Now that the mid-term US elections are less than a fortnight away, I thought I would turn my attention to where the race for the Senate appears to be the tightest, given that the race for the House of Representatives seems all but won by the Democrats and lost by the Republicans. The latter have a narrow majority of four seats in the Senate and will take four seats to ‘flip’ to the Democrats in the election. The campaign has been going so badly for Trump and the Republican party that. although the Senate was said to be on a knife-edge, pundits are now predicting with a 74% probability that the Democrats will gain five seats to make them the majority party in the Senate. By common accord, the states most likely to ‘flip’ are North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Maine and Texas and the Democrats leads in these states is of the order of 4%-5%. American elections are very made regionalised and state-by-state races and the campaign by individual senators is of supreme importance. Texas will be the state that Republicans will particularly hate to lose but their candidate, Paxton, is widely regarded as lazy and ineffectual. He is evidently too frightened to take on his Democratic challenger in a local debate because it is evident that he will lose such an encounter very badly. While Texas historically favours Republicans, Paxton’s campaign has faced strong headwinds due to lingering fallout from his prior scandals and 2023 impeachment trial. A notable segment of moderate and independent voters have broken toward Talarico, making this one of the tightest Texas Senate matchups in modern history as early voting begins. As things stand at the moment, the polls are giving the Democrat challenger a lead of anything from 2%-5% But the polls may lead one into a false sense of security as the Republican voters tend to be ‘uber-loyal’ to their part whereas the Democrats rely upon quite a diverse coalition of individuals to actually come out and vote for them. In the background, there is an overriding fear that as Trump realises that his party are going to lose badly, he may even try to cancel the whole elections which would leave American society in an uproar. It is readily apparent that large numbers of Americans really dislike the president – corruption being the most prominent descriptor followed by perceptions that he is dangerous. Only 28% thought he is effective and 23% that he is honest. A second explanation for the pessimism is the state of the US economy, particularly the impact of inflation on the day-to-day lives of citizens. Altogether 34% of respondents thought that the economy and inflation were the most important issues facing the country. When asked about the president’s handling of inflation, 28% of respondents approved while 67% disapproved. It is important to note that Americans were very much focused on domestic issues when responding to questions about the most important issues facing the country. Only 6% of them thought that foreign policy was the most important issue. Whilst most Americans are of the views that the elections will be conducted fairly, as many as three quarters of them believe that Trump will not accept the result with the most unpredictable of consequences.
After my Tai Chi session in the morning, I stayed in the Methodist Centre and had a cup of coffee with some of the old regulars. One of my regular acquaintances was not present this morning, so I did not step out as we sometimes do to the ‘Gifts of Love’ but stayed in house as it were. So afterwards, I made a trip to the newly opened Sainsbury’s grocery store to do my weekly shopping and this is my first full weekly shopping in the new store rather than just a browse. As I wanted to get some things for the weekend, including some zero alcohol wine, I was pleased to have a wider choice of products than the range offered by Aldi and I am pleased to see that the Nectar card worked as it should giving me some reasonable discounts into the bargain. Then I came home And after unpacking the shopping made myself a lunch of quiche, Cavolo Nero kale and some sun dried tomatoes. Though I did not feel inclined to be at all energetic, the sun was shining so I made myself cut the back lawn which again, like the front, will probably be the second last cut of the season. I can always remember the last cut of the season when I have to empty the mower of its remaining petrol and oil because I tend to do in on a Friday nearest to November 5th which will be the 6th this year. Tomorrow will be quite an unusual because our domestic help is going to make a special trip round to the house to lay out the table in the dining room especially well for the weekend. I got a text from Meg’s cousin confirming the arrangements for the weekend, as well. In the late morning, I am going for a coffee in one of the local coffee shops to meet with the two (and possible three) Spanish speakers from church as we had arranged last Sunday. Tomorrow is arranged as a ‘one off’ but if we manage to meet regularly at this time each week, this would be a real bonus. Turning our attention to IT matters, many websites throughout the world have been taken off-line as AI has discovered some vulnerabilities in the underlying PHP code (which, incidentally, is the ‘engine’ for the WordPress applications that facilitates this blog) So far it does not appear that any real damage has been done as AI has identified weakness rather than specific attacks in the underlying code which is now being addressed. The disturbing thing is that AI discovered the vulnerability that was hiding in ‘plain sight’ although these vulnerabilities have been there all along. For the moment, I am sitting tight and waiting to see if my internet provider (who hosts the PHP program) is going to contact me or wherever I need to be more proactive in seeking out aa revised, updated version with the vulnerability issue addressed. However, I have always kept a separate and sort of back-up version of this blog which is just pure text and the simplest of HTML to display it and this is kept on a separate server altogether so that if an unimaginable disaster were to strike, any investment in this blog over the years would not be wasted. But the wider issue remains a source of concern because in the hands of a malevolent actor, a rogue AI application which brings down multiple internet sites across the globe is always a possibility.