Monthly Archives: October 2018

Candidate Abrams continues her legal winning streak in the Georgia gubernatorial race:

A federal judge knocked down a motion from Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp against a previous temporary restraining order that changes the way election officials handle absentee ballots in the state.

US District Court Judge Leigh Martin May rejected Kemp’s arguments point by point and concluded the “injunction ensures that absentee voters who are unable to vote in person and whose applications or ballots are rejected based on a signature mismatch will still have the opportunity to have their votes counted in the upcoming election.”

Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, also filed an emergency motion Tuesday with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He argued, “the district court issued a preliminary injunction that requires 159 Georgia counties to make immediate, significant changes to those longstanding procedures right in the middle of an ongoing statewide general election,” which he said threatens to “disrupt the orderly administration of elections.”

Last week, May, the judge, ordered that Georgia election officials stop rejecting absentee ballots with voters’ signatures that do not appear to match those on record. [CNN]

I’m wondering about this “long-standing” claim of Kemp’s. PolitiFact seems to indicate the law is only a year old:

Under a 2017 Georgia law, a voter registration application is complete if information on that form exactly matches records kept by Georgia’s Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration.

If there’s no match, it’s placed on a pending status and the applicant is notified in the form of a letter from the county board of registrars about the need to provide additional documentation. It’s then up to the applicant to provide sufficient evidence to verify his or her identify.

But perhaps the reference can be twisted to mean something far more innocent, eh? There are days I get tired of the picky word shit.

When it comes to climate change, the eye candy is the big hurricanes coming in, and future visions of drowned cities. The real bell ringer, though, will be the quiet changes in the foundation of civilization.

Agriculture.

With that in mind, here’s a thought-provoking bit from WaPo on how viniculturists in Italy are experiencing climate change:

Season after season, he’d been growing and harvesting the same grapes on the same land. But five years ago, Livio Salvador began to wonder whether something was changing.

When he walked through his vineyards, he would see patches of grapes that were browned and desiccated. The damage tended to appear on the outside of the bunch — the part most exposed to sunlight. Salvador talked to other growers and winemakers in the region, and they were noticing it, too.

Their grapes were getting sunburned.

“It has almost become the norm,” Salvador said this month, after a torrid growing season that saw 10 percent of his fruit wither to waste under the sun.

In a region celebrated for the prosecco and pinot grigio it ships around the world, Italy’s particularly sensitive white wine grapes have become a telltale of even gradual temperature increases — a climate slipping from ideal to nearly ideal. Vintners and farmers are noticing more disease, an accelerated ripening process and, most viscerally, a surge in the number of grapes that are singed by the intensifying summer heat.

Even if Ag doesn’t go under and plunge us into famine, there are more subtle problems ahead:

In this part of northeastern Italy, wine production is the abiding identity, and the vineyards stretch for miles, interrupted by villages with church bell towers and by the occasional Palladian villa. One large producer says the region has been suitable for wine-growing “since ancient Roman times.”

Much like Pittsburgh losing its steel industry, or places like Flint and Cadillac, MI, losing the car industry. It’s a long way back when a cultural identity has been ripped away.

Think of it this way: Office workers aren’t really going to notice changes to the climate directly. The slow, impactful changes simply don’t hit them because they work on, well, office stuff. Even those who will look at the numbers describing climate change can always write it off as bad data collection equipment or even “natural cycles,” despite anything the scientists say.

But the Ag people, they will notice. They have to notice. When their choice bit of land becomes progressively less productive, they’ll notice. And they keep records, they know the long-term trends.

Sometimes we see them as tradition-bound conservatives, but in the end they may be that all important non-climate change scientist group that grabs the ideological deniers by the lapels, shakes them vigorously, and tosses them into the river of dishonorable obscurity.

Congressman Steve King’s recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate. We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior.

— Steve Stivers (@RepSteveStivers) October 30, 2018

Steve Stivers is National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman.

Representative Steve King (R-IA) isn’t a Democrat.

It’s stunning, to me. Not only the condemnation, but waiting until this late in the campaign season. Is this just a hand-wave at being outraged, soon to be followed by a sigh and an admission that, one more time, they’ll just have to work with him?

Or is this an attempt to sink King into a lake with a boulder tied to his ankles?

Maybe Stivers should consider switching parties.

With one week left ’til the midterms, I think it’s fair to say that the Republican Party is now trying to reap what it’s been sowing over the last few years.

Not sure what I mean? Many pundits and bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan, noticed more than a decade ago, closer to two decades in fact, that the conservative wing of the Republican Party, even as it took over the Party, looked less and less outside itself, and instead contented itself with information which came from other members of the conservative wing, or was fed in through official conservative news sources, such as Fox News, Breitbart, and others. This became known as the ‘bubble’ or ‘echo chamber,’ a version of the information landscape which has a problematic relationship with reality, sometimes strong, sometimes dubious, and occasionally completely delusional.

By encouraging members of the conservative wing, now simply known as the Republican Party as members who refuse to succumb to the lure of uniform thought and behavior^[1] are RINOed out, to utilize only the conservative news sources, the leaders and backers of the Republican Party have worked to ensure their Party members’ support by controlling the news they consume. Additionally, by poisoning the traditional and neutral mass media as having distributed “fake news”, President Trump has participated – put the frosting on the cake, if you will – in the work of carefully fertilizing the crop. Through careful control of the content of the news, as documented by (perhaps former) Republican Bruce Bartlett, the members of the base are carefully nurtured for the big day. That big day might as well be known as The Reaping.

And I think it’s coming with mid-terms. How do we know this? The level of deceit from the Republican side. That’s the point, after all, of the bubble. The bubble members are fed their informational nutrients, no matter what the connection might be to reality, and the favored leaders of the Party receive their votes.

So we have …

• Healthcare pre-existing conditions. Apparently a number of GOP incumbents are claiming they are in favor of keeping legislation that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to citizens with pre-existing conditions. Even President Trump claims he’s for that.

  Problem is, the AHCA did not retain that requirement. The AHCA was to replace the ACA, and the ACA brought that requirement into the law; the AHCA would have made it possible for insurance companies to deny coverage again. The AHCA was Trump’s baby, he worked for it, and was exceedingly bitter when it failed in the Senate.

  But today? Today, he’d have you believe the Democrats are against it and the Republicans have been for that ban on using pre-existing conditions to deny coverage all along.  No, really, that’s what he’d have you believe. Even as his Administration supports a lawsuit brought by some States asking that the ACA be declared null and void, including the all-important ban.
  If your GOP candidate is claiming s/he voted for, or would have voted for legislation denying insurance companies the right to deny coverage to pre-existing conditions, but you do a little sleuthing and find they were full-throated supporters of the AHCA, then they’re liars. No shilly-shallying, folks. They’re taking advantage of the ‘bubble’ to feed you bullshit.

  See here for a more authoritative take on both the lies and the legislative analysis.

• Immigrants are grifters, murderers, and rapists. Well, no. Many statistical analyses (here’s one) indicate that immigrants, at worst, commit crimes at no higher a rate than natives, and often at lower rates. This makes sense, as what’s the point in traveling to the United States to commit a crime in an unfamiliar context when it’s so much easier on one’s home turf?

  Furthermore, immigrants often take jobs no native-born American will take, and the recent lack of immigrant labor has lead to major problems for mom ‘n pop size businesses.

  However, the dangers of immigrants has been a constant theme from President Trump and his adherents for the last week or two. Frighten the base into voting for their sober protectors. That caravan coming out of Honduras must be full of automatic weapons, because now our Army is deploying troops down to the border. And, dammit, you know the Democrats are for open borders. Trump keeps telling you so directly.

• Democrats are evil. A quarter of America is only evil if you really want them to be. However, to be honest with you, as an independent I see both sides as simply being fallibly human.

  The difference between the two groups? Let me share with you, if I haven’t already, my definitions of conservatives and liberals.

  A conservative is afraid the future may destroy that which they value about the present, both tangibles, such as communities, as well as intangibles, such as values. The sober, temperate conservative is thoughtful and understand change is inevitable. The emotional conservative is less forgiving, less tolerant, sometimes rigid, and can be manipulated by the canny marketeer. I had not given it any thought before, but I suspect Lincoln might be considered a sober, thoughtful conservative, intent on preserving the Union, but acknowledging that the central role of Justice in a stable society required the freeing of the slaves. An emotional conservative frantically defends everything, while the sober conservative lets those things associated with injustice go.

  A liberal looks at the past and is horrified by the injustice s/he sees, and swears to do better. To the conservative, the liberal recommendations can seem like madness; independents may also find them jarring. Yet, one should not abhor those who would do better, but instead offer constructive, considered criticism – and be willing to be persuaded by their arguments. Temperamentally, liberals tend to be impressed with themselves and each other, and, the further out on a limb they’ve gone, the more patronizing they can become. It’s too bad, as I see such luminaries as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers to be the most liberal: not in position, which never defines liberals or conservatives, but in their thought processes.

  Evil is a convenient harvester, though, isn’t it? Voting against evil makes one feel like a Roman legionary holding back the vile Visigoths. (The Romans did eventually lose, BTW, and Rome was sacked.) But, as long time readers and certain spot-readers of this blog may realize, this is really about dividing the country. As an adversary might want, the United States is weak when we’re divided. (We must hang together, or surely we shall hang apart, to quote a Founding Father.) When we’re squabbling and screaming and lying about each other, we’re ripe for the picking.

  The words coming out of Trump’s mouth are sweet music to the Russian oligarchs’ ears.

  Democrats are not evil, no matter what the Republicans want you to believe. Their lies do not, to these independent’s eyes, appear to be anywhere in magnitude to the Republicans’ lies, to be comparable to the concerted and coordinated Republican attempts to control the information reaching their base.

I could go on, but frankly I find writing this sort of thing exhausting. The cynicism, the abandonment of principles, the rejection of long-established traditions that were constructed to keep us from capsizing on the rough seas of politics, suspicion of outsiders, and even sectarian violence.

It’s tiring. But it should be obvious: The Reaping is underway. The Republicans need the votes, and now they’re banking on how well they’ve insulated their base from the real world in order to reap those votes.

Are you just a stalk of grain sitting out in the field? Or are you beginning to wonder?

I’ll leave you with this.

DON’T TRUST ME.

DON’T TRUST FOX.

Just go out and do the research. The Republicans are for a ban on pre-existing condition clauses in insurance? Easy question: Why didn’t the AHCA contain that clause? Why did the Republicans vote more than 70 times to abolish the ACA during Obama’s years? Why are they once again trying to gut the ACA via their lawsuit with no exception for the ban, no legislation waiting to institute a ban, no nothing?

Go ask the questions. Then there’s one more: why are you voting for the Republicans this year?

¹ That is, they practiced the once revered Republican tradition of thinking for themselves.

Which makes Trump’s latest campaign promise to end birthright citizenship another impeachment matter. CNN has the report:

President Donald Trump offered a dramatic, if legally dubious, promise in a new interview to unilaterally end birthright citizenship, ratcheting up his hardline immigration rhetoric with a week to go before critical midterm elections.

Trump’s vow to end the right to citizenship for the children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on US soil came in an interview with Axios released Tuesday. Such a step would be regarded as an affront to the US Constitution, which was amended 150 years ago to include the words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Trump did not say when he would sign the order, and some of his past promises to use executive action have gone unfulfilled. But whether the President follows through on his threat or not, the issue joins a string of actions intended to thrust the matter of immigration into the front of voters’ minds as they head to polls next week.

All it does is remind me of how woefully inadequate Trump was when he entered office, and how he hasn’t progressed a bit since then. Still completely into the show-biz aspects of being President, without a whit of intelligence concerning anything substantial.

If he were smart, he would have said “I don’t like birthright citizenship and I’ll sponsor a Constitutional Amendment,” hey, he’d look smart to the Independents, and he’d have half a chance at getting it passed, too. CNN notes:

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for “Axios on HBO.”

Several other countries, including Canada, have a policy of birthright citizenship, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing immigration.

It’s worth a national debate. Heck, I might be in favor of it.

But right at the moment I’m only in favor of impeaching his sorry ass out of the Oval Office before he does any more damage to this country’s underpinnings.

That’s a big target.

Like many slapstick comedies, The Great Race (1965) is good for some light-hearted laughter, and, in this case, some lovely and well-choreographed fencing scenes, although I wish there’d been a bit more from Natalie Wood’s character, just to balance the fun duel between Tony Curtis and Ross Martin.

But other than that, it’s just unremarkable fun. If you don’t like slapstick, you won’t like this. But if you do, you’ve probably already seen this.

The fact-checkers for WaPo’s Fact Checker column are a little pissed off:

Somewhere, somehow, a memo must have gone out to Republican lawmakers who voted for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare: If you are attacked for undermining protections for people with existing health problems, jab back by saying the claim got Four Pinocchios from The Washington Post.

That’s not true. Republicans are twisting an unrelated fact check and are misleading voters. We have found at least seven politicians who have done this.

Rep. Peter J. Roskam (Illinois’s 6th District): In a debate on Oct. 22, he said: “Sean [Casten] has falsely accused me of being against protecting people with preexisting conditions and that was fact-checked by The Washington Post, who gave that four Pinocchios.” …

In sum, the first six lawmakers are referring to a fact check that: a) focused on how many people had preexisting conditions, not whether the bill harmed them; b) was published before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a critical report about the possible impact on people with preexisting conditions if the bill they supported had become law.

Several lawmakers referred to a sentence in the AHCA. Rep. Davis even misquotes it as: “Nothing in this bill shall allow insurance companies to deny anyone coverage for preexisting conditions.”

Actually, the sentence said: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions.”

This sentence was mostly a public-relations exercise, but notice the difference? It says “limit access to health coverage,” not “deny coverage” as Davis claimed. Everyone has “access” to buying a Tesla, but it makes a difference whether you can afford to buy it.

If the Republicans consider it important to subvert the message of the fact-checkers, it must mean the fact-checkers really are having an impact. Then throw in a misquote and the third-raters from the GOP just look awful.

Know hope. Even if I don’t.

There’s been a lot of outrage after President Trump suggested the Tree of Life synagogue needed a guard, as noted in Business Insider:

Trump was responding to a reporter who asked if he felt compelled to “revisit gun laws” after a gunman opened fire while shouting anti-Semitic slurs at a Saturday morning prayer service at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue.

Trump, speaking just over an hour after Pittsburgh police confirmed they had taken 48-year-old Robert Bowers into custody, said that if the synagogue had “protection inside, the results would have been far better.”

I think the approach of outrage is misguided. I suggest a more rational approach, as follows:

Sure, an armed guard might have stopped this attacker.

But he wouldn’t have stopped three armed attackers.

Oh, but you cry, that’s never happened before, and it won’t happen here in America.

Oh, sorry, sorry. I didn’t realize you don’t read history or current events.. It’s happened many times throughout history, and, given the extremist rhetoric flooding the net, it seems very unlikely that haters will continue their individual assaults. After all, someone with a big megaphone and a small brain – or, perhaps, a foreign brain (Russian? Iranian?), will begin encouraging attacks by groups.

Oh, but then we can post more guards!

You sure can.

And bigger guards.

Sure. Wannabe basketball players? Yep. How many do you need?

Uh …

And you don’t want to drain the pews, do you? Hard to get folks into the proper tithing mood when they’re armed to the incisors. They even feel like they’ve already given.

No!

Oh, yes, they will. But here’s what I suggest: privatize it!

What? Oh, yes, that’ll work!

Big companies can supply guards to all you faithful types! In fact, I’ve noticed there’s a wonderful place for a machine gun nest up on the Holy Cross. For you Christians, at least. I’ve never been in any other religious structure, except in India. For instance, how about a nest right up in the balcony at East Bay Calvary?

That’s America for you, isn’t it?! Isn’t it wonderful?

Sure. For the first two months.

Uh, what do you mean?

Hey, profit’s everything, right? That’s the American way. Hell, profit’s more important than Jesus. Just ask Pat Robertson.

Now you’re just being ridiculous.

I’ll pass that on to Pat, and I warn you, he may disagree with you. Just imagine that big ol’ machine gun peering down at the pews, just waiting for that sneak attack from some hater, your faithful defender’s finger on the trigger –

You’re being a jerk.

I’m being a jerk? What if your defender gets the hiccups?

Fuck off.

Certainly, I can see I’ve inserted some unfortunate thoughts in your head, and you’ll need to wash them out. But just one more thing …

What?

What if your defender, that guy with his finger on the trigger of that heavy machine gun, is a hater? Or … a liberal?

Have fun, kids! Glad I don’t feel that need to attend to religious services, sounds like everyone’s at risk now.

And I wouldn’t dream of suggesting, you know, that sort of thing. The NRA might die of heart disease if I did.

NASA recently awarded some VR software an award:

A mixed-reality software that allows scientists and engineers to virtually walk on Mars recently received NASA’s 2018 Software of the Year Award.

OnSight uses imagery from NASA’s Curiosity rover to create an immersive 3D terrain model, allowing users to wander the actual dunes and valleys explored by the robot. The goal of the software, a collaboration between Microsoft and JPL’s Ops Lab, is to bring scientists closer to the experience of being in the field. Unlike geologists on Earth, who can get up close and personal with the terrain they study, Martian geologists have a harder time visualizing their environment through 2D imagery from Mars.

“Feeling like you’re standing on Mars really gives you a different sense of Mars than just looking at the pictures,” said Parker Abercrombie, OnSight team lead. “And I think it’s a really powerful way to bring people to these places that they physically can’t visit.”

Here’s a video:

As a science geek, it sounds real cool and all that. But has NASA setup any sort of metric to measure just how much more useful this approach to studying conditions on Mars vs the more traditional approaches? And if the advances in science attributable to this “mixed-reality” software are substantial, are they prepared to analyze the reasons behind the gain, that is, perform a qualitative analysis? Such an analysis may help sharpen the next step along this alternative planetary analysis path.

I must admit I was bothered by Colbert’s routine last week mocking President Trump’s “I’m a nationalist, not a globalist” comment during a recent speech, because equating that to National Socialism, or the Nazis, isn’t really accurate.

Because he’s comparing “nationalism” to “globalists,” this is about international trade. It’s best to understand what’s going on here in order to have effective responses to Trumpists, so let’s break down what Trump said. From The New York Times:

At a rally in Houston on Monday night, he embraced the term as unabashedly as he ever has. “Really, we’re not supposed to use that word,” he told supporters in a nod to the usual political sensibilities that he relishes disrupting. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!”

Asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why he used that word given its association with racist movements, Mr. Trump professed ignorance of its history but did not back off. “I never heard that theory about being a nationalist,” he said. “I’ve heard them all. But I’m somebody who loves our country.” Undaunted, he added: “I am a nationalist. It’s a word that hasn’t been used too much. Some people use it, but I’m very proud. I think it should be brought back.” …

“Radical Democrats want to turn back the clock” to restore the “rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” he said in Houston, where he was campaigning for Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican. “You know what a globalist is, right? You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can’t have that.”

So are the terms “nationalist” and “globaliist” important in the national conversation? The best way to look at this is to look for absurdities. Trump characterizes himself as a patriot that wants to put the United States first. The implication?

That other Presidents do not.

If you’re a hyper-partisan, this is sweet, sweet honey. After all, the members of the other tribes are traitors and imbeciles and, hey, they paint stripes on themselves at midnight before ride the Ferris Wheel for the great sacrifice of small children.

Ahem^[1].

But for the rest of us, the great majority of Americans who still buy tickets for the Rationality Train, it should be self-evident that just about all American politicians always put America first^[2]. That some do not perform as well as others may be because of competency or the currents of History, but to suggest that it’s rank treason is damned unlikely.

Therefore, this is a question of strategy. It helps to ask why there are different strategies, and, given the now-obvious limitations of President Trump, particularly in the realm of “trade deficits”, we can come up with an explanaation.

A nationalist believes, or purports to believe, that international trade is a zero-sum game. For every winner, there’s a loser. So you pick a metric, do your measurement, and if, say, the trade balance with some other nation is negative, then you’re losing the “trade war” with that country, and Something Must Be Done.

A “globalist,” for want of a better turn, has progressed beyond the simple and incorrect description of international trade to realize that it’s possible, if not guaranteed, to have both sides win at trade. This is actually quite the natural result that every single private sector person should realize. When you buy salt from the grocery story, or the salt miner, the fact of the matter is that they have too much salt, while you don’t have enough, but you have enough money to afford it, while they need money to continue the business, keep the shareholders happy, etc.

Each comes away relatively happy with the transaction, assuming it’s an honest transaction.

So there’s the thing. Trumpists want to think there’s a winner and a loser for every relationship, and they think America’s not winning – why? Many reasons, from propaganda to being in an industry that’s doing poorly or has a poor outlook.

It’s easier to blame that country across the pond than yourself – or the currents of the global economy.

The globalist sees trade as winners on both sides, if handled properly. They want America to win, too – and to have happy, prosperous winners on the other side as well. Their problem is that can be a hard gig to properly manage, sometimes.

So there’s your definition for the day.  I think that’s a little more easy to use effectively than a defective equality to National Socialism. You can just say Trump’s not smart enough to understand international trade’s potential.

¹ I hyperbolize merely to highlight the absurdity of hyper-partisan thought.

² Some readers, given the behaviors of the current President vis a vis the Russians, might question this assertion, but I will let it go in this post in order to advance the argument without distracting, unproven details.

Gee, is this the footprint of Godzilla? How about, ah, that one with three heads? No?

The hard, dirty cops in the noir thriller Mulholland Falls (1996) are, sadly, not hard enough for me to believe them, at least not in the TV-cut version which we saw. These cops, a unit formed to oust organized crime from Los Angeles, CA, start the movie off one evening in the early 1950s by tossing a would-be mob boss off of the cliff where Mulholland Drive has a lovely view of Los Angeles.

The next morning, though, the pulverized body of a woman is brought to the attention of the squad’s boss, Captain Hoover. She is swiftly identified as the beautiful Alison Pond. The trail to her killers leads to a confederate who took films of her with her lovers, through Captain Hoover’s hotel bedroom, and onwards to a military base where a leader of the atomic bomb effort, General Timms, is mortally ill and babbles at length concerning how sometimes the one hundred must be sacrificed for the one thousand. As it happens, there’s a hospital ward of dying servicemen on the base, all ill from radiation poisoning.

But when Hoover accuses Timms of killing Pond, of making her a member of Timm’s one hundred, it’s a look of innocence and dismissal. On the ride home in the base’s DC-3^[1], Hoover and his partner realize they have been setup for an identical fate as that suffered by Pond, but overpower the General’s over-zealous Colonel and his assistant and toss them from the plane, instead. Hoover’s partner also dies in the incident.

In the end, Hoover loses his long-time partner and, possibly, his wife, as well as his former lover, Pond.

As noir goes, Mulholland Falls is definitely mediocre. The problems are principally with the characters. Of the four dirty cops, only Captain Hoover is given much to work with, and the actor, Nick Nolte, doesn’t come through as either brutally stupid or cannily corrupted. He doesn’t achieve the proper look, either, being far too bland to really communicate anything to the audience. This point does bring up the entire question of the importance of appearance in theater. Sometimes it can be used to indicate the moral role of a character, and sometimes it can be used to obscure the moral role. But the look of Captain Hoover said little, being more of a journalistic effort than a dramatic effort.

His partner, Ellery Coolidge, may be a long time partner, or brand new, competent or incompetent. Honestly, none of that comes through. He seems to be just filling that slot marked “Partner, to be ignored when Hoover is in emotional pain.” The other two cops of Hoover’s squad are non-entities, despite their slick suits and very cool convertible.

Even more jarring is General Timms, who comes across more as a dying philosopher or artist, and not a stiff-lipped General, doing his duty. His clothing, his bearing, even his housing did not speak to the constraints of the purported role, but rather someone who probably should never have even been considered military.

Without effective characters in these moral roles of defective, failing people, the plot becomes more artifice than moral lesson. Noir isn’t just about bad endings, it’s about how the selfishly bad decisions of the people inhabiting these scenarios lead to their grim demise. Noir is the flip side of the morality tale wherein doing good leads to good results, even if the self-sacrifice is mortal. Noir is specifically about how following one’s impulses, not socially-approved, leads to an ending other than what one might expect.

And Mulholland Falls never quite gets there.

1 The DC-3 was a sweet workhorse of a plane, as I understand it, with the first rolling off a runway in 1936, and even today some are flying. According to Wikipedia the plane used here is the military version, listed as the C-47.

Remember all those horrible immigrants from Mexico that Big Daddy Trump told us about? Here’s Fox News helping us out:

President Trump railed against illegal immigration Thursday, claiming that “women are raped at levels nobody has ever seen before,” in reference to the journey north to the United States.

At a round-table event in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia — slated to discuss tax reform — Trump instead started his discussion with a focus on the border and illegal immigration.

“Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower when I opened—everybody said ‘oh, he was so tough.’ I used the word ‘rape,’” Trump said, referring to his controversial comment at the start of the presidential campaign when he said “rapists” were coming across the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

“Yesterday, it came out and this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “They don’t want to mention that. So we have to change our laws.”

That was from last April. Of course, during his candidacy he claimed things were even worse.

And now he claims the ‘caravan’ coming up through Mexico from Guatemala has more of the same. Good lord! It must be a war zone through the heart of Mexico! Am I right? Yeah? From WaPo:

Mexicans shower the caravan with kindness — and tarps, tortillas and medicine

PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico — Everything Pedro Osmin Ulloa was wearing, from the black felt shoes with the gold buckles to the shimmery blue button-down, was as new to him as he was to Mexico.

The 30-year-old Honduran corn farmer and dogged sojourner in the migrant caravan was dressed head-to-toe in donated clothes. His 3-year-old son, Alexander, played with donated toys. And the rest of the family — his wife, his two brothers and a cousin — sat on the sidewalk eating beef stew and tortillas ladled out for them by residents of this bustling market town in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state.

“These people have been beautiful,” he said. “Everyone’s helping us out.”

It’s tough to be xenophobic when everyone’s being so bloody kind to those less fortunate, isn’t it?

But this is how low the United States has sunk under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump. We run around in circles, terrified that furriners might get into the country and commit horrible crimes, while the Mexicans, a much poorer country, have opened their hearts and arms to those who’ve been forced from their homes.

If Trump had been serious about immigration, he wouldn’t have bothered with that non-starter of a wall. He wouldn’t have bothered with “immigration reform.” If he was the smart dude he claims to be, he would have commissioned studies to discover exactly why these countries south of us are leaking some of their best and brightest to their big neighbor to the north, and then taken those corrective actions necessary to help them out, whether that’s more foreign aid, or withholding ag exports^[1], or whatever.

Vote Democratic. Even if you’re a conservative, the Republican Party needs to be burned down to the ground and rebuilt.

If they reform into a party with honorable intentions, then you can vote Republican next time. Right now? They’re not.

¹ The theory goes that our low-cost food exports, often subsidized by the American government, out-competes the local farmers, who lose their livelihoods and sink into poverty.

And maybe then migrate to the United States to work in the … ag industry!

Still, I haven’t heard whether this theory proved out or not – it’s from 25 years ago, and it was just as politically unpopular then as it would be today, I’m sure.

I see the EPA doesn’t see the value in, oh, clean air. This is the headline from IFL Science!:

EPA Announces It Will Discontinue Science Panel That Reviews Air Pollution Safety

Perhaps it’s a bit un-nuanced:

Made up of doctors, researchers, and other experts, the 20-person Particulate Matter Review Panel works to provide guidelines on particulate matter (PM) – tiny solid particles found in the air, such as soot – known to cause respiratory and other health issues. The panel will be replaced by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), a seven-member group established in 1977 under the Clean Air Act to address “research related to air quality, sources of air pollution, and the strategies to attain and maintain air quality standards.” CASAC will be legally required to advise the EPA administrator on quality standards beginning in 2019.

Sounds like a bureaucratic rearrangement and even streamlining. But the Union of Concerned Scientists is not happy:

The administration might claim to be making this move in the name of streamlining but there are much bigger consequences to eliminating science from the process.  Sure, it will be a faster process to update the PM standard without a review panel, but we’ll also have a less science-based process. Review panels effectively serve as a public peer-review of the EPA’s integrated science assessments, which detail the state of the science on pollutants.  Without a PM review panel, there is far less expert input informing the PM standard.

But perhaps this is precisely the point. The administration has made clear that they are interested in fast-tracking the PM and ozone reviews in order to set new standards before the end of the administration.  This is an aggressive timeline, considering that the EPA is only required to update the standards every five years, and usually needs more time to conduct the careful, science-based process of characterizing the state of the science on a pollutant’s health effects and working with scientific experts to issue a standard that is protective of public health. If you can eliminate this careful scientific assessment, you can speed up the process, but at the expense of public health.

My suspicion? Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is apparently from the same mold as his predecessor, the disgraced Scott Pruitt, as the DeSmog blog notes:

Coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, the interim administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the resignation of Scott Pruitt, has held positions as the Washington Coal Club’s Vice President and President. Wheeler’s profile at Faegre Baker Daniels consulting, as recently as April 2018, listed him as the WCC‘s vice president. The group’s most recent tax filings, as of 2016, listed him as president.

An informational brochure described the coal club as a “small informal group with a mutual interest in coal,” while boasting board representation and sponsorship from some of the largest coal companies in the country. Its mailing address in 2014 was listed as courtesy of Arch Coal. According to the brochure, its “main activity is a luncheon-meeting program, which is held monthly” and “on or close to the U.S.Capitol complex in Washington, DC.”

The Washington Coal Club’s website no longer appeared in operation as of May 2017. However, in December 2017, the group bestowed “Lifetime Achievement Awards” on numerous individuals including vocal climate change denier and Murray Energy CEO Robert E. Murray.

[Attributions omitted.]

That last bit would indicate to me that Wheeler has a set of views that are out of step with traditional EPA views. So my assessment is that he was hearing voices saying things he didn’t want to hear, so, in the tradition of autocrats everywhere – he silenced them.

Readers comment on the sad Monahan / Ellison controversy:

I think Monahan is being dishonest.

It certainly feels like it, but we may never know unless she takes one of two actions: release the video, or recant her accusations. At the moment, she’s in deep long-term danger as far as her future goes, because not releasing the tape isn’t an option, and if she releases the (or “a”) tape after the election and it’s not considered to show what she claims its shows, then her reputation is absolutely done and she’ll spend the rest of her life working waitressing jobs, because the Democrats won’t touch her, organizations who might like her experience working for the Democrats will take one look at this episode and mark her untrustworthy.

Even the Republicans would hesitate to hire her.

And even if she waits to release it until after the election and it does show Ellison engaged in loathsome behaviors, she’s still tarred with poorly chosen behaviors.

Any conclusions concerning her motivations are purely speculative. Her actions are congruent with a woman who’s been abused as well as a woman who has been spurned. Out on the fringes, there’s still congruency with her being a Republican mole, and even her being a Russian mole.

And, of course, there’s the Muslim angle to consider. This would also be fringe, but not yet formally out of the picture.

Just not enough information, and we’ll probably never have it.

Another reader:

Minnesota has really been disappointing me. Way too many racists outside the metro. Probably too many inside it too, but they are more likely to be drowned out.

I’m disappointed, but, on reflection, not surprised. Over the last few decades there has been an awful lot of change being forced on Americans, on the fronts of moral, cultural, and work (among others), and while we may embrace change that we choose, it’s a rare person who likes to have change forced on them.

My perception is that city folks are accustomed to change. The city council decides to upgrade a road and forces an assessment. The restaurant down the road closes and becomes a little trade shop. A light-rail line is installed. Extra taxes are bestowed on vehicles in order to reduce congestion in downtown. It’s off to the theater, the cinema, the Fringe. Not all of these are forced changes, but those that are have accustomed the city folks to change.

Red are Trump-voting counties, Blue are Clinton leaning counties.
Source: Wikipedia.

Not so in smaller towns and rural areas. The pressure of population, and the change that inevitably accompanies more and more people, isn’t present in those communities; indeed, many are drying up. As we can see on the right, this map of voting in Minnesota show the rural areas voting for Trump, while the cities of Duluth (4th largest in the state) and the Iron Range, an old union area, the Twin Cities, and Olmstead County, where Rochester, the third largest city in Minnesota, and Mayo Clinic are located, voted for Clinton.

These are well-known results, but I bring them up to point out that the Democrats represent change. They support, to lesser and greater extents, gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, changes to our national healthcare system, power station regulations, anthropocentric climate change crisis regulations, and other proposals which escape me.

And change, at the moment, is a negative for the smaller cities and the rural areas. Many small towns are emptying out as they lose their economic purpose. They continue to “suffer” from environmental regulations which are designed to keep them safe & healthy, but also hinder their ability to grow crops, raise livestock, and other activities. Prices for the commodities they produce are down.

And you know what doesn’t represent change? Racism. Racism and its cousin, xenophobia, are simply part of the old, old way of doing things, recognizing someone is “other” based on the easily observed, and victimizing them if they’re other. Because the other represents change, represents a threat to the present social order, the present power structure.

When times are tough, it’s a lot easier to blame the other for your problems rather than admitting that the way of life to which you’ve committed yourself may be going away, or even that your personal failures, such as failing to commit to learning and growing and changing, are at fault.

In the cities, we’re used to change and don’t have a lot of time for the overt racist who wants to return to the old ways, because there’s a critical density of people who understand and explain why that’s unjust, not to mention stupid. Of course, there’s still the covert and unconscious racists, a problem we still work on.

And this semi-obvious line of reasoning leads to a big problem incoming for the Republicans. They’ve told the rural areas that they’ll help restore them, explicitly or implicitly. That will require economic change. Thus, the Republicans must either tie themselves strongly to the policies which bring that change, or become the Party of Change, and I don’t think the latter is acceptable to them, unless they spin it as the Party of Regressive Change. The return to the Golden Age has certainly been a recurrent theme for them, but it’s ultimately a dead-end – coal, for example, is not coming back.

Thus, they run the possibility that the Democrats may take credit for any changes which benefit the Republicans’ base.

And, worse yet, those changes will engender positive attitudes towards other change, once again fracturing the Republican base.

They can walk this tight-rope, I’m sure. But I’m not sure they’re smart enough.

A reader writes concerning Senator Klobuchar’s reply to me concerning Statehood for Puerto Rico:

Avoiding political fodder in an election year sounds plausible. Also, I’m guessing that statehood for PR was not even on her radar, and some staffer wrote / printed (already written) this generic letter and sent it to you.

Possibly. However, I’ve been running across hints that it’s on some politicians’ radar, in a negative way for Republicans and positive for Democrats.

But I’m more concerned for the territory’s residents than I am about the political situation. It’s been repeated ad nauseam in the media that residents of Puerto Rico are United States citizens, but the fact of the matter is that they’re impaired United States citizens, because they lack full representation in Congress and cannot vote for President (which surprises me, I thought they could). While it’s true that I think Congress should be working on national problems without regard to their location, it’s also true it’s a representative democracy (aka republic) and members of Congress should, in some sense, represent their constituents.

Location of the North Marianas. Source: Wikipedia.

And the Puerto Ricans need that full citizenship, along with all the other territories, such as the occupants of the North Marianas, who just a few days ago were hit by the worst hurricane (Typhoon Yutu) to hit the United States since 1935. Yep, worse than Florence, Maria, and all the ones that got the media attention, WaPo claims. Yet, how much attention and assistance will they get? Probably even less than the Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria, and I worry about that. Isolation in the Pacific Ocean doesn’t help their cause.

It’s not that Puerto Ricans don’t want Statehood^[1]. But it takes two to tango, and despite the Republicans as recently as 2016 saying they want Puerto Rico to become a State^[2], nothing seems to be happening on the Republican side of things.

It’s disappointing.

¹ From this Telegraph article. This comes with the caveat that a majority of Puerto Ricans didn’t vote in the referendum.

² From the 2016 RNC platform, which is quite long.

We support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We further recognize the historic significance of the 2012 local referendum in which a 54 percent majority voted to end Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. territory, and 61 percent chose statehood over options for sovereign nationhood. We support the federally sponsored political status referendum authorized and funded by an Act of Congress in 2014 to ascertain the aspirations of the people of Puerto Rico. Once the 2012 local vote for statehood is ratified, Congress should approve an enabling act with terms for Puerto Rico’s future admission as the 51st state of the Union.

Efflorescence:

1. the state or a period of flowering.
2. an example or result of growth and development:
   These works are the efflorescence of his genius.
3. Chemistry .
   1. the act or process of efflorescing.
   2. the resulting powdery substance or incrustation. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “In New York, a look into the early days of the world’s oldest Christian nation,” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:

Orson Welles, in “The Third Man,” posited a cynical theory of what makes some cultures creative and others not: “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” This isn’t a fair summation of the creative potential of peace or democracy, and only slightly more accurate about the cultural accomplishments of the Swiss. But an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art seems to prove the same thing by inverting the logic.

A sumptuous survey of early Christian art in Armenia suggests that no matter how scattered the people, no matter how frequent the wars or painful the disruptions, nothing could dim the Armenian cultural efflorescence.

In an interview, the ultimate partisan & quitter Newt Gingrich says a bit and implies quite a bit more:

During a live interview on Oct. 25 at The Washington Post, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that if Democrats re-take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections and subpoena the president’s tax returns, it would likely force a fight in the U.S. Supreme Court. “And,” Gingrich said,”we’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it.” [WaPo]

While the acknowledgement that Kavanaugh was selected for his demonstrated sympathy for a “soft on criminal Presidents” view, rather than any outstanding legal analysis virtues he might possess, is of course appalling in a Gingrich sort of way, it’s the implicit statement that caught my eye.

That is, he seems awfully damn confident that Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch (IJ), and Chief Justice and Keeper of the SCOTUS legacy Roberts are partisan puppets he has firmly in his pocket. Is this really true? As I’ve discussed before, a criminal President is a truly dangerous thing, and Justice Kavanaugh’s views appear to be naive, or partisan, in the extreme. But what of the others of the conservative wing of the Court? Are they just finger puppets, ready to cover up any crime the President may commit?

Surprises do occasionally come out of SCOTUS.

When someone’s food talks back to you.

Ever had one of those ice cream sundaes where the ice cream is just a little off? All those lovely toppings wasted because the ice cream has that weird, artificial chemical after-taste?

Or how about when someone bolts a huge spoiler onto the back of a … Honda Accord?

Well, Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) is sort of like that. A gang, aware of a bank in Aspen, CO, containing some gold, comes to town. The plan is to blow up an old mine up the side of the mountain, and while everyone is distracted by the explosion and possible avalanche, they invade the bank and take enough gold to carry.

How will they escape? To that end, they engage the services of a tall, handsome cross-country ski guide, purportedly for a round trip over the hills and through the woods, but actually planning to rendezvous with a small plane piloted by a confederate at the guide’s cabin.

Problems start to appear when the man planting the bomb in the mine loses the drunken waitress he’s picked up to a monster. I know, careless, especially when the monster appears to be a small stick with cobwebs wrapped around it, but the bomb is in place, and while the town is buzzing about the missing waitress, the bomb goes off, killing a watchman who’s checking the broken door. Operating like a gasoline engine without oil, the gang makes it to the oblivious guide, who sets them off cross country.

And every once in a while, a cobwebby stick pops into view.

This crew seems to be full of opaque comments, odd fears, and, to top it off, the boss has his alcoholic girlfriend along for the ride. She’s cheeky, bitter, desperate, but it comes off a little flat.

Once at the guide’s house, the plot comes out in the open, meaning the guide is deep in the doodoo, but in the midst of threatening gestures, Mr. Monster snatches up the guide’s housekeeper, a straight-faced Indian who may have been the best actor of the lot. Eventually, one of the gang traces her to the monster’s hideout, an old cave, and finds the woman webbed to the wall – along with the missing waitress.

At least they followed Burke’s dictate for ‘the sublime.’

Then the gang member joins the larder, and we finally get a good look at the monster. I must say, this caused division in my household, because my Arts Editor immediately proclaimed it the “worst monster ever,” while I actually thought it was creepy and the best part of the movie.

Did I say larder? THE MONSTER’S A BLOODSUCKER! And a loud eater. Poor upbringing, I’m sure.

In any case, the drunk girlfriend and the guide, forced to take refuge from the non-existent storm into which they were trying to escape from the violent boss of the gang (or remnants thereof), stumble into this mess, swiftly followed by the enraged boss, and while the guide and drunk girlfriend escape, everyone else pretty much goes up in flames.

Who knew monsters were flammable?

There’s a lot going on here, but the story doesn’t coordinate the themes, and the themes are really fairly trivial. There’s some typical 1950s anti-women violence, the characters are a trifle random, which is perhaps another 1950s trope, and the acting itself is fairly awful.

It’s too bad. A complete redo with careful thematic consideration might yield a more horrifying condemnation of amorality.

The good news out of Georgia concerning vote suppression in Gwinnett County is that the ACLU did, in fact, suggest that letting non-experts judge the validity of signatures was unconstitutional, and the judge agreed:

The plaintiffs, including the ACLU, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Coalition for Good Governance, argued that allowing nonexpert election officials to judge the validity of signatures without giving voters the chance to contest the decisions amounted to unconstitutional voter suppression.

U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May agreed, and she ordered Secretary of State Brian Kemp to instruct all local election officials to stop rejecting absentee ballots over the mismatched signatures. Instead, such ballots will be marked “provisional,” and the voter will be given the right to appeal the decision or confirm his or her identity. Kemp and the Gwinnett County election board were named as defendants in the suit. [WaPo]

And Gwinnett County is the second largest in the State.

This is, you’ll remember, the same state where current Secretary of State Brian Kemp is also GOP candidate for Governor Brian Kemp, meaning he has a conflict of interest, which he refuses to acknowledge. I thought this final comment in the WaPo story was interestingly naive:

The “exact match” law has been blamed for the suspension of more than 53,000 registration applications in Georgia this year.

Kemp has also been accused of purging hundreds of thousands of active voters from the state’s rolls.

He has argued that his office has properly maintained the state’s voting rolls and that the “exact match” law is an appropriate safeguard against voter fraud.

Now, we’re all familiar with computer breaches. Typically, these are spun as simply someone gaining access to some enormous amount of data of a sensitive nature, presumably to use for identity theft or other nefarious purposes.

But that’s just one form of computer breach. Imagine someone gaining the ability to alter that data. Now imagine someone gaining access to the voter rolls, and, say, altering the data so that the middle name or middle initial of some subset is changed.

And that subset is defined to be mostly Republican voters. Or Democratic. Or black. Keep that imagination going folks, because right now we’re talking about weaponizing our computer systems, and, like most weapons, they can be equally efficient without regard to the identity of the target.

Speaking as a software engineer: once a malicious hacker^[1] gains enough access to alter data, this is not difficult. In fact, depending on the security configuration and how easy it is to connect to other databases, this can even be trivial for any database programmer who’s gotten beyond the stage that I affectionately call “half-baked.”

And if that occurs in conjunction with this “exact match” law, well, I understand how anyone concerned about voter fraud might think this law is a good thing, but I dearly hope that I have demonstrated why such a law, assuming its little name is properly descriptive, is actually a big bloody disaster just waiting to happen.

That law probably should be repealed as soon as possible, and Republicans, if they’re smart, will lead the way, because they are as likely to become victims as anyone.

And this lets me move on to a reader comment:

The not wanting an ID to vote should be a no issue thing. How would you like if somebody hijacked your name and voted for a liberal.

Here’s the thing: how much of a problem has voter fraud been over the years? I honestly cannot think of voter fraud being an issue during my lifetime, with two exceptions.

First, our “sore winner” Trump, who has spat out accusations of fraud with no evidence, and then appointed a commission to investigate, who got little cooperation and, again, found no evidence for widespread fraud.

Second, I have heard rumors that there was voter fraud in Chicago during the JFK / Nixon contest of 1960 (actually, not my lifetime, but I’ll roll with it). However, despite the tightness of the race, Nixon refused to call for a recount:

There were charges of vote fraud in Texas and Illinois, both states won by Kennedy; Nixon refused to consider contesting the election, feeling a lengthy controversy would diminish the United States in the eyes of the world, and the uncertainty would hurt U.S. interests. [Wikipedia]

Otherwise, not much. Now, it sounds like a fine thing to tighten up voting processes, yet it appears that, historically, we’ve done just fine. And then let’s add in my analysis of this “exact match” law – the Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and on the march, and it should teach us to move slowly and with deliberation before disturbing processes that work. I’d hate to hear that Republican voters were disenfranchised in a close race just as much as I would black voters, Latino voters, or any other “minority”, just because we thought we were making a process more secure or efficient – when it already works. Not only is it a miscarriage of justice, but the follow-on bitterness damages our nation.

Or, as should be tattooed on the inner eyelids of every engineer, Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

¹ Naturally, a government employee with access to the voter rolls could also inflict extensive damage, or corruption as we call it in the trade. The real question concerning both hacker and employee is whether their technical proficiency is such that they can even cover their tracks so that the corruption is only detected piecemeal.

There are a number of threats to stable, rational Western civilizations these days, ranging from the trivial, such as homeopaths, to the abnormally large number of major threats, such as the rampant attacks on the free press, which are both physical, in the form of the recent bomb mailed to CNN, and rhetorical, as in President Trump’s unsupportable rhetorical attacks on the veracity of the mainstream media.

But one of the dramas playing out here in Minnesota embodies, I think, one of the stronger threats which is not really recognized for what it is. I refer to the relatively recent allegations of Karen Monahan that Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), now running to be Attorney-General of Minnesota, engaged in misconduct during their recent, now-terminated, relationship.

The key to my concern lies in the details of the scenario, which I’ve noted before but will briefly recap. Monahan claims he abused her one evening:

“We never discussed — the video I have of you trying to drag me off the bed,” Monahan wrote to Ellison, quoting abusive language he allegedly shouted at her. [MPR]

The key piece of evidence, the video she cites, has never been released nor leaked to the press. In point of fact, its existence and contents have not been verified in a court of law or in a public news piece, at least as of yesterday (KSTP.com).

Ellison, naturally, has flatly denied any improprieties in this or any other relationship.

In terms of circumstantial evidence, both sides have brought some support to the table. Monahan claims to have told friends and has a medical report on the matter (same KSTP.com report):

“You can’t discount what Karen Monahan has reported and all the evidence she has,” said Monahan’s attorney, Andrew Parker.

During the DFL-hired lawyer’s investigation, Monahan provided medical records, therapy notes and text messages where she mentioned the allegations, along with several friends who heard of the claims.

“She told them about the physical abuse more than a year before it ever came out publicly,” Parker said.

Meanwhile, Ellison’s circumstantial evidence of innocence comes from his ex-wife:

Kim Ellison, who is Keith Ellison’s ex-wife, came to the congressman’s defense Sunday in a statement that was emailed to reporters.

“We may be divorced, but we are still a family,” she wrote. “I want members of our community to know that the behavior described does not match the character of the Keith I know.” [MPR]

Since the cited MPR report, the divorce papers of the Ellisons were unsealed, against their wishes, and nothing of a violent nature pertaining to Keith Ellison was found.

The situation may be summed up as a political candidate facing an unsupported accusation of misconduct, which he cannot effectively refute. Note the victim needn’t be a man, and in fact there have been a few cases publicized of powerful women being accused of misconduct.

How has this affected Ellison’s chances at election as MN AG? His poll numbers on Sept 19 in a local StarTribune poll looked fairly good, as you can see on the right – a 7 point lead, with 15% undecided and another 6 voting for others.

But that was a month ago, and that’s a month of uncertainty and accusations flying about. How is the race going now? For a race in a national atmosphere in which Republicans face substantial doubt (or, in my mind, they’re a national disgrace who should be booted out of power en masse), Ellison is now severely under-performing, as can be seen on the left, down by 7, but with 16% still undecided.

So much for quantification. Let’s talk civilization, shall we? Our current form of civilization traces from ancient Greece crucially through the European Renaissance period, during which concepts such as rationality and its cousin, proof, came to the fore. It is on these concepts that many important parts of our civilization are dependent, in fact so many that I hesitate to list them. Understanding that I will forget my reader’s favorite while noting those relevant here, occupants of this list will include science, technology, and justice, which in turn enable core institutions such as the Western democratic governments which we enjoy, comparatively speaking, today.

When examining how the Monahan / Ellison controversy stacks up, I was struck by this quote from the recent KSTP.com report referenced earlier:

Monahan says she feels abandoned by some in her party, that’s she’s worked for as an activist and fundraiser, since stepping forward.

“The Me-Too movement goes back and forth, to each party, when it’s in one person’s hands the other wants to distance themselves,” Monahan said.

It’s a vague statement, but reminds me of something Andrew Sullivan has brought up more than once in his weekly column. Here’s one useful quote:

A month or so ago, a friend and I mulled over when exactly the backlash to the then-peaking #MeToo moral panic would set in. Mid-January, we guessed, and sure enough here we are.

No, we were not being clairvoyant, just noting certain dynamics. The early exposure of Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and Harvey Weinstein — achieved by meticulous, scrupulous journalists and smart, determined women — quickly extended to more ambiguous and trivial cases. Distinctions among many different types of offenses — from bad behavior at private parties to brutal assault and rape of employees and co-workers — were being instantly lost in the fervor. Punishment was almost always the same — social ostracism and career destruction — whether you were Mark Halperin, who allegedly sexually assaulted women in his workplace, or Al Franken, damned because of mild handsiness and pretending to grope a woman’s breasts as a joke. Any presumption of innocence was regarded as a misogynist dodge, and an anonymous online list of accusations against named men in the media was created and circulated with nary an attempt by its instigators to substantiate a single one. Within a few weeks, the righteous exposure of hideous abuse of power had morphed into a more generalized revolution against the patriarchy. …

But the French signatories also worried about due process: “This expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner, or sending messages with sexual connotations to a woman whose feelings were not mutual.”

In essence, an accusation can be as good as a conviction. This would be a violation of the ascertainment of believable evidence before conviction.

Without the claim of the video, I’d shrug this off as another he-said / she-said, a little frustrated that no dispositive evidence was available. But that video has the potential to be dispositive, and this is where I’m get a bit angry, because this claim, unsubstantiated as it is so far, is an attack on civilization.

Why?

[Interviewer] Chaloux asked, “Why not to show it to put all these doubts aside?”

“I’ve had so many survivors say, do not cater into these demands, because we don’t have tape. I’m not trying to make it harder for people who have been victimized to come out,” Monahan replied.

To me, this simply screams Believe me because I say so. This is no better and no different than the bully exercising their illicit power over the weaker, taking all the fruits of their labor to themselves, or pedophilic priests telling their unhappy victims to not mention a word because this is the Will of God.

It’s a willing dissension to the rules of civilization because they happen to be inconvenient to the selfish desires of the person in an advantageous position who wants something.

Does Monahan have anything at all? Beats me. If she does, I’d be happy, in a sad sort of way, to watch and/or listen to this video, and, assuming it’s an authentic video (see recent posts on deepfakes), come to a judgment based on that.

But there’s one more thing about this I’d like to talk about. Once, perhaps twice, I’ve talked about how we tend to look at things from an individual’s point of view, rather than society’s. This has ranged from whether or not everyone deserves a living wage regardless of what they do, to questions about whether or not society should subsidize college / university educations to a greater or lesser extent.

Something Monahan said in that interview reminded me of this little teapot tempest (where the teapot is my brain). Along with this:

“If and when I decided to share that video, it will be in a time that works for me,” Monahan said. “This is my process, my number one responsibility is my own self-care and doing what I feel I can handle.”

Was also this:

Monahan says she feels abandoned by some in her party, that’s she’s worked for as an activist and fundraiser, since stepping forward.

“The Me-Too movement goes back and forth, to each party, when it’s in one person’s hands the other wants to distance themselves,” Monahan said.

Monahan said she will not be voting in the AG race for any candidate.

“I’m not looking or expecting any kind of outcome, this isn’t about an election for me, this isn’t about politics, you’re not thinking about an election and neither is your family when you are dealing with something like this,” Monahan said.

Although I’ve read very little about ancient Greece, their concept of polis always seemed to imply a consciousness concerning the good of society, of the City of which they were members. That is, we’re not always working towards our own good, but sometime we take actions for our City’s, or society’s, good, regardless of how it impacts us personally.

American society has notable societal good mechanisms, such as military service, charitable giving, and charitable work, but I think we’re notable for how we compartmentalize this sort of thing. Thinking about this sad little controversy, it seems to me that no one is really coming out ahead on this, outside of Ellison’s opponent – and even he, whatever his name is, is not achieving a clean win.

For Ellison, his reputation is damaged forever. Even if Monahan were to recant, there’ll be wretched rumors forever.

The Democrats will probably lose an easily-won race, and their reputation, as Monahan is a member, will be damaged by her attack on civilization.

The Republicans will probably survive in their current pathological form a little longer because of this victory, when they really need to burn to the ground and rebuild on more rational grounds – which would benefit the nation as well. Speaking of rationality, the Democrats lose a bit because of the missing video and their frenzied response – not that they could do much better. For the record, the investigating lawyer dismissed Monahan’s claims as unsubstantiated.

Minnesota society doesn’t benefit from this, either.

The culmination of all this is someone either making a false allegation or, due to selfishness, has damaged civilization by disregarding and discarding our best traditions. Is it hard to release a tape that shows your former lover hit you or humiliated you?

Maybe it is. Although, to me, vengeance would be far, far sweeter, but maybe that’s not how it works for other folks.

But damaging the civilization on which we rely is, or should be, a far greater concern than personal emotional discomfort. If she’s concerned about how her own allies are treating her, maybe it’s not because they’re disloyal – but wary of her.

Let me finish by borrowing an aphorism from the skeptics community – extraordinary claims require, as proof, extraordinary evidence. Certainly, an actionable claim of misconduct against Rep. Ellison is an extraordinary claim. That video may constitute that extraordinary evidence. Why not make it available so that we can come to an agreement as to the truth of her claims?

Yes, I’d like a half moon of popcorn…

If you didn’t find my Independent Voter’s Guide entirely persuasive, then check this New York Times article concerning President Trump’s national security sensibilities:

When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.

Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials

Lovely. Is there outrage among Republican members of Congress? Calls for reprimands or even impeachment? Waiting to see. Maybe they will.

Did you, dear reader, suffer (or enjoy, depending on your kicks) outrage at Secretary Clinton’s approach to her mail servers (which Secretary Powell had recommended to her, BTW)? This is just as bad. How much longer can the United States tolerate such loose behavior in the Chief Executive and his or her Cabinet?

I have my first response to my emails to my various reps concerning Puerto Rico becoming a State, sent on September 30. Senator Klobuchar is the winner of the race, and here’s her response:

Dear Mr. White:

Thank you for taking the time to write to my office about Puerto Rico. Based on your comments, it is clear to me that you have thought about this issue at length. It is always helpful to hear people’s ideas and our office will consider your views as we go forward. I appreciate that you shared your thoughts and concerns with me.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. I continue to be humbled to be your Senator, and one of the most important parts of my job is listening to the people of Minnesota. I am here in our nation’s capital to do the public’s business. I hope you will contact me again about matters of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator

That’s just about as non-committal as it gets. I wonder if she’s concerned that her response could become political cannon fodder.

Little known fact: The Costume Department made their budget by not issuing any bras. Not a single one.

Light and fluffy, it melts in your hands and all over your neck. Once Bitten (1985) dances on the edge of the cliff of Despairingly Predictable Movie Cliches, not ever quite falling off, but certainly wowing the crowd as it keeps throwing itself at the ground – and missing.

But, while I did giggle once or twice, this vampire story of how we almost lost Jim Carrey to the forces of evil doesn’t really come close to being compelling. Ho Hum.