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It’s after midnight and I need to get to bed now, so I won’t see any of the results from the Iowa precinct caucuses until the morning, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling about them. To manage my own expectations: I’ll be disappointed if Bernie gets less than 30%, I’ll be stunned and horrified if he actually doesn’t win, and contrariwise I’ll be ecstatic if he gets over 50%, a clear majority, topping everyone else combined, and I think that’s a definite possibility.
Why do I think he can do so much better than the polls?
1. I think the polls are lying
2. He got 50% in 2016, and most of those people are still with him
3. The big rally in Cedar Rapids a couple of nights ago. Bernie filled an arena, there were 3,000 people there to see him speak. That’s a bit short of the 20-30,000 he can draw in L.A. or New York, but it’s not bad for Iowa. Also, on the same night Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg also had rallies. None of them had over 500. If all of those 3,000 people show up to caucus (and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t) we will simply overwhelm the opposition.
4. Early reports look good. I’d never heard of these ‘satellite’ caucuses before and I’m still not sure they’re a good idea, but they definitely seem to be breaking Bernie’s way. At 2 locations, he got 100% of the delegates.
5. The opposition has already started damage control. “Most (Biden aides) feel it’s not going to be great,” one Biden insider admitted. You’d think they wouldn’t admit to such pessimism before the night has even begun, but there’s a real possibility they could fail to break 15%, and then they’re going to look ridiculous.
So, we will see. Whatever the results we will talk about them tomorrow for a bit but then the focus will shift, almost immediately, to New Hampshire. And then, for the next 4 years, nobody will pay attention to Iowa again.

“In ancient Rome, there was a poem, about a dog who found two bones. He looked at one. and then the other. Turned round in circles, and he dropped dead” -Devo

People are like that, sometimes. They’ll be talking about one thing and then somebody will bring up some totally unrelated thing and everybody switches to that and conversations, and plans, and projects fade into nothingness.
It gets used in politics a lot. Change the subject to your favorite subject, and all else is forgotten until somebody changes it back and you’re arguing back and forth about which things you should be arguing about, instead of arguing about what you should be arguing about. Paralysis sets in.
I was just in a discussion about Bernie’s plan to legalize marijuana by executive order on his first day in office, which I think is awesome of course because marijuana should have been legal always, and can have medicinal uses which will help lots of people, and mostly it will get a lot of people out of jail who shouldn’t be in there. Most people were in agreement, a few were worried that he was moving too fast, and then one person said “I don’t think marijuana should be legalized until after he’s closed the camps on the border.”
Of course I want to see something done about the camps, and Bernie is aware of that issue and also wants to find a humane solution. But these two things have nothing to do with each other.
Let’s not devolve into arguments about which issue is more important than the other. As Bernie himself is fond of saying “You have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Today, someone pointed out to me on Facebook, is a big day. It’s Groundhog Day, of course. It’s also Super Bowl Sunday. And, it’s a palindrome. 020220.
They said it’s the only palindromic date of this century, but that’s not true. December 11th of next year will also be a palindrome (121121) if you’re using American date notation (month/day/year) and November 12th of next year if you’re using European notation (day/month/year). So, it’s kind of fun to note, but not really a big deal.
The Super Bowl is kind of a big deal for millions of American football fans and the residents of the cities represented, but I haven’t seriously followed American football for years and didn’t know it was Super Bowl Sunday until this morning when I saw the post. So, good luck to all, may the best team win, and it will be cool if there are some spectacular plays for highlight shots, but for the most part I don’t care much.
Groundhog Day is a holiday I take note of, largely because Groundhog Day was one of the greatest movies of all time, but I’ve kind of ruined it for my kids, because they’re so committed to the concept that anything I like must be super lame. Also, I do tend to pay attention to the Groundhog’s prediction even though I know it’s a load of old bollocks. Sort of like the Horoscope, or Facebook quizzes. Not scientific, just a conversation starter.
So, it’s a big day, kind of, due to the convergence of several unimportant events, but tomorrow will be a big day, really and truly.
The Iowa Precinct Caucuses. I am nervous and excited already.

As everybody predicted, the Senate has voted to not hear any witnesses, and it is safe to predict that they will not vote to remove Trump from office or do anything that might hurt his feelings in any way.
Salon had a pretty good article on it, saying that the Republican party has sacrificed any dignity they have left and have openly embraced totalitarianism.
The Democrats, instead of immediately announcing new impeachment charges, like for corruption, or maybe the egregious human rights violations he is committing on our southern border, or in supporting the Saudis torture and murder of an American journalist, or tax evasion, have responded by changing their own rules and allowing Mike Bloomberg into the debates.
It’s not a direct counterpoint, they are just reminding everybody that they are crooked, too.
So, what can we do? I guess the only thing we can do is take down the names of every Senator that voted to refuse witnesses, of every Senator who votes to allow Trump to stay in office, and target them for defeat at the ballot box. It probably won’t be effective in most cases. The most conservative of them are from the most conservative states, and it’s not exactly new news to their constituents that they are right wing assholes.
But if it’s effective in even half a dozen cases, it could tip the balance in the Senate.
Which won’t help us out of our current dilemma. But it might help us out of the next one.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall – Robert Frost

A portion of Trump’s wall fell down today. It was under construction, the concrete hadn’t set yet, and the wind blew it over. It landed on the Mexican side, crushing some trees and closing a road for a while. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but that could, technically, be considered an invasion. An incursion, any way.
One of my Facebook friends, and I thought this was funny, was ranting and raving about how God hates the wall, and this is his revenge on Trump. It’s a sign that the whole wall idea is a bad one.
However, logically, there is no reason to blame God (who probably does not exist IRL) for this, when shoddy workmanship and bad planning are quite enough to bring walls crashing down.
Of course, officially the wind is to blame. The 37 mph (approx. 60 kph) wind. That is about half the wind speed of the very mildest thing that can be called a hurricane. 37 mph is a breezy day, but that’s about it. Until the wall fell on them, the trees weren’t even bending.
So, vengeance from a wrathful God or just a bad day on the construction site, it doesn’t look good for the wall.
One other thing that doesn’t look good for the wall: Bernie Sanders, in a bold move just ahead of the Iowa precinct caucuses, has announced that he will start his term with a bunch of executive orders, and one of them would be to stop construction of the wall.