saltillo.  Upon arriving, they finally found General Wool.  Declining to enlist for another year, the regiment made its way to the mouth of the Rio Grande and a ship to New Orleans.  In its year of service, the regiment had marched 5,500 miles, the longest military campaign since the days of Alexander the Great.

Written by the regiment's quartermaster, the book is more of a travelogue than a tale of war.  The battles are few and far between.  Most of the book details the places and small events: a rain storm in Kansas, the cultural differences of the many parts of Mexico, the landscapes, commentary on flora and fauna, issues with feeding the regiment, and so forth.  Though the author gives lots of information about the voyage, very little is mentioned of the soldiers.  Only a vague picture is painted of Colonel Doniphan and less so of other officers and men.

For those interested in an eye-witness account of the period, highly recommended.

Kit Carson (1940)

Kit Carson (Jon Hull) and his band of trappers are coming down from the mountains to return to civilization and sell their furs when they are set upon by a band of Shoshone.  Worse still, these Shoshone are armed with rifles!  Most of Kit's party was killed but he and two others escaped.  Arriving at Fort Bridger, they are offered a job by Capt. John Fremont (Dana Andrews), who is seeking a trail to California.  Moreover, Fremont is escorting a wagon train funded by Dolores Murphy (Lynn Bari), who hails from Monterey, California.  Though Carson refuses Fremont's job offer, he reluctantly accepts Murphy's, mostly because he expects she will get scalped if he doesn't.

In California, General Castro has been arming the Shoshone with specific purpose of killing migrants.  He sends one of his underlings to make sure that Fremont and the wagon train are wiped out before crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Back in the wagon train, John is fallen in love with Dolores but Dolores has fallen in love with Kit.  The love triangle must be put on hold in order for Kit to save everyone from a concerted assault by rifle-armed Shoshone.  When the party arrives safely at the Murphy Hacienda, Kit decides it is time to leave.  Such plans are ruined when he comes upon a Mexican wagon train of weapons and gunpowder.  It turns out that Castro is going to wipe out all the American settlers.  Kit warns the American settlers and they reply by establishing the California Republic and raising the Bear Flag.  Carson and Fremont arrange for a battle with General Castro.  Of course, they defeat him.  Kit kisses Dolores and heads south with Fremont toward Los Angeles to join US forces there in the Mexican American War.

Of note, Ward Bond - a character actor who was ubiquitous in the 40s and 50s - played an Australian with an American accent but he did have a boomerang.  Clayton Moore, who would go on to play the Lone Ranger in the long running TV series, appears as the leader of the wagon train.

Though a fun film, it is wildly inaccurate.  Jim Bridger was only 5 years older than Carson but he is played by 53 year-old Raymond Hatton to the 25 year-old Jon Hall.  Huh.  Carson was only 5'6" but is portrayed by 6'1" Hall.  Huh.  Carson and Fremont's first expedition in 1842 never went to California.  Their second one, in 1843, did.  It was their third expedition in 1845 that coincided with the Mexican-American War and the Bear Flag Revolt.  Jose Castro was the commanding general of Alta California during the war but never engaged in a battle.  In 1840, Fremont married Jessie Benton, daughter of the powerful Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and was therefore unlikely to propose marriage to a woman on her way to California.  Likewise, Carson had married Josefa Jaramillo in 1843, with whom he had 8 children.  The romance angle of the movie is out of place.

Popcorn fun but terrible history.

A Quest for Amber

If you enjoy my blog, perhaps you'll like my book: A Quest for Amber