Monthly Archives: December 2020

Kickback:

A kickback is an illegal payment intended as compensation for preferential treatment or any other type of improper services received. The kickback may be money, a gift, credit, or anything of value. Paying or receiving kickbacks is a corrupt practice that interferes with an employee’s or a public official’s ability to make unbiased decisions. Kickbacks are often referred to as a type of bribery. [Investopedia]

Used by me here. I receive annual training from my employer that emphasizes kickbacks will result in termination. Since I’m not in Sales, it doesn’t really apply, but the training is still mandatory.

This will be a short feature, since Trump has less than a month left in office. These are deals that appear to be ripe for benefiting Trump personally. Retroactively, we can include this deal with the United Arab Emirates, as well as the other deals for Muslim nations to normalize relations with Israel (see previous link).

Here’s the next deal on the Kickback Watch:

The Trump administration has formally notified Congress that it intends to sell nearly $500 million in precision bombs to Saudi Arabia, a transaction that is likely to fuel criticism from lawmakers who object to arming the Persian Gulf nation over its record of human rights abuses and stifling dissent and role in the war in Yemen. …

The gulf monarchy, with which the Trump administration has forged close ties, has been the subject of bipartisan criticism over its war in neighboring Yemen, where Saudi jets, using U.S. precision munitions, have repeatedly bombed civilian targets as the kingdom has sought to weaken Iranian-linked rebels there. [WaPo]

That the Trump Administration is trying to sneak it past the media and public by announcing it on December 24^th is telling. But this is particularly worrisome:

An individual familiar with the sale, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to the news media, said the deal includes 7,500 “Paveway IV” precision-guided bombs, worth $478 million, which under the terms of the agreement would be produced in the kingdom.

Read that as “technology transfer” – from advanced science to manufacturing techniques. If I were a fly on the wall in the Oval Office, my guess is that the Saudis refused to pay a kickback without that clause.

Merry Christmas, everyone. The Sun is giving you a gift of a new sunspot, which have been few and far between in the last few years.

From NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Another Nutcracker Suite has arisen, and I can only pity Vice President Mike Pence:

Hours before President Donald Trump retweeted a message for his vice president to “act” in stopping the ratification of the Electoral College, he met for more than an hour in the Oval Office with Mike Pence, whom he has complained recently isn’t doing enough to support his bid to overturn the election.

The discussion was “entirely unrelated” to the eventual tweet, one person familiar with the matter said, though would not specify whether the issue of the January 6 ratification in Congress arose. The two men went separate ways for the holiday. [CNN/Politics]

Pence will be in charge of the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6^th. By bringing him to the attention of the Trump cultists, Trump  has given Pence two unpalatable choices:

1. Ignore Trump’s pathetic treaty. Trump’s cultists will hate Pence forever, and his political career is over. He cannot win an election without the support of the cult.
2. Somehow bollix up the count. We can then assume Trump will desperately try to hold on to power for as long as possible, and pick his own successor. It’ll be a member of his family, not Pence. Additionally, if it fails, Pence’s perfidy will be remembered, and his political career is over.

As observed by many, for Trump loyalty is for suckers, and Pence has been loyal even when he could have led a 25^th Amendment maneuver to remove Trump from power, and made it stick.

Now, I would be shocked if he ever wins another election.

The kid did good work.

Identity Unknown (1945) follows a man’s search for his name and identity in World War II. Caught in a blast in France that killed three other servicemen, he alone survives – but not all of him. He’s forgotten who he is, and all of their dog tags were blown off and recovered, but with no clue as to who is who – and fingerprint checks take a long time when computers don’t exist and there’s a war going on.

Sent back to the United States, with a list of potential names and homes in his pocket, he takes the name Johnny March^[1], and impulsively decides to search for his identity. He jumps a train and begins his exploration of America’s id.

He encounters a woman who assumes she’s a widow, a little boy who thinks March is his Daddy, a gang war in progress, and a farm auction, and in each manages to make a positive contribution. He’s the quintessential Everyman, proving that it isn’t position, but what’s in the heart that matters.

It is not as compelling as it might have been, but it kept us interested and watching. Its mystery keeps it in the ballpark, and its humanity keeps it watchable.

And here it is now. It’s a feel-good movie, no doubt about it, and if that’s what you’re about, this may be for you.

¹ Yes, yes, I know that “Johnny March” is the same name I mentioned in the recent review of The Power Of The Whistler (1945). So I screwed up, eh? I think the name in that movie was simply “George.” Mea culpa!

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen Fox News, NewsMax, and OANN retracting or otherwise whitewashing claims aired on their networks of corruption of voting machines, under threat of lawsuit from SmartMatic.

And today there’s a new lawsuit in the wings:

An executive for a voting machine company that has been the target of conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and been baselessly accused of swinging the results against the President is suing his campaign and conservative media figures for defamation.

Trump has called Dominion Voting Systems “a disaster,” and his supporters have pushed the conspiracy theory that the company deleted votes for Trump on its voting equipment and that Dominion’s director of product strategy and security, Eric Coomer, helped subvert the election. …

The lawsuit names as defendants the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Trump adviser Sidney Powell, conservative media outlets One America News Network and Newsmax Media, the right-wing website Gateway Pundit, and Colorado businessman and activist Joseph Oltmann, among others. CNN has reached out to those named in the lawsuit. [CNN/Politics]

And I’m left wondering:

Is the lawsuit the point?

Or is the legal process of discovery the point?

Will there be some interesting information that comes popping out if these lawsuits are not settled prior to reaching court?

On this snowy night here in Minnesota, that’s what is coming to mind.

That would be the Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) in the wringer over the recently passed Covid-19 stimulus bill:

“I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000 or $4000 per couple,” Trump said in a video released on Twitter. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items in this legislation or to send me a suitable bill.”

The extraordinary message came after he largely left negotiations over the measure to lawmakers and his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump did not explicitly threaten to veto the bill, but said he was dissatisfied with its final state. [CNN/Politics]

McConnell’s signature behavior over the years has been No victories for Democrats! Even more so than Only conservatives need apply for positions in the judiciary!

But this bill is a response to the Senate race runoffs in Georgia, a carefully crafted attempt at buying votes for incumbents Loeffler and Perdue. If the benefits of the bill are expanded to more money for direct subsidies to citizens, that will be a direct blow to his creed. Democrats will be able to use it in future campaigns. Democrats used Trump to increase the emergency benefit to you, while Republicans had to be dragged into it! Although Republicans denied increased benefits to you for no good reason! is also an effective slogan.

And the Democrats have seized on this opportunity:

Still, Trump’s message appeared to be greeted favorably by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted: “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks.”

“At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent,” she said. “Let’s do it!”

Will Republicans tell their beloved President NO! and risk the wrath of the wretched Trump cult?

Or will they fold and hand the Democrats a victory?

This is the problem of supporting a narcissist as your Leader. Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself, and he has been disappointed that most Republicans are not willing to cross the line into autocracy territory and hand him what he thinks would be power, so he’s putting the squeeze on them by pushing on McConnell, who’s much more a leader than newbie Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) or any unelected official. This is a tug of war between McConnell and Trump.

It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

One of the complaints of the Skeptic community concerning journalism on such subjects as homeopathy and other quack remedies is that the journalists think that balance is the arch-goal, and often the only goal.

Therefore, the Skeptic community should be cheering Jennifer Rubin’s piece in WaPo yesterday on the next step the journalistic community must take to avoid enabling autocrat-wannabes in the future:

Fairness comes not in serving up equal portions of lies and truth, but in accurately separating, as best the media can at that moment, what is true and what is false. Instead of “balance,” which denotes an artificial leveling of the scales, reporters should aim for perspective, context and completeness. And, most critically, notions about moral equivalency between the parties and the assumption of sincerity and honesty from Republicans must be rethought in an era in which so many Republicans are indifferent, if not hostile, to truth and democracy.

Quacks, would-be theocrats, and other believers in the ridiculous may hate it, but facts and the study of reality – which is science – take precedence over their wants. Journalists are not finished when they’ve presented “both sides” of a subject. They need to also survey the relevant science, whether it be directly (hard), or by interviewing an acknowledged expert in the field (also hard, as sometimes an “expert” is either a fellow crackpot, or someone outside of their field). For example, a clash between a homeopath and a skeptic should include the fact that there are no solid scientific studies (which would be studies that have not been shot down by scientific criticisms about procedures or analysis, including making allowances for the well-known, yet mystifying, placebo effect) showing homeopathy has any efficacy.

“In fact, given the number of such studies that failed to show the effect, homeopathy is probably bullshit.” This might be a bit harsh, but accurate.

A good journalist would also include a short paragraph on how homeopathy might result in treatment delay, which, in the case of serious illness, can shrink life expectancy.

I think Rubin has done a service for the entire journalistic world here, not just for political reporters.

But this might be it:

It’s never aliens, until it is. Today, news leaked in the British newspaper The Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nevertheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)—a so-called “technosignature.” Now, speaking to Scientific American, the scientists behind the discovery caution there is still much work to be done, but admit the interest is justified. “It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it,” says Andrew Siemion from the University of California, Berkeley.

Most curiously, it occupies a very narrow band of the radio spectrum: 982 megahertz, specifically, which is a region typically bereft of transmissions from human-made satellites and spacecraft. “We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency” such as this one, Siemion says. Perhaps, he says, some as-yet-unknown exotic quirk of plasma physics could be a natural explanation for the tantalizingly concentrated radio waves. But “for the moment, the only source that we know of is technological.” [Scientific American]

It’s quite convenient that the apparent source is the closest star system to ourselves, isn’t it? While everyone says they expect this to turn out to be natural or from an Earth-based system, there’s an undertone of excitement.

It’d be quite a turnaround, after this mess of a 2020, if 2021 was the year in which we confirmed there’s someone else out there?

If you’re in the mood for amusement, the blizzard of Presidential pardons that began today should provide it. First, toss out the idea that pardons should be used to correct injustices.

The goal here is to understand what each pardon is trying to accomplish for Donald J. Trump.

For example, the pardons of campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former NSA General Michael Flynn (admittedly an early pardon), and others in this category are a signal that President Trump will take care of those who are willing to break the rules on his behalf. This guarantees a flock of potential criminals applying for jobs with a future Trump campaign.

The pardons of former Republican Congressmen Collins, Hunter, who I’ve mentioned before for their missteps, and Stockman signal that if you’re a loyal elected Republican official, don’t be too worried about corruption, Trumpie will take care of you. This applies to those politicians who signed the legislation Texas v Pennnsylvania, especially. All they have to do is get Trump, or his designated ideological successor, reelected, and any corruption problems will be resolved.

See? It’s fun! But those are the easy ones. How about the non-violent drug offenders? That’s a bit more of a challenge, isn’t it?

An addendum to the last part of the Campaign Promises Retrospective series:

With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss.

The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.

Members of the group assembled­ in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions. …

In [the place of relatively mainstream Administration advisors such as White House Counsel Pat Cipollone], Trump has welcomed figures from the political fringes who have offered him optimism and ideas for how to stay in power. Their brazen proposals have rankled some of the president’s aides and allies, who have warned that attempting to invoke the military or challenge states’ election processes through executive power would violate the Constitution and backfire politically, according to officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. [WaPo]

Anyone who wishes to contend that Trump has hired the best must now attempt to justify the appearance beside Trump of the likes of Giuliani, Sidney Powell, MacEnany, and even worse figures who have little respect for democracy – but a hunger for power.

But the striking feature for me is that Trump does not stare hard reality in the face and deal with it. Instead, he seeks those who say what he wants to hear, without regard to the quality of the source. In this, he’s emblematic of the Fox News viewers who flock to Fox News not because of excellence, but because it tells them what they want to hear – especially its editorial side –  such as that the election was rigged.

The recent walk-back of Fox News‘ Lou Dobbs’ claims in that arena must have been quite a shock to them.

I have to wonder how many Fox News viewers will find in the loss, and despicable post-loss behavior, of President Trump an allegory for their own behavior – and how they should modify it.

And that doesn’t mean moving on to OANN and NewsMax, who are vying to replace Fox News in the affections of the conservative viewer. It means seeking facts, not lies, opposing viewpoints and not precious coddling.

President Trump didn’t seek out and hire the best of the best for his Administration. He sought and hired those who shared his predilection for conspiracy theories and amateur ideas of America’s place in the world – and how we should behave.

And we’ve been paying the price for that in prestige and lives.

While some conservatives still believe that the mainstream media, such as CNN, are irrationally against President Trump, I think his actions of late – as if his impeachment and failed but near conviction wasn’t enough – have proven that their reporting has been accurate and fair.

So here’s CNN/Politics‘ Stephen Collinson today:

Joe Biden will be president in 30 days. Until then, the question is how much damage can be done by a vengeful, delusional soon-to-be ex-President swilling conspiracy theories, whose wild anti-democratic instincts are being encouraged by fringe political opportunists.

Donald Trump will retain the awesome powers of the presidency until noon on January 20, and there’s never been a time when he has been subject to as few restraining influences or has had a bigger incentive to cause disruption.

The President is spending day after day in his White House bunker, entertaining crackpot theories about imposing martial law, seizing voting machines and staging an intervention in Congress on January 6 to steal the election from Biden.

Surrounded by the last dead-end loyalists, Trump is flinging lies and political venom like King Lear in a crumbling Twitter kingdom, alarming some staffers about what he will do next.

If you have any doubts, Professor Richardson provides this bit, although I looked at her endnotes and I’m not sure where this information about his empty schedule comes from:

As he descends into the fever swamps, Trump has largely given up any pretense of governing. His public schedule remains empty, and his private meetings appear to focus on how he can stay in office. Today we learned that Russian hackers broke into the email system used by the leadership of the Treasury Department, but the cyberattack from Russia has gone unaddressed except to the extent the president tried to blame the attack on China (although he has made no move to retaliate against China for the attack). He has made little attempt to shepherd any sort of an economic relief bill through Congress. And, most crucially, he is silent about the epidemic that is killing us. As of this evening, more than 18 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 319,000 have died.

So here’s the thing: how to corral this President into flying right and at least not deliberately damaging anything more?

I believe this falls on the President-elect and Corporate America.

First, Biden should make arrangements with Corporate America, meaning a quiet conference call with various major entities which may interact with The Trump Organization. Then Biden should call Trump, unofficially, and say,

Hey, Jack! Fly right or The Trump Organization will be strangled into dust.

And then the titans of Corporate America should start calling Trump. The message?

We won’t use your hotels.
We won’t golf on your golf courses.
We won’t buy from you.
We won’t sell to you.
We’ll pressure your allies in the same way, until they agree.
You will be sanctioned.
And this goes for all your children as well.
Forever.
Enough of damaging the United States.

Corporate America depends on a healthy United States to operate, to profit, to let the CEOs pretend they’re great people. It’s time for them to contribute to the country in which they operate, to keep it politically safe.

Because no sane business wants to operate in TrumpLandia.

Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist is puzzled by megachurch Christmas displays:

Here’s what some megachurches are doing to celebrate Christmas. Far from a simple Nativity play, these are Broadway-style performances that, I think, are meant to bring you closer to Jesus.

I haven’t figured out the connection yet, but maybe you can fill me in.

How much money is wasted on these performances… and for what real purpose? Does any of that scream “birth of Christ” to you? Does any of that make you want to join these churches? I have to imagine it does or else they wouldn’t be doing it, but then I have to question the type of people suckered in by these spectacles who think they’re somehow more devout as a result of watching the show.

The answer to real purpose is maintenance of the epistemic bubble. This is the fulfillment of a bonding need of a group of people. By providing it, the church reduces the risk of exposure to influences which may dilute both offerings and allegiance.

This is how you build loyalty to irrationality. It’s a small step, but it’s the building of that bubble of a society, within the larger American society, that emphasizes homogeneity while reducing tolerance.

If they didn’t provide it, members would seek it elsewhere – and their information stream would be less controlled by the church.

Either that, or all of these megachurch pastors are drama queens – and that is entirely possible. After all, megachurch.

But it bears repeating.

Currently, President Trump is Commander-in-Chief of Armed Services that are sworn to the Constitution, not to him.

As a member of the military, as informal as that might be, he is subject to military discipline.

If he thinks he can stomp his feet and try to pull off a military coup, he may find himself sitting in prison, facing a military tribunal – and then, possibly, a firing squad. Engineering a coup would qualify for treason or sedition, punishable by death.

This should be made blindingly clear to him by his legal advisors. Trump’s best option, if he has no appetite for the alleged avalanche of legal actions awaiting him on January 21, is to get the hell out of Dodge on or before January 20.

Today, outgoing AG Barr announced there will be no special counsel investigating Hunter Biden or the election:

Attorney General William Barr on Monday rejected several of President Donald Trump’s inflammatory and unfounded statements regarding the presidential election, saying at a news conference that he doesn’t plan to appoint a special counsel to investigate President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter or the election.

“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was a right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” Barr said in response to a question on the presidential election. He said that widespread fraud wasn’t found in this election.

Barr also roundly rejected suggestions from the President’s supporters in recent days who’ve called for the US government to seize voting machines. …

On the Hunter Biden financial investigation — which the Biden transition acknowledged recently and Barr had kept quiet during the election season — the attorney general gave a similar answer that there is no need for him to take special steps to protect the investigation.

“To the extent there’s an investigation, I think it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr said when asked about Hunter Biden. Federal prosecutors and IRS investigations are conducting the probe, and Hunter Biden has not been charged with any crime. [CNN/Politics]

The Democrats – and anyone who cares for truth and its proper representation, including Robert Mueller – were outraged at Barr’s characterization of the Mueller Report as essentially exonerating Trump and his election campaign. The investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election resulted in multiple indictments, convictions, and identification of multiples cases of obstruction of justice, which could not be further pursued by Counsel Mueller. Barr’s assertion was preposterous.

Barr also interfered outrageously in ongoing investigations and prosecutions, leading to two unprecedented petitions from former DoJ employees requesting his resignation.

But since September 2020 onwards, he’s been a disappointment to Trump and the right, as he failed to find any mud to smear on the Biden family, any evidence of really anything at all. In some ways, it’s as if Barr had realized that the Evil of the Democrats might actually be the Evil of the Republicans.

But this announcement is a bit more important than it sounds, because it confuses the message Trump and the far-right would like to push on receptive voters in 2022 and beyond. It’s important to have a straight-forward message when it comes to politics: The Bidens are corrupt and The election was stolen. It keeps the base all stirred up and in training.

It’s harder to push those messages when AG Bill Barr, a man who had the potential to be the “greatest” AG ever, according to Trump, drops a brick on those messages.

We should still look for those messages being used as weapons by the right, but the Democrats should be ready to use Barr’s own words against them. Even if the Deputy AG initiates special counsel proceedings at Trump’s direction – and I expect that to happen, as Deputy AG Jeffery Rosen has a record of being led around by the nose – it’s not important. The investigations will lead nowhere, even as they’re seized upon as proof that … well … something happened!

Yeah. Trump bullied Rosen into initiating unjustified investigations for political purposes. That’s what happened.

Vatican critic Novus Ordo Watch (Novus Ordo translates to New Order, and is generally thought to refer to the most recent promulgation of the Catholic Mass by Pope Paul VI, in 1969 – and, if you’re wondering, the blog is subtitled Unmasking the Modernist Vatican II Church – oh, the horrors!) seems to be having a conniption over the Vatican’s … nativity scenes:

In case you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, it just did: The Vatican has unveiled its Nativity Scene in St. Peter’s Square.

Although this year we’re not confronted with a homo-erotic Frankie Horror Picture Show or an unconventional Nativity display made of sand, what Bergoglio’s sect came up with this time around is a fitting end to an annus horribilis, a truly horrific year.

Here’s one:

Unlike most American nativity scenes around here in Minnesota, which tend to be in the realist, if not authentic, tradition, this seems to be an abstraction, an interesting commentary on the dual natures of those involved in the nativity – both human and divine, or at least mythical, as it were. Unlike the American tradition, which suggests that humanity and Christ (and attendees) are alike, the Vatican nativity scene suggests a difference, an incomprehensibility concerning the Divine, that perhaps humanity will have to face for an eternity.

Which is quite appropriate.

And then there’s the scene which has led to some people to ask if Darth Vader has invaded Catholic orders:

I love the camel, who seems entirely disenchanted. And Darth as a wise man? Wise guy might be more appropriate. The Art Newspaper engages in a bit of snark:

But the 2020 offering has received mixed reviews, as the tableau, which the Catholic Herald is calling an “embarrassing sci-fi creche”, features an astronaut as one of the three wise men, with another that can only be described as a Darth Vader-doppelganger holding a shield. While it would appear that Darth Vader was not, in fact, at Jesus’s birth, it’s important to remember that the Gospels were written long after Christ’s death and such facts could easily have slipped through the cracks.

Ahem. The figure in question reminds me more of a Teutonic Knight of the Middle Ages, but rumor has it they were not invited to the Nativity, either.

Churches often have cool architecture. Consider this one near Stiege in Germany –and who is saving it:

Ask Hans Powalla if he is a believer and the immediate response is a firm “no”.

Yet he and other villagers in and around the German town of Stiege have embarked on the Herculean task of saving a picturesque church by moving it from the middle of a forest into the centre of town.

Former electrician Powalla, 74, said they were driven by the “unique architecture of the building” and the “meaning that it gives to the region” in the Harz mountains.

The object in question is a stave church, or wooden church, complete with dragon ornaments on the roof, built in the Nordic style in 1905. [Channel News Asia]

Follow the link to see the actual church (the pic is copyrighted). It’s neat.

And it’s cool that it’s being saved, regardless of the religious affiliations of those who are rescuing it. At one time, it might have been burned down, possibly with great joy, by competitors.

At least in Germany, they seem to have gotten beyond that.

And you have to like a church with carved dragon head ornamentation.

I do believe this judge is outside of his jurisdiction on this matter:

… on Oct. 2, [Ohio juvenile court Judge Timothy Grendell] made an order that legal experts call unheard of, and medical experts say could cause harm. The judge banned two parents, who were wrangling over custody of their young boys, from having the “children undergo COVID-19 testing” without his approval, according to the court record.

A doctor subsequently ordered a coronavirus test for one of the boys before admitting him to a children’s hospital for severe breathing problems. When Grendell found out, he threatened to find the mother in contempt of court, a move that could lead to her being thrown in jail. [Scene]

Perhaps medical professionals should have veto power over judges’ orders involving medical issue?

I don’t make this suggestion entirely in jest. This is the sort of order that could easily get someone killed, if followed. Of course, the details of such a veto power would matter, and I certainly wouldn’t want an acupuncturist, say, having that sort of power.

The balance of the article basically says Grendell is a nutcase who shouldn’t be on the bench. A former Republican Ohio state legislator, he seems to have deeply ingested the witches’ brew of what passes for conservatism these days that convinces him he has competency in any field he likes, and that is a real problem in the Court system, because it really is hard to remove a judge – and that’s as it should be. Playing political games with the judiciary is a quick way to discredit the judiciary and induce more social unrest.

But when they don’t understand that they don’t have competent opinions on important matters, then, well, they’re basically incompetent boobs.

But if we can’t quickly remove them, a medical veto power might at least rein them in a bit.

Our younger cat, Peeper, was fascinated with this sloppily edited video on the habits of brush turkeys.

Petting parties:

To some social observers, petting parties of the 1920s were a natural, post-First World War outgrowth of a repressed society. To others, the out-in-the-open hug-and-kissfests were blinking neon signposts on the Road to Perdition.

“Petting parties varied quite a lot,” says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. “But certainly there were parties where young people did quite a lot of erotic exploration — kissing and fondling. These parties always stopped before intercourse. In that sense they had imposed limitations created by the group presence. They were not orgies and they were not promiscuous — one set of partners only.”

Petting parties, Fass explains, “allowed young people to experiment in a self-limiting way by creating peer regulation that both encouraged experimentation and created clear limits.” [Linton Woods, NPR]

New one on me. I guess I don’t get out much.

Lek:

1. a small area in which birds of certain species, notably the black grouse, gather for sexual display and courtship
2. the act or practice of so gathering [Collins English Dictionary]

Noted in the book The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman. Almost done with it.

I haven’t been paying attention to the cryptocurrencies lately, so this CNN/Business article from a few days ago caught me by surprise:

Bitcoin has blown past the $20,000 mark and continues to hit record highs as investors flock to the cryptocurrency during the coronavirus pandemic.

After topping the symbolic benchmark Wednesday, bitcoin continued to surge. Prices topped $23,000 Thursday morning.

Bitcoin (XBT) has been on a tear this year, having tripled in value. It and other cryptocurrencies have been attractive to investors as the US dollar has weakened.

“It’s not a surprise to us that Bitcoin has hit $20K but it is a very symbolic threshold to reach at the end of what has been a historic year for bitcoin,” said Michael Sonnenshein, managing director of Grayscale Investments. “These are just the early days, and we think there’s a lot more runway to go.”

With the Federal Reserve expected to leave interest rates near zero for several more years, bitcoin may continue to win new fans.

Later on, the article says that gold bugs, i.e., the investors preoccupied with gold as an investing option, are finding something to love in cryptocurrencies – or at least so the investment pundits would like to think so.

I try to be suspicious of pronouncements like that as possibly self-serving.

But here’s my real question: in a crisis such as the one we’re experiencing right now, where we should, by all rights, be busting our normal Federal budget to keep people and businesses upright, which comes down to borrowing from future generations to keep the world afloat for them, how would this work with a cryptocurrency? One of the features of cryptocurrency is regulation of the currency supply, which is implemented via the action of mining. This was meant to banish runaway inflation, but sometimes – at a time like this – it may make sense to risk runaway inflation, as the alternative of soup kitchens roaming the cities, and hungry mobs armed with pitchforks, is even worse.

With standard currencies, it’s not difficult to ramp up the printing presses and pump more money into the economy. Indeed, the last time we did that, under the terminology of quantitative easing, no substantial inflation was experienced, despite widespread expectations of same among those who were paying attention. Why?

The money, by and large, never entered the economy.

At the time, the Federal Reserve had determined that the banks had become unacceptably vulnerable to shocks to the economy, and they raised the requirements for bank reserves. Then the Fed bought shares in those banks, presumably from their treasuries (bank shares owned by the banks themselves), and the banks funneled that money into their reserves. (The Fed later sold those shares, and at a profit, or at least so I’ve heard.)

I recount this story^[1] not to suggest that the link between printing money beyond replacement plus GDP growth and inflation does not exist – the inflation experienced by the Wiemar Republic in its frantic attempts to pay its war reparations to France, as well as various African debacles over the decades, dispute the proposition – but to point out that it doesn’t necessarily exist.

So, if my understanding of cryptocurrency is correct, and that mining cannot be accelerated, as that would violate a foundational precept of cryptocurrency, then, really, of what central use is it? Indeed, is its inflation in price reflective of the fact that US dollars are being printed at a faster pace than normal, while mining doesn’t really go any faster?

Or is it just a convenience? Even worse, has this well-meaning social experiment become nothing more than an investment ghost, useful for shearing the investment sheep of their wool?

¹ As I understand it. I am a software engineer, not an economist!

From Wood v Raffensperger, et al, a Trumpian lawsuit in Georgia, comes this doozy:

VERIFICATION

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1746, I declare and verify under plenty of perjury that the facts contained in the foregoing Verified Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief are true and correct.

Plenty of what? Is that a recipe ingredient?

Or just an admission?

Or are we all just members of a reality show, rather than inhabitants of a computer simulation, as I’ve been assuming?

In the category of Unexpected dialog, I think Santa should have said, “Oh, hey, brother. How’s Dad doing?”

Immortal zombie elves are plaguing Santa.

That’s how A Christmas Horror Story (2015) kicks off, and from there it’s all downhill.

In some ways, this collection of four stories, set in Bailey Downs, are anti-stories. Intertwined and tenuously connected, they chronicle the sad plague afflicting, for no particular reason, the elves of Santa; the savage infliction of the birth of Christ on three teenaged journalists; a dysfunctional family paying a Christmas visit upon ancient Aunt Etta and her butler, Gerhart; the rum-based Christmas ramblings of an ancient radio DJ; and of a changeling, exchanged for a little boy, of a family stealing a tree from the lot of a man who rides herd on a collection of trolls^[1]. None of these end well, although some feature a special guest appearance from Krampus, the ancient Christmas spirit accustomed to making meals out of evil people.

But, more importantly, none of these stories really has a moral for us. They function more as cups dipped into the swirling stream of Chaos that surrounds us, their reflections unwilling to fashion their madness into moralism for us, emphasizing that random darkness can afflict even those undeserving of it. That even those who are virtually venerated by their fellows die terrible, undeserved deaths.

“You were going to give me away as a gift, I heard you talking!” screamed Sparkly, just before he collapsed from glitterlung. Or so my Arts Editor assures me was said.

These are not noir stories, for noir stories depend on the bad behavior of their characters to lead to their sad, if well-deserved endings. These are nihilistic stories, told by spirits that do not believe in morality and its alleged consequences, but instead in a random Universe that multiplies the deserved desserts of their exemplars by a thousand, before tossing them into the hidden shoals of humanity’s wasteland, there to bewilder the explorers of history who stumble upon their monuments and corpses, and terrify those with the least grain of guilt.

My Arts Editor and I like to spend part of Christmas watching some movie or other that we’ve never heard of, hoping to enjoy it. Memorably, in this vein we’ve seen Rare Exports (2010) and Anna and the Apocalypse (2018). A Christmas Horror Story will be thrown on the Unmemorable pile, I fear. The bilge I’ve made up for this review may or may not be accurate, but the movie is certainly neither inspirational, fascinating, nor amusing.

It’s just nihilism. Have fun, philosophy majors of a certain turn of temperament. And those of you who are William Shatner completists, for there he is, taking a competent turn as the radio DJ.

Maybe we’ll find something better in the next week.

¹ I have to wonder if the collective noun for trolls is bridge.