The perfect response to Trump’s territorial trolling

Via Brian Beutler, the response from the Mexican President on convicted felon Donald Trump’s idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Wednesday that the United States revert to a historic name for the territory, America Mexicana, in a clapback at President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

And on the subject of making Canada the 51st state of the United States, MP Elizabeth May puts forth a proposal for Washington, Oregon, and California to become the 11th province of Canada:

Take that, Mr. Convicted Felon!

Music is a robust language

I sing in a church choir, one which typically sings four-part harmony. For many hymns, we start in unison for verse 1, then add parts in later verses. Sometimes, my fellow tenor and I will try to sing our part, but decide to shift to unison. Sometimes, when I sing, I sing the wrong pitch, or the wrong words. However, the music goes on – in general, the choir continues singing. Even in cases where the director may make a change (going to another verse due to the entrance of the priest not being complete), the choir follows, using their musicality to keep the music going.

In all these instances, the printed music provides the framework for the musical performance. As a counter-point, source code for computer software is a fragile language – one semi-colon out of place and everything stops…

The sentencing of Donald Trump

Today, Donald Trump was sentenced for his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.

Coverage: (CNN – Takeaways) (CNN – live blog) (CNN – audio of hearing) (MSNBC – audio of hearing) (USA Today – article and downloadble audio) (CBS – audio excerpts from hearing).

I listened to the USA Today audio (download), it was a little clearer than the audio file provided by the NY State Unified Court System (download). I am providing the USA Today audio download in a player at the end of this post.

Here are my notes of the hearing:

  • Counsel introductions (People and Defense)
  • Both sides are reviewing the probation report, neither side had anything to add to the record
  • Clerk informed People and Defense that they could make statements before sentencing
  • People/Josh Steinglass
    • People recommend unconditional discharge
    • Reviewed how Trump showed no remorse and threatened to retaliate against prosecutors in this case
    • Jury reached a unanimous verdict
    • Probation report says defendant sees himself as “above the law”
    • Must be mindful of the office of the presidency
  • Todd Blanche
    • Disagrees with what the government just said
    • Case should not have been brought
    • We will seek an appeal
  • Donald Trump
    • Very terrible experience
    • Political witch hunt
    • Lots of complaints
    • DOJ is very involved
    • I won the election
    • This is a weaponization of government
    • I was treated very unfairly
  • Juan Merchan
    • Wishes to explain reasoning for sentencing decision
    • A judge must decide what is correct sentence
    • Court must consider the facts of the case and any other mitigating circumstances
    • Extraordinary circumstances involved in this case
    • One power that the presidency does not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict
    • Pronounced sentence of unconditional discharge

Court Documents

Musing about podcast subscription/listening lists

What is a podcast subscription/listening list? Well, let’s start with talking about subscription lists. For most, if not all podcast clients, OPML files containing a list of the podcast feeds being monitored have been the defacto standard for import/export of podcast feed lists. Prior to use in podcast clients, OPML files have been used as a defacto standard for import/export of feed lists for feed aggregator apps.

As far back as 2012, Dave Winer was pushing for the use of OPML subscription lists within podcast apps. In this context, he wanted podcast apps to be able to subscribe to an OPML file with a URL, so that people could automatically get any updates to the OPML, and subsequently, anything new would be added to their podcast app.

In the fall of 2024, Dave Winer brought up this idea several times and later created a page describing this idea in more detail, and calling it “listening lists”. Dave Winer created a Github issue to collect feedback on this idea, and Dom Christie suggested the following:

I have been wondering if the episodes from curated lists could be published in their own RSS feed? That way, users (and not just podcasters) could created their own feeds, listenable in any app.

That same day, Dave Winer linked to a page describing a RSS feed made up of first episodes of fiction podcasts. An overview page lists the podcast episodes and also provides audio players for them – neat! From the looks of it, this is a made-by-hand page, although there could be some tool or tooling involved.

This suggests several ideas to me:

  • App to create a podcast feed which merges a list of other podcast feeds
  • App to allow users to create a podcast feed of podcast episodes that they select (it could include the ability to host the created feed)

I did some experiments over the holidays with Dave Winer’s RSS NPM module to create a podcast feed of some audio files that were not organized as a podcast. However, the experiment shows how this type of feed can be created. I am going to start working on this concept. If anyone reading this is interested in collaborating, let me know!

What is the plan for Democrats?

So, here we are. Mike Johnson was elected speaker of the House 218-215 (in a 90 minute vote with phone calls to the holdouts by Donald Trump). What was the next opportunity to test the Republicans? The rules package. What was the vote? 215-209, with 10 not voting and one Democrat voting for the package.

WHAT!

If all Democrats voted against (including that one outcast), it would have lost 214-215. Why didn’t the Democratic conference flex their muscle there? Ugh.

Next, the electoral count. I was not expecting any challenges, and there were none, which is as it should be. Today, the House passed the Laken Riley Act. The Hill reports that “The legislation cleared the chamber in a 264-159 vote, with 48 Democrats joining all Republicans in support. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation this week…..Democratic leadership did not whip for or against the Laken Riley Act, allowing members of the caucus to vote their conscience.”. Well, I guess the Democrats are “keeping their powder dry”….

Now Trump is boasting about buying Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal, among other stupid ideas. Representative Jim McGovern has the right idea:

This would be a good start – don’t let the people forget about what Trump “promised” he would do when he became President. Democrats, let’s get out there and keep the pressure up! And, let’s try not to feed the troll…

The certification of the 2024 US presidential election

Today, a joint session of the US Congress, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, certified the results of the 2024 US presidential election, declaring Donald Trump the winner.

This was not the result I wanted, but it is a result which honored the votes of the American people, via the system of voting in the US called the Electoral College. The length of the proceeding was less than 30 minutes, as there were no objections by any Representative or Senator. It was amazing how quickly it went, as opposed to 2021 where numerous objections were raised by Republican (see my liveblog from the 2021 certification).

Kamala Harris released a video today stating that she would fulfill her constitutional duty to preside over the electoral count today:

The House and Senate Congressional leaders held a brief ceremony to remember the events of January 6, 2021:

In CNN’s liveblog coverage for today, Jamie Raskin shared part of a conversation with fellow representative Bennie Thompson:

“I was reflecting on the fact that we can feel proud of standing up for the constitutional order and the election process as it is supposed to work, but it’s also a very tough pill to swallow” Raskin told CNN of his private conversation with Thompson.

Previously on this weblog:

Other coverage:

How to volunteer to help process election data

Now that the 2024 US election results have been certified by the states, those results have been made available to the public through the state election offices, usually part of the Secretary of State for each state.   A non-profit, Open Elections, has been working for over a decade to collect and make US election data publicly available for academic and political analysis. 

I am helping again with my home state of Oregon. For many counties throughout the US, the county election office releases a PDF file of results for each precinct. Open Elections depends on volunteers to process these files and create files in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. The files are reviewed and then committed to a GitHub repository organized by state. Some counties also make results available directly in CSV format, but not many. Fortunately, there are several tools that can be used to capture data from PDFs in a table format (Tabula, a Java application, and Microsoft Excel). I have been using Excel this time, and it is working well for me (Tabula would not run on my Windows 11 laptop).

For more information on how to help, check out their documentation site (a little dated, still refers to 2020 election, but there is work going on for 2024 results). I feel like I am doing something positive as opposed to just feeling bad about the 2024 presidential election results. Take a look!