Monthly Archives: January 2019

I haven’t really run across a movie in this particular category before, which I’ll ad lib as dry farce. Castle In The Air (1952) concerns a Scottish Earl of Locharne who has been attempting to keep the family castle going by renting out its rooms as a bed and breakfast, even as the joint appears to be falling apart around him. Among his employees and family is the butler and handyman who refuses to accept a layoff notice, and also plays, or pretends to play, the bagpipe; the Earl’s manager, Miss Trent, who he calls ‘boss’; and the family poltergeist who provides a bit of entertainment for the guests, both day-only and overnight.

There are several guests, but two standout. The representative of the local coal board, Mr. Phillips, has come visiting to decide if the castle should be requisitioned for use by the local coal-miners, a precipitous event which the Earl dislikes intensely. Consequently, Mr. Phillips has been put up in the worst room in the castle. On the other hand, Miss Nicholson, Scottish through and through, has convinced herself that this Earl of Locharne is the true heir to the Scottish throne, and has thrown herself into proving this through her genealogy passion, not to mention quite the deep Scottish accent.

Into this mess strides long-legged Mrs. Dunne of Denver, CO. She claims to be a Locharne; even better, her portion of a restaurant chain that she won from her ex-husband sets her up in enough funds to buy the castle, if she wants it – and she thinks it charming.

It turns into a balancing act, convincing Mr. Phillips that the castle is a wreck, while showing Mrs. Dunne that it’s not entirely a loss. Meanwhile, Miss Nicholson is attempting to start a revolution to install the Earl into his rightful throne. And, ‘boss’ Trent alternates between yearning for the Earl (who’s not nearly as charming as she claims, at least to me) and being outraged at the hijinks she imagines him indulging in.

It has its moments, but the print we viewed was somewhat flawed, which was disappointing. I thought the lead, played by David Tomlinson, could have been more effective. Yet, the overall whimsy of this movie, completely lacking in any profound thought or emotion, was actually attractive, making for a restful night after a day of futile fencing at the local tournament. The cold of January in Minnesota is best left outside, and watching Castle In The Air was peculiarly restful.

Inaugurating a post title referring to an idea I’ve written about from time to time: events congruent with an undeclared war between Russia and the West. Of course, that’s all speculation on my part, and perhaps Special Counsel Mueller’s part, you understand. I’m thinking of events such as the Russian interference with the midterm elections, and the Brexit debacle being endured by the Brits.

But the official kick-off entry comes from Politico:

Members of the U.S. Congress have slammed a decision by the Trump administration to downgrade the diplomatic status of the EU embassy in Washington, saying the move and the way it was carried out “needlessly denigrate transatlantic relations.”

In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 27 Democratic Members of Congress say they are “deeply troubled” by recent reports of the downgrade.

Professor Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy has a short post out summarizing an article he’s written for the Duke Law Journal.

Introduction

How might artificial intelligence change judging? IBM’s Watson can beat the top Jeopardy players in answering English-language factual questions. The Watson Debater project is aimed at creating a program that can construct short persuasive arguments. What would happen if an AI program could write legal briefs and judicial opinions?

To be sure, AI legal analysis is in its infancy; prognoses for it must be highly uncertain. Maybe there will never be an AI program that can write a persuasive legal argument of any complexity.

But it may still be interesting to conduct thought experiments, in the tradition of Alan Turing’s famous speculation about artificial intelligence, about what might happen if such a program could be written. Say a program passes a Turing test, meaning that it can converse in a way indistinguishable from a human. Perhaps it can then converse—or even present an extended persuasive argument—in a way indistinguishable from the sort of human we call a “lawyer,” and then perhaps in a way indistinguishable from a judge.

It’s an interesting proposition. I’ve been thinking about Volokh’s summation (I haven’t read the actual paper), and I think my criticisms may center around his first point of evaluation:

[1.] Evaluate the Result, Not the Process. When we’re asking whether something is intelligent enough to do a certain task, the question shouldn’t be whether we recognize its reasoning processes as intelligent in some inherent sense. Rather, it should be whether the outcome of those processes provides what we need.

At first glance, this seems fairly reasonable. However, I think there’s some cracks in this thought, and they center not around technical problems (of which I’m not qualified to comment, having taken just one AI course 35 years ago, and been an interested reader since), but, I think, around civil society.

I think one of the charming aspects of democracy for most folk is that we’re not judged by divine or divinely-anointed creatures (aka, those idiot monarchs and their self-interested minions), but by everyday citizens who are judges and jury. People is the operative word, because that’s what we are. This comes from the idea, fallacious as it may be^[1], that we share a similar theory of mind. That is, we think we understand how our fellow people reason, how they evaluate evidence, their general moral instinct, perhaps even ethical / moral theory, and the general importance of justice in our culture.

Crucially for Volokh, the odds of his hypothetical project’s complete acceptance by the general public may correlate directly with society’s (or perhaps that should be plural possessive) willingness to include artificial intelligence entities as part of the human social landscape, versus considering them as entities alien to our understanding – that is, entities which do not share our theory of mind.

Volokh’s third point somewhat addresses the issue, even as it’s at odds with his first point, above:

[3.] Use Persuasion as the Criterion for Comparison—for AI Judges as Well as for AI Brief-Writers. Of course, if there is a competition, we need to establish the criteria on which the competitors will be measured. Would we look at which judges’ decisions are most rational? Wisest? Most compassionate?

I want to suggest a simple but encompassing criterion, at least for AI judges’ judgment about law and about the application of law to fact: persuasion. This criterion is particularly apt when evaluating AI brief-writer lawyers. After all, when we hire a lawyer to write a brief, we want the lawyer to persuade—reasonableness, perceived wisdom, and appeals to compassion are effective only insofar as they persuade. But persuasion is also an apt criterion, I will argue, for those lawyers whom we call judges. (The test for evaluation of facts, though, whether by AI judges, AI judicial staff attorneys, or AI jurors, would be different; I discuss that in Part IV.)

Persuasion is, to a great extent, the sharing of the reasoning, the chain of logic, which proceeds from assumptions and facts to a final conclusion. This, in turn, is a reflection, warped in some ways, of how the mind generating the argument is actually working. Thus, this third point seems to be at least partially contradictory of his first point.

Let me speculate on why Volokh wrote point 1, above, in which he asks that only results be judged, not method. This is strongly reminiscent of a facet of Machine Learning (ML) in which the decisions made by algorithms which utilize ML are shrouded in mystery. That is, if an ML-based algorithm that selected whether or not a given applicant would be sold a mortgage was asked how it came to a decision concerning some particular applicant, yay or nay, it’d not be able to explicate its decision. This is a common problem, and it’s not necessarily impossible to fix, but possibly Volokh is aware of how hard this may be able to complete.

But that persuasive element is a key part of analyzing how another entity’s mind works, and deciding whether it’s compatible with our own, or not.

The lure of the objective and untiring “mind” is real, but the question is whether it’s something we can accept, or if it’s the notorious Siren song. To the extent that we can accept artificial minds, I have to wonder how much those minds have to share the same flaws that we suffer from.

And if those minds do cross the rubicon from merely machine-learning algorithms to full-fledged Artificial Intelligences, will they still remain trustable? I’ve discussed the semantic sloppiness of using the term Artificial Intelligence when the algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, exhibits no signs of consciousness or, more importantly, self-interest (for want of a better term).

I suspect that, as assistants to human judges, AI-based programs will be easily accepted, because they’ll remain tools in the hands of humans. But judge and jury are positions of authority and responsibility. Will automating such positions be acceptable to a citizenry accustomed to policing itself?

Time will tell.

¹ I suppose President Trump is the outstanding example of the Age of someone who does not have a mind congruent with the general theory of mind, as I’ve noted elsewhere. How many of us are well-acquainted with a creature that lies, boasts, and aggrandizes himself at every opportunity? Not many. Still, we like to think that we understand somewhat how our fellow citizens think.

Perhaps you’ve heard the reports that the FBI began an investigation of President Trump for inappropriate ties to Russia, aka he’s a Russian intelligence asset, or perhaps you’ve been living under a rock this week. Year. Two years. In case it’s the latter, here’s the fast summary from The New York Times:

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

This led to another example of what seems to be faux-outrage from Rep. Peter King (R-NY), as noted by Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seized on a White House talking point — that reports of the FBI investigating whether President Trump was working for Russia prove Trump was right about the deep state — and took it a step further Monday: “that’s almost like a coup.”

During an interview with Fox News on Monday, King called news of the probe “absolutely disgraceful.”

“From what I’ve seen and heard, if this is true, what the FBI did is absolutely disgraceful,” King said. “They have been investigating the Trump campaign from the summer of 2016. Absolutely nothing, zero has come up involving President Trump. James Comey told that to the president. The reason President Trump fired Comey was Comey refused to say that publicly, that the President was not under investigation.”

No, Rep. King, he fired him to stop the collusion investigation, as the President himself stated. This Reuters report has both the admission and the later attempts by the White House to retract the admission on the grounds NBC fudged the tape.

But besides those trivial details known as facts, the question of why does Rep. King insist on ignoring the recent revelations which justifies the investigation calls merrily for an answer. If you’re wondering about these revelations, Steve Benen provides a lovely summation in connection with Trump’s inclination to destroy the most important bulwark against Russian aggression, NATO:

* Jan. 3: Trump publicly endorsed the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, arguing that the Soviets “were right to be there.” It was one of several recent examples of the Republican president endorsing Russian propaganda for no apparent reason.

* Jan. 10: The Trump administration tried to defend the idea of relaxing Russia sanctions. It didn’t go well.

* Jan. 11: The New York Times  reported that after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey, the FBI began an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” The article added, “Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security.”

* Jan. 12: The Washington Post  reported that Trump has “gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations” with Putin, going so far as to take his own interpreter’s notes after one private discussion.

* Jan. 14: The New York Times  reports that Trump raised the idea of withdrawing from NATO “several” times in 2018.

So what is the reason for King’s faux-outburst, his apparent idiocy?

Trump may not be desired by the Republican Party, but he is the result of 25 years of Republican Party culture. This is nearly definitional, and certainly undeniable, because the Republican base loves him. If King and his fellow Congressional members from the Republicans turn on Trump, they are also turning on themselves and each other, because just about all of them, now that the moderates have moved out of the party, or become irrelevant from illness, old age, or death, are also products of the Republican Party culture.

To condemn Trump is to condemn themselves and the very culture which got them elected to high office. Without the hardest of evidence of Trump being a Russian asset, they’ll only play around the edges of opposition: pass the occasional bill he opposes, and then only if the support is overwhelming and the arena is arcane. Once in a while suggest he settle down. That sort of ineffectual thing.

Because, for reasons of ego, they just can’t condemn themselves. Impeaching and convicting Trump risks the very Republican Party itself in its present form, and while the Republican base will still support Trump even if impeached and convicted, that is a small portion of the electorate; the 40% or so of the electorate that calls it independents, like myself, would consign the Republican Party to the ashcan of history, and down the toilet would swirl King and his colleagues.

King must be in a cold sweat.

And here’s an AI-generated film:

If you are a visual artist who loves the big, sweeping tableaus, that is the big strength of Aquaman (2018), and you may want to see it. But if you’re not, if, like me, you’re a story junkie, then skip it. Bad audio, a mundane plot which is all about the action and only gives a superfluous nod to the question of how being a hero or villain affects humans, the plot bounds soggily from set-piece to set-piece, creating good guys, bad guys, and little kids caught in the middle as needed, rather than organically from the origins of the scenario. A whole lot of acting phoned in from home. Sure, the big ‘A’ has a sense of humor early on, but why is he impervious to bullets? And what’s with the pirate sub?

It didn’t help that during the battle scenes we spotted intruding Martian war machines (perhaps yet another version of War Of The Worlds was filming on the studio lot next door), and a big old kaiju that was guarding the sacred trident that Arthur, yes, Arthur (think of a good Brit accent, no less) has to take from his grasp in order to win his throne. Yeeeeccccch.

But here’s the big condemnation: part way through I started considering how this could have been improved in a surprising, yet logical, manner. That’s a bad sign. For the record, when one of the bad guys, clad in a suit that kept the water in so he could breath, crashes through the roof of a house on the island of Corfu, he earns himself a good old-fashioned death-glare from the grandmama who happened to be there, and I thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if she turned into one of those old Greco-Roman Fates who snipped the strings of humanity, and really nailed him with a death glare?

Yeah, this was a bad, boring movie. Too little plot, too much fighting.

In WaPo Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) lays out how Congress has become a hollow shell since the years that Rep. Gingrich (R-GA) held the Speaker’s gavel:

Our decay as an institution began in 1995, when conservatives, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), carried out a full-scale war on government. Gingrich began by slashing the congressional workforce by one-third. He aimed particular ire at Congress’s brain, firing 1 of every 3 staffers at the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office. He defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, a tech-focused think tank. Social scientists have called those moves Congress’s self-lobotomy, and the cuts remain largely unreversed.

Gingrich’s actions didn’t stop with Congress’s mind: He went for its arms and legs, too, as he dismantled the committee system, taking power from chairmen and shifting it to leadership. His successors as speaker have entrenched this practice. While there was a 35 percent decline in committee staffing from 1994 to 2014, funding over that period for leadership staff rose 89 percent.

This imbalance has defanged many of our committees, as bills originating in leadership offices and K Street suites are forced through without analysis or alteration. Very often, lawmakers never even see important legislation until right before we vote on it. During the debate over the Republicans’ 2017 tax package, hours before the floor vote, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) tweeted a lobbying firm’s summary of GOP amendments to the bill before she and her colleagues had had a chance to read the legislation. A similar process played out during the Republicans’ other signature effort of the last Congress, the failed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Their bill would have remade one-sixth of the U.S. economy, but it was not subject to hearings and was introduced just a few hours before being voted on in the dead of night. This is what happens when legislation is no longer grown organically through hearings and debate.

Of course, it’s important to remember that Pascrell is a Democrat criticizing his opponents. Nevertheless, he is one of the best situated Americans to describe how Congress has changed, particularly in its acquisition and evaluations of information, and his is an important contribution to the conversation. Republicans may assert their favorite argument, that it’s Big Government and Way Too Much Spending, but I think that’s become an argument with some holes in it, given the vast incompetence exhibited by the Republican leadership of the 115th Congress (that’d be the one just concluded a few days ago, when Rep. Pelosi (D-CA) assumed the Speaker’s gavel from retiring Rep. Ryan (R-WI)). Their inability to follow an appropriate process for creating legislation concerning the most important issues facing the nation was, speaking as an independent, simply appalling and inexcusable.

But it can be explained by deliberate actions to cripple our government. No doubt Gingrich would claim – and believe – that he was just rooting out liberals with a distorted view of reality, but in the following decades, it’s become clear that, instead, he and his adherents crippled our government. If lobbyists are indeed often writing legislation via their captured Congresspeople, and then forcing it down the throats of Congress before it can be properly read, much less debated and modified, then Congress has been failing in its duties.

Later in the article, Pascrell claims Pelosi, as the new Speaker, will be trying to repair at least some of the damage. Whether this works out or not, we shall see. I suspect, given the propensity of new generations to lean towards data analysis, the ideology and power fixation of Gingrich and his buddies may be rejected as foolish failure as the youngsters continue to move into government.

But they do have to wake up and start taking an interest in governance.

Jumpin' in the Shower,
   Jumpin' in the Shower,
Jumpin' in the Shoooooooower ...


      THUD! THUD! THUD!

Try it with that faux-Swedish accent where the ‘J’ becomes a ‘Y’…

A reader thinks we need more data points concerning real wage growth, or its lack thereof:

That graph needs one showing income and wages for others. Considering that’s all wiggling around in an area less than 2% wide, it doesn’t really say much.

To my mind, it says it all: blue collar wages, in real terms and to the extent that our inflation measures measure something useful, have remained stagnant since at least 1966. One of the best ways to move up from blue collar is to get a college level education. But what if the cost of higher education is rising faster than the general inflation rate? And, if you believe the Edvisors website, it has from 1977 – 2013:

That has pushed education further and further out of the reach of the blue collar segment. Of course, there are scholarships and grants and loans, but these are basically ways for various groups to control who gets to go to college, and who does not – rather than letting the students decide if they want to go to college or not. I suppose if your decision would be negative anyways, then it doesn’t matter so much.

So this is just one example of the problem of stagnant real wages for blue collar workers – they’re stuck in a hole that it’s difficult, even impossible, to dig your way out of.

De novo:

The email bag once again has yielded up a bit of right wing propaganda (I get quite a bit of left wing propaganda, which I’ve recently covered), which this time around is rather more subtle than the norm. A good part of the reason is that it doesn’t delve into easily proven or disproven historical claims, but rather into the criminology surrounding our southern border with Mexico: that’s right, it’s pro-border wall propaganda.

I found, while researching the claims made, that criminology concerning these various claims is very underdeveloped. Some statistics are not kept at all, some are in fragmentary form, certain statistics cannot be collected because the victims do not choose to perform them, etc.

Against this background of uncertainty, these claims are made in a very positive format, which is to say, each is made, followed by an exclamatory FACT!, as if they are viable bricks in their unanswerable argument. But let’s talk about them, one by one, for evaluation purposes.

The propaganda itself is not text, but a video. While the mail I received attached it as an mp4 video, I also found it on YouTube, and will add it to the end of this post. I will transcribe the claims and answer them with the data, where available.

The section headers are mine, they are not from the propaganda, and are employed to increase readability. Any bolding in the quotes are mine, not the authors’, unless otherwise noted.

Crime Rates Of Illegal Aliens

… An illegal alien in the state of Arizona is twice as likely to commit a crime versus a natural born citizen.

The closest I could come to verifying this is a study by Dr. John Lott, Jr., who, according to the Washington Times, is President (and possibly the only employee) of the Crime Prevention Research Center. From the study’s abstract:

Using newly released detailed data on all prisoners who entered the Arizona state prison from January 1985 through June 2017, we are able to separate non-U.S. citizens by whether they are illegal or legal residents. Unlike other studies, these data do not rely on self-reporting of criminal backgrounds. Undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans.

However, this report has come under heavy criticism. Alex Nowrasteh at the right-wing Cato Institute, for example, believes the entire paper was invalidated due to a data analysis mistake by Dr. Lott.

Lott wrote his paper based on a dataset he obtained from the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) that lists all admitted prisoners in the state of Arizona from 1985 to 2017. According to Lott, the data allowed him to identify “whether they [the prisoners] are illegal or legal residents.” This is where Lott made his small error: The dataset does not allow him or anybody else to identify illegal immigrants.

The interested reader should click through to see Mr. Nowrasteh’s analysis of the error.

Dr. Lott’s study was considered to go quite against the flow of other analyses. Non-partisan FactCheck.org’s characterization of the question of crime rates in the illegal immigrant population in the context of competing claims from Republican President Trump and Senator Sanders (I-VT) may be the most believable I ran across:

President Donald Trump said it’s “not true” that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “safer than the people that live in the country,” providing several crime statistics he claimed represented the “toll of illegal immigration.” Sen. Bernie Sanders made the opposite claim, saying: “I understand that the crime rate among undocumented people is actually lower than the general population.”

Who is right?

There are not readily available nationwide statistics on all crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally. Researchers have provided estimates through statistical modeling or by extrapolating from smaller samples. One such study backs the president’s claim, but several others support Sanders’ statement.

FactCheck.org later cites Cato Institute research:

“Illegal immigrants are 47 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives.” (And legal immigrants are even less likely to be in jail or prison.)

All of which is based on extrapolations, estimates, etc.

This is one of those situations in which biased readers can read their own conclusions into the data, simply by refusing to believe, or disbelieve, in the research methods – and it’s easy to understand their reactions. But this simply reinforces the point I’d like to make, which is this:

Using Dr. Lott’s apparently deeply flawed study in such a positive manner as displayed in the pro-border wall propaganda is intellectually dishonest. The study is not generally accepted by Dr. Lott’s peers, insofar as I can see, and while his study may be congruent with the views of the zealots of the anti-immigrationists, this doesn’t make the study right to cite when it’s methods are flawed.

I might further note, in my own experience, that Dr. Lott’s results are often congruent with the right wing, most often in the area of gun rights, and yet those studies are often disputed and, supposedly, disproven, if I’m to believe my casual reading.

This is not to accuse Dr. Lott of publishing deliberately fraudulent research. Instead, I’d like to suggest that he’s suffering from a form of intellectual error called confirmation bias. This manifests, in my experience as a software engineer, as finding an expected result after developing some software, or an expected coding error when researching a bug, and STOPPING. That is, I found what I expected, I must be right, so let’s stop right here, proclaim victory, and go home. The proper intellectual approach for us flawed human types should be to ask, Where did I go wrong? and if you can’t find an answer to that, maybe you’re right. But, from time to time, there’s some end case you didn’t test that makes your software buggy. You didn’t find it because your test cases all worked – and you never thought of the end case that invalidates your conclusion of perfection.

I suspect Dr. Lott just isn’t as thorough as he should be.

Drug Smuggling Over The Southern Border

… 90% of all heroin and fentanyl come across the southern border.

This claim appears to be true for heroin, as United States Assistant Secretary William Brownfield reports in Briefing on the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report:

My estimate is that between 90 and 94 percent of all heroin consumed in the United States comes from Mexico. My estimate is that a very tiny percentage now, perhaps as little as 2 percent to 4 percent, comes from Colombia. And the remainder, which might be somewhere in the 4 to 6 percent category, comes from Asia, the majority of that coming from Afghanistan.

Finding numbers for fentanyl is more difficult, but let’s just stipulate our propagandist has a true fact, because concentrating on whether or not these numbers are accurate leaves the reader open to the mistake of forgetting the context. And what is the context? The conclusion that the wall will help stem the flow of drugs into the United States. In this respect, WOLA, a human rights organization advocating for Central America (Mexico is part of North America, not Central America, in their view, I think), can help:

Misconception 2: “Building a wall would greatly reduce heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl trafficking.”

Proponents of a border wall often claim that it would help the United States solve its opioid addiction problem by blocking heroin smugglers from Mexico. This reveals a misunderstanding of how cross-border smuggling works.

The vast majority of the drug that enters from Mexico does so through “ports of entry”—the 48 official land crossings through which millions of people, vehicles, and cargo pass every day. “Heroin seizures almost predominantly are through the port of entry and either carried in a concealed part of a vehicle or carried by an individual,” then-U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske told a congressional committee last year. “We don’t get much heroin seized by Border Patrol coming through, I think just because there are a lot of risks to the smugglers and the difficulty of trying to smuggle it through,” he said.

“The most common method employed by Mexican TCOs [Transnational Criminal Organizations] involves transporting drugs in vehicles through U.S. ports of entry (POEs),” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reported in its 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. “Illicit drugs are smuggled into the United States in concealed compartments within passenger vehicles or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers,” according to the document.

The lesson here is that there are two components to evaluate in just about any argument: the data, and the logic. This propaganda, through its forceful presentation (“FACT!“), attempts a sleight of hand trick by using what does appear to be a true fact and a forceful presentation to force through a conclusion which actually doesn’t follow. The fact is relevant, but the omission of other critical facts, namely the methods for transporting the drugs, renders this propaganda fallacious and untrustworthy.

Finally, there is an implicit assumption to this argument which is, at least in my view, false, and that basis is that the problem is supply, not demand. I treated this fallacious assumption in this post here, but the argument is buried so deeply that it might discourage the reader, so permit me to quote myself for my final rebuttal to this “fact”:

Supply. [Hugh] Hewitt’s argument is that the supply of illegal drugs is the problem. Few economists will find this a reasonable argument, because the true driver is the demand. Demand, demand, demand, repeat it over and over and you soon realize that fentanyl is not the problem, it’s a symptom of a deeper malaise in our society. Whether it’s the inevitable stress of a society transitioning from the arbitrary strictures of divinities to reasoned debate concerning ethics, morality, and law, or the stress caused by manufacturing moving overseas, or the stress of a populace that often does not push itself intellectually and now finds itself in an international competition where intellect is the key to success, it needs to be explored. It may not be a resolvable matter, as sad as that makes me, but it’s important to realize that cutting supply does not eliminate the problem. It’ll be like squeezing an unpoppable balloon, the symptom will just reappear in some other form. The core problem, singular or plural, needs to be identified and, if possible, addressed.

Child Sex Trafficking

… Over 10,000 kids are illegally sex trafficked across the southern border every single year.

Whether the propagandist means the entire southern border, or the Arizona border is unclear. So are the numbers itself. Research on this topic is frustrating, and so I, once again, have a real problem with some dude shouting FACT! as if he has indisputable information. Here’s a chart from CNN on sex trafficking:

Note this isn’t child sex trafficking, this is just human trafficking, and, presuming the former is a subset of the latter, the numbers simply don’t add up.

Of course, an argument can be made that one case is one too many, but this would once again losing focus on the context. Whether or not the numbers are right, why should we believe a wall will be effective? We have reports of people being carried in 18-wheelers, which means crossing at ports of entry. Walls can be tunneled under, they can be climbed.

Even if it’s just one child, it’s a sad situation. But are we building a wall because it’ll stop people who are determined to supply a tragic demand here in our own backyards, or because it’ll satisfy the vanity of a President who promised to build one – and then couldn’t convince his own Party to fund it? This may be the strongest claim of the video, and yet it’s easy to question the facts and the logic it uses to support the wall. Indeed, if we were to build a wall, what would happen to those children who do encounter the wall? Left to die by the traffickers?

Federal Prison Populations

We have 56,000 illegal immigrants in our federal prison system.

The first real fact to remember is that most illegal immigrants do not tramp through the southern border. Most come in legally on visas and then do not leave when they should. This suggests that 56,000 – or whatever might be the true number – is grossly exaggerating the contribution of those who come through the southern border.

That said, Preston Huennekens of the Center for Immigration Studies (“Low-immigratin, Pro-immigrant”) reports, in an article entitled “DOJ: 26% of Federal Prisoners Are Aliens” …

At the end of the first quarter of FY 2018, there were 57,820 known or suspected aliens in federal custody. Within the report itself, the numbers are analyzed respective to the holding entity (BOP [Bureau of Prisons] or USMS [US Marshal Service]).

This is, perhaps, the source of the numbers in the propaganda. How many of them came over the southern border, rather than waltzing in on tourist visas? We don’t know.

Because of lack of reporting of relevant statistics, those in state custody is not known.

But because there are many ways into the United States, we can be fairly sure that 56,000 is far too high an estimate of the number of incarcerated illegal aliens from the southern border.

Federal Prison Costs

135 Billion dollars a year, that’s how much is the financial burden on U.S. taxpayers every single year that illegal immigrants drain from our system.

When it comes to the financial burden of these prisoners, it seems to me that the U.S. Government Accountability Office‘s statistics might be the best source of information. This particular report is dated July 2018, so it’s not out of date.

GAO’s analyses found that the total annual estimated federal costs to incarcerate criminal aliens decreased from about $1.56 billion to about $1.42 billion from fiscal years 2010 through 2015. These costs included federal prison costs and reimbursements to state prison and local jail systems for a portion of their costs. GAO’s analyses also show that selected annual estimated operating costs of state prison systems to incarcerate SCAAP criminal aliens decreased from about $1.17 billion to about $1.11 billion from fiscal years 2010 through 2015. These selected costs included correctional officer salaries, medical care, food service, and utilities.

This is so low that I actually wonder if it’s accurate, but keep in mind this is Federal cost and some State costs. But it remains plain that the experts’ estimate is two magnitudes lower than our propagandists’ estimates. Given the slipperiness with which his other claims have been delivered, a sober reader must give the benefit of the doubt to the folks who are professionals, paid to find the truth – not the propagandist with an agenda to push.

But much more importantly is the failure to bring the entire context to light. Sure, illegal aliens in prisons cost us money. But how about illegal aliens who are quietly working for a living and paying taxes? Our happy little propagandist somehow fails to present the balanced case, but PBS does cover it.

In general, more people working means more taxes — and that’s true overall with undocumented immigrants as well. Undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $11.6 billion a year in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy.

I’ve been distracted from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s troubles by our own, but his have been continuing without me. They may impact the United States, at least as a distraction from President Trump’s huge troubles. Ben Caspit reports for AL Monitor concerning Netanyahu’s recent nation-wide address, touted as a big announcement:

One minute after Netanyahu began to talk, it was clear that all the drama had been unwarranted. He did not announce peace, declare war or reveal a new existential threat. He presented no achievement in the battle against Iranian nuclearization. Instead, he faced the camera to complain about the way he was treated in the investigations and to demand the right to confront the men who turned state’s witness against him. He even suggested that the face-to-face meetings be broadcast live.

“He lost touch with reality,” one of Netanyahu’s ministers told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity after the broadcast. “He thinks this is a reality show and that he is the director.”

It’s one thing when the opposition claims you’ve lost contact with reality. But one of your own Cabinet ministers? Sounds like a former Secretary we’ve heard from. And with an election coming up very soon …

Netanyahu suddenly understood that he stands to lose the race he started just two weeks ago, when he brought the election date forward, between [Attorney General] Mandelblit’s announcement [of possible indictments on the charge of corruption] and the election. Netanyahu examined surveys that probed the influence of an indictment before the elections and concluded its political impact could be lethal. We’re not talking only about the election results — Netanyahu knows that even if he wins the elections after such an announcement, he would have a hard time assembling a coalition. He would need a miracle that would heighten the power of the far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties to give him a majority, with partners willing to serve under a prime minister who is struggling to prove his innocence in court. It is unclear whether other potential partners would enter a coalition under such circumstances. Even for Netanyahu, that miracle is likely unattainable. He also understands that he is fighting not only for his political life, but for his freedom.

What is especially interesting for me, though, is how this is affecting Netanyahu’s political party, the Likud:

The polls taken after Netanyahu’s appearance revealed that a significant majority of the general public does not believe his version of events or his claims that the proceedings against him are unfair. On the other hand, Netanyahu reaped success among Likud voters, his base, and got them to close ranks. A large majority of them believes him and swallows his version as absolute truth. Still, this limited achievement might not be sufficient for his political survival.

Indicating that, like Trump, Netanyahu has enticed a large number of citizens into placing their leader above truth. A precarious time for Israel, between hostile powers, a potentially corrupt leader, and an opposition that doesn’t appear to sport a plausible replacement for Netanyahu:

Despite all the above and the unprecedented drama, we must remember an important point: Netanyahu still enjoys a large lead in the polls. Even now, when his situation seems hopeless, it is too early to eulogize the man.

Probity:

The quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.
‘financial probity’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in “Turks losing trust in religion under AKP,” Sibel Hurtas, AL Monitor:

Mehmet Ali Buyukkara, a theologian at Istanbul’s Sehir University, said he was hardly surprised by the findings of the KONDA survey. He tweeted, “Those who are pious in terms of language, appearance and perhaps worship have failed the class in terms of morals, probity, sincerity and attentiveness to haram.” According to the scholar, public display of piety have become freer. But the change has not led to greater attraction to religion but to “alienation to a certain extent.”

We happen to have Amazon Prime, and we’ve been watching it via a TiVo unit. We stumbled across Great Greek Myths, and we’ve just been laughing our way through it. Not for the content, but for the consistently awful hash of a captioning effort. We don’t know if it’s being done by a computer tool of some sort, or some poor translator who doesn’t know English. Some of it’s consistently wrong, such as Thebes translated as Thieves except for once, while more difficult Greek names tend to be more variable.

And then there’s the occasional exclamation which correlates with nothing at all, such as “Hermes, No!”

Quite the thing for something prerecorded.

Jerry Falwell, Jr, President of Liberty University, preceded in that position by his prominent father, gave an interview with WaPo a few days ago that has caused a bit of a stir. Elizabeth Bruenig, also in WaPo, uses her interpretation of theology to make this point:

Of course, that doesn’t mean Falwell never cares for Christian principle in American leaders, or that he would actually endorse a misreading of Augustine if it were laid out for him next to a stronger reading. He seems instead to have been reasoning backward, trying to explain in Christian terms why he holds the conclusions he does, rather than beginning from the religion and following it to its own conclusions. Critics of Christianity have struggled for centuries with precisely what Falwell does: That the religion isn’t very good at making you rich or powerful and that it offers very little advice for crushing your enemies or securing your own benefit at the expense of others. “A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume,” Falwell claims, in direct contradiction to a lesson shared by Jesus in Mark 12.

Tim Thomas on the right-wing The Resurgent remarks on a disturbing remark by Falwell:

But note what he says in defense of supporting a man who is lacking in the moral realm.

“What earns him my support is his business acumen.”

“A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume.”

“ … he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor.”

Notice anything in common among these statements? In each case, Falwell relies upon financial arguments to defend the notion of supporting someone lacking morality. The unavoidable impression is that Falwell actually believes improved economic conditions are sufficient to identify policy – and more importantly, that policy’s promoter – as moral.

That part of the actual interview:

You’ve been criticized by some other evangelical leaders about your support for the president. They say you need to demand higher moral and ethical standards. You disagree with them on that?

It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor. A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, “Yeah, you were right.” Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, “Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand.”

So let’s talk about morality, or ethics. How do we identify morality and immorality? Most folks would point at a code of ethics or a religious canon and, you know, gesticulate a bit before finally saying “Rule #3 forbids incest!” But, as an agnostic, I’m inclined to throw out what appear to be arbitrary lists of rules and begin anew by asking, In the absence of some divine authority inscribing lists, how do moral / ethical systems form? Are they random?

Biologists may object, but I have no problem applying the principles of evolution to human institutions. To illustrate my point, imagine a collection of fair-sized islands in the ocean. Each has a population of humans. As the Creators, we endow each separate population with a distinct ethical system. From time to time, we check in on them, and what will we find?

That some of these societies are in better shape than others. Some will have gone extinct – or, even more likely, their original ethical system will have gone extinct, replaced by something more geared to societal survival.

Now, of course I’ve glossed over numerous points, such as the effects of resources, general health, and other purposes, but I’m simply making the point that your ethical system will substantially affect your outcomes. So when Falwell attempts to use some perceived positive outcomes as justification for supporting Trump, in his remarks there is a serious echo as to how we determine good ethical systems.

Is this to say I agree with Falwell? No.

Backwards reasoning often suffers from mistaking coincidence for causation: This happened and then that happened, they must be related. Well, no. In any environment of even slight complexity, teasing out which factor is causative and which is caused or even coincidental can be quite the feat. Ethical systems evolve over long periods of time, during which, like biological evolution, avenues are explored and those rules which lead to bad outcomes are explored and discarded, while those rules leading to good outcomes are selected. It’s a bloody business, and sometimes the value of a rule, which is to say whether a rule is good or bad, takes a long time to play out. For example, the American / libertarian rule that greed, in the private sector, is a good thing, is a societal rule that is still rather up in the air, in my view, and its occasional leakage from the private sector into other societal sectors proves to be quite problematic. So when Falwell tries to work backwards from alleged good outcomes to Trump’s actions, activities, and policies, he’s committing an intellectual error of mistaking two possibly unconnected results to Trump’s actions. It would not be unfair to suggest that it’s deeply reminiscent of wishful thinking.

Ethical systems evolve to help produce good outcomes for society, and in that they circumscribe behavior, straying outside those circumscribed boundaries signals danger to society. For example, it’s commonly acknowledged that truth-telling is an important part of leading an ethical existence. Thus the importance of fact-checkers in current society, under the common understanding that the more the President, whether the name is Trump, Smith, or Warren, misleads their base, the more they put society as a whole in more danger, because analyzing both past & proposed policies based on fallacious knowledge of current conditions will, in all probability, lead to fallacious, even dangerous conclusions.

All that said, could Falwell be right? After all, I did not demonstrate that he is wrong without doubt, only that there’s a very good probability that he’s wrong. How about supporting, circumstantial evidence?

Unfortunately for Falwell, he misstates facts and mistakes personal certainty for certitude about reality. Let’s look at some of his statements in the interview. In the following, personal pronouns not referring to himself usually refer to Trump.

What earns him my support is his business acumen.

No, just no. By all reports, he’s at best mediocre.

Yeah, Congress, the spending bill that they forced on him in order to get the military spending up to where it needed to be — he said that would be the last time he signed one of those. But he had no choice because Obama had decimated the military, and it had to be rebuilt.

Falwell fails to note Trump’s whole-hearted embrace of the 2017 tax bill, which contributes far more to the sudden ballooning national debt than the false meme that Obama somehow decimated the military. This is misleading and is easily interpreted as self-serving. The cutting of taxes is doing far more to bankrupt the country than anything else – except perhaps the monstrous military budget.

In general, failing to consider all the evidence, particularly that evidence which hurts your cause, is an ethical failure.

… he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor.

A statement shorn of context. Add the context that the previous Administration did far more for the blacks than Trump, and Falwell looks really bad. Noting the disparity between blacks and the general populace simply reinforces the perception that this misleading statement is, again, self-serving.

And this last statement…

Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.

This should leave commonsense folks aghast. Even the best of us makes mistakes, yet Falwell thinks that any policy Trump decides on will be what’s best for the country? What, is Trump God?

This is one of those idiotic remarks which forces the reader to make a judgment: is the author of the remark really as dumb as a cinder block, or is this as self-serving as the others? Considering that Falwell managed to “inherit” the post of President of Liberty University upon his father’s death (a creepy circumstance deserving its own rant), has kept it for years, and manages to head up a large segment of the Evangelical movement, I think we can assume he has at least average intelligence.

So one is forced to analyze the statement to understand its hidden message, and that message is that, basically, President Trump is another coming of God on Earth, and so you Evangelical faithful had better get in line behind Falwell and engage in the usual unquestioning obedience. And note the remark about some policies

… may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to what’s best for this country …

This isn’t a throwaway line, it serves as an insulator for Trump against any sort of judgment that might come out negative from the conservatives. Falwell doesn’t care about the liberals or even the moderates, but when it comes to conservatives, he doesn’t want them to even think they can judge Trump. Just accept and, ah, worship.

So, why? Forgive my cynicism, but the Evangelicals have finally gotten their grip on the levers of power, and by God, if you’ll forgive the phrase, certain of them plan to keep their paws on them. It’s clear from his misstatements and his position of intimacy with Trump that his influence over Trump is far more important to Falwell than much anything else, such as the health of the country. Of course, I may be influenced by my observations that the pulpits do tend to attract those who wish to assume powers beyond their abilities, but then I don’t see much reason to doubt that observation.

It was really quite the interesting interview, a portal into the dark soul of the Evangelical movement. For all that Goldwater was a nut, he sure was right on this one, wasn’t he?

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

It’s easy to see this interview for what it is: the religious impulse to impute omniscience to itself. They endorsed Trump, and thus he can do no wrong. It’s really an embarrassment to the religious folks to see this mania sweep over this guy.

Steve Benen writing on Maddowblog concerning the revelation that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is only providing partial inspection coverage during the government shutdown:

In WaPo Marc Thiessen makes the case that President Trump’s address to the nation was a big win for the embattled President:

And he laid out his solution, which he explained was “developed by law enforcement professionals and border agents” and includes funds for cutting-edge technology, more border agents, more immigration judges, more bed space and medical support — and $5.7 billion for a “physical barrier” that he called “just common sense.” Without naming her, Trump responded to the absurd charge from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that a wall is “immoral.” Democrats voted repeatedly for physical barriers until he was elected president, he noted. If a wall is immoral, Trump asked, “why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.”

Thiessen, of course, is well-known as a Trump apologist who has twisted himself inside out on occasion to justify Trump’s record. Steve Benen’s reading of the situation is hardly correlational with Thiessen’s:

He probably won’t admit it publicly, but Donald Trump reportedly didn’t even want to deliver his Oval Office address last night.

The New York Times  reported, “[P]rivately, Mr. Trump dismissed his own new strategy as pointless. In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms that he was not inclined to give the speech or go to Texas, but was talked into it by advisers, according to two people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified sharing details.”

The president, of course, delivered the speech anyway, and by any objective measure, it was a transparent failure. As became painfully obvious over the course of his nine minutes, Trump has no plan. He has no new material. He has no offer to extend to his rivals. He has no bill to promote or lobby on behalf of. He has no facts, as evidenced by the avalancheof falsehoods he peddled to the nation. He has no support, with polls showing broad American opposition to his demands for a border wall.

Benen, too, reads the events of the day through his prism, and while I have more sympathy for his take on things – and in particular his reference to polls which document the lack of public support for Trump’s wall – it comes to mind that, in reality, it’s better to wait for polls to emerge indicating whether the citizenry was swayed, or not, by the President, by the Democratic response – or if they just didn’t give a shit. Either or both of these writers may hope to sway opinions.

But while I was contemplating the various spins presented, it seems that after these two and more years, one fact about walls finally tapped me on the shoulder and asked me why I hadn’t mentioned it yet. It’s this:

Do walls at zoos exist to keep visitors out? Or the animals in? How about prisons?

Did the Berlin Wall exist to keep the Western hordes out? Or to keep the citizens of Communist Germany IN? If my reader is too young to remember the Berlin Wall, go look up the statistics on how many people were killed by the Communist guards for attempting to go over the wall, and their identities.

For those readers who prefer to interpret reality through the prism of fantasy, consider the purpose of the wall at the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

Now, I’m not really sure how this all applies to our particular situation. Perhaps it doesn’t. But in all the yelling and screaming from both sides, it’s worth remembering that walls can keep people in as well as out. And that’s an infringement on our freedom, now isn’t it?

The problem with party zealots is that they’re useful right up until the point that a compromise with the big bad enemy comes along – and then they scream bloody murder about being sold out. So I read this CNN report on the development of a potential compromise to break the government shutdown with some hope, of a perhaps dubious sort, but I’m having my doubts that it’ll immediately go anywhere:

Staring at a prolonged government shutdown, Republican senators are privately planning to court Democratic senators on an immigration deal that would give President Donald Trump money for his border wall and include several measures long-sought by Democrats, according to sources familiar with the matter.

After Trump stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders, GOP senators privately gathered in Sen. Lindsey Graham’s office Wednesday to discuss a way out of the logjam. The long-shot idea: propose an immigration deal that would include $5.7 billion for Trump’s border wall along with several provisions that could entice Democrats.

Those items include changes to help those who are a part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as well as immigrants from El Salvador and other countries impacted by the Temporary Protected Status program – along with modifications to H-2B visas.

The plan is in its very early stages. Its chances of success are still very uncertain at best, Republicans cautioned.

As an independent, I do not favor Trump’s Boondoggle, and I wonder if it’s better for the Democrats to hold out in hopes of breaking Trump on this issue. As I view Trump and his ilk as a danger to this country’s most important institutions, it might be a wise thing to do.

But compromise is integral to our style of government, and if the Republican Senators are finally going to get off their asses and offer something up, it’s certainly worth at least considering working with them on it. Possibly the best way to handle this is to offer Trump a paltry $1 billion for his wall in exchange for a few Democratic priorities, and then leave it to Trump to either accept it, and risk the wrath of his base and his Fox News handlers, or veto it and face a possible and humiliating veto override, which would sting especially as the Senate is Republican-controlled. That’d amount to a rejection of Trump by the Senators of his own Party.

Trump remains the center of political life in this country, but no longer as a vortex of chaos for the Democrats, but a cancerous wart on the throat of the Republican Party. Faced with this decision, he may find it impossible to swallow his pride and accept it, and thus split the Republican Party right down the middle.

And the Virginia state Senate race that had the DLCC so worried is in and the results are … blowout. Democrat Boysko wins by nearly 40 points. As I noted before, this seat has a history of recent Democratic victories, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, except perhaps the magnitude. The total votes cast was just over 21,000, which appears to be a trifle on the low side insofar as turnout goes, but not terribly so.

So I think we can classify the DLCC as willing to harvest dollars through mild misrepresentations and emotional manipulation, although admittedly I couldn’t find any polls for this race, so a DLCC claim that they just didn’t know for sure is somewhat believable. Something to keep in mind, especially as their report of their victory also bridges on to the next special election, which they have left unspecified except that it’s located right here in Minnesota, and involves a Republican-held seat. A little research shows this will be for MN state Senate District 11, and has been held by the Republicans by comfortable margins over the last two elections; Ballotpedia has no data before then. The special election is Feb 5, 2019, and should be more interesting than the Virginia special election.

Perhaps most interesting is the magnitude of the victory of in Virginia, which is quite a bit larger than in previous elections for this seat. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the Democrats are still excited, especially with the government shutdown and resultant tug of war between Trump and the Democrats over the Trump Boondoggle. Will this continue? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Keratometer:

A keratometer, also known as an ophthalmometer, is a diagnostic instrument for measuring the curvature of the anterior surface of the cornea, particularly for assessing the extent and axis of astigmatism. It was invented by the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1851, although an earlier model was developed in 1796 by Jesse Ramsden and Everard Home. [Wikipedia]

Used on my Arts Editor yesterday.

For those readers who found the mystery foreign corporation appealing to SCOTUS to void a subpoena titillating, it has come to a disappointing end, according to Politico:

But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court turned down the company’s request to step into the dispute, at least for now. The order in the case came a little more than two weeks after Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary freeze on the contempt order and the sanctions.

The court’s order Tuesday offered no explanation for its decision and no justice publicly signaled any dissent. The high court did indicate that Roberts referred the issue to the full court and that the short-term stay he ordered last month was now dissolved.

And no further details were given. A pity.

Politico has a piece confirming the Trumpists are clenching their fist tighter and tighter on the Republican Party apparatus:

President Donald Trump is tightening his iron grip on the Republican Party, launching an elaborate effort to stamp out any vestiges of GOP opposition that might embarrass him at the 2020 Republican convention.

The president’s reelection campaign is intent on avoiding the kind of circus that unfolded on the convention floor in 2016, when Never Trump Republicans loudly protested his nomination before a national TV audience. The effort comes as party elites like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney are openly questioning Trump’s fitness for the job, and it’s meant to ensure that delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., are presidential loyalists — not anti-Trump activists looking to create a stir.

But what sparked a new thought was this:

Delegate selection will be preceded by an array of elections for GOP state chairmanships, which began last month. Ohio GOP chief Jane Timken, a close Trump ally, is expected to be easily reelected this week. There are also key contests in Florida and New Hampshire.

The winners of those chairmanships will play major roles in determining who becomes a delegate in Charlotte. Trump aides have been making calls to those states in recent weeks to take stock of the contenders and determine how the contests are likely to play out.

“We are monitoring, tracking, and ensuring the president’s allies are sitting at the top of state parties,” Stepien said.

In the months that follow, individual states will determine how to select their delegates. While some state parties will choose their delegates on their own, others will pick them through conventions or caucuses. Some will hold elections where Republican voters decide.

In each case, the Trump campaign is planning on influencing the process — in some instances by organizing at local conventions, and in others by helping Trump supporters wage campaigns for delegate slots.

And what makes for “… the president’s allies …”?

Think about it. It seems reasonable – to me – to presume an ally of President Trump is someone who approves of lying, taking credit when not due, hyperbolizing beyond all rationalization, and a few other character traits which, frankly, I was taught are not desirable in anyone.

Much less a President.

But these allies of the President are now attempting to take over the levers of power. Quite honestly, if I was a moderate Republican, I would be on my way to the mailbox with that envelope containing my GOP membership card and a letter of resignation. After all, a coterie of people who approve of a lying braggart, who probably are themselves the same, are now trying to take over the entire party.

Can this end well for that moderate Republican?

I’m sure the Trump Team can simply claim that they’re wrapping up a nomination as early as possible and that it’s simply good politics, and I don’t doubt they’re being honest about it, because for them, as the old saying goes, Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Sadly, this is rarely true, and it isn’t at this time in American politics. Perhaps for Trump, losing would be the end of his political career, but for the American who believes in country over party, this attempt to shield Trump from intra-Party competition damages the country, rather than improves it, because we need the best candidate the Republicans can provide – not an amateur-hour politician who has proven himself to be a weak and easily manipulated man, incapable of learning or even concentrating. He mistakes bluster for strength, random chaos for strategy.

That’s not what America needs.

So I expect this purification effort in what used to be the Republican Party to squeeze more moderates out and move the party ever further into the wastelands of extremism. Look for the theocrats, such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., delighting in their new-found access to power & influence, to find more and more outlandish ways to justify their pleasure in being in proximity to President Trump.

The party will become more of a strait-jacket, and conservatism, in itself an honorable political tradition when practiced with honesty and wisdom, become more and more discredited. That, too, will be unfortunate, but I think almost inevitable when it has the face of such dishonorable people as Trump, McConnell, Ryan, Falwell, and everyone else swearing fealty to Trump.

Admittedly, not compelling on its own. The story, though, is good. In passing, I have mentioned House of Representatives hopeful Mark Harris (R-NC), supposedly a pastor in District 9 of North Carolina, who employed a Republican operative who allegedly illegally collected and discarded absentee ballots from District 9 voters for the 2018 mid-terms. Harris won the contest, but by a small enough margin that those discarded ballots may matter, and the North Carolina Elections Board refused to certify the election. The House of Representatives has stated it’ll refuse to seat Harris without the certification, so he’s kinda stuck at the moment, as the above .

You’d expect he’d be willing to to speak to the press like, oh, any legitimate representative of the people. But, nope, as WSOC TV found out:

To avoid the media, Mark Harris ran down a fire exit staircase. A man tried to prevent us from following but we still did. The alarm went off as he ran out. When media caught up he sprinted across the street to the First Baptist Church of Charlotte's parking lot #NC09 @wsoctv pic.twitter.com/vDFca16EYx

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) January 8, 2019

That sort of behavior really makes you wonder, especially as it comes from a pastor, who, popular opinion has it, should really be above such behavior.

Of course, Harris had an excuse: he wanted to go watch a football game. Not exactly responsible behavior.

There’s little chance to closely examine these war machines. Maybe we would have giggled rather than shuddered if we had.

The faux documentary War Of The Worlds – The True Story (2012) is a different approach to the classic story (retold in radio and movie forms a number of times). It’s structured as a continuous interview with “Bertie” Wells, an elderly survivor of the Martian invasion of 1896. It recounts, in linear fashion, the landings and subsequent fighting between British Army regiments and the Martian war machines.

I don’t recall ever reading H. G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, so I’m not sure of the fidelity of this movie to the novel. Taken on its own, as independent from other retellings, is not easy, since I was favorably impressed, many many years ago, by both the Orson Welles radio version as well as the 1953 movie version, but not quite so much by the slicker 2005 version. But let’s give it a whirl, because it’s fun.

That is, this version of the story is fun.

First, the plot is suitably tight. Playing on our perceptions of late Victorian sensibilities, it’s fascinating to see how the butcher with a horse carriage reacts when a 100 foot tall war machine with a laser cannon comes stomping down on him. The courage of the Army regiments, and, later, the self-sacrificing defensive actions of the fictional warship HMS Thunder Child, reminds me of a letter written by the famous British Army officer T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, who, upon being informed of the deaths of two of his brothers in the front lines during World War I in Europe, lamented his loss but their gain in, I suppose, honor, at being able to serve their country to the point of losing their own lives. I recall reading that with some surprise, as I do not believe it is a widespread sentiment in current times. The courage depicted in this movie brought that sentiment once again to mind for my musing and fascination.

Despite isolated successes, humanity’s war efforts are generally so ineffective that armed resistance collapses, and the Martian war machines roam the landscape at will, carbonizing some of the fleeing humans, while scooping others up for a quick bite to eat. But all the while, they carry the seeds of their own destruction within them: the bacteria and viruses of Earth are hard at work, as our invisible, sometimes-loathed fellow Earth-dwellers win the day where the science and arms of mankind cannot, and soon the war machines are collapsing as the invaders driving them die from the very treasure they had in their hands. Claws. Tentacles. It’s a satisfying story in that it celebrates persistence, bravery, and a belief that, where there’s a will, there’s a way – no matter how dubious such a belief may be in real life. There’s no need to ask for congruency with reality in this theme, for if we do, then despair overtakes us and we can never hope to survive if we despair. Take that last chance buzzer-beating shot from half-court, even if you have a broken wrist – you can’t hit that shot if you don’t take it.

Equally well done is the presentation of the movie, because I’d estimate 85% of it is not original footage, but borrowed from old film reels of everyday Victorian life as well as war footage from World War I. Yellowed, sometimes out of focus, the creators of this film have deftly intermixed original footage featuring Bertie and, for a short time, his  brother, as each struggles with issues of survival and bravery in the face of a power that just doesn’t care about them, with the old newsreel footage, taken out of context, in order to suggest the reactions of Victorians to the hungry Martians. The intermixing is almost entirely well done; only once did I yell “oooops!” As I’ve watched my Arts Editor struggle with issues of integrating old photographs, now digital, with new photographs, I sympathize with the struggle of doing so in video, and this is not really a criticism of the movie, but only an observation.

Oh, and the Martian war machines? I don’t know if they were original to this production or not – but I loved them. Great stuff. The film makers were mostly faithful to Burke’s adage concerning the sublime – never try to show it all.

I see from the Wikipedia page the producers were following in Orson Welles’ tradition of blurring the line between reality and fiction, and I’m not sure I’d agree that they managed to pull it off – but I do celebrate this well thought out attempt.

So, if you like alien invasion movies, and don’t mind a bit of a twist, see this one. Or if you’re tired of Hollywood blockbusters, see this. I can’t quite say it’s generally recommended, but it’ll repay the curious viewer.