The Alligator News Roundup

Hope your Thanksgiving was relaxing, peaceful and harmonious, and that you got a nap after doing the dishes.

Number Five. Vanity Fair. Trump is ahead of Biden in 5 of 6 swing states.

We’ll start with very brief look at the 2024 presidential election. Very brief because some of you are FED UP with national politics, and for good reason.

Recent polling indicates that Trump is significantly ahead of Biden in polls in key swing states for the 2024 election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania.

For Team Trump that’s good news, but for Team Biden it might suggest a strategy. The Trump lead is almost a repeat of the 2020 numbers at this point in the election cycle.

Most Americans went to bed on Election Night 2020 seeing on their local news that Trump had a commanding lead and would no doubt be returned to the POTUS office. The next morning, however, showed a decisive Biden victory.

Most of that victory came through mail-in ballots delivered in the night-time hours after the polls closed, and virtually all the decisive vote counts were from those very states where Trump now has a significant lead.

Trump’s lead this time is as substantial as it was in 2020.

Which may provide some guidance to Team Biden in how to pull out a win in those same swing states. Practice makes perfect.

There are those who will be quite interested in the results of midnight mail-in balloting in those swing states.

Number Four. NPR. Judge says undated Pennsylvania ballots will be counted.

And speaking of midnight ballots, this story should make the job of counting them much easier for the third shift crew.

It has come to the attention of the Pennsylvania NAACP and the Pennsylvania Democratic campaign committee that many mail-in ballots in various Pennsylvania elections have been submitted without the date handwritten on the return envelope, which is required under Pennsylvania law for the mail-in ballot to be legal. Thus, the ballots were to have been discarded.

Whether they actually were discarded is a detail that has been lost in the 2020 fog of election war.

Nevertheless, it is cause for concern.

According to these watchful watchdog agencies, the mere fact that a voter made a simple mistake in failing to scribble the date alongside a scribbled signature should not in any way disqualify that vote from being counted.

This is a lot like writing a check and forgetting to put a date on it. Or, come to think of it, maybe it’s not like that, because the bank won’t honor it without the date, but never mind that, because voting is a serious issue of preserving the Republic For Which We Stand, whereas writing the check is merely about paying your rent.

And so, a federal judge has said, Pshaw, we don’t need no stinkin’ dates, it’s a ballot that got filled out and we’re gonna count it. Because making you date your ballot violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says the right to vote cannot be denied for something that is “not material” to whether the person is eligible to vote.

Not dating your ballot, after you took the trouble to get it from the mail, fill it out, seal it in the envelope, and sign your name… that date thing is just “not material.”

Anything that makes midnight ballots easier to count is what we are after. Because all the polling in Pennsylvania says that unless those midnight mail-in ballots are counted, there could be a landslide.

Number Three. 404 Media. AI cameras took over a small American town.

This is one of those heart-warming stories that really restores your faith in how neighbors are looking out for each other.

Or at least how they are looking AT each other.

An artificial intelligence system called Fusus has solved a huge problem that has plagued Starkville, Mississippi, for years. Specifically, police in this college town have largely been in the dark about where each person in town is at any given moment, and what they are doing, and how they are dressed, and what they may be carrying, and who they may be hanging out with, and where they may be driving to.

Big problems leaving gaps in the data.

Fusus has rescued the police from this problem by merging together all the camera feeds from all over town and displaying them on a huge screen at the police department. Security cameras, doorbells, surveillance systems, regardless of manufacturer, all can be read by Fusus and shown to the police.

The software allows the officers to search the video database to find where specific people are right now, based on their clothing or their cars or their faces.

Now there is no more mystery. You can go virtually anyplace in town and know that the police know exactly where you are.

And really, what exactly is the point of a police officer driving around town in a marked car, smiling politely and waving to the citizens, when he could instead sit in his office and watch the big screen until he catches somebody doing something wrong?

Because it’s a matter of public safety.

In fact, it is so safe that police have visited the local university dormitories to help decide where new cameras should be placed in order to provide enough data.

It is so safe that the Chief of Police, an ardent protector of individual freedom, has assured us that “our school systems, our churches, our kindergartens, they’re all on board and part of the system.”

Department spokesperson Natasha Nottsewanabe issued a statement celebrating the completion of the system, quote: Now ve haf ezzakly vhat ve need to ensure ze final solution to ze problemz of criminal actions. Ve vill no longer haf to ask for your paperz, pleeze, for ve vill already know vhere to vind you!

Unquote.

It is good to have everyone on board. I love being part of a system!

Number Two. The CAIRCO Report. Car kill switch hiding in that 1000 page bill.

It’s hard to find all the details on this one, but here is another reason why we should be grateful to be living in 21st-Century America where people are looking out for us.

If there is one thing we need, it is someone watching over us to protect us from ourselves. Anytime we need that, or even if we don’t need that, there is always someone to leap into the breach to help us.

Usually, it is the federal government. Which is why we pay them.

Apparently when the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed in 2021, it included a provision to shut off your car, if your car determined you were driving unsafely. I don’t think there was much guidance in the bill as to what “unsafe” meant, but, given our political climate it could mean lots of things:

Such as swerving in and out of traffic, going too fast, going too slow, cruising past a gun store, pulling into a church parking lot on Sunday morning, or perhaps driving to a polling place on a November Tuesday.

I’m not sure under what road conditions it could be shut off. You could be climbing the 4-mile-long Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in heavy traffic, or navigating the blizzard in near-zero visibility on I-94 in North Dakota.

Some Senators, ever on the lookout for a good reason to stir up the media in a way that stirs up the media but does not actually bring about any change, introduced an amendment to kill the kill switch idea.

The amendment failed in the Senate, so the kill switch remains with us, and is to be implemented in new cars for the 2026 model year.

Those are the cars that will be available in less than 2 years from now, just in time to trade off the old clunker.

The amendment got shut off, just like your modern, kill-switch-equipped Camry will get shut off if Toyota or the NTSB or the local cops or Meta or Alphabet or the CCP thinks it should get shut off.

So we are protected once again from those who would sacrifice our safety on the altar of freedom.

Number One. CBS News. Super pigs threaten to invade northern U.S.

And finally, this.

No politics here, just a good old nature story to make you appreciate the wide outdoors, and which will scare the bejeebers out of you if you think about going outside.

It seems our mild-mannered Canadian neighbors had a program 40 years ago to encourage farmers to grow wild boars. Those are pig-like swine, not native to North America, who are hardy enough to survive a Saskatchewan winter.

It did not work well; there was little demand for the pork, and after a few years, the market collapsed.

Many of those mild-mannered farmers, with an ever-present eye to the future and taking full responsibility for helping the environment, got rid of their herds of swine by simply cutting the fences and letting them go.

Turns out the pigs are as fertile as they are aggressive. They have bred with larger domestic pigs — boys will be boys — and this has created a very large, very aggressive, very destructive and very smart super pig.

The population has grown so much that destroying 65% of the pigs each year will not be enough to stop the explosive population increase.

Hunters, of course, love it. Helicopters and high-powered rifles are good tools, but the pigs have adapted. They are smart enough to stay hidden in daylight. Which means they range at night.

Stephen King, here we come.

And here come the pigs, moving south across the border. Makes you want to go hiking in Glacier National Park again, don’t it?

And that is the Alligator News Roundup for Friday, December 1, 2023. Have a good weekend.

Und ve vill know if you haf a good veekent, for ve vill be vatching you! Good day!