East Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, insisting the election has been stolen from President Donald Trump, has urged like-minded supporters to consider “revolution” like the Egyptian uprising seven years ago and colonial America’s revolt against England.
“They rose up though all over Egypt, and as a result of the people rising up in the greatest numbers in history, ever anywhere, they turned the country around …. If they can do that there, think of what we can do here,” he told thousands of cheering Trump supporters in downtown Washington at Saturday’s “Million MAGA March.” …
“This was a cheated election and we can’t let it stand,” said Gohmert, a Tyler Republican and former trial judge who easily won a ninth term this month. [The Dallas Morning News]
Chad Bauman on Religion Dispatchesthinks he understands President Trump’s incessant claims that he won the election:
With diffuse roots but emerging most forcefully midway through the twentieth century in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, prosperity theology draws selectively on biblical passages (chief among them John 10:10, in which Jesus says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”) to insist that God desires our physical and financial prosperity. Our task, in a phrase popularized by the movement (and its detractors), is to “name it and claim it.”
The most virtuous and effective act in prosperity theology is positive confession, in which one claims and expresses gratitude to God for the health and wealth one expects to enjoy—even if it seems implausible one’s expectations will be realized. The most sinful act, accordingly, is sometimes called “negative confession”; that is, admitting failure, ill health, poverty, or disappointment. In prosperity theology, words matter; “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Those who lay claim to victory actualize it, while those who admit defeat find themselves hopelessly entrenched in it.
And Trump was brought up in the church of one of the most famous pillars of the movement, Norman Vincent Peale.
Not only does this lens bring Trump’s reactions to the election into focus, it explains his fairy-tale predictions for Covid-19: that it would disappear, that it was well under control, that it was all a hoax. He was trying various magical incantations to make it go away. He was trying to claim victory over it. But that victory was an illusion and a quarter million Americans have died from that smoke.
Indeed, his many other pronouncements, such as bringing jobs back to the United States, being responsible for the greatest economy in history, passing the greatest legislation and nominating the best judges, are all congruent to Bauman’s observation and explanation.
Even for a man notorious for his ignorance of the Bible, religion permeates his life – and leads to actions that are dangerous to the Republic.
And Americans wonder at their fellow citizens who adhere to agnosticism or atheism – or even Satanism.
But what happens to the prosperity theology movement if Trump finally admits defeat? Or has to be escorted from the White House and have his name put on the White House’s Never to be admitted list? Do they crumble? Or do they find a way to rationalize the loss?
Addiction is pursuing activities that make you feel better even in the face of contraindicating factors like, oh, death. So reading Friendly Atheist’sremarks on Pastor John Magee made me realize that, in some essential regard, everyone connected with his church is an addict:
Just over a month ago, we learned that John Hagee, the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, tested positive for COVID.
His son Matthew made the announcement at the time: [Tweet omitted – HW]
Notice that Matthew said his father was “receiving extremely good medical treatment.”
He’s lucky he can afford it. That’s not necessarily true of the congregation he’s putting in danger by hosting in-person, indoor, mask-optional, not-very-socially-distanced services.
Yesterday, the elder Hagee was back in church. He said he spent 15 days in the hospital with “double pneumonia” but he was better now. But you can see from the video below[link added – HW] that the church hasn’t made any adjustments for COVID. It’s still in-person, indoor, jam-packed, and mask-optional.
Let’s enumerate.
We have the congregation. They’ve received the news of their pastor becoming ill, thus making Covid-19 immediate and real. Are they addicts? Sure. They go to a church rich in superspreader potentiality, and they know it. But it makes them feel good to go and participate in services, because that makes them part of the Chosen.
And we have the clerics. They are all vulnerable; even Hagee, who presumably was told by hospital staff that reinfection is quite possible. But there he is, up and preaching. He knows the risk to himself, his fellow clerics, and his congregation. All it takes is one asymptomatic shedder of the virus to infect attendees. But Hagee? He’s popular, powerful, he has prestige. History teaches us that power is as much a drug as meth, and often just as hard to shake. He’s an addict.
It’s a classic depiction of addiction, willfully pursued in the face of danger to both self and others. I wonder if it would help to keep that in mind when communicating with clerics and their congregations. I’m sure they’ll dislike the characterization. Perhaps it doesn’t apply to all congregations – although I suspect those that are not addicts are also not putting themselves and their fellows at risk.
A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”
“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT
I think – no, I know – what catches my attention is the total commitment of those dying to their myth and delusion: … they’re filled with anger and hatred.
Hatred of who, I wonder. I’m honestly puzzled. Hating reality seems like such a waste of time and energy. But that puzzle suggests that these patients, in one of the strongholds of what’s become the far-right, and thus of Covid-19 denial, are the victims of an ideology and theology that seeks to deny reality when it’s not compatible with ideological or theological tenets.
And when those tenets are more important than the facts on the ground, this is what happens. Reality slaps you down and holds your head underwater, and, often enough, there’s no succor for you.
And because these tenets are the spawn of a pack of religious grifters and their political kin, it makes me angry.
I know I advocated for Pete Buttigieg for Press Secretary, but now I have a new favorite.
Whoever runs the Steak-UmmTwitter account.
friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. (good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization
It’s no surprise that I missed this back in April, as I am not a Twitter user. The account has won awards, and motivated Administration-snark tweets such as this:
When you get more responsible information from a frozen meat than from the President of the United States.
— Toots of Four Seasons 🤲🚿😷 (@TootsTheRed) April 10, 2020
As this Twitter account is demonstrating a better track record than Spicer, MacEnany, and whoever-it-was between them (I honestly don’t care who that was, since they never held a press briefing!), it might be best to bring corporate Big Frozen Meat on board. They seem to be far closer to truth and reality than the Republicans.
And it’ll embarrass the crap out of them.
(My thanks to Dr. David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine for his blog post on the subject of the Steak-Umm Twitter account.)
As your day goes from bad to worse. I’ll bet the owner of the arm has a final in quantum physics later today, too.
It’s the old slice ‘n dice story in Sea Beast (2008). A deep sea fishing boat returns home after surviving a storm which took one of its crewmen, not realizing that something has trailed it back to port. Once arrived, the bodies quickly begin mysteriously piling up. Or disappearing. Depending on how hungry el Monster happens to be at the moment.
Why is it mysterious? Because our monster is invisible! Not a relation to this ridiculous critter, but its own special power is a paralyzing venom it can spit, leaving prey more or less looking like an audience member, eyes wide in horror, drooling a bit, hoping this all comes to an end quickly, but without that wide-mouthed CHOMP –
Think of parasitic wasps. You know, those little insects that turn spiders into paralyzed meals for their offspring. Those things that convinced Darwin there is no God.
In any case, there’s a lot of running around, use of ineffective guns, a little bit of cleverness, and an inventive use of a cigarillo. Sheesh, I hadn’t seen one of those in decades.
The acting was fairly earnest. The special effects, the plot, the dialog: mediocre at best, embarrassing mostly. Yeah, avoid, avoid, avoid.
SpaceX launches its first bird with a full crew today. The actual launch is at around 6:30, give or take. This is from CBC, the Canadian Broadcast Corp.
Comments Off on Book Review: How To Be An Antiracist
Ibrahim X. Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist has been a must-read for the left side of the political spectrum in 2020, and there’s a lot to be said for it. It explores the author’s experience as a Black man growing up in America in an episodic series of events, from his childhood to his achievement of finding a position in academia.
From this journey, he draws lessons, definitions, and prescriptions, using not only the experiences of himself, his family, and his friends, but historical incidents as well. His subjects cover a number of areas: biology, culture, and class are just some. His findings are cast not just at the White community, but the Black community, the Asians, as well as previous generations, along with the current generations. As we should expect, the findings are rarely comforting for any of them, as Kendi suggests his own parents had shared in widespread misconceptions in the Black community of how race should be handled in America, along with the necessary blame of the southern slave owners of the years previous to 1865, that the researchers of the 20th century got key conclusions completely wrong, often based on preconception rather than actual research.
Each chapter contains definitions of his key antiracist concepts, pronounced in a manner that is grating, and almost certainly intended to be that way; a recounting of incidents from his life that help illustrate his point; and prescriptions drawn from them. This approach can be a trifle bracing, particularly in the first category of definitions. As they tend to lead each chapter off, they can come across as unsupported, but by doing so, they provoke the reader to react and, hopefully, organize their thoughts on the subject. The personal anecdotes then give valuable insights into the thought processes of Kendi, perhaps leading to a better understanding of why the matter of race has never been a transactional process.
The prescriptions can range from the relieving, such as the observation that anyone can be racist, rather than just Whites, to the puzzling intellectual error that suggests that if a non-racial group’s racial composition doesn’t reflect surrounding society’s racial composition, then it should be changed until it does, which completely ignores the realities of statistical mechanics.
And it leads to perhaps the most important omission from this book: the role of merit, or excellence, in any group, and how that interacts with a historically racist society. The negatives of promoting someone based on something other than ability is well-known, even as it continually occurs in nepotistic and other non-merit based environments world-wide; yet, just such an excuse from that realm, i.e., a fallacious use of He’s just not good enough, is also well known to be an excuse for satisfying racist impulses. How does Kendi propose to balance the proposition of enforced racial composition against that of the requirement of excellence? He doesn’t say.
Like any book that strives to break new ground, sometimes it gets off the trail and plunges into the river, and that’s all well and good: it shows striving. I don’t accept all, or even any, that I read; in particular, his suggestion that racism started with the Portuguese makes me wonder if an anthropologist trained in evolutionary theory would agree.
But the fact that I finished this two months ago and only now have written a review suggests that, along with the time taken up with the recent election, it took time to absorb and think about the proposed debating points, and that’s not a bad thing.
You may not like it, you may hate it, but it might make you think.
“He bids 24 hearts? No, he cannot play bridge until he’s defrosted from that block of ice!”
For a movie generally found on B-lists of science fiction movies, The Thing From Another World (1951) is actually not laughable. It’s not even disappointing. Indeed, the worst part of this flick may be its unwieldy title, although I confess nothing better springs to mind.
When a scientific research station in the Arctic reports a mysterious flying saucer passing nearby, followed by an explosion, the US Air Force dispatches a plane (a lovely C-47, a descendant of the famous DC-3) and crew to investigate, lead by Captain Scott. Teaming up with their itinerant newspaper reporter and the station personnel, they get to the crash site, only to find the saucer deeply buried in ice. An attempt to thaw it out using “standard” thermite bombs results in its ignition and final explosion, but the crew does come away with one prize: a block of ice with a body inside.
Returned to the research station, the chief scientist, Dr. Carrington, wants to examine the body, but is denied by Captain Scott. A few hours later, though, the unthinkable has occurred: the ice block has melted and the body isn’t a body – it’s animate and dangerous.
Carrington and his team take samples and discover they’re dealing with a plant, a mobile plant that feeds on blood. Carrington becomes the stereotypical scientist-before-man, unable to separate the pursuit of knowledge from the need to survive, and is thus the least believable of the characters.
But the battle for survival is believable. Bodies pile up. The Thing is trying to survive, as are the humans. The acting is competent or more than competent, and the plot’s depictions of both official and personal reactions are more than believable. These are important components of the movie, because, after all, we’re dealing with the unbelievable: a visit of a creature from outer space.
Does the movie have problems? No doubt. Certain cultural attitudes are on full display, for example. But these flaws are not the howlers you often see in old science fiction movies. To its credit, this flick is really beautifully filmed, and if it’s not filmed on location, it sure feels like it.
I won’t recommend it, as it’s not that compelling. But if you’re looking to spend an hour or so meditating on the possible dangers of the Universe, this is not a bad movie to contemplate. It surprised us at how we didn’t object to it, and that’s no bad thing.
A jibe (US) or gybe (Britain) is a sailing maneuver whereby a sailing vesselreachingdownwind turns its stern through the wind, such that the wind direction changes from one side of the boat to the other. For square-rigged ships, this maneuver is called wearing ship.
In this maneuver, the mainsail will cross the center of the boat while the jib is pulled to the other side of the boat. If a spinnaker is up, its pole will have to be manually moved to the other side, to remain opposite the mainsail. In a dinghy, raising the centerboard can increase the risk of capsizing during what can be a somewhat violent maneuver, although the opposite is true of a dinghy with a flat, planing hull profile: raising the centerboard reduces heeling moment during the maneuver and so reduces the risk of capsize. [Wikipedia]
As any sailor knows, the wind isn’t a perfect source of propulsion because you can only sail so close to it before you have to start tacking and gybing. This means any cosmic sailing ship would clip along nicely when going away from a star, but would struggle to turn back.
All about solar sails. In case you’re curious, here’s the The Planetary Society’sLightSail 2 mission page, although to my eye it appears to be broken at the moment. If you were wondering, its predecessor, LightSail 1, made orbit but suffered a malfunction and didn’t complete its mission. I also have a vague memory of The Planetary Society launching something else using an obsolete Soviet Union ICBM launch vehicle that blew up before payload release, but I can’t quite remember the details. Anyone?
Lately I’ve been meditating on the idea that today’s crop of right wing Christians are really quite the arrogant bunch. There’s nothing new in the thought; for all that humility is supposedly an important attribute of the prototypical Christian, it’s difficult to see it in the Evangelical.
Why do I say this? Well, I came to this not through direct observation, but while I was considering my own agnosticism, by which I mean that, when it comes to spirituality, or the divine, or religion, whichever term you prefer, I don’t know.
Does a Divinity, singular or plural, actually exist? I don’t know.
What’s it’s name? I don’t know.
What does it care for me? I don’t know.
What are its plans for, oh, anything? I don’t know.
It’s rather the catchphrase for me, as an agnostic. Maybe there’s a Divinity. Maybe there’s not. Maybe there is, but he doesn’t much care for me. I don’t know.
It even applies the other way. Does the Divinity want our society to be more just?I don’t know. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t ask.
And then I thought about the Evangelicals – this was during the campaign – and their painful certainty about how the world should be ordered, and that their God wants it that way. That God favors the United States (aka Manifest Destiny). That God ordained that Donald J. Trump, Father of Lies, should be President. That, in the 2004 campaign, George W. Bush had been selected by God to be President. (That didn’t end well at all for us, did it?)
One of the finest examples of this arrogance came through my email this morning, from the ever persistent Erick Erickson:
I am weary.
Truth cannot be what any campaign says it is. Truth must be true and Christians must have an obligation to the truth.
Yesterday, between the phone calls calling for me to be fired from radio and emails encouraging me to shove Omaha Steaks up my ass, die in a fire, and calling me a sissy who should die of cancer for the offense of telling people the truth, I had a Christian tell me that God’s will is for Donald Trump to win and the church to be purged of all the pretend Christians like me who did not really support him. This Christian truly believes that we are about to watch God perform a miracle and generate enough votes to shift the Electoral College to President Trump.
I ended the day with a Christian telling me there’s no way God could ever want Joe Biden as President because he’ll persecute the church so how dare I say if Biden gets elected it would be God’s will.
If you go through the various quotes of Erickson I’ve pulled over the years, it’s clear that he’s quite arrogant himself, between his views on abortion, how Trump’s Administration is part of God’s plan, and perhaps even his views on how the Democrats will destroy the economy.
But arrogance is not a uniform phenomenon. For different folks, it affects different facets of their beliefs with different magnitudes. Worse – much worse – arrogance decreases tolerance. The more certain a belief, the less tolerance there is for divergence. Stripped of context, this isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it’s merely an observation of human behavior. For example, if the context is homeopathy, the belief that drinking water that was used to dilute a poisonous substance until it’s chemically indistinguishable from water will cure one of the same affliction, and the belief, based on extensive research, is that homeopathy is ineffective, then having little tolerance for those advocating using homeopathy to cure anything is a good arrogance, if perhaps a little grating.
But basing one’s arrogance on a Divinity for which there’s no evidence, on a Divinity whose plans, if any, are plainly marked as being mysterious?
Intuitively, it seems clear that the less plain evidence is apparent for supporting an arrogance, the stronger that arrogance must become simply to survive. It’s as if a mouse is gifted with a megaphone so that it may shout, I’m a monster! just to stop the mountain lion from eating it. And I think with Erickson, we’re seeing him caught in the grinding gears of arrogance. He has dared to be not quite so arrogant as those he has often written for. It is, in a sense, for the man who had the arrogance to write of Trump Derangement Syndrome, as he called those who loathed Trump the Liar, a comeuppance, even karma, as his fellow Evangelicals exhibit behavior that, truly, appears to be deranged to their fellow citizens.
But Erickson’s arrogance isn’t quite as strong as many of his fellows, and, in their intolerance, they’re grinding him up. He’s not exhibiting as strong an arrogance as they, and in their intolerant certainty, the upbraid him for his perceived lack of faith.
Am I arrogant? Some will yell yes! I think I’m only middlin’ arrogant, and I try to mitigate it by often asking myself about the foundations of my belief systems. I shan’t go into that topic here, though.
Now, I think Erickson is a little baffled, and it’s because he misses a bit of emotional logic here.
I’m weary of the self-imposed victimization of people who, when things don’t go their way, concoct conspiracies to avoid confronting problems. Four years ago it was Democrats who believed Russia stole the election. Today, Republicans believe voting machines did.
Joe Biden is President-Elect and too many people who rather play victim, cry, scream, and believe a whole lot of lies. We are more than a week away from the election and his lead keeps growing. Is there voter fraud? There’s always voter fraud. Is it enough to scrap the election? No. Why? Because Biden won overwhelmingly with lawful and legitimate votes.
Here’s the thing: the pastoral grifters and con-men, as well as the earnestly mistaken, who’ve been leading the Evangelicals, have spent years telling their congregations of Trump’s selection by God. Even now, with Biden the clear winner, we have Kenneth Copeland stoking the hatred and arrogance:
Erickson is missing this bit of logic: If Biden does win the Presidency, against all the prophecies of the huckster pastors who proclaimed Donald J. Trump a holy icon, then not only does it mean the pastors are wrong, but it means those congregations have been repudiated.
Repudiated by God.
And if you’re part of these congregations, that arrogance of which they’ve imbibed cannot permit such a thought. They tithed, they believed, they lived their lives by the canons promoted by their clerics, they promoted their faith, they may have even committed acts of dubious public morality, because cults sometimes require such acts in order to retain membership.
By promoting truth over their arrogance, Erickson threatens their position in society as the Chosen of God. For the arrogant, that prestige factor, even if it’s only self-perceived, is most important. For the humble, who know of their own ignorance, the selection of Biden to lead the nation, even if personally repugnant, doesn’t carry this emotional logic and weight.
Erickson should not be surprised. He has, after all, been promoting the far-right ideology for decades, and, judging from his emails, imbuing it with the fragrance of the Divine. To be puzzled now is a measure of just how far he’s bought into the mythology of a divine creature for which there is no objective evidence.
Alabama voters chose political novice, failed hedge fund manager, and retired football coach Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to replace incumbent Doug Jones (D-AL), and they did so by twenty points. Alabama Daily News sat down with him for an interview, and he had a couple of gems for the reader:
Question: You mentioned the majorities and they are going to be razor thin. I mean, right now it looks like one or two seats in the Senate for Republicans, maybe 14 or 15 seats for Democrats in the House. And that’s as close as it’s been in a long, long time. Do you think the Democrats are going to have to work with Republicans and Republicans are going to have to work with Democrats? You see that being possibly a more productive situation?
Tuberville: Yeah and that’s how our government was set up. You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive.
Urp #1. The Founding Fathers worried about entrenched interests and accumulation of power. This guy doesn’t understand that the Judiciary is the third branch. What are we to make of this? Well, that he’s just another Republican amateur. What are the Alabama voters thinking? The Republican Party could have at least picked First Lickspittle Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, an experienced, if radical nutcase, former Senator to resume his position.
Question: Other than the obvious, I mean you won your race, and so that’s obviously a big takeaway. Other than that obvious point, what kind of takeaways did you take from the election, both state and nationally? What do you think voters said?
Tuberville: Well, it’s a little concerning to me that, just as a citizen this time last week, I look at it and I see what country I grew up in and what it’s meant and the direction that we were going, and it’s concerning to me that a guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a Socialist type of government, you know, one-payer system in health care, raise taxes 20%, when the other half the country is basically voting for freedom, let us control our own lives, stay out of our life. And that’s concerning to me that we’re to the point now where we’ve got almost half the country voting for something that this country wasn’t built on. Very concerning and, you know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism. Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 percent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism. So we’re fighting it right here on our own soil. We’ve got to decide, you know, over the years which direction we’re going, and that part’s concerning to me.
Urp #2. World War II was about fascism, not socialism. Now, I know the fascist party in Germany used to be called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, so it can be confusing – but as he incorporates this fallacious point as the center of his argument against socialism in general, this intellectual mistake cannot be excused. Inserting the proper name and definition destroys his assertions.
But even worse is this: Fascism is a creature of the right, not the left, where socialism generally originates. Now, I know that I find little difference between communism and fascism, but for the politically aware, Tuberville’s far-right ideology is housed in an apartment right next to that holding the smoking remains of fascism.
I suspect this is a strong contender for the Clown of the Senate.
Mark Joseph Stern speaks to a remarkable speech delivered by Associate Justice Alito, appointed by former President George W. Bush, to the Federalist Society:
On Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The Federalist Society, a well-funded network of conservative attorneys, has come under unusual scrutiny after Donald Trump elevated scores of its members to the federal judiciary. Its leaders insist that it is a mere debate club, a nonpartisan forum for the exchange of legal ideas. But Alito abandoned any pretense of impartiality in his speech, a grievance-laden tirade against Democrats, the progressive movement, and the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Alito’s targets included COVID-related restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, Plan B, the contraceptive mandate, LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, and five sitting Democratic senators.
Ironically, Alito began his prerecorded address by condemning an effort by the U.S. Judicial Conference to forbid federal judges from being members of the Federalist Society. He then praised, by name, the four judges who spearheaded a successful effort to defeat the ban—or, as Alito put it, who “stood up to an attempt to hobble the debate that the Federalist Society fosters.” Alito warned that law school students who are members of the Federalist Society tell him they “face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.”
These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself defied the basic principles of judicial conduct. [Slate]
A faux-pas by Alito? Or could this signal something more important?
A retirement from SCOTUS in, say, the next week or two?
It’s not entirely insensible. Justice Alito is 70. Assuming Biden holds true to his word in 2024 to not run again, we may see a President Kamala Harris from 2024 to 2032, which would mean , if Alito is a team player for the conservatives, he would still be holding on grimly at age 82.
Or he can retire now and let Trump nominate a far younger conservative.
That begs the question of why Justices Thomas (age 72) and Alito are still in their seats. Partly, that can be attributed to the right-wing epistemic bubble that insisted President Trump couldn’t lose. Today, Arizona and Georgia have been called for Biden, and if I think Georgia’s call is premature, that’s really neither here nor there. Biden has thankfully won and, regardless of my disappointment in so many of my fellow Americans, firmly planted his boot up Trump’s ass.
We can also attribute their continued presence in their pleasure in doing the work and occupying preeminent positions in society. I don’t begrudge it, unlike Erick Erickson. No doubt they worked long and hard to achieve their positions.
But Alito and Thomas now face at least four years of a Democratic President, and a good chance of twelve years of Democratic occupation of the White House – and I suspect that the very survival of the Republican Party in its current form during that time is up for debate. If Thomas and Alito leave their positions during that period, the liberal fear of far-right dominance of SCOTUS for decades will suddenly transform into a liberal majority on the Court.
So this could be a signal that Alito is about to retire. If he does not, he may find himself being asked to recuse on cases that can be plausibly linked to this rhetoric, and that is embarrassment in itself – a self-inflicted wound, as it were.
Who’s up for some more SCOTUS drama? Quite frankly, I’ll take a skip. By the time a nomination could be made and the requisite votes taken, Senator-elect Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat, would have replaced Republican Senator McSally, but that’s not enough.
And, finally, one of his comments show how much he’s bought into conservative anti-expert sentiment:
For instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a “constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.
The last remark is a classic far-right whine, and is quite ironic since Alito himself qualifies as the worst sort of expert: someone who tells other people how to act.
The New York Timesreports that my concern about voting machines is shared with … President Trump.
A Dominion ImageCast precinct-count optical-scan voting machine, mounted on a collapsible ballot box made by ElectionSource. Source: Wikipedia
President Trump on Thursday spread new baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, fueling a conspiracy theory that Dominion “software glitches” changed vote tallies in Michigan and Georgia last week.
The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts.
One of the areas that had me worried was the age of the machines, but, at least in Georgia, it appears that concern has been addressed:
Georgia spent $107 million on 30,000 of the company’s machines last year. In some cases, they proved to be headaches in the state’s primary elections in June, though officials largely attributed the problems to a lack of training for election workers.
So now I’m both relieved and a little saddened that there almost certainly won’t be a little bump for Mr. Ossoff in Georgia Senate Race A over the 50% barrier.
A little drama lost, a little technical assurance gained. I’m such a bad engineer sometimes.
Comments Off on There May Be An Unexpected Problem
When it comes to the government handoff, the Trump Administration isn’t going to make it easy, but the Biden team is on it.
The Biden team has drawn up lists of recently departed senior officials at key agencies to help transition officials get up to speed on ongoing projects, budgets, trouble spots, technology and personnel, a senior transition official said, describing “a whole plan for this contingency where we don’t have cooperation but have to move forward.” The plan was put in place to anticipate refusals of some agency heads to engage even if the GSA declares Biden the winner, the official said, for example from John Ratcliffe, the Trump-appointed director of national intelligence.
Over a decades-long career in Washington, Biden has cultivated a long list of friends, associates and former aides with deep ties in just about every corner of government. Those connections and that experience are reflected in the team he has assembled. Now, their abilities to prepare for a new administration under extraordinary circumstances are being tested. [WaPo]
It shows forward thinking and planning.
So what worries me? It’ll go too well. Biden, with his team and their vast experience and contacts, will assume responsibility so smoothly that we’ll never realize just how well they’ve done their job. The far-right fringe will yammer, Fox News “hosts” will amplify the yammering, and then we’ll end up with a pack of incompetents winning another election in 2024.
Even if the Biden Administration discloses the messes they have to clean up, it’ll never get to the Fox News regulars.
Ugh.
Except … apparently former Mayor and Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) has become quite popular on Fox News. How about Mayor Pete for Press Secretary or Communications Director or Fox News Liaison?
Kevin Drum thinks President Trump’s frantic delaying tactics vis a vis the Presidential Election results are down to mental illness:
The real answer requires us to take seriously what so many of us have been saying all along: Donald Trump is nuts. To put it a little more conventionally, he’s such an extreme narcissist that he can’t believe he lost. He literally can’t believe he lost. So his brain makes up stories for him, and the only plausible story in the face of hard numbers is that his enemies cheated. So that’s what he believes. And he’ll believe it forever. There’s no more chance of changing his mind on this than there is of changing the mind of someone in an asylum who believes he’s Jesus Christ.
For me, it’s too pat. And it betrays an unconscious bias: that a person in a particular sphere shares the same general goals and motivations as do others. Most politically ambitious people are looking to put their stamp on the world, or be known for their service and leadership.
This is not true of Donald Trump. For him, money and some prestige are at stake, and that’s it.
So follow the motivations. Follow the money. Follow his debts. Connect the dots that will make the heavens open up their dollars for Trump and his family. Then it starts making sense. The clues are already coming to the surface.
Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), at one time lauded for his actions with regards to Covid-19, and then reprimanded as those same actions turned out to endanger Floridians, and suspected of cooking the Covid-19 numbers, had a position to fill … and let’s have the Miami Herald fill in the rest of the tale:
When Gov. Ron DeSantis needed to hire a data analyst, his staff picked a little-known Ohio sports blogger and Uber driver whose only relevant experience is spreading harmful conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on the Internet.
In his own words, Kyle Lamb of Columbus, Ohio, has few qualifications for the job at the state’s Office of Policy and Budget, which pays $40,000 per year.
“Fact is, I’m not an ‘expert.’ I’m not a doctor, epidemiologist, virologist or scientist,” Lamb wrote on a website for a subscribers-only podcast he hosts about the coronavirus. “I also don’t need to be. Experts don’t have all the answers, and we’ve learned that the hard way.”
Plucked from the obscurity of the blogosphere, Lamb, 40, broadcasts his lack of scientific training in his theories about the pandemic.
In frequent posts on Twitter and sports message boards, Lamb has said that masks don’t prevent the coronavirus from spreading; that lockdowns are ineffective; that hydroxychloroquine, a drug touted by President Donald Trump, can treat the virus; that COVID-19, which he said might be part of a Chinese “biowar,” is not more deadly than the flu; and that the virus isn’t dangerous for children to contract.
The same article notes that the position pays $40,000/year, which may explain why no one more qualified has filled it – there may have been a lack of applicants.
But it also speaks to the loathing for expertise exhibited by Republican leaders. Why?
If DeSantis dared to hire someone who actually knew what they were doing, he might be shown up. After all, the State under his leadership has not done as well as Republicans might fantasize that he’s done, often on top of the leader board for infections, although not at the moment – if you trust their numbers.
And, for a party of third-raters, it’s important not to be shown up. It will undermine future political plans if Governor DeSantis were known to have smarter people than himself working for him, because that’s not done in the party of the strong man. The strong man knows all and makes no mistakes.
Not like the Democrats, who work with experts and understand that their task is to take the recommendations of experts and turn them into palatable policy actions.
DeSantis is already on dangerous grounds, because he was elected purely because of a Trump endorsement in 2018, an obscure Representative who, prior to that endorsement, was considered an absurd long-shot. Since then he’s done little to separate himself from Trump.
The same Donald Trump who lost his own reelection effort recently, for those readers not paying attention. That endangers DeSantis.
Strong men have tender egos because they’re not all-knowing, and that myth is half their appeal for some voters. To hire in a mere data analyst who might contradict DeSantis is not tolerable, so, instead, offer the ill-paying job to someone who is a skeptic of current medical practices, knows nothing, and needs the money.
That’s how to guarantee loyalty and self-affirming reports. And it answers the questions of Professor Viswanath:
“It’s extremely disconcerting that you appoint somebody that has very limited technical qualifications and has made his agenda very clear,” Viswanath said. “At the end of the day, the price will be paid by the residents of Florida to these steps. So my question is, what is the end game here? Who is going to benefit from this?”
But the interesting part is how the offer is really just a way to keep the Republican base stirred up – and with little connection with those old-fashioned concepts of facts & honesty. It’s a lot like looking at one of those toxic emails that I take apart from time to time. Here’s the interesting part, viaCBS DFW:
“The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for creating suspicion of final vote totals. Not allowing Republican poll watchers to observe the vote count in multiple states, in some cases blocking their view with poster board, last minute changes in election laws in battleground states, ignoring the deadline to vote and accepting ballots for days after the election, ignoring postmarks and signature checks, not verifying that mail-in ballots were being sent to people who were alive or living in the state and voting machines that have been a concern for over a decade all raise serious questions.
This paragraph is just packed with juicy Satanic tidbits. Let’s see:
Poll Watchers denied: False.
Blocking poll watchers with poster board: False.
Last minute changes in election law: Properly legislated and signed by the governor? Within the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State? If so … Utterly irrelevant.
Voting deadlines ignored. This remark, as it lacks particulars, can be labeled False unless someone provides more information.
Signature checks: I had not heard these were ignored, but, if so, good! It’s widely agreed that signature authentication is foolish and should be outlawed. It’s a rare person whose signature does not change over time. Utterly irrelevant.
Ignoring postmarks? Again, I’ve not heard of this. Every state that I’ve seen analyzed requires a postmark by Election Day. My guess is that this is false.
Not verifying that mail-in ballots were being sent to people who were alive. Where did this happen, and does it matter? Validation of a voter’s right to vote typically takes place at collection and tabulation, not in sending mail-in ballots. Too, where mail-in ballots must be requested, validations take place at that time as well. Irrelevant concern.
Not verifying living in the state. As has been noted by many commentators, this would deprive certain classes of voters of their rights: military personnel on deployment, college students, and, I should imagine, several other categories of voters. Irrelevant concern.
Voting machines concerns. Only in this last point do I and the Lt. Governor share concerns. In fact, Lt. Governor, in view of the variance between poll results and election results in Texas, perhaps you should push for a full audit and manual recount of all national office contests – in Texas. If you insist that voting machines are a necessity, then push for an exception to trade secret laws in connection with voting machines. You are right, there are many concerns when it comes to voting machines – and Republicans should lead the way in getting rid of them, as I’ve said many times, or making them trustworthy.
“This lack of transparency has led many to believe that the final count is not accurate in states where the winner was determined be a very small percentage of the vote.
There is plenty of transparency. One can volunteer to be an election worker or a poll watcher, and we all know that. Those poll watchers, provided by the two major parties, assure there’s no shenanigans at the lowest levels. And in those States, such as Georgia, where the margin of victory is very small, recounts will occur, either automatically by law, or at the request of the losing candidate.
The only lack of transparency here is your real goal in this offer, Lt. Governor.
“In Texas we know voter fraud is real. In just the last 60 days, we have had three major arrests on voter fraud including a social worker who was arrested last week for allegedly registering almost 70 developmentally disabled adults to vote without their signature or consent.
It may be illegal to sign them up, but for all we know that was to harvest more Republican votes. In fact, I have to wonder if this crime actually qualifies as voter fraud, and instead may be identity theft.
“In Texas, we also know that it is possible to provide the results of mail-in ballots on Election Day. We counted 970,000 mail-in ballots last Tuesday – a 55% increase over 2018 – and added those results to the in-person voting total before midnight on Election Day. The delays in counting mail-in ballots in other states raises more questions about voter fraud and potential mistakes.
No, it doesn’t. It raises questions about the legislatures of the States involved. For instance, in Pennsylvania the processing, i.e., just opening the envelopes, of mail-in ballots does not begin until Election Day – a decision made by the Republican-dominated legislature. Minnesota? Counted as soon as possible. Same for Texas.
“When all legal votes are tallied and all illegal votes are discarded, then America can have a greater level of confidence in the election process.
Let’s go a little further with this, Lt. Governor. How about when everyone who is qualified to vote and wants to vote is not discouraged or restrained from voting? Isn’t that the higher standard to which you should aspire?
“President Trump is absolutely right to pursue every allegation of voter fraud and irregularities, just as Al Gore did in 2000. Every candidate for public office has this right. My goal is to ensure that, regardless of the outcome, every American has faith in our electoral process and our democracy.”
Then, Lt. Governor, please do not scamper about spreading lies.
In the end, this guy isn’t being honest in that last paragraph. He has managed to mix a motivating force of conservatives, love of money, with the aggrievement culture that has been a resounding drum in the conservative movement for decades. Suggestions that Democrats are stealing elections has, as a primary goal, to keep the base stirred up and donating money to Donald Trump and the rest of the grifters running the Republican Party, but also to accomplish a more important goal:
To drag the Democrats down to the Republican Party’s level.
The Republican Party is filled with incompetent third-raters. Anyone who’s willing to observe the preventable disaster called Covid-19, who has watched Republican governors try to ignore the problem, finesse it, depend on personal responsibility, and fall apart, is well aware that, with a few exceptions such as DeWine and Hogan and one other whose name escapes me, the Republican governors have assumed their states would be spared – for no good reason – and then have flailed when that proved false.
They’re incompetent.
And because of that, their dominance of the national scene is threatened.
What do you do when you’re saddled with incompetent folks who get elected only because of a marvelous Marketing department, but voters are figuring it out? You make your opponents look as bad as yourselves.
That’s why their opposition to the ACA – it’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s Democratic.
And that’s the crap Lt. Governor Patrick is frantically trying to sell.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has made the sensible decision to perform a recount by hand of the President race in the face of some delusional claims of irregularities, each of which are dismissed by judges nation-wide for lack of evidence; given the margin of victory for Biden, 14,000 votes, it makes sense to do a hand count.
And wouldn’t it be funny if Biden substantially increases his lead?
But I wish they’d include the Senate race as well. It’d be a real howler if Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, who came in just behind Republican incumbent and general moral failure David Perdue and will be joining him in the runoff in January, were to suddenly have enough paper ballots for him to put him over the 50% barrier and avoid the runoff.
That’d certainly raise more questions about voting machines, now wouldn’t it?
Comments Off on Consider Yourself Warned: Gatekeepers Were Good
From the political column of the Atlanta Constitution-Journal (AJC):
Really Fake News. If you’re scrolling in your social media news feeds over the next two months, beware of the “Georgia Star,” a new website to be launched by fervent Trump supporter, John Fredericks.
Media Matters describes it as the newest in “a network of websites that launder right-wing media content and talking points through pages designed to look like local news sites.”
We fully expect outlandish claims, false accusations, and dirty tricks between now and January 5th – and they will most likely show up on social media first and foremost. So before you “like,” “subscribe,” or “forward,” a story you just can’t believe, consider the source.
And, once again, we see how the Internet enables any kook, of any political persuasion, to not only spout off views (like I do), but to also participate in propaganda efforts with a fair chance of actually making them work.
Which means, mislead readers.
Back in the bad old days of no Internet, readers had a couple of local choices and two or three national choices, and that was about it. If a paper was taken over by a deliberately misleading corporation, then it was a problem – but quite often such propaganda outlets were quickly identified and abandoned by readers, leading to substantial financial losses.
Nowadays? A web site is abandoned, so what? They’re freaking cheap. (Why do you think I keep doing this? ‘cuz I’ve got a big mouth, lots of opinions, and it doesn’t cost much.) You run off and start another, sell a little advertising space, and off you go again.
Be warned, not all news sites are trustworthy. Wise readers already know not to read RT, Breitbart, and many others, except for amusement. The Georgia Star and its ilk – what I’m tempted to call the Barstool Blowhard “news” sites – will be another to avoid.
Professor Richardson puzzles – perhaps she really understands but is funnin’ us – over very recent governmental moves by President Trump:
In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.
Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.
The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.
It’s not hard to connect the dots. As Trump’s own children have testified, Trump is motivated by money, and a recent report from The New York Times has indicated he has a shitload of debt about to fall right on his neck.
So what does he do? A few weeks ago the Arab nation United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to normalize relations with Israel. My speculation is that the deal is this:
UAE normalizes relations with Israel.
The United States Executive, despite the vociferous objections of lawmakers and intelligence agencies, agrees to sell the most advanced fighter aircraft, the F-35
Under the table, UAE also agrees to cover Trump’s imminent debts, and maybe even his long-term debts.
That much has been agreed to, as evidenced by the Administration announcement.
The real danger here is not that Trump escapes his debts by cheating at playing government. The real danger is that UAE has the F-35 and its technology.
It can sell it to Russia.
It can sell it to China.
You’ll notice that covering Trump’s debts won’t cost UAE a thing, as Russia and/or China can easily supply the funds in exchange for F-35 technology.
It can sell or otherwise share it with other Arab League countries which are still actively hostile to Israel. So much for Trump being a big friend of Israel.
And this takes me all the way back to why Trump is so ill-suited for his attainment of the Presidency. He doesn’t understand the big picture. He’s trained and practiced the art of making and losing[1] money all of his life, but he has apparently no clue about international relations.
And that’s a large portion of the Executive.
If Israel, or even ourselves, find ourselves in the middle of a shooting war in a few years, and our F-35s are suffering large losses, we’ll know who to blame. President Trump, his supplicating Republican Party, and 62 million voters who voted him in 2016, all supported by a conservative disdain for expertise.
And our options? Limited. Fortunately, delivery takes time, and Biden may simply cancel the deal the moment he comes into power, leaving UAE high and dry.
1 Reportedly, he’s better at losing money than making it.
Incumbent Republican Senators from Georgia Perdue and Loeffler are upset with the Georgia Secretary of State, responsible for the election in Georgia, because neither broke the necessary 50% barrier in order to avoid a Jan 5 runoff against their Democratic opponents. Here’s their statement:
This is absurd and it is telling they give absolutely no examples of their alleged mismanagement. Georgia has been transparent and well managed throughout this process – out performing many other states. They are damaging faith in the system for singularly selfish reasons. https://t.co/5a16SoxH9o
All the people mentioned in that statement? Republicans. In the absence of any evidence of cheating, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has a return volley. It’s weak tea:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday rebuked calls from Republican US Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue to resign as both of their Senate races appear to be headed for a January runoff.
“Earlier today Senators Loeffler and Perdue called for my resignation,” Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, said in a statement. “Let me start by saying that is not going to happen. The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me.”
“As Secretary of State, I’ll continue to fight every day to ensure fair elections in Georgia, that every legal vote counts, and that illegal votes don’t count,” Raffensperger continued.
“I know emotions are running high. Politics are involved in everything right now. If I was Senator Perdue, I’d be irritated I was in a runoff. And both Senators and I are all unhappy with the potential outcome for our President.” [CNN/Politics]
If Raffensperger understands that he was just asked to abandon his duty and use his position to cheat the two Senators to renewed terms, he doesn’t betray it. But that’s the message.
An honorable official would have come out and said it, and then informed the two Senators in no uncertain terms that it’s time for them to resign.
Face it, Raffensperger. You no longer have a political future, because you didn’t cheat. Recognize it and go out with a big boom. You’ll feel better for it. And, like you said, let the voters fire you. Jokers like those Senators have no place in American politics – or shouldn’t.
