Monthly Archives: November 2018

If the Democrats want to seriously cement a majority for the next twenty years, their next year in power in the House of Representatives will be crucial. Paul Waldman in The Plum Line outlines the importance of their oversight of the Executive Branch:

We don’t know exactly what that plan is, but the biggest challenge will be finding room on the calendar to conduct all the probes Democrats have lined up. There’s the strong documentary evidence that the president and his family undertook a years-long conspiracy to commit tax fraud on a massive scale, and the administration’s attempt to rig the census and its repeated lies about it, and the possibility that the president intervened in the decision on where to locate the new FBI headquarters to avoid competition for his hotel, to name just a few of the dozens of matters that cry out for investigation. There are things we can’t yet anticipate, like whatever will be revealed once we’re finally able to see President Trump’s tax returns. (If you think they won’t contain evidence of a pile of misdeeds, I’ve got a degree from Trump University to sell you.) And, oh yeah, that Russia thing.

And, of course, there are a raft of policy decisions ranging from the questionable to the horrific that administration officials need to answer questions about, whether it’s the sabotaging of the Affordable Care Act or the separation of children from their parents at the border.

But just as important will be the question of how they conduct themselves. Evidence should be publicized, along with information about why such evidence should be considered evidence of wrong-doing. After all, some folks don’t keep up with governmental ethics, so it doesn’t hurt to explain it again and again.

These investigations need to be models of how to run a governmental investigation – in a sense, it should be a model for the Republicans, a lesson in how to conduct investigations.

Sure, there’s going to be the core of Republicans who’ll refuse to take it as a serious investigation. They’ll call it just politics – but the proper answer is, Yes, it’s politics – but politics can be conducted in acceptable or unacceptable ways. The questions we’re examining here have to do with whether or not the politics were conducted properly – or improperly.

Has there been improper use of governmental offices for material gain? Have some United States citizens been treated unequally, such as the Puerto Ricans?

Was there collusion with the Russians in violation of American law?

These investigations must become the bridge from the Democrats to the American public, in particular the independents, through which they earn those independents’ trust. Every year, this trust must be re-earned by both parties, ideally – and this is the Democrat’s big opportunity to do so.

President Trump donates another unsolicited amateur opinion – in poor taste – to the world:

There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018

And outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown was understandably disturbed:

So on the way home tonight, I was reminded about Juliana v. U.S., which is the lawsuit brought by a collection of children against the United States’ fossil fuel policy. I’ve blogged about it a little bit, with the latest thread here. The plaintiff’s web site is here, under the name Our Children’s Trust; the basic gist of the lawsuit is that the Federal Government bears responsibility for our failing atmosphere, which is causing multiple ailments for the children of today, through their support for the fossil fuel industry.

The suit was brought in 2015, and both the Obama and Trump Administrations tried to have the suits thrown out, but the latest attempt has more or less failed, and a Federal Judge is now working on getting it to trial – apparently some superior court has temporarily stayed it while considering the latest gibberish from the Trump Administration, but that is not thought to have much chance of success. There’s too much history to quote here, but it sounds like the Trump Administration is virtually standing on its head, trying to get the case thrown out, or at least delayed. Given their overbalance towards profits vs environment, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

So, Governor Brown, I know it’s in poor taste to undertake major government actions when you’re on the way out the door – but have you thought about the State of California joining this lawsuit? Perhaps we could get those absolutely filthy subsidies to the fossil fuel industry shit-canned for good. Maybe even claw-back some of those ridiculous profits.

[tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1061962869376540672]
That’s a banana republic stunt right there, folks. If he had evidence, then it’d be a law enforcement matter, and he should submit his evidence to law enforcement for appraisal, arrests, and that sort of thing. He has none? A respectable man would keep his damn yap shut.

But perhaps it is a law enforcement matter. In his official role, President Trump wields outsize influence over the legal landscape. This attempt to corrupt the election process in Florida should be investigated by the FBI, and pursued by a federal prosecutor. After all, taking down foolish elected officials is one way to climb to the top in that profession.

This long-running thread deserves a new entry, but frankly I’m too tired to put something together, so here’s Stephen Wolf of The Daily Kos instead:

In a critical victory for fair elections and the rule of law, North Carolina voters have elected civil rights crusader Anita Earls as the next Democratic justice of the state Supreme Court. Just as importantly, voters rejected two deceptively written constitutional amendments that Republicans had put on the ballot so they could pack that very same court to stop it from curtailing their worst-in-the-nation gerrymandering and voter suppression. Furthermore, voters rejected Republican legislators’ ploy to usurp Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s power to appoint the state Board of Elections in their quest to prevent Democrats from expanding early voting.

See the link for more progressive jubilation, which I think is justified, given the toxicity of the North Carolina Republicans.

Paean:

1. : a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph
   ‘unite their voices in a great paean to liberty’
   — Edward Sackville-West
2.  : a work that praises or honors its subject : ENCOMIUM, TRIBUTE
   ‘wrote a paean to the queen on her 50th birthday’ [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “On this World War I anniversary, let’s not celebrate Woodrow Wilson“, Michael Beschloss, WaPo:

One can admire Wilson for his progressive reforms, for his idealism and eloquence about America’s role in the world, as I do, without sugarcoating his displays of political incompetence as a president of war. In wartime, Americans have a right to expect that the bravery of U.S. troops is matched by brilliant political leadership in the White House. Too often in the past, World War I anniversaries have been transformed into paeans to Woodrow Wilson. This time, let’s keep it focused on the troops.

I found this WaPo article on freshman Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) fascinating as a possible presage of the renewal the GOP so desperately needs:

He had schooled himself on border security, health care and flood-control issues — a big concern for a region still smarting from Harvey. He met with engineers to discuss infrastructure and with young Republicans to energize new voters. More than one yard in the district was adorned with both a Crenshaw sign and a “BETO” sign, in allegiance to Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz (whom Crenshaw outperformed by 12 percentage points in Harris County).

“He’s just tenacious,” Poe said of the man who will be his successor. “I don’t think folks are going to know what to do when he gets [to Washington], and I mean that in a good way.”

In a 2015 Facebook post flagged by one of his opponents, Crenshaw called candidate Donald Trump an idiot and referred to his rhetoric on Muslims as “insane,” according to the Texas Tribune. Three years later, Crenshaw says he supports the president’s policies, save for the trade warfare, but prefers to comport himself in a manner that is the total opposite of the commander in chief’s.

“His style is not my style,” Crenshaw says. “I’ll just say that. It’s never how I would conduct myself. But what readers of The Washington Post need to understand is that conservatives can hold multiple ideas in their head at the same time. We can be like, ‘Wow he shouldn’t have tweeted that’ and still support him . . . You can disapprove of what the president says every day, or that day, and still support his broader agenda.”

If he really means he supports the President’s agenda, then he’s a red herring. But he may simply be pursuing the sane, diplomatic course, hoping to keep the job going. Add to this a degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, which suggests he takes this job seriously, and we can hope that he’s the start of the rebuilding effort of the Republican Party – a rebuilding this nation sorely needs.

The value in viewing When’s Your Birthday? (1937) may not lie in the content of the movie directly, but in what it tells us of the era in which it was made. Dustin Willoughby, mediocre boxer and would-be doctor of (and to) the stars, i.e., an astrologer, has just lost his girl (from a hoity-toity family) and his job, while acquiring a possibly deadly enemy when the man, a mobster, takes his astrological advice for betting on the dogs.

But when that works out but the mobster finds himself in unrelated financial straits, Dustin, who has now found his way to a manager and a new girl, takes a reluctant step up the career ladder to forecasting the results of boxing matches.

But, through the mixups endemic to this category of film, his own forecast is mistaken for that of the mobster’s boxer, and when this is discovered, he finds himself returned to his former occupation – but he’s in the ring 15 minutes early, according to his own forecast. He must only survive his opponent, but win the match or his mobster friend will have his head in revenge.

The pacing of this movie is very flat, very even, as is the delivery of the dialogue, mostly fast paced and a little over the top. The treatment of the women is very chauvinistic and gallant, two words of related background, and thus the whole venture feels quite dated. Throw in the silliness of astrology, and you more or less have to hope the dog, Zodiac, will steal the scenes, but his chances are too few to elevate this movie.

Which is not to say the movie is bad in any particular way. It just feels like, to use a phrase from another era, like a ‘penny-dreadful,’ tied to its era by is preconceptions, and not one of those rare stories which can rise above those ties and speak to humanity across the ages.

In other words, this ain’t The Odyssey.

I get notifications from AL Monitor concerning lobbyist activities in Washington concerning the Middle East. Boring? Sure – until you run across this little bit concerning the Keene Group:

A family affair: Keene’s wife, Donna Wiesner, has registered to lobby on the contract [with Algeria]. Interestingly, her registration form lists “marriage” as her compensation under the contract. “If I earn something, she gets it,” Keene said.

I send my laughing thanks to AL Monitor for this day brightener.

While I have no desire to visit Jerusalem, it is an interesting city. I recall reading decades ago about a riot involving various Christian sects over who should control one of the holiest Churches of Christianity. Literally, it was hermits whacking hermits upside the head over a church.

So this article in AL Monitor caught my eye tonight:

Image: CBN News

A Jerusalem family that holds the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is resisting community and political pressure to relinquish them. Adeeb Joudeh al-Husseini, who says his family was granted the keys in the 12th century, told Al-Monitor there is no reason he should give them up. The key holder says his family’s custodianship dates back to the time of Saladin, the Muslim leader who liberated Jerusalem.

With some digging, I might be able to name my great-grandfathers on my paternal side. Maybe. After that, no dice. These folks go back to the 12^th century, a remark which begs analysis as to whether this is good or bad. But their problems are very much of today:

But at the same time, Adeeb is adamant about his innocence of the accusations leveled against him, saying, “I sold our family home to a respected Palestinian businessman who was recommended by officials from the Palestinian Authority and local leaders.”

Records do in fact show that the house was sold to a Palestinian banker named Khaled Attari who has since disappeared, but it is unclear how the house ended up in the hands of the extremist Jewish group. Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has set up a committee to look into what happened.

Will a cherished family tradition be ground to dust by the cogs of history?

The phone rings, and a recorded computer voice, after some delay, chants that their company is going bankrupt, but you should call their number to reclaim money you paid them. For Apple and Windows support, if I heard them properly.

Uh huh.

I better liked the Indians telling me I have terrible viruses. At least you could ask them if their mothers were ashamed of them. What fun is this?

The libertarians will tell you, no doubt correctly, that deregulation caused the cost of phone service to fall. What they didn’t properly realize is that a social cost rise comes with the drop in economic price. In other words, there’s more fraud because it’s cheap to do on a mass scale.

Maybe regulation wasn’t such a bad idea. I wonder if any economists have seriously sat down and calculated that out.

Abnegation:

1. The action of renouncing or rejecting something.
   ‘abnegation of political power’
   1. Self-denial.
      ‘people are capable of abnegation and unselfishness’

[Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in “Can the Republic Strike Back?” Andrew Sullivan, New York / Intelligencer:

My faith was never quite as deep [as Max Boot’s], and so the disillusion was never quite so complete or sudden as Max’s. I was able to endorse Clinton and Blair, for example, and found in Obama the moderate Republican I’d always admired. My breaking point was the revelation that the GOP backed the brutal torture of prisoners, the total abnegation of a politics of freedom. If you didn’t recognize the barbarism that lay just beneath the Republican surface then, you were blinded by something pretty powerful. Some of my hostility to the right thereafter was tinged with excess, hyperbole, and a sense of betrayal. I became a nonperson on the right before it happened to the Never Trumpers. Maybe I was too harsh. Or emotional.

From “All In The Fold“, Jonathan Keats, Discover:

“We’ve figured out a way to put these building blocks together at the right angles to form these very complex nanostructures,” Baker explains. He plans to stud the exterior with proteins from a whole suite of flu strains so that the immune system will learn to recognize them and be prepared to fend off future invaders. A single Death Star will carry 20 different strains of the influenza virus.

I had to read it three times before I realized there was an implied “proteins of” in that last sentence. Otherwise, it sounded like a “Death Star” to exterminate humans, not influenza.

Sleaze. It’s an old word, a word with which anyone with a gram of self-respect never wished to be associated with, a word which nestles right next to ‘swamp,’ a word that is the favorite nephew of ‘corruption.’

And I think it really applies to the release by Trump’s PR man, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, of a doctored tape, as WaPo (and damn near any other news outlet) is reporting, regarding an incident involving President Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta at a press conference.

I’m not going to bother with references to deepfakes, even though I’ve discussed them before. I’m just too disgusted with this Administration, and with every American who thinks it’s an Administration worthy of the name.

Playing stupid games like this means it’s not a worthy Administration. Trump said he was going to drain the swamp?

Maybe he did. And then refilled it with something twice as toxic.

Too often, systems of morality and/or ethics (which I’ll shorten to ethical systems to save the fingers) are often taken to be semi-arbitrary masses of rules, which are obeyed, or not, without a great deal of thought as to the reasons behind the strictures – and whether or not those reasons are truly timeless, or if they’re actually context-dependent. This is an important, and perhaps underappreciated, aspect of Artificial Intelligence development. I was recently struck by this in an article on the Trolley Problem in NewScientist (27 October 2018, paywall). The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment in which someone is given the choice between who, based on category, is to be killed by a runaway trolley, in order to save others.

This has become interesting for AI investigators as the somewhat silly development of driverless cars careers along, and someone decided to do a world-wide survey:

Overall, people preferred to spare humans over animals and younger over older people, and tried to save the most lives. The characters that people opted to save least were dogs, followed by criminals and then cats (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0637-6).

Edmond Awad at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues think these findings can inform policy-makers and the experts they may rely on as they devise regulations for driverless cars. “This is one way to deliver what the public wants,” he says.

The team found that people in regional clusters made similar decisions. In an Eastern cluster, which included Islamic countries and eastern Asian nations that belong to the Confucianist cultural group, there was less of a preference to spare the young over the old, or to spare those with high status. Decisions to save humans ahead of cats and dogs were less pronounced in a Southern cluster, which included Central and South America, and countries with French influence. The preference there was to spare women and fit people.

Many technology researchers and ethicists told New Scientist they thought the results shouldn’t be used to set policy or design autonomous vehicles because that would simply perpetuate cultural biases that may not reflect moral decisions.

As if there is one universal moral system (and, irrelevantly, it can be applied at highway speeds in crisis conditions). And whose will it be?

Look, ethical systems don’t exist for giggles, but to facilitate societal survival. Generally, we see this as set of rules for inter-personal interactions, wherein we have rules for how we treat each other. However, some rules are not oriented on this basis, but rather on how to value the individual in a crisis situation.

Think of it this way: the potential, skills, and talents of an individual are the principal parts of the value that individual brings to the society. Those first three parts are obviously variable, and while, no doubt, many folks who think simple existence is miraculous are squealing at me now, the Universe has rarely, if ever, put much value on simply existing. And the point of the Trolley Problem exercise is to understand how a society values its citizens (among other, more interesting, questions).

But there’s a fourth variable in my observation, and that’s society. Yes, societies do differ, and are forced to differ, in so many ways, from geography, to natural resources, to the skill set of the average inhabitant, to the fertility of the inhabitants. Most of these are going to have an impact on the society’s ethical system, mostly subtle. Let’s pull out a coarse example.

Suppose Inhabitant A knows how to make bronze, an important part of the armaments necessary to defend this society from the predations of the barbarians on the other side of the mountains. Now let’s put him in the Trolley Problem. He’s gotten his foot stuck in the track, here comes the trolley, and on the other fork of the track is … a bunch of children in similar straits!

Do you sacrifice A or the kids?

Well, I left out some key information: how many other citizens know how to make bronze? Many? Save the kids might be the right answer. But what if only him and maybe his hermit half-brother know how to make bronze, and we’re not sure about the hermit?

Maybe those kids shouldn’t have been playing on the tracks, eh? “A” may be critical to this society’s survival.

If you obsessively attempt to apply your native society’s moral system to that situation and kill the guy with the knowledge of how to make bronze, you may have just doomed that society.

Ethical systems exist to help societies survive, and the context societies exist in can differ. So when I see these ethicists solemnly proclaim that you can’t use that survey to construct the moral system of your AI system, it tells me these ‘experts’ have persistent blinders. I’m not sure these ‘experts’ really even have a clue.

Maybe professional philosophers would be a better choice, although no doubt the ethicists think they are professional philosophers. But from this angle, I don’t see it.

And I shan’t even guess as to how to implement this moral system for the driverless car so it works acceptably well in various societies. Not even a fucking hand-flap.

Those of us who wish to see more science and technology trained folk in Congress should note the upset of the GOP‘s Katie Arrington by 314 Action’s endorsed Democrat Joe Cunningham, as reported by Roll Call:

Democrat Joe Cunningham’s win in South Carolina’s 1st District is a blow to Republicans who thought they’d hold on to the coastal seat even after South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford lost a GOP primary earlier this year.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Cunningham led GOP state Rep. Katie Arrington 51 percent to 49 percent when The Associated Press called the race.

President Donald Trump carried this Charleston-area seat by 11 points in 2016. But there were signs the race was becoming increasingly competitive this fall, with some internal polling pointing to a close contest. Offshore drilling — which Sanford opposed and Arrington said during the primary that she supported — became a central part of the general election contest.

Close readers will note the name Mark Sanford, who I’ve mentioned before as a somewhat more moderate Republican who had the temerity to criticize President Trump. He was upset by Arrington in the primary, who probably thought she’d won herself a job in that initial victory. Roll Call attributes Arrington’s own missteps for her loss:

In a moment of major significance for this race, Arrington said during the primary that she supported Trump’s effort to lift the ban on offshore drilling. She repeatedly attempted to walk back those comments, but it became fodder for Cunningham and his allies. Cunningham picked up the endorsement of several area Republican mayors because of his opposition to offshore drilling.

Cunningham avoided taking money from PACs and still outraised Arrington. He is an “ocean engineer,” which must be the item that attracted 314 Action’s attention, although presently he’s a lawyer. Or perhaps I should say that additionally he’s a lawyer. Having chops in both engineering and the law is no mean set of skills.

And this should be a lesson to all the Trump-clones that not all of the President’s plans, serious or not, will play well with general conservatives. When it becomes clear that some policy will damage them, Republicans are like everyone else – they bleed, too. There are times when self-sacrifice of economic prosperity is necessary for the greater good, but when it’s merely to benefit the fossil fuel industry, then it’s a bit nuts.

The real question is whether these Republicans who revolted also realize that the fossil fuel industry’s output is a menace in terms of climate change – and now that, too, is a menace to their communities.

Another winner from the science and technology sector was in Oklahoma, where surprise Democrat victor Kendra Horn from the space industry upset a long time Republican.

Naturally, everyone and their cousin has an opinion on the recently completed mid-terms. The trick, I think, is to treat it like a traveling email from a conservative friend: read with skepticism. Here’s Ed Rogers in WaPo, who I’ve not read before, but appears to be quite the apologist for Trump:

While Tuesday night was not a complete win for Republicans, there was no blue wave, either. By most measures, Republicans beat the odds of history and nearly everyone’s expectations, while Democrats were left disappointed as the fantasy of Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams and others winning fizzled. Not one new progressive Democrat was successful bursting onto the scene. It will take a few days to process the meaning of this year’s election returns, but the instant analysis is clear: Democrats may have won the House, but Trump won the election.

As I always say, in politics, what is supposed to happen tends to happen. I predicted in August that the Democrats would take the House but that alone was not enough for most Democrats. As much as this year’s midterms offered an obvious opportunity to rebuke President Trump, little of what the arrogant Democrats and members of the mainstream media expected would happen actually did. So much of what they said turned out to be wrong that it will take a while before the significance becomes clear. And if the 2018 midterms prove anything, it is that Trump is standing strong while Democrats and their allies who thought Trump would have been affirmatively rejected are in fact the ones who have themselves been denied.

Rogers has some problems to overcome if he’s going to convince readers of his thesis (Trump good, Obama bad). For example:

• “Democrats have underperformed in comparison with the historical markers and general expectations of a midterm cycle. The president’s party loses 37 seats in the House on average in midterm elections when his approval is below 50 percent — but Democrats aren’t projected to pick up nearly that many seats.” Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? But out of sight is that tricky devil, numbers shorn of context, and the context in this case is a nation that has been excessively gerrymandered, mostly by the Republicans (Maryland exception duly noted). As this has been getting worse and worse, this average number becomes less and less meaningful. In point of fact, it’d be interesting to see a graph of that average changing over time compared to the amount of gerrymandering occurring. Apples and oranges.
• “Let the message be clear: Voters had a chance to repudiate Trump and they did not.” No? It’s often a mistake that innumerate pundits indulge in, thinking that a binary result is the end of the question. But it’s not. Let’s take a single example which, I believe, represents most legislative seats defended by Republicans this mid-term: Representative Steve King. Representing the deeply conservative western heartland of Iowa, the 4th and, earlier, 5th districts, that state to my south which I visit most years (Sioux City, specifically), he’s been in Congress since 2003, and he won again in the mid-terms. Now, if Rogers’ thesis was impregnable, we’d expect King’s margin of victory to be comfortable, since it has been in the past, with margins ranging from 9 percentage points to 23.3 points in the recent 2016 contest (data from Ballotpedia seems a little fragmentary for the now non-existent District 5). Trump was a big winner in District 4 during the Presidential election, winning the district by 27 points. So how did Representative King do yesterday? Must have been a cakewalk, right?

  According to The Gazette, King barely won 50% of the vote. His margin of victory? 3.3 points. Remember, voters hate members of Congress – except their own. They typically get a break. So how did King suddenly fall apart? By clasping Trump tightly, he damn near sank himself in the lake. Like a number of Trump-endorsed or Trump-loving candidates, from Arrington in South Carolina to McDaniel in Mississippi, that big old Trump stamp on their foreheads was the stamp of doom. King managed to survive it, which I find more than a little puzzling – but, having driven through the district in campaign season, it’s not really surprising. The advertising was suffocatingly for King. (And this is a guy who’s been little more than a rubberstamp, BTW. But I’ll let you do that research.) The toxic power of team politics comes to the fore, I suppose.

  My point is that there are more to numbers than Thug Won, Thag Lost. Rogers should acquaint himself with the numbers behind the numbers, the stories that are flowering all around him – if he’s willing to look at them.

• Rogers is smart enough not to mention the Senate, because this time around the Senate was configured overwhelmingly in the GOP’s favor – which is why I’m mentioning it, for the benefit of the reader who only skims politics.
• In another instance of shorn context, and as Kevin Drum adroitly points out, the Democrats made large gains despite the heavy burden of fighting in an overall good to very good economy. This became a point of some contention, as President Trump proclaimed his holy influence over the stock market every time it jumped, and ran and hid from the big bad thunderstorm every time it tumbled. The Democrats, and some independents such as myself, on the other hand, noted that President Obama handed off a good economy to Trump, and that’s saying more than usual, given the turd that Bush had handed Obama. From there, and noting that Trump’s tax reform of 2017 has done remarkably little except balloon the deficit, it’s not hard to make a credible case that it’s still an Obama-inspired economy. If you’re really set on pursuing this somewhat dubious line of logic, the stock market jumped 2+% the day after mid-terms. Understanding why may require you to stand on your head without recourse to your hands, however.

  Of course, this entire topic deserves its own rant, which I’ve indulged in at least once. But the important point is that we’re asked to accept judgments that sound good, but have been cleverly made bereft of important context.

• “Not one new progressive Democrat was successful bursting onto the scene.” This should be a big red flag concerning Rogers’ willingness to dance with the liars. This only needs one example: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins NY-14 by 64 percentage points. But she’s not alone, as Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota won confirmation of her progressive agenda surprisingly comfortably, and Ilhan Omar, also of Minnesota, has burst onto the scene with a real shock for those of an anti-Muslim bent. And I’m not even bothering to research the question, I knew about these without a single search (except to get Ocasio-Cortez’s name). There’s probably more.

  But the point is that reality is misrepresented here. A storm came through and knocked over the trees, Rogers, and proclaiming it as nothing more than some showers is a waste of time.

Viewed with as much context as possible, I think the mid-terms have a lot to teach the Republicans, but it’ll be a lesson they can’t stomach: Trump is a metastasizing cancer. In some parts of the body politic, he’s still a rock star. But for others, they’ve recognized he’s a disaster, and they’re trying to find ways to get rid of him.

But perhaps most importantly is this pert little line, slipped in without trumpets nor support:

No liberal will want to admit it, but Trump is an asset to the Republican Party, while President Barack Obama was a disaster for the Democratic Party.

It’s not a misinterpretation, but a deliberate smear. And, most interestingly, it’s not a smear of President Obama, but of what he stands for: the old style of politics. Rogers, as an apparent apologist for Trump, dares not have any truck with the style of politics in which both Parties debate and create solutions to commonly recognized national problems through cooperative effort. This cannot be tolerated because it ruins the narrative that the Democrats are evil and out to wreck the United States. (If you think I hyperbolize, you need to research some of what Trump had to say in the last days of the mid-term campaign.) This is not a new narrative, though, because it starts with Newt Gingrich, and sweeps along to Lott and McConnell and many others.

By attributing doom and disaster to Obama, of which I, as an independent, didn’t notice a whiff, Rogers wants to bury that old style of politics and replace it with the single Party with its manly leader. And Rogers might have even made this work. If only Trump wasn’t such an ineffectual putz, and doomed to become recognized by more and more disaffected former supporters as that.

If you’re a Republican and want to save your Party, start a new one. Or kick Gingrich out, followed by Trump, followed by anyone who protests the first two. Then start listening to officials and former officials such as Warner, Flake, and Lugar. That’s the path back to an honorable political institution.

Getting away from this politics stuff for at least a moment, BepiColombo successfully launched  a couple of weeks ago. BepiColombo is a European Space Agency / Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency joint mission to Mercury. From the press release:

BepiColombo comprises two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO, or ‘Mio’). The ESA-built Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) will carry the orbiters to Mercury using a combination of solar electric propulsion and gravity assist flybys, with one flyby of Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury, before entering orbit at Mercury in late 2025.

So in seven years we’ll be seeing a bunch of mysteries solved, and bigger bunch of new mysteries generated, because that’s how this sort of thing works. Wheeee!

BepiColombo approaching Mercury.
Credit: spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mercury: NASA/JPL
(Presumably an artist’s work, but no name is given. Perhaps stitching photos and stuff together doesn’t count as artistry.)

Watching the coverage of the mid-term elections this evening can be a bewildering run through a spectrum of emotions, colored as they are by my current desire for a rational GOP to counterbalance the Democrats, which at the moment doesn’t exist – thus my desire to see the Republican Party burn to the ground, so that it may be reconstructed, preferably on lines that do not include such personalities as Pat Robertson and his ilk.

Democratic gains in Minnesota’s Representatives, as well as retention of both Senatorial seats by unexpectedly comfortable margins (in Smith’s case), has acted to restore, to some extent, my faith in local American citizens; on the national scene, the losses by Democratic Senators Heitkamp of North Dakota and Bill Nelson of Florida, as well as Democratic candidates Abram’s apparent loss to Kemp in the Georgia gubernatorial race and Gillum’s apparent loss to DeSantis in the Florida gubernatorial race, are dismaying as none of the victors are, in my opinion, of the high moral character necessary to be the leaders they must be in their positions. In a phrase, they seem to just be Trump sycophants, incapable of independent judgment.

Seeking more positive emotions, it may be tempting to note that Democratic Representative Conor Lamb, who just months ago had won a special election by a whisker, easily won re-election, but his district was redrawn between the two votes. It’s an apples and oranges thing. Don’t go there.

So for reassurance, it may be worth noting that current Kansas Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach (R-KA), who has been mentioned before on this blog for his many claims of unsubstantiated voter fraud, seems to have lost his high profile gubernatorial run in traditionally conservative Kansas. Last I saw, it wasn’t even close. Is it possible that Kansas will become a Democratic stronghold? If one believes that we can learn from our mistakes, if pain can change our minds and our ideologies, then it’s not out of the realm of possibility, as Kansas hosted the Brownback debacle of the last few years. They have a new Governor-elect from the Democratic Party, and I noticed in the news chyrons that at one or two Republican Representatives from Kansas had lost their re-election campaigns. Now, these could be ephemeral signs, as perhaps those seats will flip right back to the Republican column at the next opportunity. One might argue that’s what happened tonight in Minnesota.

BUT if ruby-red Kansas becomes the historical crack in the Republican Party’s armor, I think we’ll know why and not be surprised.

Elections have consequences. That’s why we vote, and we vote thoughtfully, not in a rigid, ideological manner.

Know hope.

My Arts Editor draws my attention to this article on a novel form of battery technology in Science Alert:

Scientists in Sweden have developed a specialised fluid, called a solar thermal fuel, that can store energy from the sun for well over a decade.

“A solar thermal fuel is like a rechargeable battery, but instead of electricity, you put sunlight in and get heat out, triggered on demand,” Jeffrey Grossman, an engineer works with these materials at MIT explained to NBC News.

The fluid is actually a molecule in liquid form that scientists from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden have been working on improving for over a year.

This molecule is composed of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, and when it is hit by sunlight, it does something unusual: the bonds between its atoms are rearranged and it turns into an energised new version of itself, called an isomer.

Like prey caught in a trap, energy from the sun is thus captured between the isomer’s strong chemical bonds, and it stays there even when the molecule cools down to room temperature.

A fascinating bit of science – but is it technology? That is, can this be scaled up to be an industrial solution?

And then, a solution to what? Obviously, it’s a new and interesting form of battery, since it stores and releases energy, and it doesn’t appear to be difficult to use on release. How well does it transport? And can it be manufactured without polluting the shit out of the environment? The article mentions C, H, and N, none of which qualify as rare, so that’s a good sign – but what does it take to make the molecule? The fact that the power source is the local star is, of course, a very good thing.

And then the fact that it appears to absorb some spectrum of the incoming electromagnetic spectrum is interesting. Is it the same part of the spectrum which is instrumental in anthropocentric climate change? If so, can we use this as a stopgap measure while we continue to work on stopping the creation of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most worrisome climate change gases?

And for those of us who are especially paranoid, if this does prove to be a viable stopgap, have we just bestowed longer life on the fossil fuel industry? Since this stopgap has no effect on the growing percentage of CO₂ in the air, then the recent research concerning carbohydrates making up a growing percentage of the foods we harvest, I’d suggest that permitting the fossil fuel companies to continue to enable the pollution of our atmosphere would probably be a mistake from a body health point of view.

So many questions!

From an AP report:

Sean Hannity spoke from the stage of President Donald Trump’s last midterm election rally on Monday, after Fox News Channel and its most popular personality had insisted all day that he wouldn’t.

Hannity appeared on the podium in a Missouri arena after being called to the stage by Trump. Another Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, also appeared onstage with the president.

“By the way, all those people in the back are fake news,” Hannity told the audience.

And you, sir, are merely a propagandist, not a journalist. Your appearance and your dismissal of your “colleagues” permits viewers to dispense with any delusion that you have any journalistic standard – and any acquaintance with the truth.

Apparently the lack of a comet’s characteristic coma associated with interstellar object ‘Oumuamua is really annoying some astronomers, enough so that they’re beginning to explore more outré possibilities:

“‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization,” they wrote in the paper, which has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The theory is based on the object’s “excess acceleration,” or its unexpected boost in speed as it traveled through and ultimately out of our solar system in January.

“Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” wrote the paper’s authors, suggesting that the object could be propelled by solar radiation.

The paper was written by Abraham Loeb, professor and chair of astronomy, and Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral scholar, at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Loeb has published four books and more than 700 papers on topics like black holes, the future of the universe, the search for extraterrestrial life and the first stars. [CNN]

Sounds a little crazy? Turns out this is a very small part of the scientists’ paper. Let Ars Technica straighten you out.

This is, of course, some pretty sloppy science news coverage. But in this case, most of these stories are not being written by trained science writers but rather online reporters who see the potential for a flashy headline. While it is not “fake news,” is is certainly a classic clickbait.

But there’s more at work here. Katie Mack, an astrophysicist and astute observer of scientists and the media, has noted on Twitter that the Harvard scientists knew perfectly well what they were doing. “The thing you have to understand is: scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea if it has even the tiniest *sliver* of a chance of not being wrong,” she wrote. “But until every other possibility has been exhausted dozen times over, even the authors probably don’t believe it.

“Some of us are more conservative, of course,” she continued. “And it surely varies by field. But in my area (astrophysics/cosmology), there’s generally no downside to publishing something that’s (a) somehow interesting and (b) not completely ruled out, whether or not it ends up ‘the right answer.'”

In other words, if you’re a researcher looking to create a media splash, you play the, “I’m not saying it was aliens…” card.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Speaking as a software engineer, a good approach to solving a problem in an efficient and effective manner is actually congruent with the Harvard scientists publishing ‘crime’. Look, most any problem, absent essential evidence, can usually be explained by more than one process. While many times a good guess will yield a solution, an approach not based on intuition is to generate a list, exhaustive if possible, of all sources of the problem which are congruent with the current collection of facts. Using good ol’ Popperian philosophy of science, each potential source should come with a potential fact which would disprove that solution.

Then the process of problem resolution becomes a matter of focused fact collecting. At some point, your list of probable sources of the problem gets down to one, and you now know where to look and even know the solution, if it’s not one of those damn P=NP problems.

In the physical sciences, you may have several still left when all possible facts are collected, and then you’re just left with ranking them based on probabilities.

But the basic philosophy is sound, so I’m not sure I’d call what the scientists did clickbait. Did they list many other possible resolutions to this problem? Dunno, couldn’t find the paper despite the link. But, without a good visual inspection of the object, which is now impossible, we can’t really rule out the possibility that it’s an object from another civilization.

Politico notes a sudden surge of interest in joining the the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:

Dozens of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are clamoring to join the House Intelligence Committee next year — for a chance to be part of a panel at the vanguard of the partisan brawl over Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The interest has veterans of the committee worried that a new class of lawmakers will reinforce the partisan impulses that drove the committee toward dysfunction the past two years. The politicization of the once sober, above-the-fray panel has undermined what some lawmakers and national security officials say has been a decades-long partnership with the intelligence community. …

Republican and Democratic leaders have been compiling lists of dozens of members — one Republican lawmaker recently suggested upward of 70 on the GOP side — who want to join the committee. The demand for spots comes amid the ongoing partisan fight over the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether any of President Donald Trump’s associates participated in it.

As Politico points out, partisan lawmakers are out in force to join what used to be a non-partisan, quiet committee. No doubt, some of this is the new profile members on the committee suddenly had because of Rep. Nunes’ incompetent leadership technique, by which I mean his frantic and very public attempt to use the committee to protect his Party leader, rather than monitor the President – the one and same man, in case you were wondering. Partisans, if they’re smart – in some cases, an undue assumption – must be uneasily aware that their continued presence in this ego-inflating chamber is often dependent on the independent voters in their districts or States, and if the Intel Committee is going to suddenly acquire profile, it may also acquire prestige.

But there may also be an interior reason to seek a position on the committee, and that would happen to be all about brown-nosing for the Republicans, because if they can gain the favor of President Trump, then they can move up in the Republican hierarchy. Of course, just being a member isn’t enough – one will have to find ways to obstruct the monitoring, leak strategic information, that sort of thing. The creative Republican committee member will find ways to get his Leader’s attention.

All in the tradition of the previously noted incompetent Representative Nunes.

On Lawfare Molly Reynolds gives a short history of the committee.

Having gotten on the Center For Inquiry’s (CFI) mailing list, probably when they combined with Skeptical Inquirer, I’ve recently been subjected to frequent mailings from them. For those readers unfamiliar with CFI, they are an organization carrying on the free-thinking tradition, aka agnostics and atheists. Part of that tradition is the view that one of the strengths of the United States is the Separation of Church and State, also known as the Establishment Clause, as bolstered by the Johnson Amendment, which forbids churches taking advantage of tax-free status from advocating for particular candidates.

As I noted here, the younger generations (you can insert a harsh, grating voice at this juncture if you’re so inclined) are showing less and less interest in organized religion. Now, I’m aware that this doesn’t make them all agnostics and atheists, but reports do indicate that youngsters are falling into that category with increasing frequency.

So, if you’re not aware of CFI, let me note that, while like most profit-free organizations they’re usually on the hunt for funds, and they’re not always above trying to inflate a point here or there to gain your sympathy, their latest missive impresses me as more than just the hunt for the nickel. I suppose that may be because they don’t actually ask for one.

Instead, they explain their very deep unease about tomorrow’s midterm elections. Perhaps my younger reader, atheist or faithful, doubtful as to voting, might want to read their concerns.

Dear Friend of CFI,

Please vote tomorrow.

We face a pivotal moment in our country’s history. The separation of church and state is suffering under the most withering attack in generations.

The Trump White House has embraced the religious right with open arms. The balance of the Supreme Court has shifted ever further in favor of religious privilege. Congress is our best, and perhaps only, chance to stop theocracy from calcifying in the federal government. It’s not an overstatement to say that our freedom from religion is at stake in this election.

And while theocratic activists batter at the wall between church and state, our government is becoming disconnected from basic facts. Career scientists are being driven out of federal agencies where their work informs life saving regulations. Propagandistic media networks spread wild conspiracy theories that become accepted knowledge in the White House. Trump lies so often and so outrageously that news outlets are struggling just to accurately cover his statements.

Your vote matters. Please vote tomorrow, and help others to vote if you can. If you’d like more resources for how to register, find your polling location, or join a last-minute voter registration drive, check out Secular America Votes.

As always, thank you for supporting the separation of church and state.

Sincerely,

Jason Lemieux

Director of Government Affairs

Center for Inquiry

Partisan readers will dismiss this as a partisan letter from an organization which they may despise.

I think it’s a bit more, though. Whether you’re religious or atheist, it’s a fair question to ask: Why is the United States secular? We may be a highly religious country, but our miscellany of religions makes it critical that the State remain secular and disinterested in religious affairs which do not infringe on our secular legal system.

By voting for the Republicans, who have been pursuing the policies concerning which CFI has expressed concern, we risk putting in place policies which favor one religious sect over all others. This road is unstable and has historically lead to terrible violence, tragedy, and backwardness. For more on this, see my thoughts at length here.

If you’re atheist or at least not a member of an organized religion, this should concern you. If you’re a member of a religious sect, which can mean anything from a Roman Catholic to a 10 member church out in the middle of nowhere, you should also be concerned, because, again, you may not find yourself in the proper group. Given the history of theocracies, this should leave you deeply uneasy.

And the whole religious strife drama is a poor way to run a country. See Iraq.

So give voting another thought, if you had decided against it. No snowflake has ever hurt anyone on its own, but an avalanche of them is a helluva thing to stop. Be part of one.

One of the more brazen displays of allergies to ethical systems is on display down in Georgia. It centers around Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican, who decided to enter the primary for the Georgia governorship a few months back.

A person with an ethical system would have resigned or, at least, recused himself from any matter having to do with counting the votes of the primary. This is, I shouldn’t need to add, simple, basic, obvious: a conflict of interest shakes the confidence of the voters in the system, and for good reason, as there have been numerous occurrences of people in power manipulating the system to keep and gain more power.

Did Kemp resign or recuse? No.

Next came the general election, and the ethical requirements were the same: resign or recuse. Need I report that he did neither?

The man in power will be counting the votes that could move him along to another seat of power.

But he appears to have become nervous, because just a day or so before the election, he’s tried to assure his selection through what appears to be another dirty tactic, as NBC News reports:

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, said Sunday that he was investigating the state Democratic Party for an attempted hack of the voter registration system — a claim met with a swift response from Democrats charging him with a shameless “political stunt” two days before Election Day.

Kemp, who is in a neck-and-neck race with Stacey Abrams, alleged that the state Democratic Party made a “failed attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system” and announced that his office was opening an investigation into the party. Kemp said his office alerted the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, but he offered no evidence to back up his allegation.

“While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, I can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes,” Candice Broce, press secretary for the secretary of state, said in a statement. “We can also confirm that no personal data was breached and our system remains secure.”

Since the FBI will supposedly be investigating any possible attempts to corrupt the electoral systems of Georgia, I’m left at a loss as to what Kemp legitimately thinks he’ll accomplish, because, of course and following in President Trump’s footsteps, he must despise the FBI – an institution once beloved of the ‘law and order party’. And, at least to those of us paying attention to computer crime, it should be no surprise there’s probably not a public computing system that has not been the target of hacking. So Georgia’s electoral computer logs show they’ve been a target? So does every other state’s.

But I think it’s more interesting to notice how being a public citizen, such as Kemp, means that your ethical system necessarily becomes a public statement. If your ethical system is strong, if you have that sense of being an honorable public servant, then there’s little to worry about insofar as honor goes. You may not achieve the electoral success you desire, but the electorate are a bunch of assholes, anyways. They’re private citizens and can betray their ethical systems on a whim.

But if it’s weak, as Kemp’s conduct proves his to be, then we see blatant disruptions of commonly agreed-upon norms.

It makes for one big old storm cloud for his opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams. The silver lining will be very little comfort if she loses: Kemp will run a high risk of leaving office in disgrace, and even handcuffs.

That’s what often happens to the unethical public citizen, as we’ve seen in a number of States.

And, just as importantly, while Kemp may win one for the Party short-term, long-term the Party takes another hit to its ‘brand.’ Do they understand this? Is it so important that they win through brazen underhandedness that the future doesn’t matter?

Or are they so confident in their ability to manipulate the voters through superior marketing techniques, as well as gerrymandering?

Inquiring minds want to know.