Why nearly everybody wants a indicted felon to be the Republican Nominee for President

Often I make adage that the reason why bad things happen is because nearly everybody wins in some way when those bad things happen. That’s certainly the case with the ever so profitable mass shootings and probably true with Donald Trump being the Republican Nominee.

Let me explain…

  • Donald Trump if he gets the Republican nomination for President has a very powerful chip to plea bargin away for his federal and arguably state felony charges. Few Americans facing felonies can say they are one election away from the White House and voluntarily give it up for a significant fine and ten years probation and potential house arrest. It is literally the biggest single thing one could literally give up outside of one’s life and liberty for a long period of time.
  • The federal prosecutor wins by being able to stop a dangerous felon from once again being in the White House where he could cause so many problems for the nation.
  • At the same time, the Republican Party could benefit significantly from Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination by the primary system. Should Trump become the Republican nomination then step down, the National Republican Committee would be empowered to name his successor. They could pick a sensible, competitive nominee such as Mike Pence or some other dark horse who depending on the economy and state of world affairs could very competitive against the aging and rather bland incumbent of Joe Biden. Trump is a bad candidate but a plea could get rid of him while keeping the base happy.
  • Don’t underestimate the ability of Donald Trump to excite Republican voters and help boost grass roots efforts, especially through his sense of grievance to the system. While ultimately I see Trump pleaing out the felony charges, I don’t think he’ll stop bashing the big government, rigged system until the day he enters his plea. This excitement will help the GOP turn out voters come election day, without the divisive sib-prime candidate that Trump ultimately is. Indicted felon just writes campaign ads, not that voters needed to be reminded of the obvious.
  • It’s a dream come true for Democrats to be running against a once lost candidate, indicted felon for President. Democrats and the Joe Biden campaign know Trump’s weakness and they know a winning strategy at least in the political environment of 2020. Prior results often do predict future performance although things are changing in the political environment.
  • An indicted felon who says crazy things and loves to sling mud and manure is perfect for the news media and selling lots of advertising for Korean cars and laundry soap. Trump is the gift that keeps on giving for television and radio with his short crazy clips and gives the press so much to analyze especially as he faces multiple felony criminal cases that could put him in prison for what would effectively be the rest of his life.

Finding Peaks …

Finding Peaks …

Algonquin Peak

After studying the methods quite a bit, I’ve determined there is no real easy way to find peaks on mountains and report their exact elevation in QGIS. The best method I could come up with was to figure out the median point in the elevation for the map, then use that to isolate “mountains” and from there polygonize, create zonal statistics for each polygon, crop the DEM layer to each polygon then select the pixel that matched the peak. This can be done, but I couldn’t figure out how to automate it easily using the Graphical Modeler, so I would have to write a full plugin to do it. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. In most cases, I didn’t care about the exact peak, and it would just be easier to add peaks to my maps on a case-by-case basis using a point layer with labels queried against the DEM layer.