Monthly Archives: December 2018

Electroaerodynamics:

Instead of propellers or jet engines, the plane uses electrodes on its wings to produce ions that push against the surrounding air. The team claims the plane is quieter and cleaner than any other powered aircraft.

“It really wasn’t clear that it would work,” says Barrett. “Quite a few colleagues said it had less than 1 per cent chance.”

The idea of producing aircraft thrust via an electric field, known as electroaerodynamics, was first explored in the 1960s. Electrodes are used to create an electric discharge that produces electrically charged atoms or molecules in the air. An electric field then accelerates these ions towards the back of the plane. Collisions with air molecules produce a thrust force in the opposite direction, pushing the plane forwards. [“Electric zero-emissions plane raises hopes for eco-friendly air travel,” Douglas Heaven, NewScientist (24 November 2018, paywall)]

What happens when little, tentative monsters run into a full-fledged monster? That’s the question presented by horror story cum morality fable Bad Samaritan (2018). Minor league thief Sean Falco is exploring whether or not he can build a stable and happy life while taking advantage of society when one of his escapades reveals that one of his victims, a man named Cale, is a monster himself. Sean has discovered a woman in Cale’s house, immobilized in leather and chains, and Sean is forced to leave before he can free her.

Cale, the big monster, discovers what has happened and now vengeance most foul is rained down upon Sean. Friends are hurt and die, his adoptive parents face ruin, and Cale must dodge fate itself.

But monsters tend to have egos in proportion to their commitment to being monsters, and so Cale plays with Sean. As Sean works to remedy his failure to free the mysterious woman, more and more horrible secrets come to the surface.

In a horrific finale, Sean is introduced to his future as a monster – as is the audience.

We found the pacing to be a little slower than we might have liked, but it’s not a bad little movie for its genre. If you enjoy seeing the darker side of human nature, especially of those who do not commit to the general rules of society, this movie may be for you.

A cousin to the usual e-mail comes across my desk today from my Arts Editor, who in turn received it from a member of the extended family. It’s not so much poisonous as, well, mis-informed and misleading. I’ll take it apart piece by piece this time ’round, but first let me note that, while surveying the web for precise answers to certain questions, I ran across other dissections. Regardless, I will continue with this as an example of recognizing and researching an exercise in triggering System 1 thinking, which is the fight or flight reflex, rather than rational assessment.

President Trump is asking everyone to forward this email to a minimum of 20 people, and to ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in the United States will have the message. This is an idea that should be passed around, regardless of political party.

The TRUMP Rules: Congressional Reform Act of 2017

I did some searches of the Web to attempt to verify President Trump issued this call to faux-sanity, but failed to find any indication that he does. That, of course, is not dispositive, but given Trump’s habit of using a trumpet for popular political messages, I’d have expected to see it as a prominent subject of discussion if he was backing this email.

So let’s go on to the meat of the subject.

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they’re out of office. And, no more perks go with them.

Let’s be picky, because that may tell us something about the author. Tenure has an interesting definition, according to Merriam-Webster:

1. : the act, right, manner, or term of holding something (such as a landed property, a position, or an office)
   especially : a status granted after a trial period to a teacher that gives protection from summary dismissal
2. : GRASP, HOLD

Clearly, no tenure suggests an absurdity, election to office without actual occupation of the seat, with respect to the first part of the first definition, while the second has no application to an elective seat. If this is indicative of the intellectual acuity of the author, it’s a negative, and readers should treat the balance of this anger-inducing screed with appropriate caution.

With regards to pension, Congress members receive a pension if they perform five or more years of service, so for the House of Representatives, they must win election to 3 terms, while Senators need only win one (assuming completion of terms).

But how about no pensions? This is an interesting question because it plays into citizen anger at Congress. It reinforces it because there’s no presentation of an opposing viewpoint. So let me present one to the open-minded reader:

The lack of pension for former members of Congress will lead to a more plutocratic membership. Former members of Congress don’t get free food & housing, they must find the funds to pay for them once they’re back in private life. Just like real people – because they are real people – they have to plan for a future in which their skills are outdated and they’re retired. If there is no pension, then the regular Joe may consider a run for Congress to be a mistake, because it’s difficult or impossible to work at your regular job when performing the public business. It wasn’t true in 1800, but these days the business of government is a huge undertaking that requires the full attention of both the bureaucracy and the elected overseers.

Think of being 6 years out of your regular line of work. Could you go back to it without retraining or updating? I probably couldn’t. Sure, a ditch digger could – but most ditch diggers aren’t going to win runs for Congress.

A pension can be argued as being a way to persuade the non-millionaires to take a shot at public service. We know the plutocracy of America has a strong interest in being in control of the United States government, because we see the huge donations from the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and many, many more than fly beneath the radar for the GOP, plus a smaller number for the Democrats, such as Tom Steyer. Then add in those who are directly in the front lines, such as Rick Scott (R), Senator-elect of Florida, or Senator Mark Warner (D) of Virginia. It’s not hard to see how removing pensions, which rich people don’t need, makes it easier to attain a seat in Congress. Now they need only beat another millionaire.

2. Congress (past, present, & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress must purchase their own retirement plan, just as ALL Americans do.

This has a couple of problems.

• Congress has participated in Social Security since 1984, according to AARP. This is not difficult to discover, really. This, in reality, is about inducing anger at Congress, fallaciously widening the abyss between OUR government and ourselves.
• ALL Americans purchase retirement plans? A ridiculous statement. Some do, some are too rich to do so. This vague statement serves to bind the angry reader with everyone else, the beginning of the assemblage of a cult.
• I presume “It may not be used for any other purpose” refers to Congress borrowing from the Social Security reserves without restoring the funds. In fact, I believed that at one time. But it’s not true. Here’s a Motley Fool article on the topic. For those unfamiliar with the Motley Fool, they are an investment advice website of some 20 or more years standing. They are a-political advocates, generally, for long-term investing. That requires investors to understand reality – not buy into political myths. Give it a read if you’re doubtful.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

While this is a topic that could be discussed from either side for hours, it makes more sense to step back and ask why is this brought up? Perhaps their salaries sound large, although it’s important to keep in mind that the members must find living quarters in Washington while also maintaining residency in their home state.

But, for me, if you’re going to talk about outrage at the money in Washington, then ask about the budget. The aggregate Congressional salary is, rounding up, $100 million (529 members @ $174,000 per, with rounding accounting for extras for Speaker and other special positions). Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? If you nodded, you’re not paying attention. The Federal budget is in the BILLIONS. Congressional salaries are out of control? Try military spending. Congressional salaries aren’t even an eye-drop.

In reality, I view this as just another wedge being driven into the granite of the United States citizens, generating outrage at our own Congressional members through income disparity. They have to travel, maintain at least sleeping quarters, etc etc, and yet we’re going to bear down on their salaries. While it may seem dubious to let them set their own pay, which is their responsibility under the Constitution, the truth of the matter is that we should be electing Congressional representatives that will be responsible with our funds in the first place. That’s OUR responsibility, and shirking it by requesting a law that would supposedly do that work for us is, well, shirking.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

According to this CNN article from 2017, lawmakers are required to use the same options all Americans do.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people (i.e. NO MORE INSIDER TRADING!!!).

Members of Congress are already required to do so. Thus, we have had various allegations and even indictments of members of Congress over the years.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts by and for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor and privledge NOT a career.

My first inclination is to proclaim puzzlement, as I don’t know what this babble is about. But then note the final line – NOT a career.

Look, it sounds all fine and grand to promulgate term limits as a way of stopping corruption and that sort of thing, but every time a Senator or Representative retires, resigns, or is defeated, a wealth of experience walks out that door. This is important. These people have learned how to get things done in the governmental context, and that is a context far different from, say, a business context.

Now, it’s true that, except for those who pass away, former members can still be available for consultation, and certainly their aides also have a modicum of knowledge. Many former members are, in fact, consulted as I understand it.

But it’s worth considering the flip side of this coin as well – the amateurs who fill the seats of those who leave. Over the last two years, as long time readers of this blog know, we’ve had a full-on display of Republican amateurism, and it’s been a dismaying example of the failings of a group of second and third raters who can’t be troubled to debate in public, to fulfill their responsibilities, to monitor the Executive, or do really anything effectively.

To a great extent I blame it on former leaders of the GOP being run out on a rail because they failed to pledge allegiance to a set of principles that became more and more extreme as the years passed. See my RINO reasoning.

If the performance of Congress has displeased my reader – and I differentiate between performance and adherence to ideological principle, which is an entirely different thing – let me suggest that entry into Congress is not the precipitating event of their incompetence.

I think it’s far more reasonable to suggest it starts with the party from whence they came. If you’re unhappy with a member of Congress for being a fumbling, rubber-stamping fool, consider the possibility that this is what their Party and its backers have wrought.

The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work … not get all kinds of freebies. NO WONDER THEY’RE FIGHTING EVERYTHING HE TRIES! Pass it on!!!!

Anyone watching Congress and Trump is well aware of the compliancy of the GOP members of Congress to Trump’s wishes. Hell, FiveThirtyEight runs a continuing monitor of Congress called the TrumpScore, which rates that compliancy for every member of Congress. Most GOP members rate over 90%, which is appalling given the incompetency of President Trump, both in terms of policy and operationality.

To suggest Congress is battling Trump is laughable.

Let’s help TRUMP drain the swamp!! Just hold your finger down then hit forward and send it to everyone you know. Let’s help trump get the country straightened out.

And so we find that this mail, of which various similar version have floated about since 2000, is an adaptation by someone trying to promote a Trump re-election in 2020. Sounding an official theme of his 2016 campaign, it seeks to cast the blame for one of the most corrupt Administrations in history on Congress. A Congress that was completely controlled by Trump’s own party for 2 years, and the Senate will remain under GOP control for the second 2 years.

It’s important for the reader to remember names like Zinke, Ross, Pruitt, Sessions, all members or former members of the Trump Cabinet, because Trump owns those names, and those names will go down in disgrace in history as objective assessments come to the fore. The Senate GOP approved them, but Trump put those names forward, and therefore, despite his efforts to disown some (and, no doubt, all of them at some point).

But, more importantly, this is another effort in the vein of alienating Americans from their own government. Assessed as one of the more successful forms of government world-wide, or at least so I think, that makes it a target for subtle campaigns such as this one, and it’s important for the casual reader to be aware that their buttons are being pushed by mail such as these.

Beware.

Long time readers who’ve followed the thread concerning political “tribes” are aware that, well, I’ve been using the word tribe. I don’t recall if I came up with it on my own, or picked it up from Andrew Sullivan, but I’ve been vaguely uncomfortable using it.

The reason is that it reflects unfairly on the Native American tribes (the First Nations of Canada, I think) because I use it as a faintly denigrative term. While the insult is unintended, it’s there, and I do regret it.

In its place, I think cult is a better term. Cults do not feature rationality, but rather a type of magical thinking often incompatible with reality, and that seems to fit a subset of the political types, especially in the extremist right-wing, quite well. Other points of congruence include the alleged supremacy of the leader, the critical nature of apostasy, the elevation of ideology over truth, and the preference for conspiracy theories to explain the hideous gaps and results of the overriding ideology over the more sane possibility that the ideology is fucked in the head.

I am aware that cult is, at least for some, a synonym for religious sect, or so it was thirty years ago. Some religious folks even find that equivalency offensive. Given the ascendancy of religious over non-religious people, though, I find it a little difficult to extend sympathy to the offended. 

I will try to use cult in the future, and my apologies for the use of tribe.

Homeostasis:

Homeostasis is the state of steady internal conditions maintained by living things.^[1] This dynamic state of equilibrium is the condition of optimal functioning for the organism and includes many variables, such as body temperature and fluid balance, being kept within certain pre-set limits (homeostatic range). Other variables include the pH of extracellular fluid, the concentrations of sodium, potassium and calciumions, as well as that of the blood sugar level, and these need to be regulated despite changes in the environment, diet, or level of activity. Each of these variables is controlled by one or more regulators or homeostatic mechanisms, which together maintain life. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Writer Automaton,” BBC.

Regarding the Acosta / Epstein affair, a reader writes:

The opinion piece simply lies. Epstein was not required to go to state prison; he got to serve his very limited in a jail of his choosing, and was out on work release much of the time.

It does sound like quite the cushy deal, even if he is required to remain on the sex offender registry. I suppose enough money makes that easily tolerable.

Michael Gerson has recognized something I’ve been talking about for a while, and that is the tendency to chase moderate members out of the Republican Party using the charge of RINO will be, well, self-defeating.

The class of departing Republicans includes a few who won’t be missed. (Hint: One has a last name that begins with “Rohrabache-”.) But many of the House losses came in suburban districts that required outreach beyond the Trump-intoxicated base. Nationally, Democrats won about 70 percent of votes cast in suburban House districts. This means the political grim reaper came for some of the most reasonable elements within the party. This process is the reverse of natural selection — call it the survival of the witless.

[WaPo]

Gerson’s a neo-conservative, and another of a group of conservatives that has little use for the current incarnation of the GOP. I don’t think much of neocons myself, as they seem somewhat unrealistic. After all, they did start & cheerlead the Iraq War. But it’s good to see another conservative recognize the pathological nature of a key GOP process.

Long time readers know I’ve occasionally commented on the crypto-currency phenomenon, although generally from the outside looking in. However, there’s a new wrinkle showing up in crypto-currency land, and I’m really baffled by it. From The Switch (WaPo), back on November 1:

There’s a new form of cryptocurrency gaining traction among fans of digital cash.

Unlike bitcoin, which has seen its price swing wildly from as high as $19,000 last year to its current level hovering around $6,200, this emerging class of cryptocurrency aims to maintain a stable price — one, single U.S. dollar — at all times.

A cryptocurrency whose price never fluctuates might sound nonsensical, particularly to entry-level traders who want to profit off a cryptocurrency’s appreciation. But many in the industry say the rise of “stablecoins” has in fact been instrumental for active investors — and could represent a crucial steppingstone to the future of money. …

“I don’t know whether the price of that crypto is going to go up or down, but it’s almost certainly not going to be the same as it is today,” said Josh Fraser, co-founder of the cryptocurrency start-up Origin Protocol. “That introduces the problem [for] either the buyer or seller . . . as part of that transaction.”

That’s why many in the industry now see stablecoins as a big opportunity that could fulfill much of bitcoin’s original promise as a medium of exchange.

I tried to do some research on stablecoins, but ran into a jungle of jargon that made little sense to me. I wonder if there’s a really good, readable explanation of how stablecoins bring anything positive to the table. The WaPo article has a lot more, including an early attempt at stablecoins:

But not all was well: In the past several weeks, Tether [provider of an version of stablecoins] has been hit by a massive crisis of confidence. On some exchanges, Tether began trading at well below a dollar, which is not supposed to happen for a currency whose sole purpose is to maintain a solid peg. While the precise reasons for the slippage remain unclear, investors have engaged in a sell-off, and Bitfinex — a major exchange that shares the same management as Tether — took hundreds of millions of Tether coins out of circulation. In one month, Tether lost almost $1 billion in its market cap.

This sort of result leaves me with a suspicion that a purely private form of digital currency may not be an optimal solution to the problem of providing a stable fiat currency. I may be wrong, perhaps a large enough provider can provide stability simply through size.

But it may turn out that the traditional source of fiat currency, government, with all its flaws and vulnerabilities, may still be the best solution. I don’t disagree with the originators of crypto-currency that government is sometimes really undesirable, given how inflation can destroy an economy when a pack of amateurs is running the government, but the winds of the free market may be even less beneficial for a currency.

Libertarians occasionally cite economist Joseph Schumpeter’s remark about creative destruction and how through that process, progress (however you wish to define it) is made. Somehow, applying this to the currency the economy runs on doesn’t seem like the wisest of decisions.

It’s like this seal is on drugs. From NOAA:

In the nearly 40 years that we have been working to monitor and protect endangered Hawaiian monk seals, we have only started seeing “eels in noses” in the last few years. Yet, our researchers have observed this phenomenon three or four times now. We don’t know if this is just some strange statistical anomaly or if we will see more eels in seals in the future.

Hawaiian monk seals forage by shoving their mouth and nose into the crevasses of coral reefs, under rocks, or into the sand. They are looking for prey that likes to hide, like eels. This may be a case of an eel that was cornered trying to defend itself or escape. Alternatively, the seal could have swallowed the eel and regurgitated it so that the eel came out the wrong way. We might never know.

It’s just so odd. Are the eels counterattacking? Or is this a particular source of pleasure for the seals?

In the interests of fairness in the Secretary Acosta affair – or, lack thereof – David Oscar Markus has come to his defense, also in the pages of the Miami Herald.

Then last week, the Miami Herald retold the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal from over 10 years ago, when Secretary Acosta was U.S. Attorney Acosta. Although Epstein was required to plead guilty, register as a sex offender, pay restitution and go to state prison, there are many — including the New York Times, Miami Herald, and others — who are calling for Congress to investigate Acosta and force him out, equating Acosta’s approval of the deal to Epstein’s actions.

Although it is fair to have an honest disagreement about the Epstein plea agreement, the attacks on Acosta are not justified. As for the merits of the agreement, it is important to remember that the federal government only prosecutes federal crimes.

At the time this case was being investigated, there were serious questions about whether Epstein’s crimes had the required federal nexus. These were traditional state court crimes with local victims, which the federal government decided should be prosecuted by the state system.

In addition, there were legitimate concerns about how a trial would have turned out. These trials are difficult as the Michael Jackson (acquitted) and Bill Cosby (hung jury before eventually obtaining conviction, which is now subject to appeal) cases have shown. Here, prosecutors have said that many of the victims either refused to testify or were going to say things that helped Epstein.

I would actually be relieved if Acosta were exonerated. While I do not give the Department of Labor much credit for improvements in employment rates and that sort of thing, it’d be good for my stomach to be able to consider him an honorable guy.

I see President Trump may have taken a step up with the nomination of former Attorney General William Barr, who served under the late President Bush. I don’t remember a thing about him, but I see Wikipedia says he’s a strong a defender of Presidential power – maybe Trump consulted the same source that I did.

Regardless, it’s good to see he has experience and was thought to have handled the responsibilities ably under President Bush. This may result in a relatively placid transition from Whitaker, whose entire background is clownish, to someone with some heft.

However, it’s worth noting that the link above, from CNN, also contains some of his commentary on the Trump Administration and the activities of then-FBI Director Comey and Special Counsel Mueller, in which he appears to express skepticism concerning the propriety of the investigation. CNN also points to a New York Times article:

Mr. Barr said he sees more basis for investigating the [Uranium One] deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.

My understanding of the Uranium One deal was that the subsequent controversy was nothing more than a fictional storm. Standard government procedures were followed, including input from the national security intelligence agencies, and it was approved with signoffs from all relevant authorities, which did not include Secretary Clinton, who was the primary target of this political attack. While I could see calls for reopening that investigation as being valid, if dubious, I think suggesting that investigations of possible collusion to buy a Presidential elections, based on the provided initial evidence, was far more reasonable – and the results since then, consisting of  indictments, guilty pleas, and the conveyance of information by Flynn and others, suggests the Mueller investigation has been more than justified.

But the question that came immediately to mind when I heard about this last night: does Barr require confirmation by the Senate? After all, he was confirmed in 1991. Not that I think he’d be rejected this time around, he might even garner substantial Democratic support, but just out of curiosity, will Trump just try to install him in the position and claim he shouldn’t be proctored?

I knew nothing about Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta until I accidentally ran across this article in the Miami Herald, which they climax with a call for his resignation. The context is the prosecution and conviction of a billionaire by the name of Jeffrey Epstein, who’d apparently been taking sexual advantage of teen-age girls.

But these abused women, who had turned to the judicial system for recourse, also are owed an explanation from former Miami-based U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. He cut Epstein a huge and unmerited break.

Maybe Acosta can include his reasoning in his resignation letter as U.S. Labor Secretary, which he should submit immediately to President Trump.

Last week, as the Miami Herald detailed Epstein’s wrongdoing, we wrote that Acosta, who was said to be on the list of possible replacements for fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was ethically compromised by his action here a decade ago.

Now, as more unbelievable details have emerged in reporter Julie Brown’s extensive, year-long probe, we are recommending that Acosta resign his current position for allowing a rich, powerful, politically connected man to avoid justice and get off easy — and also for having no qualms about denying all the women victimized by Epstein the justice they had every right to expect.

Worse yet, Acosta made the deal with the devil Epstein, then tried to hide the fact of the settlement — ultimately, 13 months in the county jail — from the victims. How squirrelly. A poorer man who had abused scores of underage girls would have received little mercy and a far harsher sentence, and deservedly so.

I had thought the denizens of the swamp were more or less the bottom of the barrel, but if these allegations are true, then Acosta may be the worst of the bunch.

Perhaps I’m just blathering. This really makes me sick to my stomach, kow-towing to the money controlled by an apparent sexual predator. It’s another example of a swamp no longer filled with alligators, but something much, much worse.

The roller-coaster continues today, my second day of a long vacation, at least as of about 11 Central. The DJI is down about 2.6%, but trending upwards even as I type:

Regardless of the trend, though, it’s worth talking about the state of the American markets. For this phenomenon, I’m actually willing to take President Trump at his word – he’s responsible. That is, during the continued run-up as we transitioned from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration, many investors took Trump at his word that he would reduce regulation and taxes, and that this would result in a business renaissance. Many investors are conservatives at heart – nothing wrong with that – and are also uninformed when it comes to politics. Sure, for those of us watching politics^[1], it’s been apparent from the beginning that the Trump Administration would be a new kind of animal, the sort with 15 irregular legs, two heads, and zero brains, but for most Americans he’s just the guy occupying the White House and issuing big promises.

Promises that sound good.

So the markets continued on their way, with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm in some sectors.

A few months ago came the dawning realization that the promised actions, many of which were kept, were false promises. That is, actions were promised on the premise that they’d lead to the business renaissance, which has then failed to materialize. While promises like these are not unusual, this boils down to government directly messing with the markets, only most of us didn’t get that. To me, these sorts of promises are de rigeur for Republicans, and I expect they’ll continue in the future, because it’s part of Republican ideology to believe that regulation strangles business and is therefore bad. But in this case, neither deregulation nor lower taxes for business have led to the fabled kingdom.

Then came the tariff wars, and the government interference became a trifle more obvious. When international companies decided to move operations to other countries rather than suffer damage to their bottom-line, President Trump then brazenly interfered directly through criticisms and threats – just think about his outrage at Harley-Davidson moving some of its manufacturing to Europe in order to avoid tariff costs. Or, quite recently, his frantic criticisms of General Motors for shutting down plants, which has been partly motivated by tariff costs and partially by falling demand for smaller vehicles^[2].

Earlier this week, more whiplash as President Trump proclaimed a deal with China, followed by a weak following announcement from China on the same subject.

Today’s plunge, which may disappear by the time markets close, is being blamed on Chinese company Huawei’s CFO being detained in Canada and possibly extradited to the United States, at least by some, but I wouldn’t tie it to a single incident, no matter how large the company. Instead, I think the market is awakening to the frightening realization that the “conservative party” of the United States is beginning to reveal itself as more than willing to interfere in markets as whim takes it. Oh, each action may have a specific motivation, but there’s no plan, no adherence to anything but political convenience, for, after all, it’s not convenient for President Trump to “own” factory closings or bankrupt farmers, and thus we get more and more interference.

And remember the tariff wars? Exceptions, which take the form of lifting tariffs for specific companies that “require” foreign resources and products, are yet another direct interference in the market. It’s not a managed market, yet, but that’s where we’re heading with President Trump, and neither liberal nor conservative really wants that – that’s the land of autocrats, fascists, and extreme socialists^[3].

Thus, market upsets each time an autocratic world leader sneezes. What is an investor to do? I think it depends on your expectations of the next American elections.

If you’re a conservative who sees a re-election victory for Trump and even a reconquest of the House of Representatives by the GOP, make plans to get out of the market right now. Markets thrive on predictability, which means, among other things, a connection between business activities and attainment of business goals. Now that the GOP is revealing itself as an interference entity, that predictability is going to disappear, because political goals do not align with business goals, despite all the effort in the world by certain businessmen to control the activities of government to their benefit. They are simply not compatible, and the frantic efforts to make the incompatible [them compatible] create non-linearities that are difficult or impossible to predict, because we don’t know which businesses have the ears of which influential politicians in Washington, do we? This corruption is the ruin of markets.

If you’re a liberal who sees Trump stumbling into obscurity in two years, and the Senate as a possible fruit of victory as well, you may want to stick around, albeit cautiously. Two years is a long time to wait for politicians and party that actually will respect both norms and laws to resume governance, but if that does happen, we can cautiously hope the markets will come back to trusting that interference in markets will resume through honest & moral regulations.

Of course, the spectre in the background of these remarks is Climate Change. The predictions of climate scientists continue to be met or exceeded, the Trump Administration even released a report indicating climate change is truly underway. If we have another two years of criminal inaction on the part of the GOP, it may impair any investments not directly related to CO₂ or methane abatement.

Or even any investments at all. Along with bank accounts and those dollars you buried in a coffee can in the back yard.

Postscript: Now that I’ve finished writing this post (roughly 45 minutes), I see the market has mostly recovered. This doesn’t invalidate my point, but merely reinforces it. So long as Trump is President, the American stock markets are in for a very rough ride, because now they have to factor in Trump’s misbehaviors as he seeks to keep his base happy. No one can really predict how that’s going to work out.

¹ That includes those of us who are unwilling spectators of this slow-motion train wreck.

² A highly undesirable consequence of the undeclared war between the United States and Russia over the annexation of the Crimea, started by President Obama by orchestrating lower oil prices, which was a direct attack on the Russian export economy. I think their return stroke has been the persistent interference in our elections resulting in the election of a President and party who appears to be equal parts compromised and incompetent, as uncovered in the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Corporation.

³ No, despite her use of the word ‘socialist’, Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has not exhibited any socialist tendencies with regards to the general economy. If you want a socialist to fear in the Western world, try UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who appears to be leading a bunch of dreaming old socialists into a failed past.

My Arts Editor has been ranting about this virtually from the day I met her, so I take a certain amount of pleasure in noting that the medical field is also beginning to recognize the problem. From Austin Frakt in The New York Times:

If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest?

There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep. And nurses and others visit frequently to give medications, take vitals, draw blood or perform tests and checkups — in many cases waking patients to do so.

Some monitoring is necessary, of course. Medication must be given; some vital signs do need to be checked. And frequent monitoring is warranted for some patients — such as those in intensive care units. But others are best left mostly alone. Yet many hospitals don’t distinguish between the two, disrupting everyone on a predefined schedule.

Peter Ubel understands the problem as both a physician and patient. When he spent a night in the hospital recovering from surgery in 2013, he was interrupted multiple times by blood draws, vital sign checks, other lab tests, as well as by the beeping of machines. “Not an hour went by without some kind of disruption,” said Dr. Ubel, a physician with Duke University. “It’s a terrible way to start recovery.”

It’s more than annoying — such disruptions can harm patients. Short sleep durations are associated with reduced immune function, delirium, hypertension and mood disorders. Hospital conditions, including sleep disruptions, may contribute to “posthospital syndrome” — the period of vulnerability to a host of health problems after hospitalization that are not related to the reason for that hospitalization.

“In addressing a patient’s acute illness, we may inadvertently be causing harm by ignoring the important restorative powers of a healing environment,” said Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University physician who has been calling attention to posthospital syndrome for several years. “The key to a successful recovery after illness may be a less stressful, more supportive, more humane experience during the hospitalization.”

Bingo. It’s easy to point at a test result for some bacteria and say that’s the problem!; it’s a lot harder to point at a process and say the same. Not that there’s no history of doing so, especially in the field of public health. After all, the recognition of lack of sanitation procedures in connection with the spread of cholera is legendary in the field.

But it’s a lot harder, and I doubt it’ll receive the same recognition as developing that new med.

Madrigal:

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name. [Wikipedia]

Noted in Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:

And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the [railroad] car. Nearly everyone, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away.

A reader writes about the size of the US DoD:

The Department of Defense is so immense, and its “budget” also so immense, the idea of auditing it to find all the Things is amusing in the least. Even with various smaller components trying hard to to be efficient and effective, there’s so much slop, it’s ridiculous. It employs over 2 million people, operates over half a million facilities at over 5000 locations. A billion here and billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Perhaps. The proper metric is hard to select. For example, from the world of private enterprise, Walmart employs over 2.3 million people and has over 11,000 locations. On the other hand, the mission and operations of Walmart does not compare to that of the US DoD, the latter having far more complexity.

But, in principle, it should be possible to track the money in the US DoD almost as readily as I’m sure Walmart tracks its cash flow.

One of the salient problems of climate change agreements are cheaters. Here’s Nobel Winner Professor William Nordhaus, from a report in WaPo:

Nordhaus has blamed the lack of climate policy progress on the strong incentive for what economists call “free-riding.”

“People free-ride when they jump the turnstile on the subway,” he said. “Nations free-ride in military treaties such as NATO when they enjoy the benefits of the strong U.S. military to protect them while doing little to pay for the common defense.”

And when it comes to climate change, he said, free-riding is “particularly pernicious.”

Unfortunately, no solutions to this particular problem are presented in the article. Obviously, it’ll end up being a matter for international law, which may mean it’ll require attention from the sometimes impotent United Nations.

If the United States wasn’t substantially in a position of denial when it comes to this problem, I’d say that it might be a good idea for Congress to pass legislation that would target cheaters in the future. I would suggest that perhaps tariffs would be automatically applied for those nations found to be in violation of their international obligations, except that there’d be a certain dark irony to such a proposal, given the United States’ decision to pull out of just such agreements.

Corporate entities could also face reprisals, including those of an existential nature, for endangering the future of the human species.

I wonder what the climate change community has come up with in this area.

Just for complete reporting concerning The Revolution at Rosedale, my Arts Editor reports gift cards may be bought for cash.

I see WaPo caught Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), arguably the favorite of the progressives in Congress these days, in a blunder:

Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Twitter that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could have paid for 66 percent of the Medicare-for-all proposal. Her tweet references an article in the Nation, a left-leaning magazine. The specific line about the missing $21 trillion comes from research by Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University. …

Skidmore’s paper clearly talks about Pentagon “assets” and “liabilities.” This key distinction was duly noted in the Nation article that Ocasio-Cortez referenced on Twitter.

To be clear, Skidmore, in a report coauthored with Catherine Austin Fitts, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development who complained about similar plugs in HUD financial statements, does not contend that all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused funding. And indeed, the plugs are found on both the positive and the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out. But the Pentagon’s bookkeeping is so obtuse, Skidmore and Fitts added, that it is impossible to trace the actual sources and destinations of the $21 trillion.

But it did not appear in her tweet, which clearly implied that the $21 trillion could have been used to pay for 66 percent of the $32 trillion in estimated Medicare-for-All costs.

“To clarify, this is to say that we only demand fiscal details [with health and education], rarely elsewhere,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a follow-up tweet.

“The point, I think, was more about how we care so little about the ‘how do you pay for it’ when we are talking about war and military spending,” her spokesman wrote in an email. “It’s only when we are talking about investing in the physical and economic well-being of our citizenry that we become concerned with the price tags.”

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that’ll dent her credibility, between getting things wrong, and then frantically backfilling. In fact, the Pentagon undergoing an audit indicates we’re also paying attention to the financial details, even though this is the first such audit, so I suspect the conservatives will just use the explanatory e-mail from her spokesman as another bit of ammunition to discredit the Representative-elect.

Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez needs to get her ducks in a row before trying to comment on just about anything. Right now she’s a leading target, and she has to be flawless or risk becoming irrelevant.

Related to the GOP frantic clutching at waning power comes this editorial from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin citizens elected a new governor and attorney general in November.

Now, leaders of the state Senate and Assembly intend to rush through bills that would reduce the authority of the incoming elected leaders while raising taxpayer costs. They want to pass them as soon as Tuesday, in an extraordinary session, so that Gov. Scott Walker can sign the new rules into law before leaving office in January.  Details just came out Friday, with the first public discussion in the Capitol on Monday and a potential vote by Tuesday. …

This is about keeping the citizens in charge of their government.

It doesn’t matter which party is coming in and going out of office — we would say the exact same thing. In fact, we would shout it — just as we are now.

Let them know who’s boss.

Tell them you are.

And this from what Steve Benen characterizes as a conservative paper.

The phrase litmus test has appeared in campaigns and debates over judge nominations over the last few decades to indicate what one side or the other side thinks is an illegitimate standard that the candidate to meet. For example, their stand on abortion is sometimes considered a litmus test in which the liberals are outraged that it’s used as a standard, while for the conservatives either you’re against abortion or you’re not worthy of the post for which you’re a nominee.

Well, I think a new litmus test is on the horizon, and I think the non-extremists will get to use this one:

Nominee, what are your views on the actions of the GOP-controlled legislatures’ lame duck sessions in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2018 with regard to their attempts to negate the power of the incoming Democratic seat-holders?

If they dissemble or endorse those activities, I’d say they failed the litmus test and should be rejected by the Independent voter as inimical to the health of the Republic.

She’s not happy with her fiancee, I think.

In Starship Troopers II: Hero of the Federation (2004), the series transforms from a bad knock-off of the original novel to a sci-fi / horror akin to the classic Alien series, with no philosophical connection to book from which it supposedly originated. While the plot is more or less serviceable, it’s not really believable. It’s somewhat messy in the details, fails to deliver up sympathetic characters, and when characters are revealed to be under Bug control, it just caused some laughter. And theme? Hard to see any theme here.

At the end, a clumsy and ineffective anti-militarism scene is tacked on, as if to make up for the rest of the schlock. And that’s just about all it is.

In light of the 2016 attempt by the North Carolina GOP-controlled legislature to strip the incoming Democratic governor of certain powers (now bogged down in the Courts), and recent similar activities in Wisconsin and Michigan, I wonder how long it’ll be before state Constitutional Amendments begin appearing forbidding lame-duck legislative sessions in which the duties and powers of the various branches of government are modified.

This sort of shit didn’t used to happen all the time.

Scientists and science geeks love nothing more than a good natural mystery, and it appears there’s one brewing off the coast of Africa, between the continent and the northern tip of the big island of Madagascar. National Geographic has a longish pop-sci report:

I’m beginning a new hobby, and naturally it’s going to be taking up a lot of my time. I’m not abandoning the blog, as it’s how I like to vent opinions, but I may not be as active as I have been.