Monthly Archives: May 2020

Pity As The Toilet Brush

By | |
Comments Off on Pity As The Toilet Brush

Phillip Kennicott of WaPo has written a fine piece on the role of pity in America’s future:

For the first time in the lives of many Americans, the coronavirus pandemic is conflating private pain with large-scale, public suffering. Now, the entire country participates in a conjunction of misery that was before limited to Americans who lacked privilege, or were unlucky. The anger we feel at the utter collapse of responsible governance isn’t abstract and, for the most part, it isn’t ideological; it is personal, because now our lives are in danger and family members are dying. Pain and suffering are no longer isolated or remote or contained; they are universal, and with that, there is an uncanny realization that this suffering is no longer a drama on television or a headline in the newspaper. We suffer in the midst of history.

That makes the processing of pity even more complicated, because while we may resist self-pity, it seems there may be no going forward, no hope for the country at all, if we can’t take pity on ourselves as a nation. Unless we can see ourselves as the world sees us — including those who say we are broken, corrupt and failing — we may not be able to survive, rebuild and reclaim anything of our past sense of national identity. Unless we can say to ourselves collectively what we say to ourselves individually — we are sick — there’s no hope of any kind of return to health.

And we can trace a lot of the pity, memorably expressed by Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times (paywall, but available at other locations for free), to the poor decisions many of us have made individually since, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Enumerating them all would be a chore, and it’s hard to balance them ideologically, but here’s a few:

  • The invasion of Iraq
  • The Lewinsky / Clinton blowjob
  • The Bush Election and re-election, and all the fraudulent hijinks that went with it (Swiftboat Veterans ad, for one example)
  • The use of torture during the invasion of Iraq
  • The uninhibited worship of the dollar sign, and the Great Recession that was the consequence
  • The removal of laws designed to inhibit recessions that may have led to the Great Recession
  • The decision of voters to elect Donald Trump

And there’s many more, some political, some economic. I’d even put NAFTA on the list, if only to provoke thought. It was, after all, a treaty meant to do away with redundancy by allowing countries to specialize more and more, thus increasing efficiency and, BTW, profits.

Shame, a word currently unpopular due to its overuse over the last, oh, two millenia, has a useful effect as a corrective to activities not desired by the leaders of a community. Notice I don’t say “bad actions,” but merely those community leaders disapprove – or, if you prefer, loathe, hate, and many other negative adjectives. When community leaders substitute their personal dislikes and biases for community good, which is an easy thing to do, then we often get shameful uses of the concept of shame.

But it’s important to separate the functionality from its appropriate use. One does not flow from the other, or at best, weakly. Its strength comes from collective use and childhood training to consider something shameful.

But how does shame work nation to nation? In a word, it doesn’t.

But pity, now, pity’s an interesting word. It’s one thing to cry shame down on another nation, because shame is an aggressive concept, easily seen as manipulable, as well as not applicable from one nation to another, no matter how loud it’s cried. But pity? Pity can be brought about by many things, some beyond a community’s control, such as plague. But it can also be elicited by bad decision making, now can’t it?

Look at these people, we told them they were wrong but they ignored us, and now look at the mess they’re in!

One can easily imagine a bunch of Neanderthals looking across the La Brea Tar Pits at their erstwhile neighbors, now sinking under the bubbly surface, where once they tried to run their plows …

Pity is, in a sense, a step beyond shame. The consequences of actions motivated by ideologies, of theologies and philosophies, will finally come to into view, and if those consequences, rather than exciting admiration, instead elicit pity, that throws understandable doubt upon those ideologies, theologies, and philosophies as valid and good selections. Just as we pity the anti-vaxxer who loses their child to the measles, but know that they brought this upon themselves, so a nation’s people, brought up against the publicly expressed pity – not anger, but pity – of foreigners for their contretemps may realize something’s gone amiss. It’s the recognition that their straits are sore, and if the pitied don’t realize it yet, it may only be a matter of time.

Pity may turn out to be the toilet brush we will need to begin scrubbing our lives of those ideologies, theologies, and philosophies that are hurting us. From relatively superfluous crap like anti-vaxxers, who trade in nothing more than congruencies to conspiracy theories, to anthropogenic climate change doubters, whose theology won’t let them acknowledge that our very civilization is poisoning itself, the pity of the majority of humanity for us may be the thing that finally prompts those not wed to those pathological institutions to realize that they are destructive to our individual and collective lives, and as we absorb these lessons, those words, anti-vaxxers and climate change doubters and anti-evolutionists – all positions for which the evidence is, at best, junk science – will become code words to the uncommitted to stay away.

For example: That politician, who is asking for your vote, doubts evolution and climate change? Easy decision, vote for their opponent, even if they hold policy positions I don’t like – but admit might be reasonable. It’s that concept that we have to comprehend – some clashes of ideas are truly clashes in which opinion, even learned opinion, can legitimately differ, while others are just fringe characters trying to make their ludicrous ideas seem reasonable, even acceptable.

Perhaps this is what others’ pity will teach us.

Projection City

By | |
Comments Off on Projection City

From The American Independent:

Experts have repeatedly warned about reopening states before the data shows conditions are safe enough. In testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, at which Scott was in attendance as a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Dr. Anthony Fauci said reopening states too early could lead to “spikes that might turn into outbreaks.”

From the May 13 edition of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends”:

BRIAN KILMEADE, co-host: The problem is, I’m led to believe, just by looking at what’s going on with red and blue states, the blue governors are reluctant to open up their states, and the reds seem more than willing to do it, and I’m wondering if you see politics in this?

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): I smell the stench of politics, partisan politics driving behavior for election results, not focusing on supersound science, as Dr. Scott Atlas said.

Supersound science is where we should focus our attention that leads us to the conclusion that, if you don’t have two underlying conditions, the chances are, you’re going to be okay. If you’re under the age of 60, the chances are really high you’re going to be okay, and in South Carolina, if you’re under the age of 20, we’ve had not a single death.

So we have a lot to celebrate and we need to look at the information and the facts through a prism of optimism, and not simply through the prism of the worst-case scenario every single time we start talking about the pandemic.

But does Senator Scott smell the stench of politics because Democratic governors are evil, or because this is what he thinks Republican governors would, or even should, do if it was a Democrat in the Presidency? One might argue that Governor Walz (D-MN) is pushing the envelope in his move, announced yesterday, to cautiously get the state open, and I’m a little worried that we’re going to see another spike in our numbers. Here’s the latest graph from The New York Times:

We can see a peak somewhat defined, but nothing is guaranteed – if we reopen precipitously, we could return to climbing that peak, much to our sorrow.

Back to my point, I suspect Senator Scott is projecting what he’d be urging Republican governors to do if the situation were reversed.

The 2020 Senate Campaign: North Carolina, Ctd

By | |
Comments Off on The 2020 Senate Campaign: North Carolina, Ctd

Senator Richard Burr’s (R-NC) potential scandal continues to advance as the FBI just seized his phone:

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said.

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

The seizure represents a significant escalation in the investigation into whether Burr violated a law preventing members of Congress from trading on insider information they have gleaned from their official work. [The Los Angeles Times]

I find this very interesting:

Such a warrant being served on a sitting U.S. senator would require approval from the highest ranks of the Justice Department and is a step that would not be taken lightly. Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

The pressure is surely getting stronger, as The Charlotte Observer reports:

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr said Thursday he is temporarily stepping down from his post as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee amid an ongoing federal probe of his stock sales.

“It’s a distraction to a committee that’s extremely important to the safety and security of the American people and a distraction to the members of that committee being asked questions about me, so I tried to eliminate that,” Burr told McClatchy on Thursday outside the Senate.

Burr, a Republican, currently has a TrumpScore of 92.2%, but as chair of the Senate Intel committee, he has been involved in work that has not disputed intelligence reports that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election (see The Charlotte Observer report, above). Will Trump and AG Barr throw Burr to the sharks? I’m betting the answer is Yes – he’ll be an object lesson, not from Trump himself, but from the top leadership of the GOP to the rest of the membership, members of Congress on downwards, that election doesn’t free you from the overt obligations of Party membership. And that’s to protect the top leaders no matter what. There will be no application of ethical and moral standards to those leaders; they are to be considered Gods.

Waxing a bit purple today, aren’t I? Think of it as a psychological defense mechanism.

In any case, they’ll bet their marketing power will bring them victory in a special election in North Carolina. However, it’s worth noting that if Burr resigns before the November elections, Cooper, if he’s so empowered, will appoint a Democrat to replace him, much to the outrage of the North Carolina Republicans. That could bring more machinations.

Speaking of Burr’s home state, how are they feeling about Senator Burr? An Observer editorial:

Now, everything he does will be colored by that failure. Republicans know Burr is an albatross, an example opponents will use throughout this election season to argue that too many in the GOP, especially the president, have seen COVID-19 through the lens of personal gains and losses. North Carolinians know that he will be a source of shame to our state, that until he honors his long-ago pledge to retire in 2022, he will be the N.C. senator who tried to steal a lifeboat all for himself.

As the coronavirus crisis worsens here and across the country, so will the weight of what Richard Burr did and didn’t do. It’s difficult to see him as a visible or viable representative of our interests. His effectiveness as a leader has been profoundly hobbled.

And yet, Burr seems to have no intention of doing everyone a favor and resigning. Sadly, that’s not a surprise. At the moment we needed him most, Richard Burr was thinking mostly about himself. One week later, that hasn’t changed.

The 2020 Senate Campaign: Alabama

By | |
Comments Off on The 2020 Senate Campaign: Alabama

My favorite lickspittle, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, former AG of the United States and Senator for Alabama, knows he’s in trouble in his race to recover his seat, and in response has published a letter pledging his undying support for President Trump – the guy who just kicked him in the face, ya know – and then went on to diss his primary opponent, Tommy Tuberville:

My principles, like my faith, are immovable and non-negotiable. I believe it is always right to do the right thing. My opponent, Tommy Tuberville, calls that weakness, which reveals his true lack of integrity. [AL.com]

And more:

Mr. Tuberville is an opportunist who isn’t from here. He stopped here for work for a while, and moved on, eventually retiring in Florida. He doesn’t know the first thing about Alabama. He says the President is wrong on China, says we must import foreign workers to take American jobs, and up until a few months ago, he said he favors amnesty for illegal immigrants. If you don’t like his position on an issue, just wait a few weeks and he will change it. His house is built on sand.

Alabamians have long resisted pressure from people in Washington telling them how to vote. In fact, Alabama’s motto is – “We Dare Defend Our Rights.”

That’s true. They elected Senator Doug Jones (D) last time, Mr. Sessions.

When I return to the Senate, I look forward to helping the President build the wall, protect American workers, and fundamentally reset our relationship with Communist China.

I can agree that the China relationship will need some serious revisions, although unfortunately our farmers are probably addicted to the Chinese yuan. However, the real question here is whether Sessions and Tuberville fans are now sufficiently alienated that each won’t support the opposing candidate, should their own candidate lose the primary.

This letter is certainly a step down that path.

This Hole Looks Deep, Ctd

By | |
Comments Off on This Hole Looks Deep, Ctd

The moribund thread concerning deepfakes, the difficult-to-detect manipulation of videos for malign purposes, gets an airing on Lawfare in the form of a response by Bobby Chesney of the University of Texas Law School to an opinion that maybe deepfakes aren’t all that important after all:

Making matters worse, growing awareness of the deep fake threat is itself potentially harmful. It increases the chances people will fall prey to a phenomenon that two of us (Chesney and Citron) call the Liar’s Dividend. Instead of being “fooled” by deep fakes, people may grow to distrust all video and audio recordings. Truth decay is a boon to the morally corrupt. Liars can escape accountability for wrongdoing and dismiss real evidence of their mischief by saying it is “just a deep fake.” Politicians have already tried to leverage the Liar’s Dividend. At the time of the release of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, for example, then-candidate Trump struggled to defend his words of “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” A year later, however, President Trump tried to cast doubt on the recording by saying that it was fake or manipulated. The president later made a similar claim in trying to distance himself from his own comments on the firing of FBI Director Comey during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Such attempts will find a more-receptive audience in the future, as awareness grows that it is possible to make fake videos and audios that cannot be detected as fakes solely by our eyes and ears.

Can technology really save us, as [Tim] Hwang suggested, by spawning reliable detection tools? As an initial matter, we disagree with the claim that detection tools inevitably will win the day in this cat-and-mouse game. We certainly are not there yet with respect to detection of deep fakes that are created with Generative Adversarial Networks, and it is not clear that we should be optimistic about reaching that point. Decades of experience with the arms races involving spam, malware, viruses and photo fakery have taught us that playing defense is difficult and that adversaries can be highly motivated and innovative, constantly finding ways to penetrate defenses. Even if capable detection technologies emerge, moreover, it is not assured that they will prove scaleable, diffusible and affordable to the extent needed to have a dramatic impact on the deep fake threat.

I think retreating from the belief that videos show the unvarnished truth to the position that no video is trustworthy would encourage a creeping belief that there is no truth, no facts, just positions, supported by manufactured evidence, taken by people seeking power. We’ve seen a lot of that from the right-wing extremists, from their disregard of scientific research concerning subjects as diverse as abortion and climate change, to the memes coursing through the conservative blood stream attacking the veracity of Snopes, the decades-old website dedicated to uncovering Internet-based hoaxes, lies, and affiliated deceptions. In fact, for the last few years Snopes has been forced into a quasi-bizarre legal quagmire by their own website hosting service (this is their GoFundMe page), which I do not pretend to understand, but appears to be a malicious attack by the forces who fear the truth. Similarly, although to a lesser extent, the American far left also seems to disregard truth in its attacks on the traditional power structure, although here my knowledge mainly derives from the occasional rebuff Andrew Sullivan delivers them in his weekly diary entries. They want to disregard the biological effects of being one sex or the other; Sullivan wishes to acknowledge and even celebrate them. To the left, I can only say that disregarding ugly facts may be alluring, but not the strategy of a successful engineer. Well, that goes for both sides, now doesn’t it?

Be that as it may, I have my doubts about the technological capability of detecting frauds, and therefore I have to wonder if a more social solution to this problem may be necessary, such as creating a registry of videos. No doubt that’ll provoke screams – really loud screams – and then we’d all have to learn to check the registry rather than just presume this or that video is really authentic. And then initial authentication, this is an untampered film of a real event, becomes an issue. It all makes my head spin.

But being forced to distrust everything that we didn’t personally experience is a recipe for breaking up a society. The anti-vaxxers are, in a sense, well on their way to doing that by spreading false information built on distrust of corporations whose main driving force is often just profits. In that sense, their position is understandable due to the behavior of many corporations, or, in other words, their execs, in always driving to increase profits rather than increase the social capital[1] of their corporations. They become the bad guys, even when they aren’t, because they have not articulately communicated to each other, their successors, and their customers the importance of delivering an honest product for an honest fee that hasn’t been built on the backs of the vulnerable, human and non-human.

And sometimes it just feels like it’s getting worse, and that’s because it is. Extremists who don’t like today’s realities call it hoaxes or social constructs and then try to blunder right through them. But when it comes to foundational realities, that doesn’t work so well.

So I hope we can find a way around the deepfake problem, whether it’s technological, verificational – or we just push every person who commits a deepfake off a sea-cliff for the orcas to eat. Otherwise society may disintegrate, or more likely mutate, into something that is less friendly and productive.

1 Social capital, a term I haven’t run across in a very long time, might be best understood as the measurement of how much the institution in question contributes to society. This is versus the usual financial measurements used to decide how well a company is doing – and the deserved “compensation” for the corporate executives. Perhaps society needs to shift away from financial to social capital measurements.

Pledges For The Debates

By | |
Comments Off on Pledges For The Debates

Beginning a thread on the pledges that ought to be asked of the candidates for the 2020 election. This need not be confined to the Presidential elections, either.

  1. (For the Democrats) Jake Tapper, a journalist with CNN, has said that he has observed that when one Party pushes back the norms and boundaries of the Presidential office, the other Party won’t hesitate to take advantage of the new powers when it wins the Presidential office. Will you, Democratic candidate, pledge to restore the boundaries and norms that have been allegedly destroyed by the present and previous Administrations? Will you give consideration to the modification or even repeal of the legislation in which Presidents may give themselves emergency powers? [I.e., begin the migration of power back to Congress.]
  2. Will you pledge to not use precision messaging during the balance of your campaign, and to confine all political message to the public arena? [Precision messaging is the transmission of campaign material to a voter on a private line, such as an email, which permits the material to be tailored to the point where different voters are told opposite information, depending on who they are. That lies must result should be obvious.]

Criminal Cronies Right At The Top

By | |
Comments Off on Criminal Cronies Right At The Top

For some reason, Steve Benen’s description of the proceedings in the case of former National Security Advisor (NSA) Michael Flynn has really brought the probable true nature of the top of our political ladder into focus. For those readers not up on the Flynn incident, Flynn was Trump’s first NSA for a little over a month, at which point allegations that he lied to the FBI about contacts with the Russians forced him to resign. Subsequently, he was charged with said lying, pled guilty twice, but, for reasons of cooperation with prosecutors, had his sentencing hearing delayed. Eventually, he sought to retract his guilty pleas, which was under consideration by presiding Judge Sullivan. Now the DoJ has sought to drop the charges, which resulted in a second letter calling for the resignation of AG William Barr, signed by 2000+ former employees of the DoJ of all political persuasions.

But the DoJ does not have unilateral control over dropping the charges, and here’s what Benen has to say:

Harvard Law School’s Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, told the New York Times. “I would predict that he holds a hearing and has the prosecutors justify the decision they made. The judge could be concerned this is cronyism.”

That would be a reasonable concern given the unprecedented circumstances.

Let’s also not lose sight of the judge’s previous comments regarding the case. In December 2018, for example, during a sentencing hearing, Sullivan made little effort to hide “disgust” with Flynn over his felonies, briefly broaching the subject of whether the former White House national security advisor had committed treason.

The judge — a Republican appointee with a conservative reputation — at one point told Flynn, “Arguably, you sold your country out” by working as an unregistered foreign agent.

This is the same judge who’s now open to receiving briefs about the Flynn case before deciding whether to accept the prosecutorial strategy of the Trump/Barr Justice Department.

Gertner’s remark about cronyism really hits home for me. This isn’t about policy differences, the political “assassination” of Flynn, or clashing ideologies, is it? If it was, Judge Sullivan wouldn’t have made his disgust concerning Flynn known. He would have approved dropping the charges without comment, or even with an approving comment. He didn’t.

The federal judge overseeing the case involving retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn took the unusual step Tuesday night of inviting briefs from third parties, and he plans to setup a schedule soon to accept those filings.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said in a filing Tuesday he’ll allow individuals outside of the Justice Department and Flynn’s attorneys to submit filings in the case that might be able to provide the court with additional information or perspectives that might help him make a decision on whether to dismiss the charges against Flynn or let him withdraw his guilty plea. [NBC News]

This is about rescuing a crony, who may have incriminating information, from the clutches of law enforcement. Clearly, presiding Judge Sullivan has his suspicions, and I suspect mine are congruent: the top levels of the GOP have been taken over by a criminal element. Composed of con-men, they have used the campaign tools built by the GOP to leverage themselves into positions of power, and now they seek to preserve their power, not only by winning reelection, but by pulling Flynn out of danger (presumably, “he knows too much” – which probably makes both him and Trump sweat), and by rebuffing all attempts at retrieving Trump’s tax information. To that latter, taxes may be dull, but they contain some of the most interesting stories.

Sullivan’s next move may be one of the most important legal decisions this nation has seen. I’d give $100,000 for him to respond, in open court, with this question for the government attorneys:

Please explain why you’ve not charged Mr. Flynn with treason? And don’t bother me again with a filing requesting all charges be dropped.

And I’d want to be there to see those government attorneys faint. Barr would probably have a heart attack.

Belated Movie Reviews

By | |
Comments Off on Belated Movie Reviews

If you like off-beat documentaries – possibly a non-sequitur when it comes to documentaries – Pretty Ugly (2014) may fit the bill. Or it may be one of the more clever bits of self-promotion that I’ve seen. Either way, it provoked a lot of conversation between myself and my Arts Editor, as the chronicles of how supposed dead-ender and self-described gargoyle Del Keens is trying to take his modeling outfit Misfit Models to success. A former model himself for Levi’s and other big firms, he knows the business and what he wants – and he’s definitely atypical.

And he and his models do tend to fascinate. Give it a shot if getting a look into an oddball nook of the modeling industry fascinates, along with a mini-bio of a dude who has had to struggle with societal bigotry in order to do anything at all.

Projection City

By | |
Comments Off on Projection City

It’s been a hallmark of Trump’s candidacy and Administration that his accusations, as wild and profligate as they can be, are often based on a shred of truth concerning himself. We’ve seen this with his response to Clinton’s accusation during the debates of Trump being a Russian puppet with his childish retort that she was the puppet, for example.

So, last night when we saw the baffling clip of President Trump asserting there’s a scandal out there called Obamagate, and “everyone” knows about it, I was, secondarily, baffled, but primarily left wondering just what the hell is now brewing in the super-swamp known as the Trump Administration. From whitehouse.gov:

Q    Mr. President, in one of your Mother’s Day tweets, you appear to accuse President Obama of the biggest political crime in American history, by far.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    Those were your words.  What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing?  And do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?

THE PRESIDENT:  “Obamagate.”  It’s been going on for a long time.  It’s been going on from before I even got elected.  And it’s a disgrace that it happened.  And if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at, now, all of this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.

And you’ll be seeing what’s going on over the next — over the coming weeks.  But I — and I wish you’d write honestly about it, but unfortunately, you choose not to do so.

Yeah.  Jon, please.

Q    What is the crime exactly that you’re accusing him of?

THE PRESIDENT:  You know what the crime is.  The crime is very obvious to everybody.  All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.

Watergate was, of course, possibly the biggest scandal in American political history. Trying to redirect everyone’s attention to an Obamagate just makes me wonder: what does Trump have his fingers into now? The testing shortages, scandalous as they are, don’t really equate to Watergate. What’s coming down the pike now?

Descending The Ladder

By | |
Comments Off on Descending The Ladder

When AG William Barr was nominated to the position by President Trump, the conservative talking point – not unreasonably – was that he was a widely respected former AG for President Bush (43). He would be following (technically not succeeding) the widely derided Matthew Whitaker, and I’m sure his nomination occcasioned a breath of relief for many not in the Trump cult, despite an unfortunate memo Barr had written criticizing Mueller investigation as being illicit: finally, a professional, even if the Democrats in the Senate largely voted against his appointment. No doubt many Republicans were outraged that the vote was not more in Barr’s favor.

Since then, Barr has done little but mar his reputation. He led off with outraging Special Counsel Mueller by allegedly misrepresenting his conclusions; later, he earned an unprecedented public letter calling for his resignation, signed by a large number of former DoJ members from both sides of the political spectrum, for his shocking interference in the Roger Stone case’s sentencing phase.

Apparently, AG Barr has a bare spot on his wall of professional awards at home, because now he has a second letter calling for his resignation.

We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us proudly took an oath to defend the Constitution and pursue the evenhanded administration of justice free from partisan consideration.

Many of us have spoken out previously to condemn President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s political interference in the Department’s law enforcement decisions, as we did when Attorney General Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of career prosecutors to seek favorable treatment for President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone. The Attorney General’s intervention in the Stone case to seek political favor for a personal ally of the President flouted the core principle that politics must never enter into the Department’s law enforcement decisions and undermined its mission to ensure equal justice under the law. As we said then, “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”

Now, Attorney General Barr has once again assaulted the rule of law, this time in the case of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Subsequent events strongly suggest political interference in Flynn’s prosecution. Despite previously acknowledging that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” President Trump has repeatedly and publicly complained that Flynn has been mistreated and subjected to a “witch hunt.” The President has also said that Flynn was “essentially exonerated” and that he was “strongly considering a [f]ull [p]ardon.” The Department has now moved to dismiss the charges against Flynn, in a filing signed by a single political appointee and no career prosecutors. The Department’s purported justification for doing so does not hold up to scrutiny, given the ample evidence that the investigation was well-founded and — more importantly — the fact that Flynn admitted under oath and in open court that he told material lies to the FBI in violation of longstanding federal law.

Evidently, they didn’t buy into Barr’s claim that the antecedents of the investigation were illicit. Other evidence of the political nature of Barr’s interference? The filing for withdrawal of Flynn’s prosecution was not signed by any professional DoJ prosecutor – it was signed by a political appointee.

Barr’s reputation is in irreparable tatters.

But, in a way, this is unsurprising. Back in October 2019, as Catherine Rampell of WaPo reported, Barr gave a speech:

On Friday, in a closed-door speech at the University of Notre Dame, Attorney General William P. Barr talked at length about a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.”

The alleged perpetrator of this campaign?

“Militant secularists,” who insist upon keeping government institutions free from the influence of any faith or creed.

To be clear: This was not merely an affirmation — delivered by a devout Catholic, while visiting a Catholic university — of how privately taught religious values can contribute to character development or stronger communities.

No. This appeared to be a tacit endorsement of theocracy.

Theocracies are predicated, at least outwardly, on a single source of inerrant rules. If Barr believes liberals are the source of the problems plaguing society, if he thinks that’s God’s opinion, it’s no surprise he’d ride in on a charger to save a conservative – even a conservative who’s confessed to sin, shall we say, twice.

I don’t expect Barr to resign just because all the professionals have condemned him. He’s doing God’s work here. Rescuing a sinner from punishment. It’s of a piece with the fairly unbelievable behavior of the evangelicals.

And Barr’s entered into the same category as most of Trump’s nominees to important posts – second- and third- raters who are either of dubious morality, or simply don’t understand the secular morality this nation has gradually built up since the days of President Washington. It’s too bad. We could have used a competent Attorney General.

It’ll be interesting to see how Barr’s action and the second letter calling for his resignation impact the independents’ opinion of the Trump Administration and its reelection campaign.

Word Of The Day

By | |
Comments Off on Word Of The Day

Scathing:

  • criticizing someone or something in a severe and unkind way:
    • scathing criticism
    • He was very scathing about the report, saying it was inaccurate. [Cambridge Dictionary]

I used this word in an email today while referencing this post. I bring up this word not because it’s unusual, but because I haven’t actually seen it, that I can think of, for at least a decade.

And Trump needs a good scathing.

Didn’t You Notice They Were Sovereign?

By | |
Comments Off on Didn’t You Notice They Were Sovereign?

I’ve certainly dissed Governor Noem (R-SD) before, but I see she’s descending to a new low:

Leaders of a Sioux tribe in South Dakota on Friday refused a request by the governor to remove checkpoints on state and U.S. highways, arguing it must protect itself from the highly infectious novel coronavirus.

In a public response to Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier wrote that the tribe would “regretfully decline” to move the checkpoints, adding that the reservation is an “island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death.”

“I absolutely agree that we need to work together during this time of crisis, however you continuing to interfere in our efforts to do what science and facts dictate seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation,” Frazier said. “Ignorant statements and fiery rhetoric encourage individuals already under stress from this situation to carry out irrational actions.”

The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Native American communities throughout the country, many of which have long grappled with a lack of hospitals, doctors and public health services. Rates of infection and death on some reservations are significantly higher than in the surrounding states, leading tribal leaders to take extreme steps to prevent the spread of the virus within their borders.

In letters to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Noem said she would take legal action if the checkpoints weren’t removed. She claimed they violated an April 8 memorandum by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that says South Dakota’s tribal governments must consult with the state before closing or restricting travel on the highways.

The tribes, which are in the western and southern parts of the state, have set up the checkpoints to limit travel to and from the reservations. According to guidelines from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, residents and visitors can pass through the checkpoints only to complete “essential activities,” such as medical appointments or getting essential supplies.

A spokesman for the Oglala Sioux Tribe told local radio station SDPB there wasn’t legal merit to Noem’s request.

The tribes didn’t immediately respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment on Saturday.

Soon after the announcement from the Cheyenne River Sioux, South Dakota reported 249 new confirmed cases, a record single-day increase. [WaPo]

Frazier’s wording is certainly provocative, but clearly his first responsibility is to tribal members residing on the tribe’s land, a group known to be vulnerable to disease, and I have to applaud his reaction. His suggestion that South Dakota is a sea of uncertainty and death may have more than one point, suggesting that South Dakota, since the invasion of the Europeans, has become a sea of death for the Indians, as well as a potential sea of death at the current time. However, I suspect that’ll be less true, given South Dakota’s low population density. I have not heard of South Dakota hospitals, and according to South Dakota’s Coronavirus news page, they aren’t.

Deaths in South Dakota are currently listed at 34. I found this interesting:

Minnehaha County is home to Sioux Falls, location of the Smithfields’ Foods plant that shut down due to mass infections, and to 29 of the 34 deaths so far identified with Covid-19. Those workers are in close proximity to each other at the plant, so this shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s worth noting.

And, remember, numbers are not trustworthy. All the experts that I’ve read agree that undercounting is certain. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader from yesterday notes:

The increase in positive tests comes a few days after the National Guard set up a testing site at Washington High School for Smithfield Foods employees and their families. More than 3,500 tests were taken at the site, and on Friday, the state announced the most positive results (239) since cases were announced.

That strongly suggests an undercount of infections, and a concomitant undercount of deaths related to Covid-19. If this is confirmed, it’s another data point in favor of judging the governor as being grossly incompetent. And, yet, Governor Noem wants the tribes to fall into line and open themselves up to carriers of a highly contagious and potentially fatal disease.

Ideology vs. reality. Which one will win? The Soviets found out the hard way. How about Noem?

Corporate Foolishness, Ctd

By | |
Comments Off on Corporate Foolishness, Ctd

Concerning the report of certain corporate dividends continuing unabated during this downturn in business activity a reader writes:

I work at Caterpillar. I was there the day they announced the layoffs. I was there the day they announced that everyone’s merit increase had been rescinded . . . 1 day before they were to go into effect due to the business slowdown caused by COVID-19 and other business conditions. And then the very next day our CEO announced that the stock dividend for the quarter would remain the same as it was the previous quarter. And I remember thinking at that time, uh oh, this is not going to look good. In fact, it looks like our salary increases and the salaries of those let go went to pay for the quarterly dividend. That is the executive board’s decision to make, but it strikes me as a clear message that shareholders are valued over employees. As an employee, I understand the need at this time to cut costs, but it seems to me that shareholders also need to have some skin in the game. But what really irritated me was when the CEO released a video talking about the quarterly results and when explaining why the dividend was not reduced, he actually used the proverbial “We have many investors who rely on that dividend income in their retirement.” And those people that were laid off didn’t rely on that income, I suppose? Very tired of corporate America always trying to con us into thinking Grandma and Grandpa are the investors counting on stock dividends and prices when it’s so obvious that the shareholders who have the majority of the stock are investment firms and other companies, not Joe and Mary from down the street.

Corporate execs often hold immense numbers of shares as well, which is generally seen as a good thing, right up until we realize those execs are married to the quarterly numbers.

And, sadly, for titans like CAT, it’s not as if they have competitors biting at their heels. Maybe I’ll decide to build a house next year, but I won’t be able to specify that the builders not use CAT-supplied gear, now will I? Thus topples one of the pillars of free market capitalism.

Belated Movie Reviews

By | |
Comments Off on Belated Movie Reviews

Even the posters have an accent. Attention to detail!

Little Shop of Horrors (1960), a Roger Corman production, is an enlightening surprise. Opening with some interesting hand drawings of the locale of the story, southern California, as part of the credit sequence, we meet young man Seymour, chronic klutz and amateur horticulturist, his employer, the ethnic Mr. Mushnick, and his love interest, Audrey, as Mushnick’s skid row flower shop struggles along.

Seymour’s backroom project, if only he can survive himself, is a cross of a Venus fly trap with … something else. Teetering on the edge of unemployment, an accident leads to blood making its way onto his project’s leaves, jolting its growth rate, and the next day it’s vocally begging for more food, much to Seymour’s befuddlement.

When Seymour delivers flowers to the local sadistic dentist, he discovers a handy way to feed his plant – kill your dentist in mistaken self-defense and take the body home. This is also an opportunity for a soon-to-be famous actor to demonstrate his chops as the masochistic patient du jour with whom Seymour must put up a masquerade.

Audrey Jr, named after the lovely lady who works at the flower shop alongside him, is soon moved to the premises and is attracting phenomenal traffic, both alive and -ahem- dead. But when the cops come by, who appear to be modeled on Joe Friday and one of his sidekicks, to see just what’s going on at this nondescript flower shop, the action becomes frenetic, from the chase, the hooker, to the unfortunate denouement.

The neat part of this movie is that each scene appears to be well thought out and plumbed for the quirkiness which can be inserted, the sum of the parts being a certain sense of surrealism by the time we discover just how the food items consumed by Audrey, Jr., are remembered for us. The stylizations required by the script may be a trifle overdone, but only a bit, the plot seems organic, and I particularly enjoyed that virtually every character seems to have a life and vision at the heart of their beings, rather than little squares of cardboard. I particularly liked Seymour’s mother, played by the grandmother of the scriptwriter.

It’s not entirely satisfactory, of course, as the print we viewed is black and white, when color could have been more fun, and sometimes the audio was a little off, but it was a surprisingly entertaining and absorbing show. Plaudits!

The 2020 Senate Campaign: Alabama

By | |
Comments Off on The 2020 Senate Campaign: Alabama

President Trump has definitely made his decision regarding the race between Republicans Tommy Tuberville and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama for Sessions’ old seat, currently held by the winner of the special election in 2018, Doug Jones (D-AL). As reported by CNN:

President Donald Trump on Friday once again tore into his fired attorney general, Jeff Sessions, saying he felt obligated to appoint him to the job and calling him “very weak and very sad.”

Sessions first became a source of Trump’s public frustration when in early 2017 the then-attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation. His recusal came after it was publicly revealed that he didn’t disclose at his Senate confirmation hearing two pre-election meetings with Russia’s then-ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

The President was asked during a Friday morning call to “Fox & Friends” if there would have been a Russia probe had Bill Barr, the current attorney general, been attorney general during the start of the Trump administration.

“No, there wouldn’t be. He would have stopped it immediately. … Jeff Sessions was a disaster. I made him — I didn’t want to make him attorney general but he was the first senator to endorse me so I felt a little bit of an obligation,” Trump said.

I particular liked this bit:

Trump added that Sessions “came to see me four times, just begging me to be attorney general. He wasn’t, you know, to me, equipped to be attorney general. But he wanted and wanted and wanted it.”

“He goes in — he was so bad in his nomination proceedings. I should have gotten rid of him there,” Trump said of Sessions, adding that he “knew less about Russia than I did.”

Admission of poor judgment and handing out important positions like candy, rather than only doing that with minor ambassadorships. Being easily swayed. It’s … embarrassing to be in Trump’s corner, frankly.

But this probably means Sessions’ demise in the July 14th runoff. The general consensus is that the winner is certain to beat Jones in the general election, but we shall see. I haven’t found any polls appertaining, and, in any case, events could easily render such polling irrelevant, more so than usual.

Word Of The Day

By | |
Comments Off on Word Of The Day

Chiral:

In chemistry, a molecule or ion is called chiral (/kaɪˈræl/) if it cannot be superposed on its mirror image by any combination of rotations and translations. This geometric property is called chirality. The terms are derived from Ancient Greek χείρ (cheir), meaning “hand”; which is the canonical example of an object with this property. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Life’s other mystery: Why biology’s building blocks are so lop-sided,” Hayley Bennett, NewScientist (18 April 2020, paywall):

Indeed, most complex molecules have at least two possible “mirror” versions, known as left and right-handed “enantiomers”. This matters because the alternatives can have remarkably different properties or effects. The two opposite-handed versions of the chemical known as carvone, for instance, give the spearmint and caraway plants their distinctive aromas. Similarly, the enantiomers of limonene, both formed naturally, smell differently: one of lemon, the other of orange.

The phenomenon has implications in drug development too. In the pharmaceutical industry, enantiomers often have to be painstakingly separated because one version of a drug doesn’t work or isn’t safe. Thalidomide, for example, was a right-handed molecule that caused birth deformities in thousands of babies, whereas its left-handed form safely treats pregnancy sickness.

It’s Not Quite Like Watching Sausage Being Made

By | |
Comments Off on It’s Not Quite Like Watching Sausage Being Made

Erin Bromage discusses in great deal how the virus behind Covid-19 moves from person to person:

In order to get infected you need to get exposed to an infectious dose of the virus; the estimate is that you need about ~1000 SARS-CoV2 viral particles for an infection to take hold, but this still needs to be determined experimentally. That could be 1000 viral particles you receive in one breath or from one eye-rub, or 100 viral particles inhaled with each breath over 10 breaths, or 10 viral particles with 100 breaths. Each of these situations can lead to an infection.

How much Virus is released into the environment?

A Toilet flush: Without a seat to close, a single flush releases ~8000 droplets into the air. If the person using the restroom before you was infected, you have a chance of contracting the virus via breathing the air in the bathroom. While the paper in question did not look for live virus, it is clear that infected people are releasing, at a minimum, viral RNA, in bowel movements. Don’t use public bathrooms or wait a few minutes before entering so gravity can bring the droplets to the floor.

Lots more, well-written and comprehensible to those of us lacking degrees in the subject, like me.