Monthly Archives: August 2020

Dr. Kaeli Swift on Corvid Research notes a newly observed behavior in Corvids – aka, crows:

Corvus macrorhynchos, the large-billed crow. Just call him Jimmy Big Mouth.
Image source: Wikipedia

Ask any crow feeder about their ritual and there’s a good chance that it starts with more than just making themselves visible. To get “their” bird’s attention, about half of crow feeders start with some kind of auditory cue, like a whistle or gentle name calling. Given that American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) can be individually distinguished by their calls, and many corvids—including the large-billed crows (Corvus macrorhynchos)—can recognize familiar conspecific calls, this strategy seems far from superstitious. In fact, previous work has demonstrated that crows can discriminate human voices.

When presented with playback of their caretakers or unfamiliar speakers saying, “hey,” hand-reared carrions crows (Corvus corone) showed significantly more responsiveness towards unfamiliar speakers. That their response is different is what suggests that they can discriminate, but it’s hard to not do a double take at the fact that the thing they seem more interested in is the person they don’t know. Shouldn’t they be more interested in the folks that generally come bearing gifts? While we still don’t have a super satisfying answer to this question, it’s possible this comes from the fact that novel humans are less predictable, and therefore more threatening, than a familiar caretaker who can be safely ignored. Likewise, a new study out suggests that it’s not just individual people crows can hear the difference between, but entire languages.

Recognizing unfamiliar human languages – for intellectual amusement, or as a survival mechanism? Fascinating stuff. I’ll go for the latter, but I’ll only put $5 into the pot, because, frankly, Corvids are known to raid the pot when you turn your back..

Logorrhea:

In psychology, logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Ancient Greek λόγος logos “word” and ῥέω rheo “to flow”) is a communication disorder that causes excessive wordiness and repetitiveness, which can cause incoherency. This disorder is also known as press speech. Logorrhea is sometimes classified as a mental illness, though it is more commonly classified as a symptom of mental illness or brain injury. This ailment is often reported as a symptom of Wernicke’s aphasia, where damage to the language processing center of the brain creates difficulty in self-centered speech. [Wikipedia]

This one came from a reader:

Here’s a word of the day for you, Hue. A writer applied this to the crazed critics of Bill Gates who accused him of implanting microchips, etc.: logorrheic

“He also became a target of the plague of misinformation afoot in the land, as logorrheic critics accused him of planning to inject microchips in vaccine recipients.”

Funny. I was just reading a Scientific American article on the topic of science vs clashing world views:

In theory, resolving factual disputes should be relatively easy: Just present strong evidence, or evidence of a strong expert consensus. This approach succeeds most of the time, when the issue is, say, the atomic weight of hydrogen.

But things don’t work that way when scientific advice presents a picture that threatens someone’s perceived interests or ideological worldview. In practice, it turns out that one’s political, religious or ethnic identity quite effectively predicts one’s willingness to accept expertise on any given politicized issue.

“Motivated reasoning” is what social scientists call the process of deciding what evidence to accept based on the conclusion one prefers. As I explain in my book, “The Truth About Denial,” this very human tendency applies to all kinds of facts about the physical world, economic history and current events. – Adrian Bardon

Another piece of literature on people who bank on reality not having its vengeance on them. Personally, I try to avoid reality vengeance, as it tends to shorten lifetimes and makes me cranky,

(h/t CJ)

NGC 2027 – the Jewel Bug nebula:

Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Kastner (RIT)

The object had been slowly puffing away its mass in quiet, spherically symmetric or perhaps spiral patterns for centuries — until relatively recently when it produced a new cloverleaf pattern.

New observations of the object have found unprecedented levels of complexity and rapid changes in the jets and gas bubbles blasting off of the star at the centre of the nebula.

It looks like a cartoon!

Just a couple of apples on this off-year – but begonias!

I don’t think you’ll find that word in the Scrabble dictionary.

It’s been weeks since we watched Fast Color (2018), and I’m still not sure what to make of it, outside of the obvious fact that it’s marvelously well acted. Ruth is a young black woman, traveling through the American West in a world plagued with drought. She’s headed for her family’s ancestral home, where her mother, Bo, and daughter, Lila, live. But she has a problem she cannot control: seizures. When they happen, she ties herself down, and then the earth moves for her.

Literally.

The government is searching for her, because power worries the powerful, but Ruth is resourceful. We reach her family’s farm with her, and discover that Bo and Lila each have powers of their own, but they control their’s – Ruth cannot control her’s. Pressure builds on Ruth, aware that the government is moving in on her and her family from one side, and her own family is pushing her as well – and, all the while, the lack of water is yet another force in her life, a dearth that may motivate the violence which accompanies the existentially threatened, especially when some are different from others. What will these raw forces pull out of Ruth, whose own restless nature wishes to follow its own course?

While some might call this a superhero movie, it’s not. Such stories have good guys and bad guys, and it’s not clear there are any bad guys here. It’s more of a meditation on the clash between mature judgment and the urges concomitant with being outcasts and different. It takes its time to build characters and advance lines of thought, but organically within the plot and world it’s building.

And it’s good.

Recommended.

Heather Cox Richardson on the activities of new Postmaster General DeJoy:

The Friday night news dump was about the United States Postal Service. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump loyalist, has recently created new rules for the agency that have dramatically slowed the delivery of mail just as mail-in voting for 2020 has begun. Today, DeJoy overhauled the USPS, releasing a new organizational chart that displaces postal executives with decades of experience and concentrates power in DeJoy himself. Twenty-three executives have been reassigned or fired; five have been moved in from other roles. The seven regions of the nation will become four, and the USPS will have a hiring freeze. DeJoy says the new organization will create “clear lines of authority and accountability.”

There is reason to be suspicious of DeJoy’s motives. Not only have his new regulations slowed mail delivery, but also under him the USPS has told states that ballots will have to carry first-class 55-cent postage rather than the normal 20-cent bulk rate, almost tripling the cost of mailing ballots. This seems to speak to Trump’s wish to make mail-in ballots problematic for states. And DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, whom Trump has nominated to become ambassador to Canada, own between $30.1 million and $75.3 million of assets in competitors to the USPS. This seems to speak to the report issued by the Trump administration shortly after the president took office, calling for the privatization of the USPS.

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called out the policies that slowed the delivery of essential mail, “including medicines for seniors, paychecks for workers, and absentee ballots for voters.” They called for DeJoy’s recent changes to be reversed.

How this isn’t a conflict of interest, I don’t know. There are some notable points.

• Popularity. The USPS is not an unpopular institution. In fact, according to Gallup, as of about a year ago, USPS was the most popular Federal agency.
• Anti-democratic. Given its popularity, this approach – underhanded, if you need an appropriate adjective – to getting rid of USPS by replacing optimized processes and experienced personnel with sub-optimal processes and using political hacks like DeJoy in place of people who know their business, subverts the popular will, as well as betraying the legacy of the first Postmaster-General, Benjamin Franklin, who saw USPS not so much as a service, but as a national binder, a tie that related all of us to each other. By destroying it, Trump and DeJoy destroy another tendon holding this nation together. This is no way to run a government.
• Prices will rise. We’ve already seen price inflation from USPS. If USPS is completely subverted and destroyed, UPS, FedEx, and their competitors will have even less competition. Basic economic theory teaches that prices rise and fall for a particular product or service in relation to the number and intensity of competition, mitigated by collusive activities. Prices will rise and profits become further engorged – much to the benefit of stock holders like DeJoy and his wife. See the links to UPS and FedEx for information on profit growth in recent years.
• Endangerment. Seeing as many medicines are now delivered via USPS, citizens who cannot leave their abodes and, for whatever reason, are isolated from pharmacies, such as in rural areas, will now have their life-saving medicines delayed, as has already been documented. DeJoy should be arrested and criminally charged with malicious endangerment by one of the states. (I wonder what would happen if a Change.org petition calling for that action were to appear.)

I have little doubt that a Biden Administration, should that come to pass, would make rebuilding USPS a priority. But it shouldn’t be necessary; Trump should know better. The fact that he doesn’t is a measure of his dysfunctionality.

I hope Pelosi and Schumer can do more to stop this oaf.

NewScientist (5 August 2020, paywall) interviews post-doc mathematician Lisa Piccirillo, who solved the Conway knot question concerning slicing in a week, concerning why she became a mathematician, and what it takes:

The decision to go to graduate school was a difficult one. I still had this idea that I think a lot of people have, which is that the only way to be a successful mathematician is to be a genius, and I’m certainly not anything like that. So I thought: “Why bother? I’m never going to be that good.”

There’s a strong stereotype of what people who do maths are like – introverted, nerdy, probably male, probably dead – and I was none of those things. I was very worried that I would have to give up other aspects of myself to be a maths robot and I didn’t want to do that. I felt that tension very acutely in my undergraduate programme, but in graduate school, I learned that this tension isn’t real. Mathematicians are interesting humans and none of them are geniuses.

Oh, ouch. I’ll bet there were some hurt feelings over that one. But Piccirillo has her revenge on me just for writing this post:

NewScientist: What will you be working on next?

I’m still very interested in 4-manifolds and in using sliceness to understand them better. It’s also true that this trick I used for the Conway knot doesn’t work on some other, more complicated knots. The reason is because it isn’t always possible to build a trace – sometimes it’s provably impossible or we just don’t know how to do it.

I’m trying to understand how to apply this type of argument more broadly to sliceness problems. More concretely, it turns out that sometimes, for some special knots, I can go home and build you another knot that shows a trace, but a computer can’t. Why not? It’s because we don’t know the rules of how we do it ourselves. If the maths gods hand me a knot and ask me to build a trace, I may get lucky, but I don’t know if I could tell you how I got there. And I’d like to understand why.

Concerning a trace: All knots have something called a trace, which is the manifold you can build from that knot. And a manifold?

In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or n-manifold for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to the Euclidean space of dimension n. [Wikipedia]

OK, that’s just a digression. My actual interest is in her statement … If the maths gods hand me a knot and ask me to build a trace, I may get lucky, but I don’t know if I could tell you how I got there. That just leaves me hanging, being a software engineer and all. She doesn’t know how? What? Then how does she know the trace properly derives from the knot? Given a trace, is there a trapdoor function that reveals the knot to which it corresponds?

Augh!

If I were Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), I wouldn’t be betting on being reelected:

As Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed this summer for schools to reopen, state leaders told school boards they would need Health Department approval if they wanted to keep classrooms closed.

Then they instructed health directors not to give it.

Following a directive from DeSantis’ administration, county health directors across Florida refused to give school boards advice about one of the most wrenching public health decisions in modern history: whether to reopen schools in a worsening pandemic, a Gannett USA TODAY NETWORK review found.

In county after county the health directors’ refrain to school leaders was the same: Their role was to provide information, not recommendations. [Palm Beach Post]

Yeah, you think voters whose kids are being put at risk, along with those same voters when those kids bring the virus home with them, will vote for DeSantis?

Yeah, me neither.

Look: as I noted just a little while ago, Governor DeSantis won his position by basically sewing himself to President Trump. When he entered the race in 2018, no one gave him a chance, but he got himself on Fox News repeatedly, and thus in front of avid Fox News viewer President Trump, and made happy noises about the President, enough that he received the Presidential endorsement – and the Florida voters, by a bare .4% points, made him Governor.

Now, for a politician, disasters are a curse and an opportunity. Display wise leadership, pick the right people to solve the problem, and you’re golden. Suddenly, people talk about your national prospects.

Drop the ball, and your political career comes to an end.

DeSantis, in his frantic attempts to remain a Trump favorite, followed orders from the White House and tried to reopen early. There are rumors that numbers have been suppressed and manipulated even beforehand, and Rebekah Jones, GIS Analyst manager for the State of Florida, was fired – she claims for refusing to participate in the manipulations. She has since set up her own coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak. Lauded early on for numbers that looked far too good, Florida has since ascended to the top of the list of states for infection rates, a sad achievement. Currently, according to Global Epidemics, it sits in the fourth place. If you trust their numbers.

Interestingly enough, DeSantis’ behavior may not only end his own political career – sycophants rarely make good leaders – but he may be helping end the career of President Trump, who, after all, despite his attempts to disclaim responsibility, carries the ultimate responsibility for the response to Covid-19. The Biden Campaign will use the disaster in Florida, including DeSantis’ dishonest and dangerous attempt to manipulate the schools into looking normal, as another charge of incompetency and even dementia against Trump.

And It Should Stick. Because it’s true. DeSantis’ ties to Trump are not a secret.

Trump’s base won’t care, they’ve had their victimhood thoroughly instilled, and Trump keeps playing to it. But independents will care, especially those with kids.

Especially suburban moms who are seeing their kids being forced to go into danger, and then coming home and exposing mom and dad.

DeSantis’ next election is 2022. He may not even run, if he’s smart. But he doesn’t appear to be smart.

Sally Jenkins on WaPo:

The “Little Boy” cloud.

Kevin Drum revisits an old post of his regarding research into why World War II ended, and usually I wouldn’t comment on an old post, even a revisited old post, but it concerns World War II, which is a pivot point in human history, and there’s one statement from journalist Gareth Cook, referencing historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa new (at the time) work, that Kevin treats that I think could stand a little more analysis. Here’s Drum:

This is fascinating stuff. At the same time, I think that Cook takes a step too far when he suggests that Hasegawa’s research, if true, should fundamentally change our view of atomic weapons. “If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit,” he writes, “then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems.” But that hardly follows. America in 1945 had an air force capable of leveling cities with conventional weaponry. We still do—though barely—but no other country in the world comes close. With an atomic bomb and a delivery vehicle, North Korea can threaten to destroy Seoul. Without it, they can’t. And larger atomic states, like the US, India, Pakistan, and Russia, have the capacity to do more than just level a city or two. They can level entire countries.

It is fascinating, even though my understanding of World War II is out of date and informal. The implications of a Japanese High Command, faced with overwhelming force and superior, by then, technologies, that still was split on surrender even after losing two entire cities speaks to a certain brand of religious fanaticism of fascinating pathology.

But it’s the statement, “If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit,” [Hasegawa] writes, “then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems.” This presumes humanity and its culture as a constant across time and space, and, to my eye, in neither dimension is humanity and culture constant. I see constant evolution and changes in values; indeed, such is necessary due to changes in environment and competition. Those cultures that do not change and adapt die.

So attempting to determine the strength of a nuclear deterrent for all of mankind is a fool’s quest, it’s a tilt against the windmill. The strength of a deterrent is societally determined. For example, what is the value of a human life? In the West, we presume it to be fairly high, but that’s not a universally accepted value. In badly overpopulated cities, the price of a life can be very low.

Another objection lies in the differing contexts. Japan was already at war, a war that had gone on for four years. Deterrent, though, implies a state other than a so-called ‘hot war’: the iconic Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc, which never devolved into all out war, may not have transitioned to a real war because both sides had nuclear weapons, or such is the popular wisdom of the time.

So while my end conclusion may match Drum’s, it’s not at all for the same reasons. He relies on equivalent technologies and their effect on the enemy, while I prefer a more fundamental approach.

If you’re not familiar with qualified immunity, let United States District Court Judge Carlton Reeves set you straight:

No, Clarence Jamison was a Black man driving a Mercedes convertible.

As he made his way home to South Carolina from a vacation in Arizona, Jamison was pulled over and subjected to one hundred and ten minutes of an armed police officer badgering him, pressuring him, lying to him, and then searching his car top-to-bottom for drugs.

Nothing was found. Jamison isn’t a drug courier. He’s a welder.

Unsatisfied, the officer then brought out a canine to sniff the car. The dog found nothing. So nearly two hours after it started, the officer left Jamison by the side of the road to put his car back together.

Thankfully, Jamison left the stop with his life. Too many others have not.

The Constitution says everyone is entitled to equal protection of the law – even at the hands of law enforcement. Over the decades, however, judges have invented a legal doctrine to protect law enforcement officers from having to face any consequences for wrongdoing. The doctrine is called “qualified immunity.” In real life it operates like absolute immunity.

In a recent qualified immunity case, the Fourth Circuit wrote:

Although we recognize that our police officers are often asked to make split-second decisions, we expect them to do so with respect for the dignity and worth of black lives.

This Court agrees. Tragically, thousands have died at the hands of law enforcement over the years, and the death toll continues to rise. Countless more have suffered from other forms of abuse and misconduct by police. Qualified immunity has served as a shield for these officers, protecting them from accountability.

This Court is required to apply the law as stated by the Supreme Court. Under that law, the officer who transformed a
short traffic stop into an almost two-hour, life-altering ordeal is entitled to qualified immunity. The officer’s motion seeking as much is therefore granted.

But let us not be fooled by legal jargon. Immunity is not exoneration. And the harm in this case to one man sheds light on the harm done to the nation by this manufactured doctrine.

As the Fourth Circuit concluded, “This has to stop.”

There’s a lot of opinion out on the Web regarding this opinion, much of it far more learned than I. But I think Reeves has served the public by repeating a message that desperately needs to be heard: everyone should be held responsible for their actions, from the worst criminal to the law enforcement responsible for catching that worst criminal. Qualified immunity may have been viewed as a way to protect law enforcement from frivolous lawsuits, but it has encouraged those worst elements of law enforcement to engage in activities which are not conducive to a prosperous, stable society, because they know they cannot be officially punished for them.

They can be admonished, as Reeves does with McClendon, above, but that’s hardly the same thing as spending time in the pokey.

Qualified immunity is a bad idea, and it must be banned.

Former Republican Jennifer Rubin has a lovely rant, no doubt borne out of frustration at Republican incompetence:

Let me suggest that Senate Republicans, angst-ridden over the failure to conclude a deal, should have taken action when Trump put his reelection above national security concerns; when he refused to hold Russia accountable for bounties on our troops; when he aired false, quack theories and contradicted expert advice; when he insisted on reopening states while the virus still raged; and when he held a rally endangering thousands of Americans. They could have removed him — rebuked him even or, at the very least, declared they would not vote for him in November — for any number of corrupt and malicious actions. Instead, they bet their careers and mortgaged their conscience to their political party.

Republicans are worried now? Hey, it is what it is.

This is what happens when you have a party wedded to the concepts of extreme loyalty and the status quo, backed up by the intense certainty that God brings you.

I’d say May God help them, except he’s already given them so many chances to get rid of Trump.

Ron Charles writes about the latest bit of legal silliness to come out of the country’s elite in WaPo:

Readers may remember my note on how The Epoch Times managed to get itself banned from Facebook. It appears that being banned is not taken seriously by the Trump cultists at The Epoch Times:

Facebook removed hundreds of accounts on Thursday from a foreign troll farm posing as African-Americans in support of Donald Trump and QAnon supporters. It also removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times that pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories about coronavirus and protests in the U.S.

Facebook took down the accounts as part of its enforcement against coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is the use of fake accounts to inflate the reach of content or products on social media. [NBC News]

I try not to be naive, but I am disappointed in The Epoch Times at this moment. No doubt, this’ll pass, and they’ll recede back to the junk heap where I metaphorically throw all of the Trump-boosting media sites that cannot be troubled with considering the damage Trump has done and can still do to the nation.

But let’s not mince words: The Epoch Times has committed blatant fraud. It may not be financial, but it remains deliberate misrepresentation for purposes of manipulating the naive. In my mind, that destroys any value The Epoch Times may have as a news source, and I encourage my readers to avoid The Epoch Times. It would appear that my first impression,

I also surveyed [The Epoch Times] site very briefly; it was painfully pro-Trump. I read a couple of columns, which were written in what has become the traditional and magisterial conservative style, Don’t bother me with the facts, I’m handing down wisdom from on high. I had no patience for that.

is sadly very accurate. Here’s a letter I should probably send them.

To: The Epoch Times,

Guys, endorsing a chronic liar is a mug’s game. Look at what you’ve been enticed into doing.

Why are you mugs?

H. White

Mostly because I can’t remember their names. Petunias?

I didn’t realize these had come out so well. The first one is perhaps the worst of the lot; I like the luminescence of the last one quite a bit. But there’s a lot to be said for numbers 2 & 3 as well.

The New York AG filed a lawsuit today to, well, destroy the National Rifle Association:

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Thursday against the National Rifle Association and four individuals, including powerful leader Wayne LaPierre, seeking to dissolve the gun rights advocacy group and accusing top executives of “years of illegal self-dealings” that funded a “lavish lifestyle.”

James said the not-for-profit organization undercut its charitable mission by engaging in illegal financial conduct, including diverting millions of dollars “for personal use by senior leadership, awarding contracts to the financial gain of close associates and family, and appearing to dole out lucrative no-show contracts to former employees in order to buy their silence and continued loyalty.”

“The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is why, today, we seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law,” she said. [NBC News]

It sure sounds superficial, doesn’t it? Especially if you’re a member who doesn’t pay attention to organization politics and rumors. But there’s a wee bit behind it:

… which was filed in state court in Manhattan following an 18-month investigation and seeks fines and remuneration.

An eighteen month investigation is no small thing. It suggests substantial issues have been discovered, as well as attention to detail. This is where a member should be squirming. And because it’s a State issue, there will be no Trump pardon, who commented

I think the NRA should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life.

Which sounds asinine, at best, to me. Or more accurately, like a man completely unsure of how to respond to unexpected bad news. I wonder how long before he begins disclaiming ever knowing about the organization.

But just an 18 month investigation isn’t a good enough clue. What about former NRA President Oliver North? Remember when he quit the top position, alleging financial irregularities? You’d think a far-right extremist such as North would have fit right in at the NRA.

And then there’s the FBI investigation concerning Russian ties.

From extremists world-wide, it’s rare to find a virtuous example – some are just crooks, and some are self-justifying crooks. The NRA has been surging toward the right-wing fringe for decades under the stewardship of CEO Wayne LaPierre, and frankly I’m completely unsurprised at this lawsuit. Not because I know of anything in particular, but simply from the reports and the behaviors. It practically screamed circumstantial corruption, and I’m only surprised it took this long for someone with investigative capabilities to file a lawsuit.

And with the NRA under financial stress due to Covid-19, they may have a hard time defending themselves.

There is a certain point in writing about the Trump Administration where you just automatically wonder what’s corrupt with whichever topic you’re writingon . It appears the Kodak Pharmaceuticals deal, as much as I’d like to think it’s a wise move to take advantage of a company’s expertise in chemistry and chemical engineering, may not be on the up and up, and Heather Cox Richardson has a useful summary of the latest disappointing developments:

This may be a very sad ending for a hallowed corporate name. Someone should check to see if Eastman’s tomb is vibrating from the rotations he’s executing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating potential insider trading over the late July launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals, a new branch of the old camera and film company intended to begin the process of bringing the production of drugs back to the United States.

Under the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration provided a $765 million loan to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals. The deal shot Kodak stock upward by more than 2,757%. But there was suspicious activity around this deal. The day before Trump’s announcement of it, the Eastman Kodak Company gave its CEO, Jim Continenza, 1.75 million stock options. Indeed, since May, when talks with the administration about manufacturing the ingredients for pharmaceuticals began, Kodak handed out 240,000 stock options to board members.

Kodak says the timing of the options was a coincidence: the board’s compensation committee meeting happened to fall on the day before the announcement. When asked by a reporter about what had happened at Kodak, Trump says he “wasn’t involved in the deal.” This afternoon, the co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement Steve Peikin announced he is stepping down. He did not give a reason.

I feel a little like I’m just a spectator at a power politics festival. The goal is for each contestant to put as many dollars as possible into their personal bank accounts, without regard to morality, ethics, or good governance, corporate or political. People responsible for the aforementioned disregardments, not having a role in this contest, can be seen leaving the field of combat, and will be later available for interviews at the kiddy ice cream stand around back.

PS Don’t let your kids have any ice cream. Unless you don’t like them. It’s full of … oh, Corporate is telling me not to say.

While honestly, truly, I want this deal to be legit, I think the Trump quote is a strong sign that it’s not:

… Trump says he “wasn’t involved in the deal.”

Yet, Trump announced it with great pride just a couple of days ago. Trump has never seen a successful deal that he hasn’t tried to horn in on; contrariwise, he disclaims knowing anything about a deal when it’s in the process of being revealed as corrupt.

The omens are poor.

It’s the day of Tennessee’s primary, and CNN/Politics thinks it’s too close to call:

Last year, President Donald Trump publicly endorsed Bill Hagerty, his former ambassador to Japan, to be the next Senator from Tennessee before he even announced his campaign. That should’ve been enough in a conservative state where Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the President.

But the GOP’s primary election on Thursday to replace retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander has turned into a bitter, competitive contest between Hagerty and a conservative challenger, Dr. Manny Sethi, over who can be Tennessee’s Trump.

Hagerty and Sethi have campaigned as Trump loyalists, even though they’ve both found things in each other’s backgrounds to try to suggest otherwise. Hagerty founded a private equity firm and served as the state’s economic commissioner under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam. Sethi, who talks about being the son of first-generation immigrants from India, is an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who founded the non-profit organization Healthy Tennessee.

Trump himself has intervened in the primary, reminding voters of his endorsement in a tweet last week and agreeing to a tele-town hall with Hagerty on the eve of the primary. In announcing the event, Hagerty called Trump “America’s greatest President.”

I find it fascinating that Trump’s endorsement is not carrying a dispositive weight. Remember back when Governor DeSantis (R-FL) was Rep DeSantis, who had just filed to run for governor – and no one gave him a chance? But, regardless of any other competencies he may or may not have, DeSantis understood how the political winds were blowing in 2017, and he understood President Trump. He’s infamous for having arranged to appear on Fox News multiple times, winning Trump’s endorsement, and going on to win the primary and then the Governorship of Florida.

Today? The Trump-endorsed candidate is not a shoe-in.

Also a factor: both of the top GOP candidates – there are actually fifteen listed – have welded themselves to President Trump, and have spent resources in trying to discredit their opponent in this area. This is partly a result of the fact that neither has an elective victory under their belt. Hagerty has been an economic advisor to some Republican officials over the years, and served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan, while Sethi, an orthopedic surgeon, has as his sole political experience a book on health policy he co-authored with Senator William Frist. Neither one has legislative accomplishments that they can campaign on, nothing at all. It’s basically a war of empty, empty words, emblematic, ironically enough, of Trump himself.

And neither is an inspirational choice for one of the most powerful legislative posts in the nation.

In this sort of contest, it’s not hard to envision supporters of these two, in the absence of political accomplishments of the candidates, simply becoming entrenched and embittered. This is not a healthy way to conduct a contest, after all, and the decision to support one or the other based on irrelevant factors such as non-political experience, personal charm, and the like, and then seeing them blasted by the other side, will damage those supporters, as I noted previously when I first covered Tennessee’s Senate contest.

I think there’ll be two factors at play here: turnout for the primaries, both Republican and Democratic, and whether or not the Republican race is close. If it is, and turnout is low, I’ll have to give the Democrat, whoever that turns out to be, a better chance at winning than the professionals have so far (“Solid Republican” from Inside Elections), because there’s a good chance that embittered partisans of the losing Republican candidate will stay home, and overall low turnout will suggest Tennessee voters have soured on President Trump.

And if turnout is high for the Republican primary, then we can assume this seat will stay Republican.

Jennifer Rubin on investigative interviews and what has gone wrong:

TV news personalities are hired in part because they are congenial, likable and watchable. They put guests and the audience at ease. They do not allow pregnant pauses. They bail out interviewees who are at a loss for words. This is the wrong skill set for interrogating a president, especially one who is a serial liar. In nearly four years, TV news outlets have not figured this out; some simply threw in the towel and declined to switch to more effective interviewers because their star anchors draw TV viewers.

The TV networks would do better to hire people — lawyers, specifically — who are attack dogs, who do not care about being liked and who do not care if they get “access.” House Intelligence Committee counsel Daniel S. Goldman and Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney and now MSNBC interviewer, know how to prepare a line of questions. (Disclosure: I’m an MSNBC contributor.) They know how to listen to the answer and follow up. They shrug off bluster and body language meant to intimidate them. If the job of the media is to hold those in power accountable and to reveal the truth (not maintain phony balance), this is the kind of person you want grilling administration figures. [WaPo]

This is a lament and critique that’s been told many times since the days of Nixon; indeed, more than once in the 50 years since the Nixon Watergate Scandal I’ve seen accusations made that the XXX White House, regardless of who’s name takes the place of XXX, made a concerted effort to charm and bribe the reporters covering them. They are recognized as a threat, especially by those Administrations who do not play to have clean hands when they walk out on the last day.

But another problem is embedded in Rubin’s remarks: TV news personalities are hired in part because they are congenial, likable and watchable … and that garners more viewers. More viewers is more advertiser revenue.

But revenue is not a measure of excellence. I don’t care how much the media owners bluster and shake their fingers about paying for the service, it simply isn’t.

Pulitzer Prizes are the proper measure a news service. It’s unfortunate – very unfortunate – that the prizes a new service can win aren’t more prominently displayed and discussed. Hell, we watch WCCO News for local coverage, and they don’t talk about all the prizes they’ve won – they just say they’re The most watched channel in the Twin Cities.

And that statement is really irrelevant, if you think about it. All it means is Frank and Amelia are awfully darn charming. But has this service won prizes for news coverage? Are you advertising it? No – or at least I can’t tell without digging. So, while I do like the reporters and anchors, I must admit that I don’t know if they’re mediocre or good. About all I can say is that they seem more professional than their broadcast competitors, who I sample on an infrequent basis.

And it’s a sad thing.

The knots that religious legislators tie themselves into when faced with an atheist amuses me for reasons obscure, so I found The Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta’s coverage of State Senator Juan Mendez’s (D-AZ) attempts to give invocations in Arizona invigorating:

Besides being a progressive legislator, Mendez is known to atheists for his history of delivering invocations in the legislature… or at least trying to. In 2013 he delivered one in the State House, but the following day, a Christian colleague delivered a second religious invocation to make up for his godless one. When he tried to give another invocation in 2016, the GOP majority leader blocked him from doing so on the grounds that all invocations had to be made to a “higher power.” Days later, when Mendez gave his invocation anyway, a minister was on standby to deliver a “real” one.

Earlier this year, Mendez was slated to give an invocation on “Secular Day” at the Capitol. But just before he spoke, the (Republican) Senate President said someone else would be doing the honors. She later said it was a mistake, but the other senator had an invocation ready to go…

Perhaps I’m just a spiritual pervert, but the story makes me smile. Some people know how to deal politely with people of other religions, but someone without religion?

Oh, dear. How can we have a good argument about the unseeable if they refuse to see the … uh …

Damon Linker on The Week considers it an insoluble problem:

So yes, it would be very good for the Republican Party of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Louie Gohmert, Devin Nunes, and all the rest of them to be leveled to the ground so a wholly new party — a more reasonable, responsible, principled, and honorable party — can be built in its place.

There’s just one difficulty with the plan: It does nothing to address the root of the problem, which no one — not the minimalist Trump haters, and not the fiercest maximalists out to pummel the party’s establishment — has a clue how to solve.

That is the problem of the Republican voter.

Every one of those politicians — from Trump on down to Gohmert and Nunes and beyond — was elected by these voters. In the midst of a pandemic that has killed 160,000 in under six months and that the president shows no sign of understanding how to combat, his approval rating among Republicans remains at 91 percent. Thanks to this unshakable support, his overall approval has barely dipped below 40 percent through the nightmare of recent months and is currently creeping back up toward his norm of the past year (around 42 percent). …

Could anything change these voters — turning them, not into liberals o r progressives obviously, but into thoughtful citizens capable of engaging with reality, thinking about actual problems, and rewarding public servants who make a good-faith effort to respond to them? The honest truth is that I don’t have the slightest clue how to make it happen. Which also means that I have no idea how the United States might work its way back to having two civically responsible parties instead of just one.

Option 1 – wait until most of the current Republican base is dead, which will happen over the next 50 years. Demographically speaking, the base, including the evangelicals, is shrinking, and I think this will continue. While it’s typical for older generations to complainv about the immorality of the younger generations, it’s my belief that the younger generations observe the immorality of the older generations, and look to do better. My impression (hauling out my old person voice) of the younger generations, both from direct interactions and what I read, is that they have been discouraged from conservatism as characterized by the Republicans, and especially organized religion, by the results of same: support for Trump.

Option 2 – reality reaches up and slaps the Republican base upside the head. One of the features of our current universe is that it’s causal – each action has an opposite and equal reaction. This applies, metaphorically, to the belief systems that we harbor, if only in how those belief systems influence our physical actions. By this I mean, you may believe that angels dance on the heads of pins, but if this doesn’t influence your actions and positions, no biggie.

But if it causes you to fallaciously believe vaccines cause autism, and therefore you won’t permit vaccination of yourself and your kids, well, now you’ve put yourself and your kids at increased risk of extinction, haven’t you?

So if you are a farmer that believed Trump when he claimed that trade wars are easy to win, and now you’re an impoverished farmer on the brink of giving it all up because China and the rest of the world refused to rollover for President Trump, that’s reality slapping you upside the head and telling you to pay attention. Your belief system is seriously flawed.

Some people learn. Some people don’t. Why? For many, that’s the problem of religion – it gives people a reason to persist in flawed beliefs, because God Told Them. The difficulty, sadly, is that sometimes that “flawed belief” is actually a socially admirable belief such as Treat Everyone With Love that happens to be in a socially unwelcoming context, such as Either You’re With Us Or Against Us In Hating Those XYZers.

But we’ve seen children put in cages, the President call violent white supremacists “fine people”, and quite a few other outrages which have left reasonable Americans (read: independents as well as Democrats) discouraged and angry, but have had little effect on most of the Republican base – although, notably, the conservative share of American’s political affections has shrunk drastically over the last few months. While much of this is probably independents changing their inclinations in the face of obvious Trumpian incompetency, at least some of this will be Republican defections by Americans who’ve decided the tunnel to hell that the Republican Party is taking is intolerable to their belief systems. Indeed, some of them are previously Republican legislators who are now Democratic legislators, such as Bollier of Kansas – who is now running for the open Kansas Senate seat.

But such defections may be few enough in number not to matter.

Option 3 – God reaches down from the heavens and tells them to stop screwing around. While this seems unlikely, it might happen.

Option 4 – an existential threat arises. This may change things, as when it’s cooperate or die, people usually cooperate, and we do have a history of cooperating in the face of existential dangers.

I lean towards Option 1, but hope Option 2 occurs as well. The Gallup poll may indicate the beginnings of the Great slap upside the head phenomenon, but it’s too early to be sure.

How to weaponize your victimhood:

The chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program investing billions of dollars into discovering a coronavirus vaccine, says media scrutiny of his stock ownership may delay a vaccine or make its discovery less likely because it is distracting him from his work.

Moncef Slaoui made the remarks on the official Health and Human Services podcast, released Friday, while being interviewed by Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary of public affairs. The interview quickly descended into a lengthy rant about the media.

“The American people need to understand that the media often times are lying to them because they don’t want a vaccine, in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Caputo said at one point. [BuzzFeedNews]

In other words, the guy who isn’t doing the lab work, who’s merely providing guidance as chief adviser, is so restive under examination that he will threaten to delay the successful conveyance of an effective vaccine to the public if the press continues to fulfill its duty of investigating possible illegalities.

Dude, too many press inquiries? Pass them on to your staff of assistants and QUIT THE WHINING. It makes you look second-rate, and Caputo becomes your effing handler. Sheesh.

First of all, for those who are going to scream that all those folks who are going to use the probable cause of yesterday’s tragic Beirut blast to push for regulation are politicizing the deaths of those Lebanese who died, please FOAD^[1]. Your heartless clinging to your political-religious tenets is sickening.

The BBC, in an “explainer” on ammonium nitrate, suggests that it may be to blame for the Beirut blast:

Nearly 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – taken from a ship off the coast of Beirut six years ago and then stored in a warehouse – has been blamed for the explosion that ripped through the port area of the Lebanese capital on Tuesday.

I have no idea if Beirut or Lebanon had regulations regarding the storage of dangerous materials, and it doesn’t matter for my purposes.

This is a graphic example of the advantages of a regulatory state. One of the campaign claims Trump will be making will be how he’s removed the regulations that have been “hampering” American free enterprise, if he hasn’t already made the claim.

Beirut is the back side of that drive to remove regulations. An ideal regulation protects something the governing entity, be it city, state, or national, considers valuable: clean air & water, health and lives of residents, that sort of thing. When conservatives complain about regulation, there are going to be two motivations.

The first is bad regulations: contradictory or ineffective regulations. Fair enough. Those need to be revised or weeded out.

The second is regulations that impact profitability. That’s the bubbling witches’ cauldron in the Republican Party’s heart, and this is why treating regulations as anti-American is wrong, because as most Americans will agree, placing lives at risk for corporate profit is not acceptable. Beirut just demonstrated what happens when regulation either doesn’t exist, or is not effectively enforced.

And anti-regulation is one of those tenets of the Republican Party that I fear is treated as a religious precept. If you have Republican Party friends, you often hear mutterings about how regulation is strangling business. It’s a lesson that is reinforced by party leaders.

It’s the ring through their noses.

So next time you are tempted to mutter about regulation, think about the Beirut blast, instead. Perhaps the regulation subject to muttering really is uncalled for. It really could be. But rather than mutter, think about how to build a formal process that evaluates regulations for appropriateness, rather than just dark muttering.

Contribute to the communal effort, rather than whine.

¹ FOAD, an acronym for the old Fuck Off And Die. Reserved for use on particularly short-sighted partisans.

The work of Imo Imeh:

The above can be found on this page regarding an art show entitled BRONX:AFRICA. A New England Public Media show on Emeh is here.

(h/t KH)