Monthly Archives: May 2020

In the race for the Georgia Senate seat previously held by Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and currently held, by appointment of Governor Kemp (R-GA), and in contradiction of President Trump’s wishes, by Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), polling is not in Loeffler’s favor. From Civiqs, for The Daily Kos:

4. If the special election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would
you vote for?

Doug Collins, Republican 34%
Raphael Warnock, Democrat 18%
Matt Lieberman, Democrat 14%
Kelly Loeffler, Republican 12%
Ed Tarver, Democrat 6%
Someone else 4%
Unsure 12%

The election for Loeffler’s seat is a special election, which means there is no primary, thus the format of the above question. If no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote on Election Day, then a runoff between the top two finishers is held January 5, 2021. Collins is Trump’s preferred candidate, but to my eye the deciding votes are in the Unsure row: they hold the balance of power. If Loeffler drops out and the Unsures break for Representative Collins, then Georgia will, working purely from quantitative analysis have a far-right Senator, as Rep Collins currently has a TrumpScore of 97.5%. And so much for Erick Erickson’s trust in Governor Kemp’s judgment.

But this isn’t the only Georgia news in a rare year in which both Senate seats are up for grabs. The incumbent in the other seat is David Perdue (R-GA), and Civiqs asked questions in the context of each Democratic declared for the primary:

1. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Sarah Riggs Amico, Democrat 42%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 8%
Unsure 5%

2. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Teresa Tomlinson, Democrat 44%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 6%
Unsure 4%

3. If the election for U.S. Senator from Georgia were held today, who would you vote for?

Jon Ossoff, Democrat 47%
David Perdue, Republican 45%
Someone else 4%
Unsure 3%

The election for Perdue’s seat is a regular election, meaning there is a primary to select Party nominees, who then compete for the seat. It’s fascinating that all the declared Democrats are competitive with Perdue, and investigative journalist Ossoff is actually ahead of Perdue. It suggests a level of dissatisfaction with Perdue that may leave Georgia with a Democratic Senator.

Georgia may be one of the most entertaining States viz a viz the election this year.

Letting your fury drag you down the wrong path:

First, the church fought social distancing orders. Then it was burned down to the ground.

And on Thursday, authorities investigating the blaze at First Pentecostal Church said they found an alarming message scrawled on the small-town Mississippi chapel.

“Bet you stay home now you hypokrites,” the graffiti read.

Just weeks after the house of worship held indoor gatherings with dozens of people — and then sued to keep authorities out — it now finds itself enveloped in a mystery that has baffled residents of Holly Springs, a town of 7,600. [WaPo, well down the page]

Neither the church nor the arsonist is right in what they’ve done, but the arsonist is far, far worse, because he (or she, although how many female arsonists do you know?) in encouraging violence from both sides. The church, if it ran its indoor service improperly, would be a self-correcting situation, and sometimes people need that slap upside the head. Their drive-in option, for which the Governor should have (and maybe did later) permitted, seems eminently reasonable.

But the disappointment is for the idiot arsonist. Violence begets violence, and that’s the last thing this nation needs.

Consider getting your Vitamin D levels into the normal range:

Researchers analyzed patient data from 10 countries. The team found a correlation between low vitamin D levels and hyperactive immune systems. Vitamin D strengthens innate immunity and prevents overactive immune responses. The finding could explain several mysteries, including why children are unlikely to die from COVID-19. [ScienceDaily]

Low Vitamin D has been correlated with poor cognitive performance as well, it’s a cheap test, and a cheap supplement – one of the few that actually works.

The reporting on this item, however, includes this:

The research is available on medRxiv, a preprint server for health sciences.

Preprint servers are not necessarily home to the undiluted truth.

Long time readers are aware of my concerns in democracies of having at least two parties competent to the task of government, from setting sensible policies, consulting with experts, to the simple competency of setting and accomplishing a task in the context of government. If there is only one, then there’s no reasonable counterbalance for those proposals and policies that turn out to be positively awful. Because of this, the word out of Britain concerning the policies and priorities of Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and his warmest Party supporters, which seemed to derive from the 1950s, were more than a little disturbing. Add in a bit of alleged anti-semitism, and the fact that he was Leader brought the entire Party under suspicion for being unsuitable to the task of governing; they seemed to be a bunch of old, dreaming men, seeing their past through rose colored glasses.

Ahem.

Then came the elections at the end of last year. Corbyn’s Labour Party was crushed by the Conservatives, Corbyn resigned, and the Labour had to reorganize. So I’m pleased to note the reorganization appears to be moving along nicely, as Andrew Sullivan, ex-Brit and in the third part of his weekly tri-partite diary entry for New York’s Intelligencer, reports on how the tradition of questioning the Prime Minister, a Brit tradition, by the opposition party is going:

Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer

And in this context, [Labour Party Leader Keir] Starmer has killed. Last week, he took Boris apart, statistic by statistic. This week, Boris had clearly done extra prep, but Keir still commanded the exchange. He also scored a coup. He asked: “Does the prime minister think it’s right that care workers coming from abroad and working on our front line should have to pay a surcharge of hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds to use the NHS themselves?” He was referring to a fee of over $750 non-British health-care workers pay on top of taxes to have access to health care. Johnson said there was no alternative source of funding, and so the charge should stay. But 24 hours later, Johnson reversed himself, and agreed to waive the fee. Starmer duly congratulated him on taking his advice. It’s not often that a Commons exchange immediately forces a change in government policy. For Starmer’s second clash with Johnson, it was a triumph.

This is how criticism should work, not the dishonest crap we so often see in American government. Even better:

[Starmer’s] also avoided melodrama and the temptation to berate a government grappling with a very tough plague that arrived suddenly. All his criticisms have been measured and detailed, and point not just to government failures but to how to remedy them.

Honest criticism, with positive and reasonable alternatives, is how adults do these things. As a counter-example, remember how the Republicans tried to throw sand into the gears of the now-defunct JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal? I’m still infuriated at the mendacity. I’m sure there are examples of Democrats also indulging in such behavior, but I disapprove of it done by either side. It slows the betterment of policy.

It’s political malpractice.

Trump was a booster of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, although I haven’t heard anything recently from him. If I thought he was capable of learning, I’d recommend Trump study what appears to be a positive relationship between Johnson and Starmer. It’s salutary.

Inedia:

Inedia (Latin for ‘fasting‘) or breatharianism /brɛθˈɛəriənɪzəm/ is the belief that it is possible for a person to live without consuming food, and in some cases water. It is considered a deadly pseudoscience by scientists and medical professionals, and several adherents of these practices have died from starvation or dehydration. It is an established fact that humans require food and water (nutrients) to survive. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Eating: Is It Possible for Breatharians to Live without Food or Water?” Joe Nickell, Skeptical Inquirer (May / June 2020):

Some mystics claim to practice inedia—that is, to suspend all eating and, sometimes, even drinking. But are inedics genuine, or do they deceive—either themselves or others? In 1980, a cult founded by Wiley Brooks raised just such questions; he espoused not only giving up eating meat but eventually living off nothing but light and air!

Ya gotta love a cult leader named Wiley. Nickell helpfully provides closure on Wiley’s cult, too!

As to Wiley Brooks—who espoused reverting from carnivorism to vegetarianism, then fruitarianism, liquidarianism, and finally to breatharianism—his followers’ faith was badly shaken when Brooks was discovered making nighttime forays to buy junk food.

The above mentioned Wikipedia link also has information on ol’ Wiley:

Brooks’s institute has set various prices for prospective clients wishing to learn how to live without food, ranging from US$100,000 with an initial deposit of $10,000, to one billion dollars, to be paid via bank wire transfer with a preliminary deposit of $100,000, for a session called “Immortality workshop”. A payment plan was also offered. These charges have typically been presented as limited time offers exclusively for billionaires.

I am almost insanely fascinated to know just who he’s pulled in on that scam, and I’m sure there’s been more than a few takers.

The only better name for that a cult leader that I’ve encountered is prosperity minister Creflo Dollar, but he was, disappointingly, born Michael Smith. So why is his full name Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr.? But he lives up to his name, as you might expect:

Dollar is known for his controversial teachings regarding prosperity theology. He has long been criticized for living a lavish lifestyle. He owns two Rolls-Royces, a private jet, and high-end real estate such as a million-dollar home in Atlanta, a $2.5 million home in Demarest, New Jersey, and a home in Manhattan that he bought for $2.5 million in 2006 and sold for $3.75 million in 2012. Dollar has refused to disclose his salary. For declining to disclose any financial information to independent audit, Creflo Dollar Ministries received a grade of “F” (failing) for financial transparency by the organization Ministry Watch.

His pic on Wikipedia shows he has a nice smile. I admit it, crazy religious cults excite a morbid fascination in me.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has been having more than his share of scandal lately, and in the Trump Administration that’s quite an achievement. Frida Ghitis, a political columnist, has a useful summary, if from a lefty point of view, and in conclusion:

One of the most distinctive and harmful traits of the Trump administration is its disdain for ethics and integrity in government. But another, is its pattern of leaving political appointees stained, their reputation in tatters, a prospect that should worry Pompeo.

And might he be gone soon? Rather than speculate, I’ll indulge in what I wish was a flight of fancy, but is entirely possible in these surreal times.

With the exit of Mike Pompeo from the State Department, President Trump has broken with his usual habit of leaving the political class suspended in anticipation awaiting a nomination to a Cabinet post by sending a nomination immediately, in fact within moments of Pompeo’s announcement of his resignation, to the Senate.

Secretary of State nominee Sergey Kislyak.

The name? Sergey Kislyak.

Observers of the political scene may remember Kislyak, then Ambassador to the United States, was the member of the Russian diplomatic corp to whom soon-to-be National Security Advisor Michael Flynn spoke secretly. Flynn was later forced from his position, arrested, and plead guilty, twice, to lying to the FBI. Later, he tried to change his plea, and that controversy is ongoing.

The nomination of a foreign national for a Cabinet position is unheard of in American history, and it is almost certainly illegal for a foreign national to hold such a position, but President Trump has indicated that he’ll seek a waiver from the Senate, and is confident it’ll be issued.

“I met Sergey many years ago during my business travels, and he has always impressed me as a man of efficiency and nuance, a man to whom I feel a connection,” the President said at a brief press conference. “He’ll be one of the greatest Secretary of States, uh, Secretarys, uh, holders of that position, even better than the amazing Mike Pompeo, and America should be proud to have him.” The President took no questions as he hurried from the lectern.

Senator Mitch “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY), current Senate Majority Leader, indicated he had his caucus firmly in hand and anticipated confirmation of Kislyak will proceed with few, if any, substantive objections.

Mr. Kislyak currently holds the position of the Senator from Mordovia in Russia. It’s unclear as to whether he’ll continue in that position or resign from it, should the Senate – the American Senate – confirm his nomination. [Fox News]

Pundits keep talking about how the far side of this pandemic will bring us a new world, far different from what it is today. I try to not get caught up in the current, as it may be just a wrinkle in a creek, of no particular meaning, rather than the Gulf Stream, the existence of which guarantees Europe is mostly habitable.

But it’s difficult to not be impressed by the changes our major retailers are taking in their stores, and begin to wonder how our unpredictable human psyches may react, even in the face of determined consumer training regimens:

Across the country, stores are reopening to a changed reality. Retailers that have spent years trying to get customers to linger, in hopes they’ll buy more than they need, are reimagining their stores for a grab-and-go future filled with deliberate purchases. Gone, they say, are the days of trying on makeup or playing with toys in the aisles. The focus now is on making shopping faster, easier and safer to accommodate long-term shifts in consumer expectations and habits.

Apple is checking shoppers’ temperatures at the door. Best Buy is asking customers to shop by appointment. Macy’s and Nordstrom are doing away with beauty consultations and alteration services, while the Gap is closing off bathrooms and fitting rooms. Cosmetics giant Sephora won’t allow shoppers to test products anymore. Others are quarantining returns for as long as 72 hours before putting merchandise back on shelves.

American Eagle Outfitters, meanwhile, is reimagining every part of the shopping experience. It has invested in curbside pickup and infrared machines that measure customers’ temperatures as they walk by. Entryway displays once piled high with apparel have become “welcome tables” with bottles of hand sanitizer, disposable masks and sticky blue mats that clean shoe soles. Clothes are even folded differently, to encourage hands-off browsing. The new protocols, which already have been rolled out at 435, or nearly half, of its U.S. stores, offer a glimpse of how even the most innocuous interactions might be tempered.

In and out in a hurry as a store policy? By god, man, that’s not American!

Nearing the end … with how many to follow?

Are we seeing the beginning of the end of the shopping culture? I, personally, have no understanding of the mindset that thinks life is not complete without a weekly visit to the local mall, a slow saunter with bags over the shoulders and maybe even a sly goal for spending so much money during the visit. It’s not that crowds bug me, as I’m generally large enough that I find crowds amusing, not upsetting, unlike my Arts Editor. But it’s the waste of time and the generally frivolous nature of the endeavour which annoys me.

I think I take myself too seriously at times.

On the other hand, many malls were dying in the last few years as the Internet store fronts – we all know their names – had been taking over from brick retail stores. Perhaps that little stream of culture had finally worn away the sand bar that created it and it was going away.

But I still have to wonder – are we still going to be a roaring consumeristic society once we’re over the bridge to the other side of the pandemic stream? Will Amazon and its brethren continue to nourish that need to own too much stuff?

I can’t say. Neither my Arts Editor nor myself are particularly big on buying stuff, and the crisis has not had much impact on us – we’ve been fortunate that way. I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out.

Back in the land of mainstream media resurgence, Margaret Sullivan of WaPo continues – without any hint of schadenfreude – to talk about where people’s loyalties are moving in this time of crisis and turmoil:

In news that is initially fairly dull, we now know that Senator Merkley (D-OR) will be defending his seat against Jo Rae Perkins (R-OR) in November:

Oregon Republicans on Tuesday elected a Senate nominee who believes in QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that has taken root among some far-right supporters of President Trump.

Jo Rae Perkins bested three other candidates to win the GOP nomination to face Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in November.

In a now-deleted video posted to her Twitter account Tuesday night, Perkins said she supports the conspiracy theory, which revolves around “Q,” an anonymous Internet user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance.

“Where we go one, we go all,” Perkins said in the video, reciting a QAnon slogan. “I stand with President Trump. I stand with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots. And together, we can save our republic.” [WaPo]

Oh, really? Isn’t the QAnon conspiracy theory just about the same as the President’s anonymous validators, people from the Democrats who, the President claims, are calling him and telling he’s doing great? He’s also done this with businesspeople. Never a name, but boy ain’t he doing great? Rather the same for QAnon – never a name, never any corroborating evidence, just whispers in the ears of the credulous.

WaPo notes the replacement message:

In a statement Wednesday night, Perkins backtracked slightly from her comments, saying that she does not fully embrace QAnon.

“To be very clear, I do not believe everything from Q/Anon and would never describe myself as a follower, but I also do not believe in infringing upon any outlet’s right to discuss news or topics,” Perkins said.

Joe Rae Perkins doesn’t appear to have a great deal of political experience: no elective office in civil government, and it wasn’t clear that she’d achieved an elective office in a commercial association. However, this lack is no longer an objection for the Republican Party; the more expert someone is, the more suspect they have become. In fact, this can be seen as a logical outcome of the old Republican oath, sometimes ignored by the oath-taker, of term-limits. While term-limits was meant to remove the old plaque build up in the heart of the nation, the emerging meme is that experience stands in the way of effective government.

Which, when stated in that way, sounds like a whole lot of hogwash. It ignores the importance of experience and the judgment that experience can, but does not always, enable.

Of course, it’s possible she’s the best the Oregon Republicans have to offer, but nominating someone who gives credence to QAnon, and hasn’t held any sort of elective office, for the United States Senate would have me putting my money on “Party in ruins, intellectually speaking”.

Steve Benen thinks the decision to declassify former Obama Administration National Security Advisor (NSA) Susan Rice’s letter concerning the notorious Michael Flynn is a mistake:

Remember, the point of this week’s disclosures, from the perspective of Ron Johnson and other Republicans, was to make Susan Rice and the Obama administration look bad. Except the gambit has now backfired: the Rice email GOP partisans were so eager to disclose shows an Obama team doing everything right, while also casting Flynn — the disgraced former general whose reputation Republicans are trying to rescue — in a deeply unflattering light.

Or put another way, Republicans have found a smoking gun, but they failed to realize it was pointed in the wrong direction.

Indeed, the gambit that was intended to put Rice on the defense has actually left her on the offensive. From the Politico article:

Rice also called for the Trump administration to release the transcripts of phone calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador during the transition. “The American people deserve the full transcripts so they can judge for themselves Michael Flynn’s conduct,” the statement read.

I am not as complacent as Benen. I think the Republicans are banking on the common citizens’ understandable ignorance of government internal procedures to make this play out as a hit on presumptive Democratic nominee Biden, as well as former President Obama.

And this means the Democrats will need to begin educating the independents on how this all works. I suggest they get everyone’s attention by having Rice take a slightly different tack. How about a press release from her?

I’d like to congratulate DNI Grenell, Senator Johnson and his colleagues on their dedication to governmental transparency, and I now call on them to release the full transcripts of the Michael Flynn calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. As a service to the American people, I will be making available as web site for Americans to consult concerning standard procedures in American government, thus making it easier for the American people to come to their own judgment on the Flynn / Kislyak conversations.

If they consider the optics carefully, she might want to contact Bush Administration NSA Condoleeza Rice to sign on to this project. Nothing like a bipartisan effort to assure the public that the explanations are on the up and up. Seriously. Make those who make the effort feel like they’re actually learning something about how government functions – and it’ll be true, to boot.

So, a little snark to get everyone’s attention. This would be a bid to take the narrative away from the Republicans and use the transcripts, or lack thereof, to highlight the incompetency endemic in the Republican Party. This would also be a classic Clinton tactic – embrace the aimed blow until it becomes a weapon in your hand. Clinton’s opponents hated that with a passion.

Another example of how Republican team politics has resulted in a collection of second- and third-raters.

My dear … you know I like PBJ, not cold cut sandwiches!

Assuming you can get a good print of it, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) is an interesting exploration of the subject of relative morality. It’s the time of the French Revolution, and French aristocrats are making their last trip to Madame Guillotine! But on the British side of the channel, a brave nobleman using an eponymous nom de guerre disapproves, for those of the nobility are often innocent – in his view.

But his brazen rescues and peerless costumes are viewed dimly by the morality-free men who have taken control of the French Revolution, which, historically, first chewed up its nobility, and then continued on to masticate the erstwhile leaders of said social upset. But enough of the history lesson! Our hero plays dual roles, the brave rescuer and the useless fop, a self-proclaimed fashion expert burdened with a beautiful French wife.

A French wife rumored to have denounced a French aristocratic family to the authorities, and leading to their deaths. Her name? Marguerite.

But a series of clues leads the French ambassador to suspect the fop, and he leans on Marguerite, using her as a lever to lure the Pimpernel into a rescue mission for Marguerite’s brother, cruelly taken, and as Marguerite scrambles to persuade the Pimpernel to go, she reveals that the family that she accidentally sent to their deaths through an incautious word, had they themselves consigned her to a prison for women of ill-repute, when their son had innocently fallen in love with her and proposed.

To the Pimpernel, they had shown a fair face, but to Marguerite they had shown something more foul.

But the leaders of the Revolution have scarcely better paint on their faces. The Pimpernel soon finds himself in a bind, but displays his coolness under pressure, and even if he’s going to his death, he’d prefer that he be … fashionable.

The problems of class bigotry are treated a little too lightly, even if they are acknowledged, but the Pimpernel himself is quite the delight. The adventure is a romp, although it lacks delightful sword play, but the reality in which it is set is grim, and it doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge those bloody realities.

Who deserves what? Did they get what’s coming to them? That’s the morass into which the incautious audience member will descend if they peek under the gaily decorated covers.

Recommended.

I liked these spring trees, located in our neighborhood.

Peaceful.

Remember the terror attack in Pensacola, FL, about a year ago? I don’t, not really, but this recent CNN report that the FBI managed to break the encryption scheme used by Apple for security made me consider the entire controversy in a bit of a new light.

The Saudi military trainee who killed three US sailors and wounded several others in a terror attack last year on a military base in Pensacola, Florida, was a longtime associate of al Qaeda who had communicated with operatives from the group as recently as the night before the shooting, the Justice Department and the FBI announced Monday.

US investigators uncovered the al Qaeda connection after the FBI broke through the encryption protecting the Saudi attacker’s iPhones and have been able to use the information on the devices to carry out a recent counterterrorism operation in Yemen, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a news conference.

“The evidence we’ve been able to develop from the killer’s devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation by a longtime AQAP associate,” Wray said, referring to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest branches of the terror group. …

The officials also used the opportunity to hammer Apple for refusing to help investigators break into the devices.

Wray said that the FBI received “effectively no help” from Apple in bypassing the phones and that third-party technology firms were also unable to help investigators. …

Barr called it a “great disappointment” that Apple had refused to help investigators.

“Apple has made a business and marketing decision to design its phones in a way that only the user can unlock the contents no matter what the circumstances. In cases like this, where the user is a terrorist, or in other cases where the user is a violent criminal, a human trafficker, a child predator, Apple’s decision has dangerous consequences for the public safety and the national security and is in my judgment unacceptable,” Barr said. …

Apple said in a statement Monday that the company doesn’t believe in creating special access to its devices for the government because of security concerns.

“It is because we take our responsibility to national security so seriously that we do not believe in the creation of a backdoor — one which will make every device vulnerable to bad actors who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers,” the company said.

“There is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys, and the American people do not have to choose between weakening encryption and effective investigations.”

In essence, Apple and its unnamed ally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have taken an absolutist position reminiscent of the armed protesters who have sallied forth in response to the various Stay At Home orders issued in most states. In each case, they have embraced a position with little regard for those on the other side of the issue, attempting to claim that their position is an ideal, rather than acknowledging that, well, an absolute right will typically impact someone else in a negative way. They share the same anti-government sentiments as well, if in varying strengths, which is beginning to feel increasingly like a dated position to hold. I find myself wondering more and more these days how much public paranoiac positions like these are organic, how many are self-inflicted wounds from incompetent or corrupt behaviors by government employees, and how many of them are the results of careful psychological warfare by our national adversaries.

I do understand the concerns of private individuals about the government monitoring their communications, although I also think, based on the British experience with cameras monitors, that monitoring the volume of communications we see today would be close to overwhelming, even with “AI” support, and so for the common citizen the threat is trivial. I also understand that adding back doors or some other approach for breaking encryption lawfully means there’s an opportunity for unlawful intrusion by malefactors.

But I’d like to make these points.

1. The FBI just broke the encryption. Sure, Director Wray says it was basically a one-off – maybe they got lucky guessing a prime number or pulled off some fancy hardware trick beyond my comprehension, specific to the device. But they figured it out. If they did it once, they now have a strategy for doing it again. The Apple claims rings somewhat hollow.
2. It’s not as if this is all new. Phones have been “tapped” for decades – a lot of decades. Communications monitoring is nothing new. Notebooks have been seized and, when necessary, codes broken and deciphered. A smartphone, which is a highly sophisticated mating of a phone with a smart notebook, being seized and read is, again, nothing new – this has been going on for centuries. For all the screaming about government monitoring and intrusion, we’ve been coping with government having these abilities for a long time, now. We have laws and punishments for illegal governmental tapping. Is there some reason to think we can’t cope with taps on our smartphones?

I know the absolutists claim the government doesn’t “need” this capability, but I do have to wonder. Taking a year to break the encryption on an iPhone cannot, in any universe, be considered “timely,” and I think we’re simply fortunate that nothing of note has happened since that might have been prevented by breaking that encryption sooner.

Perhaps I’m just cranky tonight, but the absolutist position is beginning to feel less principled and more … petulant.

I suspect most reporters are flocking to the State Department to hunt up information concerning the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick last Friday – the third IG fired in six weeks, all announced late on Fridays – and the pundits will ruminate on the possibilities of Secretary of State Pompeo being involved in illegal and/or corrupt behavior with regards to either illegal use of State Department employees for walking his dog, or the delivery of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

It’s a good idea, and I look forward to hearing what they find.

BUT WHAT struck me is President Trump’s behavior. Here’s the transcript from whitehouse.gov:

Q Mr. President, can you explain, sir, why you decided to fire the inspector general at the State Department?

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, I don’t know him at all. I never even heard of him, but I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike. I offered — most of my people, almost all of them — I said, “You know, these are Obama appointees. And if you’d like to let him go, I think you should let them go, but that’s up to you.”

He’s an Obama employee. I understand he had a lot of problems with the DOD. There was an investigation on him — on the inspector general. I don’t know anything about it.

So I don’t know him. I never heard of him. But they asked me to terminate him. I have the absolute right, as President, to terminate. I’ve said, “Who appointed him?” And they said, “President Obama.” I said, “Look, I’ll terminate him.”

I don’t know what’s going on other than that, but you’d have to ask Mike Pompeo. But they did ask me to do it and I did it. I have the right to terminate the inspector generals. And I would have — I would have suggested — and I did suggest, in pretty much all cases, you get rid of the attorney generals, because it happens to be very political, whether you like it or not. And many of these people were Obama appointments, and so I just got rid of him.

My summation of the above?

Gee, I dunno. Someone told me to fire him, so I did!

Yeah, that’s how it comes out for me. Maybe your mileage will vary, but to me this is the essence of incompetent leadership. Rather than carefully considering the request, the past performance of IG Linick, the information that Linick was planning to present in his report on the State Department, and going from there, he just shrugged and fired the guy.

A competent President would at least have laid all that out at the press conference, and perhaps even fired Pompeo rather than Linick. If, at least, the suspicions that the Saudi Arabian arms deal was not on the up and up turn out to have some correspondence with reality.

But, no. We have a guy who evades responsibility for his actions, while trying to take the kudos of others’ actions when they turn out well. Well, just remember ol’ President Truman’s watchword. Remember? Or is that too much to ask?

He just can’t suffer the thought of being wrong, can he?

Whether it’s due to a psychological problem of quite the magnitude, or a cold-blooded political calculation that his base expects him to follow through on whatever his mouth decides to say, yesterday President Trump announced that he is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive against Covid-19:

President Donald Trump claimed Monday he is taking daily doses of hydroxychloroquine, a drug he’s long touted as a potential coronavirus cure even as medical experts and the US Food and Drug Administration question its efficacy and warn of potentially harmful side effects.

Speaking at a meeting of restaurant executives, Trump said he began taking the antimalarial drug after consulting the White House doctor, though stopped short of saying his physician had actually recommended the drug.

“A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it,” Trump said. He later said he’d been taking it every day for a week and a half. [CNN]

The obvious questions: Is he telling the truth, or did that just come flying out on its own? If he’s taking anything, are they real meds – or is he taking sugar pills? Even this: Did his source of the med give him sugar pills?

But why?

President Trump’s relationship to his base requires that he be the tough, know-it-all amateur who represents them. This is the next step in proving to them the validity of their position – by taking a medicine that he’s advocated. In this, he is tougher than, say, disgraced televangelist Jimmy Bakker, who I very much doubt has ever taken the silver solution he has, until recently, been advocating.

At first, it occurred to me that this is a big risk for the President, because if he becomes ill, his base will fracture. And that’s why I think he’s lying. There’s no way to prove it, but I think this is purely the result of a political calculation. He can’t win without his base, and so he’s done what’s necessary to settle them down and reassure them that he’s still on their side in terms of the relationship between them and the experts that the Republican Party has despised since at least the days of Gingrich.

But this is, in its essence, a story. What comes next? What if Trump comes down with a cold? Does he tell his base that’s perfectly normal with hydroxychloroquine? Does he claim he has COVID-19 and hydroxychloroquine is saving his life? His base believes him implicitly, so he can say anything that advances his cause.

This may prove very interesting.

I’m no lawyer, but I found this decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a partisan battleground that is still 5-2 Republican dominated, but scheduled to become 4-3 in August after the crushing defeat of Justice Dan Kelly (R) by Judge Jill Karofsky (D) in the recent Wisconsin elections, to be quite interesting. It is the overturning of Governor Evers’ (D) executive order of stay at home and close businesses. The lawsuit, brought by the GOP-controlled legislature, was won by the Legislature, but not 5-2, but 4-3:

The euphoria that Wisconsin Republicans felt after winning yet another major political battle in the state Supreme Court this week is being dampened by a scathing dissent written by one of the conservative justices, raising doubts about how solid the conservative majority actually is.

Democrats praised Justice Brian Hagedorn for siding with liberals against revoking the Democratic governor’s stay-at-home order on Wednesday. Republicans vented their anger on Twitter.

“Conservatives have been snookered,” former state Rep. Adam Jarchow tweeted within minutes of the court’s ruling Wednesday, in reference to Hagedorn. “We will never learn.” [AP]

He certainly knows what to say to appear to be a professional jurist:

“During my campaign, I said that my job is to say what the law is, not what I think the law should be. I meant what I said,” Hagedorn told the AP in a text message. “To the best of my ability, I will apply the law as written, without fear or favor, in every case before me.”

Unlike his conservative colleague:

Hagedorn’s position drew scorn from conservative justices in the majority, including Justice Dan Kelly, who was defeated last month and will leave the court in August. Kelly wrote that Hagedorn had delivered an “insult” to the majority with his dissent.

“We swore to uphold the Wisconsin Constitution,” Kelly wrote. “He’s free to join in anytime he wishes.”

That the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is nakedly political is, I think, no longer in doubt. When former legislators don’t question the judgment of a Justice, but, instead, their party loyalty, that speaks to the degradation of the institution, from an interpreter of laws to a hand puppet of the party. This is not good for society or government. A neutral arbiter is necessary in order to interpret the laws and constitution of the land.

I’ve not been on this topic in a while, but I have long argued that the seats of judges, from the lowest to the highest, should not be elective positions, subject to the pressures and whims of the institutions that will fund their elective runs, the high fashionable needs of commerce, and other trivial topics. Instead, judges should be appointed by the Executive, but not be vulnerable to the Executive. They should be vulnerable to the Legislature, but only if a high bar can be surmounted: gross incompetence, felonious behavior, and other activities in the category. They should be term limited, although promotions, again through appointments, are possible and even probable. If a judge or justice is no longer vulnerable to the whims of political society, then they are better prepared to render service properly reflective of their neutral role. Can anyone see the unprofessional reactions of the majority in this case as neutral?

The recent eruptions over the races for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and its recent rulings, have really cast a cloud of disapprobation over the entire institution. I have to wonder if, had they been appointed by an Executive using all of its resources to find good candidates, we would have seen behavior that appears to be so politically motivated.

Cartoonist Fevzi Yazici is the victim of Turkish President Erdoğan’s fear – perhaps justified – of Turkish Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen. WaPo has an interesting profile of the cartoonist, currently residing in a Turkish prison upon conviction of aiding a supposed Gülen-inspired conspiracy. I particularly liked this depiction of, well, you figure it out:

The King

More here.

Over the last couple of days I’ve written about a possible future trend in American shared thought, and I’ve decided to make that a menu page, as you can see above. Sign Posts may be updated from time to time with your ideas as well as mine. I see it as a corrective away from the crazed fringes on both sides of the political spectrum into which we’ve strayed – much to our dismay, in my opinion. Because of these mistakes, we’ve suffered, and now the world’s people are starting to pity us, we need to rethink our core ideologies, theologies, and philosophies. Sign Posts contains ideas for quick identification and rejection of those who would lead us down primrose paths to disaster.

There have been some positive reports on how the Covid-19 outbreak has had some positive effects on the environment, and so presumably on anthropogenic climate change – although probably immeasurably small – but it’s not all silver linings.

These pansies managed to survive the winter. I’ve never seen pansies make it through a Minnesota winter before, and I have often planted them in the front garden.

Glorious!

And our perennial Lamb’s Ear is perking right along. I liked its freshness.

I wouldn’t ordinarily steal from another publication’s Word segment, but this one is too cool and amusing.

Troglomorphism:

Deep within cave systems, creatures live their entire lives shrouded in darkness. Some, like the aptly named blind catfish, have even evolved to be entirely eyeless. Others, like certain cave spiders and centipedes, have elongated limbs that serve as sensory organs. Nearly all are semitranslucent and devoid of pigment. These adaptations to the dark are known as troglomorphisms. If you venture into the word’s etymological depths, you’ll find the Greek root morph, meaning form or shape, lurking behind the prefix troglo, or cave-dwelling. [“That Word You Heard: Troglomorphism“, Discover, June 2020]

Very peaceful, I hope.

Source: Guardians of Democracy

It’s certainly hard to get, isn’t it? In the context of our current crisis, perhaps the most outstanding example was President Trump’s carnival barker-like promotion of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for Covid-19^[1]. From word that a study suggested it was effective, to White House sources suggesting Trump’s advisor Peter Navarro treated Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Trump’s primary advisor with regards to the crisis, like an overly cautious nitwit that he was able to argue with on a level field, to the news that the medications were, in fact, dangerous when used improperly, and … not efficacious. It crossed the T on the message that getting trustable information from this Administration is a lost cause.

But a question little asked by the public is Where does bad information like Trump’s come from? Does it get pulled out of Trump’s ass by a troupe of men and women hired specifically for the task?

While that may seem quite likely, the answer is rather more mundane, and, unsurprisingly, related to that mixed blessing called the World Wide Web. The answer is the science pre-print servers. NewScientist (9 May 2020, paywall) has a useful description of them in the current context:

These are online repositories of preliminary findings that haven’t yet been independently reviewed. They were invented because of dissatisfaction with the conventional peer-review model, and to take advantage of new opportunities afforded by the internet.

For those somewhat-justified paranoiacs with an eye for ossified social structures, or power structures out to protect themselves, pre-print servers sound like a good thing, a way to get otherwise-suppressed information out where it can be evaluated. But I like this description of the actual results:

Preprint servers enable information to “flow directly from people who are making scientific claims to users who don’t have the savvy to evaluate those claims”, says Jonathan Kimmelman, a biomedical ethicist at McGill University in Canada.

And this is where the claims concerning chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine came from.

The much-touted antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a good example of the system going badly wrong. A preprint about the drug’s efficacy against covid-19 in a small clinical trial appeared on 20 March (medRxiv, doi.org/dp7d). The trial was poorly conducted, says Alfred Kim at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, who wrote a critique of it in the Annals of Internal Medicine (doi.org/ggq8b4). Among other issues, the trial had a sample size of just 20 people (see “How to sniff out the good science studies from the bad”).

A second preprint by different researchers detailing methodological flaws in the trial appeared three days later (Zenodo, doi.org/dtsn).

And if this is the study over which Fauci and Navarro argued, that argument shouldn’t have happened. Navarro should have seen the sample size and tossed the printout in the garbage can, and maybe assigned an intern to keep an eye on the medRxiv pre-print server for more studies on the two medicines. But whatever Navarro’s problem is, hubris or smarts, he didn’t.

Scientific studies are hard to do. To the layman – like me^[2], but without the science groupie bug – it may seem like it should be commonsensical: give the sick people who have these symptoms a drug, if they get better, we win! More advanced thinkers will think about people who get better from strong immune systems and those who do not, and try to design the study accordingly. Even more advanced will consider nutrition. Even mooooore advanced: exercise. And, hey, what about prayer?

And then you start running into shit like the placebo and nocebo effects. If you’re thinking common-sense rules the day, read up on those known effects and try to repeat your statement. If you’re not laughing at yourself, you’re not paying attention. Scientific studies are hard. Gathering data, evaluating it, controlling for interfering factors, are the results significant, these are all hard, hard things to do. Let pride and self-confidence get in the way and they’re even harder.

Or, let’s take a different example against common-sense for you visual types. Bridges. Here’s a creek, let’s put together a couple two by fours, a sheet of plywood, maybe some rails for the unsteady, and we’re a success. Yes? How about that abyss over there? OK, a bit more complex, design-wise, right? Materials have strength limitations, so we add a few supports, maybe that new bridge near Stillwater, MN, is a good illustration. Still, the design is conceptually easy, all the hard stuff is managerial, yeah. Right?

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The fun begins at 1:20 or so.

Just a little wind and the laws of physics, which don’t care about common-sense, takes down a bridge. Whoda thunk? Not the common-sense yahoos who built this bridge.

Back to the President’s erstwhile favorite medicines. It turns out that Retraction Watch has been covering the issue of studies regarding Covid-19, most immediately those that have been retracted or have had concern expressed about them. and if you worry about the quality of information, you may want to bookmark that page for research purposes, although, of course, retractions can be slow, even untimely. Given how hard it is to do a good study, we can expect a lot of retractions, because, as NewScientist notes:

Since the pandemic began, thousands of studies related to it have been published. “The research community has mobilised in the face of the pandemic in an unprecedented way,” says John Inglis at academic publisher Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York.

From a larger perspective, I have begun to see the incidents of the Administration pushing certain treatments as examples of magical thinking. This is a thought process which refuses to see critical objections and obstacles on its way to a preferred conclusion. It may employ uninvented or even impossible processes as a way to reach that conclusion, because, after all, That conclusion is needed for our greater purposes, and so it will be. Magical thinking is a process that should be abhorred by serious people.

Yesterday I wrote about how the United States may be coming to a fork in the road, a fork that we’ve been seeing for years, but haven’t really made a decision due to a lack of feedback concerning the results. The fork is implicit in the public controversies over whether anthropogenic climate change is happening, evolution, the Iraq War, vaccination … and pandemic preparations. I suggested that pity directed at the United States by other advanced nations, pity for our poor decisions since the fall of the Berlin Wall, may accomplish what all the enraged arguments have failed to do: pull us together, in the face of negative consequences, into concordance on the proper decisions regarding important public controversies.

In doing so, it will also begin marking positions which are evidence of people devoted to these damaging ideologies, theologies, and philosophies. I listed a few at the link, above, such as anti-vaxxers, and now I’d like to add magical thinking to the list. I realize this may offend a wide range of people, both in the business and religious fields, but magical thinking has led to so many poor outcomes that it really needs to be recognized as an intellectual fault signaling untrustworthy outcomes.

And tarred and feathered as such. You provide the rail.

¹ President Trump’s ruminations on somehow ingesting ultraviolet light and injecting various disinfectants, such as bleach, on the other hand, I would classify as the meat and potatoes of bizarre side shows. Your mileage may vary.

² I hold a Bachelor of Computer Science Degree the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. One might consider computer science to be just barely within the domain of science, as it hardly ever indulges in studies of natural phenomena; more rigorous thinkers might suggest that computer scientists, without additional training, are crippled mathematicians. In case you are wondering, mathematicians are not necessarily scientists. They are something else entirely, and don’t ask me what. On second thought, mathematicians are hardy specialists in a field of logic dedicated to a logical system corresponding to fundamental reality. And, no, I’m not getting into the argument of whether mathematics is a subfield of logic, or vice versa. It seems clear to me that the proper position is the former, but I’m just a rank amateur who runs his fingers a lot.

But it’s not, and there are thousands of fossils of it. Tully’s Monster, one of the mysteries of paleontology that I had not heard of until today, gets another addition to its family of controversial deductions concerning its nature:

A bizarre ancient creature that looks like a sci-fi reject may actually have been a backboned animal related to fish.

The claim relies on chemical analysis of fossils of the creature. However, other palaeontologists remain cautious.

The animal is called Tullimonstrum gregarium, or simply the Tully Monster. It lived around 300 million years ago in shallow waters covering what is now Illinois. There are thousands of good fossils, all from one formation called Mazon Creek. …

When soft tissue fossilises, chemicals like proteins degrade in predictable ways, says Wiemann. “We can still extract biological information,” she says. Crucially, invertebrates and chordates remain chemically distinct.

[Jasmina Wiemann of Yale University, a specialist in chemical analysis of fossils], [Victoria McCoy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee] and their colleagues studied 32 samples from Mazon Creek rocks. Known chordates and invertebrates were readily distinguished, and the Tully Monster grouped with the chordates.

But …

[Maria McNamara at University College Cork in Ireland] has studied metals in the Tully Monster’s eyes. These suggested it was a cephalopod: an invertebrate group that includes octopuses and squid. “Why are the organic and inorganic components of the chemical signature showing these conflicting results?” she asks. [NewScientist, 9 May 2020, paywall]

What’s all the hubbub about, you wonder?

Two Tully’s Monsters, passing in the night.
Wikipedia

That funky crossbar? That’s right, just like a hammerhead shark – eye stalks. Did they move? You’d think they’d have to if they were to be useful – but primitive critters were not necessarily refined.

If I had a fossil of one of these, it’s go right up on the wall. So bizarrely cool. It looks like some of my software designs, in retrospect.