Monthly Archives: August 2020

Just because I enjoyed it on Colbert.

https://youtu.be/gkmAU2U_BqE

The religious “left” is moving in on Trump’s base:

“This election is different because President Trump rejects our Catholic values and does everything in his power to divide us while our economy and health care systems collapse under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Lee Morrow, elections manager for Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice and head of the new initiative. “Catholics cannot be single-issue voters.”

For Morrow, Catholic values involve caring for immigrants, the elderly and the poor and addressing racism, among other issues.

“To be true to my Catholic faith and the teachings of Pope Francis, I have to do everything in my power to make sure that Donald Trump loses in November,” he said.

“These former Trump voters are becoming Pope Francis Voters.” [Religion News Service]

Look for Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice to be investigated by Attorney General William Barr. And probably this pastor as well:

[Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice] joins several liberal Christian groups aimed at influencing religious voters. Among them is the New Moral Majority PAC [NMM], a group co-founded this month by the Rev. Noel Anderson, a longtime faith-based immigrant rights organizer, and the Rev. Ryan M. Eller, a veteran faith-based organizer based in Louisville, Kentucky.

The group has created a digital tool geared toward getting faith leaders to endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaign, making the endorsement blitz its “primary focus” heading into November.

Several faith leaders, such as the Rev. Jacqui Lewis of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, endorsed Biden and Harris via NMM this week.

“The policies of a new Biden-Harris administration will be built on principles that more closely align with our Christian beliefs,” ​Anderson said in a press release.​

Look for Rev. Lewis, his church, and his compatriots to be placed under investigation by Barr, particularly with relevance to the Johnson Amendment, under which faith leaders who take advantage of tax-free status for churches may not endorse political leaders. Which makes me shake my head, as the right wing religious leaders have railed for decades against the Johnson Amendment.

Unless they’re ineffective and so don’t draw Trump and Barr’s attention.

Historically, Trump and Barr try to throw mud on anyone and any institution they don’t like. If they do attack these groups, though, they may forget that many of these groups glory in the mud – that is, the more the powerful attack them, the more they see it as a justification of their activities.

Remember the derecho that hit Iowa? Turns out Governor Reynolds (R-IA) did, in fact, ask for Federal help. President Trump’s response is a little puzzling:

President Donald Trump said he had signed an emergency declaration for Iowa to help supply federal money to help the state recover from an unusual wind storm that struck a week ago but federal emergency management officials later confirmed he had only signed a portion of the request.

Trump claimed on his official presidential Twitter account Monday afternoon that he had “Just approved (and fast) the FULL Emergency Declaration for the Great State of Iowa. They got hit hard by record setting winds.” …

A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman said in an email that Trump had approved the public assistance portion of the governor’s request totaling about $45 million covering 16 counties. That portion of the declaration provides debris removal and repair to government buildings and utilities. He did not, however, approve the individual assistance request for 27 counties that includes $82.7 million for homes destroyed or with major damage and $3.77 billion for agriculture damage to farm land, grain bins and buildings and $100 million for private utilities repair. [AP]

At first glance, it appears to be a boot to the face of Iowans, especially the farmers. But, despite his lie in the Tweet, I suspect we’ll be seeing President Trump signing the rest of the request:

Trump is planning to visit Iowa on Tuesday, Reynolds said during a news conference, but she provided no details.

And it would not be in the least surprising if Trump signs the personal assistance portion of the emergency request at that time. It’s not that Trump has any expertise in disaster appraisal, and, given the quality of his appointees so far, I have no confidence that his FEMA head has any, either.

It’s the optics, of course.

Signing the personal assistance request in Iowa brings a sense of drama and his personal attention to Iowa. He may see this as a big win for his campaign.

How Iowans feel about being used as campaign markers is not clear to me. Perhaps this will convert Iowa independents to the Trump side. I suppose, if, in fact, he signs the rest of the request at that time, we’ll find out how much of a boost – or a drop – he gets in November.

As the Trump Administration veterans turn against Trump:

Terrified of a second Trump term. But not enough to hide in a bunker. https://t.co/Q6ojOAWbzb

— Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) August 17, 2020

“Magical authorities.” It’s simultaneously laughable that an adult would claim such authorities, and horrifying that anyone, anyone at all, would vote for this deeply deluded man.

The Ringer covers a guy – OCD, I should assume – that copyedits the The New York Times – just for giggles:

Anyone who followed @nyttypos that day soon got a feel for the flavor of its tweets. On October 19, @nyttypos spotted a “happened” instead of a “happen” in a story about Brexit; a missing space and a picture of three people captioned with five names in a story about TikTok clubs; a missing comma and a “statue” in place of a “statute” in a story about President Donald Trump’s attempt to host the G7 Summit at his own Doral resort; a subject-verb agreement error in a story about Venezuela’s water quality; a misplaced comma in a story about Bernie Sanders accepting an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and a missing space between quotation marks and a quote in a story about Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Having myself been slimed by typos in a local newspaper story about students excelling at the PSATs in high school – I was the big shocker as I was a real slacker in school – as being named H Kenny White, I have a certain sympathy with this dude, whoever he is.

Still, this guy is a bit whacko. Before the copy-edit desk at TNYT was dissolved, it was manned by one hundred professionals. Now there’s just this guy.

When he corners his typo prey, @nyttypos typically screenshots the problematic passage and tags the author and/or any editors he believes may be responsible (or responsive). Although he could catch more typos with honey than with vinegar, his tweets tend toward acetic acid. “Functionally illiterate” is a go-to put-down. “It’s kind of a paradox in that if he just wants to fix the mistakes, he’s hurting his chances of doing so because reporters are probably tuning him out, maybe actually muting him or blocking him,” Bailey says. “But he’s probably building more of a following among random people on Twitter who like to see someone dunk on the Times about backward quotation marks.”

The article is more than just coverage of the dude, though. It also gives insight into TNYT. Fun!

As many pundits, including myself, desired, Congress and other governmental forces have leapt into action with regard to the Postmaster General DeJoy debacle:

The U.S. Postal Service will suspend any policy or operational changes until after the November presidential elections, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said Tuesday.

Critics claimed DeJoy was hindering the agency’s ability to accommodate an expected surge in mail-in voting, which he denied.

DeJoy, a close ally of President Donald Trump and a longtime GOP donor who was appointed in May, said he had come to the federal agency to make changes that would allow for “its long-term sustainability,” but he intended to delay those efforts as scrutiny of those practices grew — despite his view that the USPS needed a significant overhaul.

“In the meantime, there are some longstanding operational initiatives — efforts that predate my arrival at the Postal Service — that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic,” he said. “To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.” [NBC News]

This is the first step towards victory. DeJoy has agreed to stop advancing along the front, but he’s already done damage to the Post Office. The following actions and retreats must continue:

1. Replacement of the equipment reported to have been removed.
2. Retraction of policies promulgated.
3. Return of personnel to their former positions.
4. Continued investigation of DeJoy by the postal service’s Inspector General.
5. Continued investigation by Congress. DeJoy, as noted, is scheduled to testify before Congress.
6. Continued investigation by state authorities.

To the last point, the NBC News article has this to say:

DeJoy’s announcement came as Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, both Democrats, shared their intention to file lawsuits against the postmaster general over his policy changes. At least 18 states are involved in the lawsuits.

When asked by reporters about DeJoy’s announcement, both men laughed and said their lawsuits would proceed.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Shapiro said. “Hopefully the American people can breathe a sigh of relief, but I will not let my foot off the gas so long as the postal officials continue to violate the law through their procedural steps.”

Bravo! But this is merely a first step.

Some analogies just don’t work, of course. I ran across this pretty thing feeding on the remains of an out of season apple.

And that was about as close as I could get.

I appreciate Admiral McRaven’s (USN-Ret.) urge to pinpoint President Trump as being dangerous:

Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country. He has planted the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans that our institutions aren’t functioning properly. And, if the president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, law enforcement, the press, the military, the Supreme Court, the medical professionals, election officials and the postal workers, then why should we? And if Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump. It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it. [WaPo]

But, quite honestly, stories and, yes, alleged jokes denigrating Congress have circulated for decades, not just a few years. From ridiculous remarks to more controversial topics such as term limits, I’ve seen anti-Congress, anti-government email for decades – here’s one now. McRaven is quite right that Trump is the tip of the spear, but the shaft of that spear must also be part of the treatment that the Republic will require if it is to survive and prosper with a wise government,

And not be populated with a bunch of third-raters who know how to chant ‘lower taxes,’ ‘too much regulation,’ and ‘abortion is baby-killing!’, and by so doing, get themselves elected without regard to any actual competency. None of those arguments are well thought out, and yet they’re the prison bars of the GOP voter these days. They’re clung to as if they’re sources of nutrition, but, for the nation, they’re just poison.

A reader comments on the wreckage that used to be Iowa:

It was a derecho. A very large derecho: 770 miles long lasting 14 hours, starting in eastern Nebraska and traveling easterly across Iowa and Illinois. I worry that they may start occurring in MN more often. Climate change definitely involved. 115mph winds in eastern Iowa. Not much can stand up to that.

It took 250 years to hit 1°C of global warming by 2015, the fastest change in 65 million years.

It’ll take 25 years to hit 2°C by 2040.

Here’s what I was able to find, from Wikipedia, in turn from NASA.

Not the sort of curve you want to see on temperatures – unless you’re a fusion reactor developer.

And my Arts Editor reports that one of her Iowa contacts hasn’t had power for an entire week now.

Former Trump DHS Secretary Nielsen’s Chief of Staff Miles Taylor:

Miles Taylor, a former senior Trump administration official, endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Monday, becoming one of the highest-ranking former Trump administration officials to do so. …

“Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president and even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m confident that he won’t make the same mistakes as this President.”

In the video, Taylor accuses Trump of directing FEMA to withhold disaster funding to California following devastating wildfires in that state because voters in that state had not voted for him for President.

“He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him and that politically it wasn’t a base for him,” Taylor says in the video. [CNN/Politics]

Meanwhile, far-right pundit Erick Erickson, in mail to unsubscribers on his mail list, teases for more money today:

Tomorrow, for everyone, I’ll explain what is really going on with the post office and why it is nothing to fret over. This is just a conspiracy theory loved by members of the media, so they’re treating it differently than QAnon even though it is no less nuts. If you get this, you’ll get that tomorrow. For the rest, you’ve got to click the subscribe button.

Nothing to fret over. Those weekly magazines of mine that aren’t showing up? Don’t sweat it. Meanwhile, someone with an inside view of the Administration is sounding all the alarm bells.

Erickson, for all of his claims that he’s not an apologist for the Administration, well, he is. And a bad one.

We’ve already seen a few high officials discrediting Trump, but I’m not sure I remember any of them explicitly endorsing Biden for President. Kudos to Mr. Taylor for – finally – getting up the gumption to do it. It’s the sort of thing a Responsible Republican should do.

And if this was strategically timed, all the more kudos.

An item in Steve Benen’s summary of campaign news made me think:

From a group email. The accompanying note was Be sure to watch all the way to the end credits.

If we had a metric for spontaneous creativity, I wonder if it would have increased measurably since the pandemic started.

Anadromous:

going from salt water to fresh water or up rivers to spawn: said of salmon, shad, etc. [Your Dictionary]

Noted in “These Prehistoric Ocean Animals are Still Around Today,” Ocean Currents:

Since lampreys are anadromous fish (fish that live in fresh and saltwater), they play a major role in healthy estuaries—transporting nutrients from the ocean to freshwater environments. Due to increased human disturbances, lampreys are severely declining, which has the potential to affect entire ecosystems.

The usage might be a bit inaccurate. Does the definition, as understood by marine biologists, include the requirement that the fish die after the spawning?

[h/t JN]

Apple trees – or at least the two varieties we have – are bi-annual. This is the non-productive year for ours, except, well:

I don’t keep up very well in many fields. For instance:

Via WaPo, by Lyz Lenz, a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

Sunsets on other worlds and even stars:

More here.

The USPS story bears repetition, as Margaret Sullivan promptly does:

Satrap:

(in the past) someone who governed a province (= political area) in ancient Persia [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Trump refuses to learn the lessons of World War II,” Max Boot, WaPo:

Those were farsighted decisions, but the postwar order was also deeply flawed. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe, turning the region into a Soviet satrapy for more than four decades. Joseph Stalin’s troops also advanced into Manchuria, China’s industrial heartland, helping speed Mao Zedong’s victory in China’s civil war.

I’m dreaming of a … glurg glug glurg

The Monster Walks (1932) is a rather limp murder mystery cum horror show, with beastly arms emerging from the headboards to strangle the lovelies in their sleep. Not that this is a bad thing, but this particular script could have used at least a couple of rewrites.

Don’t bother.

Stolen from The Weekly Dish’s VFYW contest – thanks to Chris Bodenner, I think. I had not heard of the Chinese ghost cities:

Bad planning? Leaders’ prestige? I wonder about the environmental costs.

Pentest:

Penetration testing is an offensive security exercise conducted by an organization with the intent to uncover security weaknesses and ultimately help strengthen their defense mechanisms, threat detection capabilities and response times. Traditionally, penetration testing is performed by an independent third-party with little to no upfront knowledge of their target organization. This is done to imitate an adversary who is targeting the organization with nefarious intent.

Penetration testing can be performed against something as small as a single tenant application and as large as a global enterprise network. Several methodologies frameworks standards and tools exist which are often motivated by or designed to satisfy a particular compliance or regulatory committee such as PCI and HIPAA. [Pentest Geek]

Noted in “Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5″ floppy disks,” Gareth Corfield, The Register:

“Aircraft themselves are really expensive beasts, you know,” said [Alex] Lomas as he filmed inside the big Boeing. “Even if you had all the will in the world, airlines and manufacturers won’t just let you pentest an aircraft because [they] don’t know what state you’re going to leave it in.”

Groups frowned upon by established authorities, such as terrorist groups and revolutionaries, may find cryptocurrency alluring, but sometimes things like this can happen …

The Justice Department seized $2 million worth of cryptocurrency from terror groups in the Middle East, federal prosecutors announced Thursday, marking the largest ever US government takeover of online terrorist financing.

The funds from ISIS, al Qaeda and the al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, would likely have been used by the groups to buy weapons and train would-be attackers, Justice Department officials said.

“Two million dollars is a lot of equipment that they can buy, a lot of weapons a lot of training that they can fund, a lot of tickets to fly people around the world,” said John Demers, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s national security division. “This is going to make a big difference in their operation.”[CNN/Politics]

The problem with hard currency is security: transportation and storage can be a chancy business. The ease of use and security of cryptocurrencies, though, have a counterbalance in ease of confiscation, or even just simple disappearance. If you’ve invested in bitcoin and the infrastructure disappears, too bad for you.

While hard currency can lose its value due to inflation, at least it still has some. Quick conversion into weapons or other supplies may be a wise move, depending on the stability of the country issuing the currency.

From NewScientist (11 July 2020):

Everyone is entitled to one good scare – and it may be good for us. People who watch a lot of horror films and those who are morbidly curious about unpleasant subjects seem to be more psychologically resilient to the covid-19 pandemic, a study reveals.

“Horror users tended to have less psychological distress,” says Coltan Scrivner at the University of Chicago. …

Fans of horror movies were less prone to negative mental states. “Which suggested to us, maybe with horror it’s about emotion regulation,” says Scrivner. Watching scary movies “allows me to give myself the experience of being afraid and then conquering that fear”. This may be one of the underlying reasons for people’s fascination with scary stories.

The prepper genres, which all feature society’s institutions collapsing, had an additional benefit. “We find that same decrease in psychological distress, but you also find an increase in preparedness,” says Scrivner. The team found a similar pattern for pandemic-themed movies. “People who’ve seen none at all were much less prepared than people who said they’d seen many.”

Some of it will be in the promptings of considering how things can go wrong, rather than how they can go right. Consider a fan of romantic comedies, searching for the right person to date, the anticipation of the pleasures and ecstasies, all that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the horror fan is screaming “Don’t open that door where the fumes are coming,” because they’ve learned to think ahead on a more realistic level. The researchers note that just watching horror movies isn’t enough, as if seeing The Omen would be helpful in preventing social anxiety. No, it takes an active interest, in my opinion, the inquisitive mind that looks at how things may go wrong.

And figure out how bad it can get.

It’s the unknown that causes anxiety; the horror fan who thinks they have the worst figured out, right or wrong, can now take actions to mitigate the worst. And that leads to less anxiety.

I am not a horror fan, although I must say I enjoyed Alien and Aliens.