Monthly Archives: July 2017

I’ve been meditating on this story over the weekend:

House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday called for a new special counsel — to investigate Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Loretta Lynch.

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Republicans said they were writing to “request assistance in restoring public confidence in our nation’s justice system and its investigators, specifically the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

The lawmakers said they presumed investigation of potential Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election was covered by special counsel Robert Mueller, but that they “are not confident that other matters related to the 2016 election and aftermath are similarly under investigation” by the former FBI director. [CNBC]

While this doesn’t appear to be about Benghazi, it’s worth noting that Clinton has been investigated by many Congressional committees over the tragic loss of the American ambassador to Libya and other Americans to an assassination plot. None of them found a thing, and the last one, run by Trey Gowdy (R) and called the House Select Committee on Benghazi, not only found nothing, but in the climactic hearing with its chief target, had its own ass handed to it on a plate, by all reports.

Still, it’s a little difficult for someone such as myself, far from the center of the maelstrom, to know if there’s anything to these charges. My suspicion is there’s not. Which then opens the question:

Why?

What’s motivating this letter, if no evidence of malfeasance is otherwise forthcoming?

What has slowly impressed itself on my brain is that the GOP, for all its decisiveness at the election box, is a collection of power-mongers and third-raters, desperately insecure and getting worse as their supposedly unstoppable position in Congress and the White House has turned out to be a mirage.

But this they know – the truth does not matter. It’s all about perception and messaging.

So if the GOP is going to be tarred with incompetence and even corruption, there’s only one thing to do:

Tar the Democrats with the same brush.

Now, nevermind that Comey’s a Republican, because he was investigating the GOP’s public leader, if I may be so bold, for corruption, and therefore he can no longer be a Party member; such are the rules of Party membership.

But if you’re going to be dirtied, it’s best to make sure your sworn enemies are dirtied, too. It distracts from the charges tossed at you.

Because, based on what we’ve seen so far from the GOP members of this Congress, they have nothing else to offer.

[EDIT Fixed a typo 11/5/2017]

Demonym:

A noun used to denote the natives or inhabitants of a particular country, state, city, etc.

‘he struggled for the correct demonym for the people of Manchester’ [Oxford Dictionaries]

Just to bring this particular story to completion, The Kansas City Star reports that Governor Brownback is moving on from Kansas:

Gov. Sam Brownback will give up the governor’s mansion in Topeka to take a relatively obscure ambassadorship after seeing his power and popularity severely diminished in the last year.

The Kansas Legislature overrode Brownback’s veto to repeal his signature tax cuts a little more than a month before President Donald Trump selected him to serve as the next ambassador at-large for international religious freedom, a position based in Washington, D.C., where Brownback spent 16 years as a member of the U.S. House and Senate.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are sad to see him go.

House Minority Leader Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, said his first reaction to the announcement was “good riddance.”

“He’s left a lot of carnage and destruction, and he’s also put the incoming governor in a tough spot,” Ward said, noting that Kansas is awaiting a decision by the state’s Supreme Court on the fate of a new school finance formula.　 …

Rep. Joy Koesten, a Leawood Republican who was one of a slew of moderate Republicans swept into office in an anti-Brownback wave last year, said that lawmakers are going to be grappling for decades with the impact of Brownback’s policies.

“I don’t think we truly know what that is yet,” Koesten said. “I think we’ve seen the surface damage, but I don’t know that we’ve seen the depth of the damage. And I think it’s going to take us a decade or more to figure that out and to fix it. So if that’s a legacy, I’m not sure that it’s a positive one.”

Clay Barker, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said that while Brownback was controversial, he was a “very consequential governor.”

Quite consequential for the GOP, because his experiment put their economic ideology to the test – and the ideology failed the test.

Sarah Jones at The New Republic thinks he’s ill-suited for his new position as at-large ambassador for international religious freedom:

But this isn’t a meaningless appointment, either. The ambassador-at-large heads State’s Office of International Religious Freedom. Religious freedom is an integral plank in a broader human rights platform, and the position is also responsible for conducting outreach to various American religious groups.

Which means Brownback, an arch-Christian conservative, is exactly the wrong choice for the role. As governor, he signed a useless ban on Shariah law that singled out the state’s Muslim residents for no valid reason. He waged constant war on separation of church and state, especially in public schools, and consistently promoted religious events and programming in his official capacity as governor. His appointment sends a dangerous message, especially in light of a May speech delivered by Mike Pence that promised assembled religious leaders that the Trump administration considered global religious freedom a major priority.

I’m trying to see an atheist or an agnostic in the position, and I’m just not getting there. I suppose you need some religious person with a record of tolerance. Yeah, maybe Governor Brownback is moving out of his current crater just to dig another one?

Or perhaps we shouldn’t have such a position. From Sarah’s link to the US Dept of State:

The Office of International Religious Freedom has the mission of promoting religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy. The office is headed by the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. We monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, recommend and implement policies in respective regions or countries, and develop programs to promote religious freedom.

Leading to the always-delicate question of when “promoting” means “interfering,” and when “interfering” really means “rescuing from persecution.” Given how the current Administration has a certain, if confused, isolationist taste to it (or perhaps better yet would be xenophobic), I have to wonder how long the position will last before Bannon has it cut. And if I’d weep if it were cut. I’m a little conflicted…

On Lawfare, former White House Counsel Bob Bauer critiques a law proposed by Senator Graham (R) to protect Special Counsels from being fired by the Presidents they’re investigating, suggesting it is too similar to another law that has been discredited. He wants to depend on the institutions:

Rather than reviving some version of the largely discredited independent counselstatute, Congress should exercise strong oversight while leaving no doubt about the readiness to move as necessary to impeachment.  For the moment, in the last few days, an informal “oversight” process seems to be having salutary effects. The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee tweeted out that “everyone in DC” should know that there was no room on the 2017 Committee agenda for an Attorney General confirmation process. The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans spoke clearly against the hectoring of the attorney general and in support of Robert Mueller. Graham made his strong statement about the doom awaiting this administration if the president fires Mueller.

This oversight activity does not have to continue informally but can be heated up and brought closer to the impeachment process. It is not hard to imagine a hearing into the effects of the president’s behavior on the Department of Justice. Senior officials could be called to testify about the impact on Department morale and regular order in the conduct of its operations. They might be questioned about any White House contacts outside the contacts policy, or even contacts consistent with the policy that would give grounds for concern. Testimony could be taken on the reasons for the well-established understandings of the relationship of president and DOJ in the administration of the law enforcement function. This is another way that the Hill can get its message across to Mr. Trump that the firing of Sessions, or that of Mueller, could bring an end to the Trump government.

I think Mr. Bauer is correct. In a sense, Senator Graham is retreating from his responsibilities of Senatorial oversight by attempting to regulate the President’s behavior through a statute. Once such a statute is in place, then it’s simply a matter of testing whether some behavior has broken the text of the statute. If so, then he’s impeached: no difficult judgments necessary.

Worse yet, there is a certain implication that behavior which does not violate the proscriptions of the statute is then legal. More statutes may be written, of course, but now we’re busy enumerating what’s illegal, and at the Presidential level, this could be a bizarre and subtle list.

Senator Graham and his allies, as well meaning as I believe them to be, are making a mistake. There’s something about systems that must be faced, as mathematicians know better than I^[1] – you get near their boundaries and things get hard. Same for a democracy in which power is distributed. When the President is suspected of wrong-doing, we don’t investigate him for criminal conduct, but for dangerous conduct. For conduct that endangers the Republic. This is necessarily a judgment call, and since we’re in the political realm, it must be a political judgment. Remember, while politics is generally considered a dirty business, formally it’s the business of governing, which includes safeguarding the Republic.

Rather than hide behind the words of a statute, Senator Graham should be willing to await the findings of the Special Counsel, and then render judgment.

And if the President fires the Counsel, then, as Mr. Bauer suggests, that is sufficient evidence of danger to the Republic, and Congress should act accordingly.

¹See Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Lake Como, Ramsey County, MN.

On Friday night I rammed my knee into the bathroom sink hard enough to elicit some very uncouth words.

But that’s not why I’m writing this.

Tonight, Sunday, for reasons unclear, my right forearm aches under load. Like, say, typing.

So if I seem a little quiet in the next few days, I’m having to rest the arm.

The United States, particularly its more conservative politicos, has long sought regime change in Iran. What passes for American conservatives these days have also detested the achievements of the Administration of President Obama, so I think they perceive a chance for a two-fer if President Trump chooses to de-certify that Iran is adhering to the requirements of the nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA). This would deactivate the nuclear deal, endorsed by experts world-wide, but scorned by our amateurs in Congress, and thus eliminate a key Obama achievement.

The other half of this action this would permit the reassertion of sanctions of Iran that are now negated, leading, in their minds, to further damage to the Iranian leadership. The conservatives certainly appear to be pushing de-certification, as Barbara Slavin on AL Monitor reports:

Several Republicans opposed to the JCPOA have told this analyst that their aim is to goad Iran into violating the agreement by imposing more non-nuclear sanctions. The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration was considering demanding new inspections of Iranian military facilities in hopes that Tehran will balk. But such demands could also trigger a time-consuming process that might postpone US abrogation of the accord.

And, as Laura Rozen reports, also in AL Monitor, Trump is quite straightforward about this being political dislike rather than adherence to a deal:

Trump telegraphed his frustration over being urged by his Cabinet chiefs to certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal at a White House meeting last Monday. He told The Wall Street Journal that he thinks Iran will be deemed to have breached the accord by the time of the next congressionally mandated certification deadline in the fall.

“We’ve been extremely nice to them in saying they were compliant, OK? We’ve given them the benefit of every doubt,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in a July 25 interview. “But we’re doing very detailed studies. And personally, I have great respect for my people. If it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago.”

Asked if he thought Iran will be declared noncompliant in the fall, Trump said he did. He added that while he respects Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he would likely overrule a recommendation to certify in the fall.

“I think they’ll be noncompliant,” Trump said. “I think they’re taking advantage of this country.”

Or, you can read it honestly as, I made a promise to rip up the JCPOA and I’m going to do it, honestly or not.

The short-term issue is whether or not the second half of the two-fer would be achieved, and I think this seems unlikely. I could simply talk about the naked politics at work, and how a refusal to treat such an agreement in an honorable manner will be perceived by an Iranian public, or we could just look at survey results. These come from the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies:

Iranians expect President Donald Trump to be more hostile toward Iran than was former President Barack Obama. Seven in ten Iranians believe it likely that Trump may decide not to abide by the terms of the nuclear agreement. Attitudes about how Iran should respond if the United States violates the JCPOA have hardened: A clear majority now thinks that instead of taking the matter to the UN, Iran should retaliate by restarting the aspects of its nuclear program it has agreed to suspend under the JCPOA, if the United States abrogates the deal. A large majority see the new sanctions that Congress is likely to impose on Iran as being against the spirit of the JCPOA, with half saying it would violate the letter of the agreement as well.

Regime change requires support from the Iranian citizenry, so if the United States takes actions regarded as a betrayal of its agreement obligations, to be regarded as an example of a lack of honor by the American leadership, they are more likely to back their own regime than be angry at it. How can I be more clear?

Implicit in the process of regime change must be the proven charge that the regime is corrupt and/or incompetent to run the affairs of state. Tearing up the JCPOA in order to enforce the United States’ arbitrary will in a naked display of force is just another fucking amateur mistake by the pack of amateurs who also dragged us into the Iraq War.

But that’s just the short-term concern. I shan’t mince words: In the long term, the childish behavior by Trump and the anti-Iran forces to whom he listens are damaging the United States in the foreign relations arena. In the private sector, a small businessman like Trump could get away with exceptionally dubious behavior because the transmission of information in the private sector is not necessarily an efficient process. Few have the time to track down all the times Trump was sued by other small businessman for dishonoring agreements, and how many times he lost. If it were, all of his potential suppliers and builders might have just refused to work with him, and he might just be Donnie Trump, cashier at the Kum ‘n Go.

But now he’s up in the major leagues, and the heuristics of the private sector do not apply. Every word, every gesture, every action, every damn stupid tweet is examined for meaning, context, hypocrisy – and adherence. Adherence to honor, which translates in concrete terms to honesty and predictability. The less faith and confidence our allies, and, hell, our enemies have in us, the less influence we have across the globe. Through these childish actions with regard to the JCPOA, he puts our reputation and our ability to affect other people through the shredder.

Now, if his people do find concrete evidence of Iranian abrogation, great. Follow the prescribed procedures. Prove it to the world. Because these sorts of things must be handled very carefully. This may not be a shooting war, but a victory in this arena is just as important. Prove the theocrats in charge – who appear to indulge in the usual vices of all theocrats – are dishonest, can’t run the country properly. Declare a victory for your Administration.

That would be great. But it has to be done properly, or we’ll just look like Trumpian losers. That seems to happen on a weekly basis, and I’m getting tired of it.

If you’re a retro-photographer, if you wake up in the middle of the night ruing the failure of Polaroid, you may wish to see The B-Side: Elsea Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (2017). A photographer starting in the 1950s, she took traditional dark room photos but also worked with Polaroids, including using Polaroid’s second largest camera, the 20×24 Polaroid Land Camera, and apparently the largest, the 40×84, which was a camera the size of a room.

This is an extended reminisce as she retrieves photos she hasn’t viewed in decades to show the interviewer, the off-camera Errol Morris., and they ramble from topic to topic, from her atypical young adulthood to her connection with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg to her own ruminations on her goals and the internal forces which compelled her to take up the camera. To a great extent, though, to borrow someone’s phrase, this is “dancing about architecture.” It’s clear this was her life’s work, and it made her very happy, but the exact reason for clicking the shutter is not clear.

My Arts Editor said it was like visiting with your grandmother when she drags out the photo-album, and she means that in a good way. The pictures are often interesting and her gentle viewpoint often cogent.

If you’re looking for something out of the ordinary, no guns firing, no angry confrontations, just someone talking about an important art form, you could do worse than Elsa.

Our foxglove appears to have spread. Also known as digitalis, it provides an important heart medicine, I’m told.

There’s been a bit of a tussle in the genetics world concerning how much of our DNA is functional, and how much of it is just junk. Heck, there’s even a disagreement over the meaning of ‘junk.’ But it had not occurred to me to wonder how to estimate these numbers – and this has some challenge given the human genome is made up of 3 billion base pairs, comprising roughly 30,000 genes. Add in the fact that many genes act in concert with each other, and the problem is compounded again. Michael Le Page in NewScientist (22 July 2017) describes one approach – assume a value and then look for conclusions not congruent with reality:

… if most of our DNA is functional, most mutations would fall in important sequences and be bad for us. But if most of our DNA is junk, the majority of mutations would have no effect. [Professor Dan] Graur’s team has now calculated how many children a couple would need to conceive for evolution to stop us accumulating too many bad mutations in different cases.

If the entire genome has a function, couples would need to have around 100 million children, and almost all would have to die, they found. Even if just a quarter of the genome is functional, each couple would still need to have nearly four children on average, with only two surviving to adulthood.

Taking into account estimates of the mutation rate and average prehistorical reproduction rate, Graur’s team calculated that only around 8 to 14 per cent of our DNA is likely to have a function (Genome Biology and Evolution, doi.org/b9q3). This ties in nicely with a 2014 study that compared our genome with other species and concluded that around 8 per cent of it is functional.

“We are walking around with a genome where only 1 in 10 bases actually matters,” says Chris Ponting of the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was part of the 2014 study.

The challenge for those who still think most non-coding DNA is vital is to explain why an onion needs five times as much of it as we do, says Ryan Gregory of the University of Guelph in Canada.

So long as you understand that evolution is a messy, imprecise business, this actually makes sense. Add in the information that our genomes can actually be used by viruses, which have their own goals, and it’s no surprise that big chunks of our genome are foreign, deactivated, non-functional, and only a bit of it is functional.

At The Earth’s Core (1976): cheesy. When not cheesy, cheesecake. And when neither of those, fairly incoherent.

Don’t bother.

And don’t even try to explain to me the presence of Peter Cushing.

A mythos is a set of stories which defines the history of some group, putting that often bloody, unsettling history into a light which makes it look really damn good. I recently received a “mythos letter” which nettled me, due to its immigrant-phobic message that is enhanced by its references to mythic elements of American history. For a Snopes.com take on it, see this article. I haven’t actually read the Snopes article, as I wish to react to this sneaky bit of trash without influence. I will omit the pictures and commentary from forwarders.

This was written by Rosemary LaBonte to the editors of a California newspaper in response to an article written by Ernie Lujan who suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the immigrants of today aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry. The paper never printed this response, so her husband sent it out via internet.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented.

As if the Americans of yesteryear welcomed immigrants with open arms? The fact of the matter is that American history is full of examples of the hatred of immigrants – the travails of the Irish, the Germans, the Polish, and the Africans are well-documented and should not be forgotten.

Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved goodbye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Or poverty. Remember the immigrant coal-miners, those stuck in the ghettos of the American cities, those who could not get preferred jobs because of ethnicity?

But more importantly, they did get help. From churches which never failed in their ideal mission, from charitable groups who thought it was their duty to help the new immigrant. The immigrant did have help, because without it they would have died in the dust. This is a group endeavour, folks.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought alongside men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.

Unless the writer is black or of Japanese descent, his father did not literally fight alongside Black and Japanese Americans – because in the former case, the military services were strictly segregated, and in the latter case the Japanese-Americans were not trusted by the American government. In both cases, it’s true that they fought in World War II – in their own units, where they achieved distinction. The 99th Pursuit Squadron and 332nd Fighter Groups made up the valiant Tuskegee Airmen (a bomber group was also formed by the Tuskegee Airmen, but never carried out missions), were mostly black, along with some Haitians and a Trinidad pilot. Similarly, several groups within the Army, most notably the 442nd Regiment, were made up of mostly Japanese-Americans in the Hawaiian National Guard, along with some mainland Japanese Americans. This, from Wikipedia, says it all: The 442nd Regiment was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare.

The broader point I wish to make is this: we were not some magically homogenous group of citizens during World War II. The white majority disdained those who looked different, discriminated against them, and had to have it proven to them that Americans of African and Japanese descent could fight as well, or better, as the could. Just as in World War I, where the American Commander-In-Chief, General Pershing, earned the epithet “Black Jack” because of his insistence that Blacks be permitted to serve in combat, “Americans” still resented the outsider, the person who looked different – the immigrant. The immigrants didn’t fight because they had magically assimilated – the fought because they wanted to become part of a society that viciously and unjustly thought them unworthy of the position.

When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French American, the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.

And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country.

Yes, indeedy. Except for the fact that this is just like our immigrant forebearers, who clung to the faith of their homelands (or did you think they converted to King Henry’s Episcopalianism on their arrival?), who lived together in ethnic communities that are well known even today (ask any Chicagoan where the Poles, the Blacks, even the Serbians live in the City), who clung to the same food they ate at home – any Minnesotan who recognizes the word ‘lutefisk’ will instantly recognize the truth of what I say.

The “melting pot” is the American ideal rarely, even reluctantly, achieved.

And immigrants do not emigrate because of their hatred for their motherland, but despite their love for it. Oh, sure, we can name men & women with the wanderlust, who have to see what’s just over the horizon – but they are the small minority. Most folks are happy enough to stick to the valley in which they were born. Those who immigrate are often chased out of their country by the many varieties of intolerance. To suggest that it’s wrong to retain the love for the motherland is to suggest that the successful immigrant arrives with no sentiment in his heart, but instantly grows some upon discovering the shores of America.

I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And this is the point of the matter, isn’t it? The writer believes she has differentiated today’s immigrant from some mythical heroic wave of “proper” immigrants, and now she’s free to hate on them.

Hate, hate, hate.

And the problem for the writer? I know better from simple personal experience. I’ve worked with many immigrants. Guess what – they speak English! Some really well, such as the Russian who only trips occasionally over the latest bit of slang, and some not so well, as a few Indians who struggle with the accent.  But they all speak it well enough to get by. Some love American culture and are deeply embedded in it, while others are more insular and remember their beloved motherland with melancholy. I’m served by them at the restaurants, they constitute 28% of our medical doctors, they pick our food, and, watching them, they work bloody hard.

So, through ignorance or deliberate deceit, the author of this slur stirs up the usual hatred of immigrants that has long motivated the conservatives, that bands them together and puts them in their place, their room of ignorance and group thinking and dislike of those who dare to think differently, where they can be used by their masters. So sometimes immigrants need a little help, especially the war refugees, when they come over. Are we so ungenerous that we’d prefer to hate on them?

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

And, oh, hey. Buddy. The Statue of Liberty is a gift from the French. Perhaps it was a nudge to a country that was going the wrong way from an older, wiser brother.

KEEP THIS LETTER MOVING. FOR THE WRONG THINGS TO PREVAIL, THE RIGHTFUL MAJORITY NEEDS TO REMAIN COMPLACENT AND QUIET.

LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN!

I sincerely hope this letter gets read by millions of people all across the nation!

Sure. And hopefully the readers put more thought into the issues than you did writing it.

Regarding the bald flowers, a reader remarks:

If the baldies match the plant in the lower left, it’s monarda (bee balm). I suspect all the lovely blooms in my yard will be turning bald in the near future.

A veritable harvest of baldness, an exercise in hirsute futility.

Me at my Annual Performance Evaluation.

It’s one of the supreme classics^[1], so what can I say? The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), starring Lon Chaney, fights through its technical shortcomings, such as people moving too fast and a very scratched up film^[2] (ours came from a DVD compilation of horror films) to deliver a tight, twisted plot and a fascinating performance by Mr. Chaney in this early, early example of film noir.

The year is 1482, in Paris. Briefly, Quasimodo (Chaney) is the deformed & isolated monstrous minion to Jehan, who both live, at the dispensation of Jehan’s brother the Arch-Deacon, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Jehan is a man of lusts and jealousies – carnal, wealth, and prestige. He has none of them, and so is consumed with jealousy for the standing of the Captain of the Guard, Phoebus, for the affections of the street dancer Esmeralda, and, just to round out the sentence, of the mostly unseen presence of the instrumentality of Godly vengeance, King Louis XI. Esmeralda, the pivot for much of the plot, is a Gypsy, dancing for a living, and also the object of fatherly affection of the King of the Beggars, Clopin, who adopted her after she was stolen from her crib.

Jehan resolves to reduce one of his jealousies by kidnapping and ravishing Esmeralda, and to that end he and his minion, Quasimodo, operating in the dead of night, track her down and attack her. But Phoebus, soon to be promoted, happens on the scene with his men and rescues Esmeralda, capturing Quasimodo in the process. Jehan slips away in the confusion, leaving Quasimodo, pleading silently for help, to his fate.

Please pick the lice from my pelt.

Phoebus falls in lust with Esmeralda, but restrains his carnal instincts upon encountering her innnocence, and invites her to the ball celebrating his appointment to the Captaincy. Meanwhile, Quasimodo is given a quick trial and sentenced to be lashed for his attempted kidnapping and assorted alleged bestial urges. It being a public, lesson-to-be-learned punishment, Esmeralda stumbles upon the scene at the end of the performance, brings Quasimodo water, and helps release him from his chains, thus winning the monster’s gratitude.

Onwards to the ball (surely one of the greatest gatherings of wimples in their natural habitat presented on film), step-father Clopin leads a mob that breaks in and accosts Phoebus in mid-woo, causing Esmeralda to proclaim herself unsuited to the aristocracy, and leaves with her step-father. She arranges for a note to be sent to the heart-broken Phoebus, begging him to meet her in a secluded garden for a farewell before she takes up the veil. Unknown to her, Jehan has continued to lust after her, and, trailing her, leaps upon Phoebus while he necks with Esmeralda, stabbing him in the back.

Esmeralda is arrested for the crime, and, under the King-endorsed wickedly augmented interrogation procedures, confesses. For this, there is no redemption: she is to be hung. Phoebus, who has survived the attack, is utterly sick with worry, but as Esmeralda is conveyed to the gallows, past the Cathedral, Quasimodo clambers down the front of Notre Dame, knocks over the guards like bowling pins, and carries Esmeralda into the sanctuary of Mother Church.

My punishment is not that I must wear a wimple, but that I think I look good wearing it.

But Mother Church is infested with a tick, a tick by the name of Jehan, who tells Esmeralda that Phoebus has died and instructed Jehan to take care of Esmeralda. Meanwhile, step-father Clopin reconstitutes his mob to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame. Puzzlingly, Notre Dame has boiling lead ready for itinerant mobs, and Quasimodo, in his isolated and damaged condition, does not recognize the mob as rescuers, but as attackers. He pours the boiling lead on their heads as they batter at the doors; Esmeralda is distraught at the deaths of her friends, far below, and in a moment of inattention, Jehan attacks her, meaning to take her by force. Quasimodo, remembering Jehan’s abandonment at his moment of need, throws Jehan from the battlements of Notre Dame into the crowd, far, far below, now a battleground as Phoebus and his men counter-attack the mob. But Quasimodo is not unscathed, as Jehan’s parting gift is several knife thrusts into the hunchback’s body. Quasimodo, mortally injured, manages to return to his one true love, the ringing of the bells of Notre Dame, for one more tug on their cords, and the cords of your heartstrings.

Obviously, there’s a lot going on here: social commentary, moral teachings, and a lot of cleverness I chose not to report. But perhaps the most interesting part is how simply it’s presented. It’s not a labored, tedious movie about the inequalities of France in the late 1400s, but a movie about a man afflicted by both God and Man, and how the thick currents of societal ignorance, sauced by class resentment, lead to general and unjust disaster, as the self-interested decisions of far too many lead to a black ending for those who merely struggle to survive.

This movie is often classified as horror, but I see it as the classic film noir, as the decisions of men & women, inevitable yet defective, lead down the path to black endings, tragically instructive.

Put up with the scratches, the unnatural speed, the captions. Pay attention. Strongly Recommended.

¹Which didn’t keep me from making fun of it, but only with the greatest of affection.

²Do film buffs consider this patina or rust?

Concerning misleading hospitals, a reader writes:

It’s a very real thing, as I think I’ve written to you earlier, having experienced it personally at Fairview Southdale [here in the Twin Cities]. Predatory hospitals are practically criminal. Yet another reason for single payer health insurance.

I wonder if there are any sites out in Web-land which list – and shame – those hospitals using 3rd party, out of network, doctors & agencies to staff their emergency rooms.

Completely unprompted, my Arts Editor composed the following while at dinner yesterday.

While save her from his selfless wisdom has a certain charm, I was immediately drawn to the last one, and became aware of the land of Were-Cows.

Moo-hahahaha….

Noctilucent clouds:

NLCs [Noctilucent clouds] are, essentially, clouds of frosted meteor smoke. They form when wisps of summertime water vapor rise toward the top of Earth’s atmosphere. Water molecules stick to the microscopic debris of disintegrated meteoroids, assembling themselves into tiny crystals of ice that glow beautifully in sunlight at the edge of space. [Spaceweather.com]

And here’s a perfectly lovely picture from a satellite. I tried to find the original on the AIM site, but that site really needs to be reorganized; this is shamelessly stolen from Spaceweather.com, which claims it found it on AIM.

Credit: NASA/HU/VT/CU LASP

Not all things Earthly look Earthly.

My Arts Editor favorites from our stroll around Lake Como a couple of days ago. I really have no idea what they might be.

I jumped all over Senator McCain a couple of days ago when he reprimanded the Senate for hyper-partisanship over the healthcare “reform” matter, and then failed to take the proper action by assenting to a procedural “begin the debate” move. By all reports, the current GOP healthcare push in the Senate was terminated by his Nay vote, as reported by NBC News:

Senate Republicans failed to pass a pared-down Obamacare repeal bill early Friday on a vote of 49-51 that saw three of their own dramatically break ranks.

Three Republican senators — John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and all Democrats voted against the bill, dealing a stinging defeat to Republicans and President Donald Trump who made repeal of Obamacare a cornerstone their campaigns.

I don’t know what sort of tightrope Senator McCain is walking, or thinks he’s walking, but it was good of him to recognize the basic unacceptability of everything about the bill he rejected – the process by which it was written, its crudeness, and its reported cruelty to those least able to defend themselves. (In this I depend on the analysis of many others, as I don’t have the time or the expertise for it.)

I’m relieved he, as well as Senators Collins and Murkowski, finally stopped the farce. My heart-felt thanks, both for my own nerves as well as some relatives who depend on the ACA and would be forced to return to uninsured status without it. Has anyone thought of inviting the honored Senators to switch parties?

THAT said, I am fairly much appalled that all of the rebuffs of the various healthcare proposals which occurred in the last couple of days were so bloody close. What is wrong with a party that would cause it to deny a benefit to so many citizens who are otherwise unable to afford it, who benefit from it individually, and, just as importantly, benefits the Nation as a whole? Do they not realize that a Nation of healthy people is a productive, happy Nation? This is not a matter of, Well, I’d rather not be healthy this  year, there won’t be any long term consequences.

No, this is a matter of the random blows of Nature laying us low, temporarily or permanently, through little fault of our own. The point of society is mutual support, and healthcare, unlike consumer goods, is all about support so that we can productive in our chosen arenas. Sometimes fantastically so.

But rare is the person who can make a living out of being ill. Maybe Evel Knievel did.

So, what is it? Purely rhetorical, I know; I’ve speculated before that this is simply a party purple with envy. But I felt the urge to vent. Sorry about that.

Noted in an investment report:

Brendan Mathews owns shares of Markel. Karl Thiel owns shares of Markel. Steve Symington owns shares of Markel. Tom Gardner owns shares of Markel and Markel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Markel.

Tom’s evidently excitable.

No doubt computer generated. Still amuses me.

I was fascinated by this CNN article on former megachurch pastor Rob Bell, who was ousted for expressing doubt about the existence of Hell. CNN’s John Blake attended his presentation in Atlanta, the heart of the Bible Belt, where street preachers were threatening attendees standing in line with a visit to, well, Hell if they persisted. I wonder how many were discouraged and left. This particularly caught my attention:

He told the audience he doesn’t like those YouTube videos where Christians “destroy” atheists in debates. Respect people’s doubts, he said. You can’t lead them to where they don’t want to go. Doubt is part of the biblical narrative, he said, quoting Jesus’ cry on the cross: “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?”

“The Bible is as much about the absence of God than the presence of God,” he said.

That element of doubt is a necessary element of faith, as I noted in this missive. The lack of same that I find in so many fundamentalists really marks them as folks who have shut up their minds, who have made ruts higher than even those a late-middle-aged man walks in. It may function as a quick-read recognition marker for like minded people, but the many requirements of the intellectual landscape that results makes them peculiarly vulnerable to manipulation, to the con-man.

Like the one in the White House.

So seeing a formerly influential man attended with great interest in the Bible Belt makes me wonder if we’re seeing the first signs of a retreat from the ramparts of desperate fundamentalism. I should think those ramparts won’t collapse anytime soon, but, then again, no doubt most observers were saying the same thing about the Berlin Wall on the evening of 8 November 1989. So, speaking as an agnostic, anything which opens the minds of my religious co-citizens to more flexible attitudes, less attached to dogma which hurts more than it helps, is a good thing.

And evidence that Bell is moving that way is implicit in this:

Do you belong to a church that says women cannot be priests or pastors?

Bad move, Bell said.

Any church that does so betrays the example of Jesus, who treated women as equals. Women in Jesus’ times couldn’t even testify as witnesses in court.

“Yet all the gospels have women as the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection,” he said.

Any group which rejects the genius of half its members is a group paralyzed by the fight for power – and a group crippled by its failure to utilize the most important resource available.

NewScientist (15 July 2017, paywall) has a fascinating interview with Françoise Sironi, a psychologist with a specialization that puts her in a field with few peers – assessment of those accused of war crimes and genocide. This may seem prosaic:

What kind of person becomes a perpetrator?

Many have grown up in a violent family, or experienced humiliation early in life. Then when they are recruited, their identity is often broken down in some way. This might involve a traumatic initiation process: children who are forced to become soldiers may be required to kill members of their family, for example. They can no longer return to their families or villages and they become dependent on the new group – their fellow child killers – and in particular, on the commander of that group.

This may help to explain one of the most troubling scenarios, which is medics who facilitate torture – advising interrogators when to turn the electricity off, for example, so that the victim’s heart doesn’t give out too soon. They no longer belong to a group whose identity is defined by doing no harm.

But this is a bit of a gut wrencher:

In 2008, you assessed Duch, the Khmer Rouge leader who tortured and killed thousands at the notorious S-21 prison. What did you conclude?

Duch is an example of what I call a man-system – someone who has relinquished their own identity and adopted that of the ideological system they grew up in. The same is true of Pascal Simbikangwa, who I also assessed and who is in prison for his role in the Rwandan genocide. They don’t fit any known psychiatric category. Their behaviour can only be understood in the geopolitical or historical context in which it arose.

What are the main characteristics of such individuals?

A strong sense of group belonging and duty, and an ability to compartmentalise. Duch was capable of talking normally about his family one minute and discussing his “work” at S-21 the next. It wasn’t easy for him to torture, he told us, yet he trained youngsters to do it. When he expressed regret, it was on behalf of the Khmer Rouge, not himself. At one point I asked, “What happened to your conscience?” He replied he didn’t understand the question.

That last statement’s implications set me back on my heels. Taken in isolation, without acknowledging his work, this devotion to group may be taken to be a high moral attainment.

And what was its use? Horrific torture.

It’s hard not to draw parallels between Duch and the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, as they inflicted agony & death on victims who did not conform to some group requirement. I suppose to an anthropologist, trained to abstractly examine human culture, this is no surprise, but for me it’s a startling descent into the amoral enterprise of group competition, where failure often means extinguishment.

And yet, the existence of such torture, and the inevitable public knowledge of same, must inevitably tear upon the nerves of the public. Because of the perception – false that it may be – of the high efficacy of torture, the knowledge that it may be turned on members of the group, rather than outsiders and apostates, its use is inevitable in intra-group situations. And why? While someone like Duch may have managed to submerge self & ego to the greater entity of the group, most others do not. Human ambition will exist, and the stronger it may be, the more likely it will use those tools that come to hand to achieve a superior position.

Thus, the group’s tool may rip that group apart.

Still, I find Duch’s statement unsettling.

Our current highest profile circus in Washington involves Anthony Scaramucci as Trump’s communications director, who is busy threatening to fire everyone AND stab them “in the front” if they dare to leak information to the press. From The New York Times:

The clash between Mr. Scaramucci and Mr. Priebus offers a case study in how the Trump White House operates, a conflict divorced from facts, untethered from the basics of how government works, enabled by the lack of any organizational structure and driven by ambition, fear, animosity and envy.

My Arts Editor shares my feelings on this specific circus:

I wonder what they’re trying to distract us from now.

Tim Tiana Lowe on National Review has similar, if unconscious, sentiments:

If you think that Trump will be incensed by these distractions, then you clearly haven’t been keeping up with the Trumpians. This is a man whose idea of intimacy is Marla Maples boasting on the cover of the New York Post about his sexual prowess, and whose idea of leadership is a public execution (see: Lewandowski, Corey; the entire cast of the Apprentice). Trump grew weary of Sean Spicer’s attempt to stammer appropriate niceties to the Fake News MSM. Why please people when you can entertain them?

Much like his namesake, the scaramouch, the Mooch masquerades as a useful idiot and a sly schemer, performing both roles while never forgetting to enthrall the audience and, most important, the boss. Today, the spotlight is off the dumpster fire that is the Senate’s health-care negotiations, and instead the Beltway class is fanning itself over the impropriety of Scaramucci’s lewd humor and “front-stabbing.” And so, however this turns out, the Mooch wins. He has entertained, shamed his foe, and impressed the boss — just as Trump’s favorites did on The Apprentice. McKay Coppins at The Atlantic notes today that Trump favors surrounding himself with “mini-mes — hard-charging, bellicose big talkers who idolize their boss and labor to perfect their imitations of him.” One could take the point one step further. While Trump takes his steaks well-done with ketchup when not eating Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish, Scaramucci frequents Hunt & Fish Club for veal parmigiana, decked out in Loro Piana suits. In truth, he’s not really Trump in miniature. He’s a genuinely self-made Trump — a Freudian projection of the president’s deepest dreams.

And Steve Benen on Maddowblog comes to the obvious conclusion:

The spectacle of feuds is obviously interesting, but it’s not what’s important. Rather, what matters is the unsettling realization that the White House is being run by clownish amateurs who don’t seem to realize they’re in over their heads, led by an incompetent president who’s a bit too comfortable in the noxious culture he’s created.

It is not a recipe for governing success.

Sure. But let’s ask a simple question: does President Trump’s base realize this?

Think about it. That base has spent an enormous amount of time listening to Rush Limbaugh & other incendiary hosts who had little reason to portray Obama’s Washington in an honest manner. For them, it was disaster, scandal, and bullying 24 hours a day – never mind that the actual scandal count was on the closer order of zero, the bullying consisted of polite suggestions, and the disasters, compared to GOP President Bush, were non-existent^[1].

So to them, if they are watching their President closely, this may not seem all that unusual. Without the proper history, perhaps what they see seems like what they’d expect from a President Trump – a lot of drama and temper tantrums, and meanwhile things are getting done.

Of course, there’s a big difference between the small business world – or The Apprentice – and a government with nuclear weapons and multitudinous international responsibilities. But is this clear to his base?

Do they actually realize how unusual and dangerous Trump’s actions will be?

Or has the right-wing echo chamber so cut them off from reality that they think this is all normal?

¹In a note far too depressing to explore deeply, I must ask, Does conservatism now simply consist of dishonest messaging? Is that the full content of American conservatism?

Como LakeLake Como, Ramsey County, Minnesota, July 26, 2017.