Monthly Archives: April 2020

A while back I expressed disbelief at Russian statistics concerning the Covid-19 outbreak. That was almost 4 weeks ago. Since then, their statistics have gotten worse:

From 43 to 1000+ fatalities in almost four weeks isn’t the worst possible showing, but it’s a little worrying, especially if the numbers aren’t necessarily trustworthy, as WaPo confirms:

Inaugurating an occasional feature in which people who can’t look anywhere but through their personal prisms are highlighted. Think of them as highly self-centered, perhaps, unable to view situations from other viewpoints.

First up is George Gilder:

So let’s stop pretending that our policies have been rational and need to be phased out, as if they once had a purpose. They should be reversed summarily and acknowledged to be a mistake, perpetrated by statisticians with erroneous computer models.

Perhaps then we can learn from this experience with the flaws of expertise not to shut down the economy again for the totally bogus “crisis” of climate change. [RealClearMarkets]

Meanwhile, there’s several thousand more people dead, world-wide, of this virus just today. Gilder is an economist who co-founded the Discovery Institute, an institution chiefly notable for advancing the ludicrous concept of Intelligent Design. He is also chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, LLC; presumably, unless he’s running a fund specializing in shorts, he’d prefer to see the economy up and running per normal.

Following up on the SCOTUS hearing concerning Georgia’s attempt to put its laws’  annotations behind a paywall:

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Malamud, saying that Georgia state laws and their official annotations, like all other works authored by judges or legislators, are not copyrightable. The decision came down to a 5–4 split between the court’s youngest five justices (John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh) and its four oldest members (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). [Slate]

Why are annotations important?

Georgia minimizes the OCGA annotations as non-binding and non-authoritative, but that description undersells their practical significance. Imagine a Georgia citizen interested in learning his legal rights and duties. If he reads the economy-class version of the Georgia Code available online, he will see laws requiring political candidates to pay hefty qualification fees (with no indigency exception), criminalizing broad categories of  consensual sexual conduct, and exempting certain key evidence in criminal trials from standard evidentiary limitations—with no hint that important aspects of those laws have been held unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. … Meanwhile, first-class readers with access to the annotations will be assured that these laws are, in crucial respects, unenforceable relics that the legislature has not bothered to narrow or repeal. [SCOTUS]

The poor legislators in Georgia might have to raise taxes to cover publishing costs – I hope no one has a stroke at the horror of it all.

Symptomatic of the extremism characteristic of the GOP – or, at least, that’s how it strikes me – these days is this:

[In 2013], Carl Malamud, the founder of nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org, decided to do something similar with Georgia state laws. However, he took a different route. He purchased a hard copy of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated for more than $1,200 from LexisNexis, scanned it, and sent USB drives with two copies of the entire state code to several Georgia legislators. He also posted it online, prompting the state of Georgia to sue him for copyright infringement in a lawsuit that memorably accused Malamud of “terrorism,” stating, “Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, Defendant freely admits to the copying and distribution of massive numbers of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Annotations on at least its https://yeswescan.org website.” [Slate]

Yep, terrorism. It’s not surprising, of course, in view of a primary fight of a couple of years ago that featured far-right Rep Brooks (R-AL) being accused of being a supporter of ISIS. There was a time when governance, including bringing suit, was viewed with some sobriety, but that appears to have gone into abeyance for the time being.

In any case, congrats to Malamud. He’s done a service for the people of Alabama, and perhaps a few other states, if I read the dissent properly (which otherwise seemed quite technical and beyond my poor skills).

My cousin Scott Chamberlain posted an epic rant back in January about the StarTribune’s art scene reporter, Graydon Royce, and his recent summary of the near-legendary Minnesota Orchestra lockout on his blog, Mask of the Flower Prince. I regret missing it back in January and note it now:

Let’s review the tape, shall we? The Orchestra’s previous management actively engaged in a wide-ranging disinformation campaign directed at the musicians, the community, the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota’s State Legislature, and beyond.  This isn’t me just being mean saying this, this was abundantly documented during the lockout, and clearly documented in the Orchestra’s actual board minutes I mentioned above. For example, when the Orchestra leadership was approaching the State Legislature to secure bonding money to refurbish Orchestra Hall, it shaded the numbers to create the appearance balanced budgets and overall fiscal health. Then, on the eve of contract negotiations with the musicians, management shaded the finances in a different way to report a large deficit and make it seem that financial collapse was imminent.

Along with this, management lied about the size of the reported deficit. This wasn’t an accident… in 2011, the board retained the public-relations firm Padilla Speer Beardsley to determine “what size of deficit to report publicly.” Once it determined the optimum number, leadership manipulated its fundraising, expenditures and draws from the endowment to match this pre-determined number. And that was the origin of the $6 million deficit the management kept touting.

Again, all of this was documented in the board minutes, and covered widely in the local media when the board minutes came to light.  The legislature was furious about the deception, feeling that former President and CEO Michael Henson personally lied to them under oath.  At least 10 lawmakers called him out by name and demanded his immediate resignation. Plus, a number of lawmakers began exploring ways to claw back the money, and at least 100 legislators demanded an immediate, independent audit of the organization. The City of Minneapolis was also furious about the deceptive finances, and as the lease holder for Orchestra Hall demanded a full report about what was happening and how the Hall was being used. When the management supplied a report that was obviously and demonstrably mendacious, Minneapolis demanded management submit a new one. And when that revised report turned out to be just as bad, the City began taking action to repossess Orchestra Hall—it was hours from doing so when the lockout ended.

All of this was extensively documented at the time.

The musicians—along with everyone else—were actively lied to. Repeatedly. Over many years. Which is why the public, local government, state government, and funders reacted so harshly. The two sides are not equivalent.

Mr. Royce continues that same pattern here. It’s the little details, like his glib summary of the lockout as essentially “both sides underestimated the others resolve.” “Egos got in the way.”

And more, and more. Scott’s an experienced hand at running non-profits, so he knows how to string up Royce. If you need an invigorating rant, even one that’s a little old, Mask of the Flower Prince should fill you right up. And, if you keep reading, you can get classical music recommendations, meditations on other topics, all from someone a lot brighter than me.

Amazingly straight-faced:

[A Forgotten Post. I meant to publish this three weeks ago!]

Finally, I see why Peter Navarro sticks with President Trump:

In his 2011 book “Death by China,” President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Peter Navarro quoted a China hawk named “Ron Vara” to prove his point on the threat posed by Beijing to the American economy.

“Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel,” Vara said. He appears once more in the book and is even referenced in the index.

There’s just one problem — Vara doesn’t appear to exist, according to an investigation by an Australian academic, who determined that Vara is actually Navarro. Ron Vara is even an anagram of Navarro’s last name. [CNN]

And why does this explain that? Because Trump does the same thing:

The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.”

A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides. [WaPo]

Navarro tried to shrug it off as him being superior to everyone else, but there’s a key problem with that assertion: if you quote someone else as an authority, you don’t necessarily have to then prove the point. While appeal to authority is a fallacious argument technique in formal rhetoric and logic, it’s not uncommon to see such in literature as a simple short-hand for an argument, with an implicit Go see his arguments present.

But if you can’t quote someone else, then you have to prove your point. By using this appeal to a non-existent authority, Navarro is skipping the actual proof – and proving himself a fraud.

These don’t last long but are cute:

Chilblains:

Chilblains, also known as pernio and chill burns is a medical condition that occurs when a predisposed individual is exposed to cold and humidity, causing tissue damage. It is often confused with frostbite and trench foot. Damage to capillary beds in the skin causes redness, itching, inflammation, and sometimes blisters.^[3] Chilblains can be reduced by keeping the feet and hands warm in cold weather, and avoiding extreme temperature changes.

Chilblains can be idiopathic (spontaneous and unrelated to another disease), but may also be a manifestation of another serious medical condition that must be investigated. A history of chilblains suggests a connective tissue disease (such as lupus). Chilblains may also be caused by Raynaud’s disease. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “‘Frostbite’ toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young,” Ariana Eunjung Cha, WaPo:

But the location of the rash on the toes, and sometimes fingers too, has puzzled researchers.

This type of rash, called pernio or chilblains, usually occurs in the dead of winter because of exposure to cold, such as when a person is slogging in freezing rain in wet socks. But covid-19 patients are getting it in springtime. Doctors also typically see the rash in people who work as florists or in warehouses that are not temperature-controlled — not in children, as is happening now.

For those readers unfamiliar with certain sports terminology, Winner’s Circle is where the winner of a horse race goes for the post-race celebration. My question is this:

What is waiting in The Federalist Society’s Winner’s Circle? A hungry dragon, perhaps?

This occurred to me while reading Slate’s coverage of one of President Trump’s latest nominees to the US Court Of Appeals for DC, Professor Justin Walker:

Welcome to the Trump Bench, a series where Slate analyzes a Trump judge’s recent work. At an unusually rapid clip, Donald Trump has so far successfully appointed two Supreme Court justices, 51 appeals court judges, and 138 district court judges during his presidency. Trump judges tend to be different than appointees by past presidents of both parties. Many are quite young, some are openly partisan, others are patently unqualified. The judges will likely be Trump’s most enduring impact on our nation, which is why we are choosing to spotlight their work.

The fifth installment is about Justin Walker, who has been nominated to the D.C. Circuit after just a few months as a federal district judge.

The Judge: Justin R. Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. The Senate confirmed Walker to the court on Oct. 25, 2019, despite the American Bar Association’s determination that he was “Not Qualified.” On April 3, Donald Trump nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Like many of Trump’s judicial nominees, Walker is a member of the Federalist Society.

At the end of this extended debacle called the Trump Administration, are we going to be saddled with a huge collection of ideological, young, unqualified, and incompetent judges which will reflect poorly on the Trump Administration?

Will the Trump Administration be judged one of the poorest selectors of judges by historians in fifty years?

And what will that mean for The Federalist Society? A loss of prestige? It’s certainly beginning to feel like it to me. They might even dissolve under the glare of bad – and enduring – publicity. There’s a difference between ideological leanings and simple incompetency, between nuanced readings and simple twisting and ignorance of the text.

Yeah, I’m glad I’m not in charge of The Federalist Society. The future suddenly isn’t so bright.

If you’re a pro-life activist, you may be faced with an uncomfortable choice in the not-too-distant future. Let me explain.

Women choose to have an abortion – and, if you’re having a fight-or-flight reaction because of the a-word, take a moment to settle down and let the adrenaline drain away – for a variety of reasons, but often the reason centers around economic circumstances. In other words, caring for one more child would push the family into poverty, thus endangering the entire family. For the pro-life person, the sacrifice of one potential child to help ensure^[1] the safety and prosperity of the others. For the pro-choice member, it’s the termination of a fetus, a non-person, to ensure the safety and prosperity of the family.

President Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep the meat production plants open is properly seen as an echo of the Texas Lt. Governor Patrick’s (R) suggestion that the elderly sacrifice themselves for the good of the country, because the workers, as they have recognized, are being asked to put their lives on the line for the good of the country – not just to ensure a supply of meat, which is not in itself critical, but for the good of the economy.

That is, a pro-life activist cannot be in favor of the forced staffing of the meat production plants. It puts the workers in the position of risking their lives unnecessarily for economic reasons.

The more frantic pro-lifers may try to make much of the option of not returning to work, but this is nonsense, since, as Governor Reynolds (R-IA) has made clear, those who should be working under the DPA but refuse to do so due to health concerns will lose their state-level pandemic benefits.

At least.

Might as well just get the whips out and drive them slaves, er, workers, back to their tasks.

So, in both situations, we have decisions being made for, ostensibly, economic reasons. There’s really little difference here, although it’s true the workers have a good chance of surviving the experience, although even so they may find themselves permanently damaged, not to mention spreading the coronavirus to customers, friends, and family. I’m trying to visual Governor Reynolds volunteering to work on the line with the workers as an inspiration to them.

While I sincerely hope she goes there, and it would be good for her re-election chances, I don’t expect it to happen.

A pro-lifer, faced with this conundrum, must decide to either take the workers side, against the Republicans who believe economics is more important than life, or the Republican side, against those who believe their lives are more important than the economics and the bottom-line, even survival.

You’d think this one would be easy. I’ll wait and see, since most, though not all, “pro-lifers” tend to be conservative.

¹ “Ensure” is the common usage for scenarios such as these, and it is wrong. The proper word would be one that means “increases the odds of the desired outcome occurring,” but, if such an English language word exists, it escapes my vocabulary. This morning.

And for my my sad sentiment concerning melodicas, a reader reprimands me:

Wow!

He keeps promising, and he keeps failing. Erick Erickson’s free missive, in contravention of his promises to stop sending mail to non-paying subscribers, of a couple of days ago manages to hit a point of vital importance, expressed cogently – while trying to blame anyone but the conservatives for it:

COVID-19 is exposing the greatest threat to our republic — a lack of trust in people, institutions, and the press. No one believes anything anymore unless it confirms their prior views.

That part is known. What is not really appreciated is that the people, institutions, and the press deserve the loss of trust, but now people are putting their trust in people and memes even more untrustworthy than those who came before. People are trusting those who now have a financial or political incentive to shape information. That not only amplifies the distrust in existing institutions but fosters even more distrust and uncertainty.

Look at CNN. If you have not heard, Joe Biden’s accuser’s mother called in to Larry King Live back in the early nineties about the assault on her daughter. It is real-time corroboration of Tara Reade’s story. CNN took the video down off the internet and conspiracists immediately presumed CNN was complicit in helping Biden.

Except CNN didn’t really take it down. They own the copyright to it and now if you want to see the clip you have to go to CNN, watch an ad, then you can see the clip. CNN didn’t take the ad down. They monetized it.

And there’s more. Yet, he doesn’t wish to go back in time and talk about how conservative media has consistently presented incomplete news – as Bruce Bartlett has documented. Or address the change in politics that came with Newt Gingrich, from mature governance to blood sport. Or the transformation of a simple medical procedure into a climactic moral issue, complete with polarizing, fight-or-flight trigger words (baby-killer, if you’re wondering), used as a litmus test when evaluating candidates.  The actively malicious crap that swims in the conservative mail stream, as I’ve documented on numerous occasions – and is done much better by other commentators. (For me, it’s sport.)

Or the embracing of the toxic strategy of team politics by the Republican Party (and more and more by the Democrats, if only because other choices are dismaying), resulting in candidates who can sing the ideological tune demanded of them, but give us blank looks when we ask them about their incompetent actions, fallacious information, and, less and less surprisingly, corruption.

I fear Erickson, so long as he looks to blame external forces, will continue to be baffled that his own side refuses to take expert opinions and scientific fact seriously. The fact of the matter is that this is the result of long training; he’s just getting the tail end of the consequences.

From NASA’s High-Resolution Coronal Imager, images of magnetic threads filled with plasma.

Via New Atlas.

President Trump’s latest go-to defense:

President Donald Trump said Friday that his remarks on injecting disinfectants to treat COVID-19 were sarcasm, after doctors responded with horror and disinfectant manufacturers urged people not to ingest the poisonous substances.

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters just like you, just to see what would happen,” Trump said on Friday during a bill signing for the coronavirus aid package. “I was asking a sarcastic and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But it does kill it and it would kill it on the hands, and it would make things much better.” [NBC News]

Yeah? The reporters should have simply replied, en masse:

Yeah, everyone else has been sarcastic, too.

Especially the dead ones. Death as sarcasm: the new art form.

Politico reports on Stacey Abrams (D-GA) ambitions:

Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia lawmaker and unsuccessful candidate for governor, has been privately calling Democratic power brokers, asking them to tell Biden campaign officials that she should be vice president, according to multiple labor leaders familiar with the discussions.

As much as I liked Abrams in her appearance on The Late Show, and as much as she impressed the former Republican Jennifer Rubin, I have to remember her lack of experience. Demonstrated competence at national level governance should be considered an important part of being on the national ticket.

And, yes, then-Senator Obama was not exactly laden with such experience during his 2008 run, either. However, his selection of then-Senator Biden as his running mate helped blunt any such criticisms and concerns.

One might argue that Biden’s presence at the top of this ticket should compensate for the inexperience of Abrams, but Biden’s age militates against such a judgment. If Biden were to have to give up the seat, temporarily or permanently, then we’d have to hope Abrams had been well-trained by Biden.

If Abrams had consented to enter the Georgia Senate race, she might have had a far better launch platform for the Presidency in 2024 or 2028. She would have demonstrated a willingness to dig in to national policy issues and gained valuable, marketable experience.

But she refused the opportunity, which was disappointing. It suggests she may be looking for a shortcut, which I would prefer not to see.

I find myself yelling at the TV every time John Batiste plays that handheld contraption into which he blows and plays a keyboard. Seems to be called a melodica.

Kill The Kazoo! I shriek.

Am I turning into a curmudgeon?

Brining and then a light sautee in olive oil. America’s Test Kitchen always gets it right!

Here’s a critical question for the audience member: do anachronisms annoy you? Does “steampunk” raise your hackles?

If so, then you’d best avoid The Three Musketeers (2011). From gross improprieties such as zeppelin-like warships flying across the Channel, to mild outrages resembling the tunnel of darts in Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), and extending to, according to my Arts Editor, improper costumes (“those costumes are circa Louis XIV, not Louis XIII!”), for the purist this movie may be the proverbial uranium brick too far.

On the other hand, though, if you treasure the deftly delivered clever line, the self-conscious story, and derring-do that, frankly, knows absolutely no bounds, then this version of The Three Musketeers may be right up your alley.

This modern version of the classic tale, while following the general plot of the Dumas story, has a number of problems. The tale is made up of quite the number of characters, and consequently none of them spring to life, despite the enthusiasm of the actors. In particularly, differentiating the eponymous trio is quite the task even for the enthusiastic.

I mentioned the derring-do, and I think the story-tellers made a mistake when they were so unrestrained – D’Artagnan charging and besting something like forty of the Cardinal’s men with hardly any help from his fellows, while entertaining, left me wondering how much further they could push it, if he also wore a red cape on weekends, and who could hope to best him?

But that last question comes up later.

Don’t take it too seriously, and the CGI, while maybe top quality a decade ago, is showing its age today, but it’s all in good fun. If you want some laughs and some silly sword-play, this version of the Musketeers – who, once again, never use a damn musket – is not the worst choice you can make.

I wish these were better, but they were fun. The property resident said this pair shows up most evenings to visit and eat.

The old The World Gone Mad (1933) is not venerable, but another insipid morality tale of greed gone mad. Two businessmen running a mini-conglomerate have looted one of the subsidiaries, leaving the President of the subsidiary holding the bag, while arranging for the assassination of the District Attorney, which is to be made to look like he was meeting a lover for a tryst. From here on out it’s a sordid mess involving a newsman or two, the supposed lover, the new DA, the men who arranged and executed the assassination, and the vengeance of the betrayed President.

And, yes, there are sympathetic characters, but they are not engaging. This is very much a so-so effort.

Embedded in this page is a video of nature returning to its habitat.

Right.

I have kept an eye on The Motley Fool (TMF), a stock picking service founded by Tom and David Gardner, since its early days, mostly because it espoused a philosophy that went against the fashion of the day, and that philosophy was long-term investing. Buy a stock and don’t sell for at least three years, five is better, forever is a lovely ideal, if rarely achieved. Fundamental (that is, based on business fundamentals) investing is far superior to technical investing (based on dubious theories of how stock prices move). Don’t bother with market timing because predicting the market on a daily basis is futile.

I even joined their Stock Advisor service.

It should not be surprising that I was dismayed by this latest mail from TMF:

Tomorrow, David Gardner will release his next set of Best Buys Now in Stock Advisor.

And while you can trust that we’ll email you for every new investment recommendation, we wanted to remind you about an additional way to receive alerts for our latest recommendations — Motley Fool Text Alerts!

No matter where you go or what you’re doing, The Motley Fool is committed to bringing you the best stocks to buy wherever you are!

Because in a market where things can change on a dime…

We think it’s critical to have the most up-to-date information possible.

Uh, really?

This is just market timing without actually using the words. We’re looking at a market in tumult, in which today’s recovery becomes tomorrow’s crash, and all it’ll take is some other bit of bad news to really send it into a tumble – whether it’s pandemic-related, or a revelation about Big Finance screwing up once again.

These sorts of things aren’t predictable, and yet here’s TMF clearly trying to predict precisely those sorts of events. Incidentally, TMF’s Stock Advisor service was badly burned when they recommended Luckin Coffee (LK), a Chinese coffeehouse chain. Following an announcement of massive fraud at the company, the stock price dropped 90% from the price when Stock Advisor recommended it. (No, no pain here.) As Stock Advisor acknowledged, these are the sorts of events that cannot be predicted – and make the life of stock timers a living hell.

I suppose they might retort that younger members expect text messages, rather than email or simply remembering to visit TMF to see the latest recommendation. However, as you can see in the quote, they are clearly selling it (just a phrase, not literal) as an important part of the investing experience.

Which is just utter nonsense.

In combination with the lapse of their portfolio tracking service, which they claimed was done in order to give better service (eh? what? do you think we’re fools? Oh, wait…):

We remain committed to helping you track your returns, and that’s why we’re retiring this tool – because we think we can do better. We are exploring other ways to help you track your returns.^[1]

That was back in October. It makes it harder to take TMF seriously. When the philosophy goes out the window, it raises suspicions that money – them getting there’s, namely – has become the number one motivation of TMF, and not educating the investor, as was their original primary purpose.

So much for their roots.

¹ Yes, I wrote a letter of complaint several months ago. No response. Another black mark on their record.

You have to wonder if the Republicans, in general, realize how discredited they’ve become by their relentless protection of the vast incompetency residing at the the top of their hierarchy. For example, if any of them had written this article concerning the behavior of the Chinese Communists, I might not take it at all seriously. But … it’s written by Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who had the gumption to vote for conviction on one of the two charges on which Trump was impeached.

None of the rest of the Republicans apparently took it seriously, between reports of some sleeping or reading, and responding with ridiculous criticisms. But one did, and so now I take what Mitt Romney writes seriously.

Just When We Don’t Need To Go To Work – just have a little patience.

She got a bit of an infection, it turns out, that might have explained the lack of healthy fruit last year. We had someone trim the troublesome spot.

Then I found there was a lone fruit survivor:

I’ll forego the munching part of our show. But the tree seems to be doing OK, regardless:

Lovely, I think.