There is no infallible means for discerning when a religious believer has been spoken to, directly and personally, by God. However, there is a reliable way to disconfirm such a claim. When a person demands that other people immediately accept that he has been spoken to by God, and treats with insult and contempt those who do not acknowledge his claim to unique revelation, then we can be sure that no genuine message has been received, and that the voice echoing in that person’s mind is not that of God but that of his own ego.
It’s a lovely thought, but suffers from the assumption that your God is good.
This speaks to the importance of objective observation. An objective observation is an observation that anyone equipped with the usual human senses and equipment generally agreed to be honest, that is, not fraudulent, can perform. When it’s objective, we can begin to consider how to measure it properly, and all the bugaboos that go along with that, because at least the bugaboos can be dealt with rationally.
God speaking to your pastor or, for that matter, the trembling dude sitting next to you, isn’t objective. Deciding if it’s the God dude or El Diablo might as well be done while shooting up some meth.
Scientists value objective findings, not subjective findings, although certainly there are certain subjective measurements occasionally, reluctantly, used. For example, measurements of pain are generally reported by patients on a 1-10 scale. This is necessarily subjective, but can be useful in a clinical setting.
But objective measurements are far more useful and trustworthy.
And that’s why private Divine communications, reported by the deeply religious, are not to be trusted. Nod politely and move on. You want that communication to be believed? Have the Divine write it into an hillside while being recorded doing so, because hoaxes are so easy to perform and so hard to detect. Especially now that famed debunker James Randi has passed away.
Or better yet, have the Divine come down and do an interview with Jake Tapper and Sean Hannity – simultaneously. Then we’ll be getting somewhere.
But trying to tell if some private Divine communication is happening or has happened is an exercise for the credulous and fools.
Oh, you were doing that again! (Quick, someone clue me in on what “that” might be!)
Merkins.
Tie on skunk noses.
Anachrony!
Hipsters!
Bad acting.
If these elements appeal to you, I Was A Teeenage Wereskunk (2016) is still only barely worth the watching. Evoking at turns laughter and teeth gritting, this story of a teenage boy being infected with wereskunk-ism is painful, really.
For those not keeping up with Evangelical news, here’s an article on the site Black Christian News:
Karen Swallow Prior, an evangelical author and professor, tweeted Friday (Dec. 11) that she was ashamed to have voted for local and state GOP candidates. Many of whom have been vocal supporters of lawsuits challenging the election results.
“What a bunch of money-grubbing, power hungry, partisan cowards who care nothing about conservatism,” the self-described life-long conservative said in her tweet.
Author and columnist, David French, published a column Sunday on The Dispatch titled, “The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism,” maintaining that “the frenzy and the fury of the post-election period has laid bare the sheer idolatry and fanaticism of Christian Trumpism.”
And perhaps most notably, Beth Moore, a popular Southern Baptist author and speaker, took to Twitter Sunday to voice her frustration and seeming bewilderment at the Christian zeal for Trump, saying that in her more than 63 years, she has “never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism.”…
Moore had particularly strong words for her “fellow” Christian leaders, who she said have a responsibility for protecting their congregants.
“We will be held responsible for remaining passive in this day of seduction to save our own skin while the saints we’ve been entrusted to serve are being seduced, manipulated, USED and stirred up into a lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit for political gain,” she tweeted.
Notably, none of these people are from the Black community.
Of course, all the grifters currently advising President Trump will be taking exception to these statements. This may be the first step in a schism in the Evangelical community. Look for more leaders stepping back from the brink of calling for civil war and, for that matter, heresy, while others continue to grasp for worldly wealth and power. This may cause violence: As ever, it’s the followers who are most likely to bear the brunt of this disaster, whether it be in physical injuries and deaths, legal punishments, or the spiritual bewilderment that accompanies losing one’s way and discovering your leader is little more than a con-man and grifter.
I believe French has been a NeverTrumper from way back, even leaving National Review over his views. The other two are new to me, but judging from their comments, they’ve been blind to what’s been going on for years. I hope, as leaders, they are willing to do public penance and analysis of their mistaken thinking. It’s through such acknowledgments that others can learn, even if it’s a lesson that will be resisted.
I think Colin Wright on Reality’s Last Stand is on my wavelength in his concern about messaging strategies, but I wish he’d increased broadcast strength:
In discussions about intersex conditions it is common to hear the claim that intersex people make up 1-2 percent of the population and is therefore “as common as red hair.” There appear to be two main goals when forwarding this claim—one laudable, the other insidious. The laudable goal is to normalize the existence of intersex people and thereby help facilitate the societal acceptance of a marginalized community who may experience social ostracism and who have often been victims of unconsentual [sic] and medically unnecessary “corrective” cosmetic surgeries. The insidious goal is to plant seeds of doubt in our collective understanding of biological sex and suggest that the categories “male” and “female” may be social constructs or exist on a “spectrum.”
Unfortunately, and as I think Colin would agree, the blind use of statistics to normalize or demonize anything is simply an abuse of statistics. If you can replace “people with red hair” with “pederast”, and thereby demonize the intersexed, well, your original argument’s really shit.
Colin’s conclusion, so far as it goes, is fine, but it’s all negatives:
While the prevalence of intersex conditions, defined in [Dr. Leonard] Sax’s clinically-relevant sense, is quite low, this by no means justifies any of the mistreatment, whether socially or medically, that many gender activists hope to prevent when they overstate its prevalence. How we treat people, and the rights afforded to them, should not be predicated on their prevalence in a population. And that is the point we should be trying to normalize, rather than false statistics.
Sure. But how about asking, then, how do we recognize those who should be regarded as threats? I quite agree, those who deviate from the norms are, on that valuation alone, harmless, or more accurately insufficient information to make a judgment. How about if we ask the evolutionary question, Does this deviation harm society and its members? After all, a pedophile shouldn’t be restrained because they are a small percentage of society; but they are restrained because such sexual relationships have been found to be a bane when it comes to the proper and normal development of the child. Broken children do not usually make for productive, happy people.
And, thus, statutory rape laws.
I recognize Wright is treating the case of improper statistics and how it leads to inaccurate messaging, which in turn leads to doubts about the trustworthiness of the source, but I cannot help but feel that he left me hanging with his terminating paragraph.
In case you were wondering about the judges who’ve consistently ruled against President Trump and his allies in their contesting of the election results, here’sWaPo:
In a remarkable show of near-unanimity across the nation’s judiciary, at least 86 judges — ranging from jurists serving at the lowest levels of state court systems to members of the United States Supreme Court — rejected at least one post-election lawsuit filed by Trump or his supporters, a Washington Post review of court filings found. …
The Post found that 38 judges appointed by Republicans dealt blows to such suits, with some writing searing opinions.
The latest example came Saturday, when federal District Judge Brett H. Ludwig, a Trump nominee who took the bench in September, dismissed a lawsuit filed by the president that sought to throw out the election results in Wisconsin, calling the request “extraordinary.”
“A sitting president who did not prevail in his bid for reelection has asked for federal court help in setting aside the popular vote based on disputed issues of election administration, issues he plainly could have raised before the vote occurred,” he wrote. “This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits.”
This is a key differentiator between private and public sectors. Trump may have expected favorable rulings because he nominated many of those Republican judges, and in the other cases he had assumed control of the Republican Party.
But they had a greater allegiance: to the rule of law.
And Trump didn’t get it. I doubt he’ll ever get it. That’s not how the private sector operates, and that’s all he understands. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s kept lists of traitor GOP-appointed judges, and publishes them, as a warning to others.
All that keeps Trump afloat is the support of the Evangelical pastors who continue to advise them, those grifters and con-men, who lead their flocks into supporting the Father of Lies as still being worthy of holding the Presidency, despite losing the election, vast incompetency, and, well, being a chronic liar.
As with the election officials, I offer congratulations on doing their jobs, and that they continue to collect their paychecks.
Your hat is too big for your britches, Mister! said the Queen of Mixed Metaphors
If you’re a fan of the lost genre of Broadway-derived movies of shallow Western musicals which make fun of the old West, then Red Garters (1954) may be for you. In Limbo County they’re holding a funeral, followed by the customary barbecue, to celebrate the gunning down of a low-down skunk. But who’s this stranger that’s come to town, fast on the draw, confused by the women, and snuffling about with the local gunslinger?
Singing their way through the contretemps brought on by the intrusion of civilized law enforcement vs the cultural acceptance of revenge killings, this beautifully photographed account of foolish men and their foolish women has a certain charm to it, but the charm is in a minor key. Don’t expect great revelations, but if you like the idea of a smart woman still falling for and winning a fast-draw, womanizing bully, and singing about it, then perhaps this is the sort of charm for which you’ll fall.
One who deceives or bluffs. The phrase comes from poker, in which a “four-flush” is a meaningless hand. (One needs five, not four, cards of the same suit in order to have a flush.) You can’t believe a word that fool says—he’s a real four-flusher. [The Free Dictionary]
Heard on an episode of The Carol Burnett Show this morning. My Arts Editor was bewildered at the idiom.
A friend from out of state wrote, and I decided to turn the reply into a post, since the subject has been annoying me:
Saw they’re cutting Minneapolis police budget?! Good luck with that!
Yeah. I agree with the idea of moving some police responsibilities to other groups, such as mental health professionals – that has proven successful in other cities, such as the pioneering CAHOOTS program in Eugene, OR. I think it’s overdue.
BUT.
They are pursuing this in a foolish manner. It’s going to take two to four years to stand up such an entity as the mental health professional responders, and during that time the police will continue to have to cover those situations until the new entities are competent for the job. Yes, the police will be responsible for those situations with reduced funding.
Immediately reducing money for the police is insane and a sign of operational incompetence.
The proper procedure is
Ascertain the need
Recognize the chronological latency of forming and training the new entity, whatever it is
Recognize the police must continue to cover those emergencies until the new entity is online
Recognize that #2 requires money
Raise taxes temporarily to cover formation and training costs (Mpls City Council failure point)
And when the new entity is online and competent, then reduce funding for the police and reduce taxes
Maybe the Council is terrified of raising taxes, I don’t know. We’re not the hunting grounds of Grover Norquist, notorious hater of taxes (and crippler of societies), so it’s a little puzzling – and makes me wonder if a substantial portion of the Council is fixated on hating MPD.
But, for comparison, a business would recognize that the development of a new capability requires investment, it doesn’t come for free no matter how much monies are desperately rearranged. Cities don’t get a pass. Raise the damn taxes or sell bonds or do what you need to do, but recognize you’re imperiling your citizens through this foolish approach to a worthy goal, and those citizens will be crying out in rejection of those policies.
Andrew Sullivan echoes Senator and now proven prophet Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ):
A long time ago now, frustrated with what I believed was a grotesque fusion of Christianity and politics in the Bush era, I coined the term “Christianism.” I regret it in some ways because it alienated many of the people I was trying to persuade. But its analogy to Islamism was not designed to argue that Christianists were in any way violent; just that, like Islamists, they saw no real distinction between politics and religion.
I mention this because it seems to be a critical element in the current crisis of American democracy that we may now be missing. In a manner very hard to understand from the outside, American evangelical Christianity has both deepened its fusion of church and state in the last few years, and incorporated Donald Trump into its sacred schematic. Christianists now believe that Trump has been selected by God to save them from persecution and the republic from collapse. They are not in denial about Trump’s personal iniquities, but they see them as perfectly consistent with God’s use of terribly flawed human beings, throughout the Old Testament and the New, to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.
This belief is now held with the same, unwavering fundamentalist certainty as a Biblical text. And white evangelical Christianists are the most critical constituency in Republican politics. If you ask yourself how on earth so many people have become convinced that the 2020 election was rigged, with no solid evidence, and are now prepared to tear the country apart to overturn an election result, you’ve got to take this into account. This faction, fused with Trump, is the heart and soul of the GOP. You have no future in Republican politics if you cross them. That’s why 19 Republican attorneys general, Ted Cruz, and now 106 Congressional Republicans have backed a bonkers lawsuit to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn the result.
And, yes, I took a moment to email Sullivan concerning Goldwater’s much pithier prophecy:
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them. – Senator Barry Goldwater
Sullivan’s article is worth perusing in full, but enough of the historical navel-gazing. The first step for rolling back this tide of anti-democracy is to find an argument which can gain traction. Here’s the first one to come to mind for me, which depends on the basic incompatibility between The Land of the Free, and the basic autocracy implicit in much of religion, which I present as a dialog between myself and a MAGA-ite:
ME: Why do you hate freedom so much?
MAGA: I don’t hate freedom! I love the United States!
ME: Stop lying to me.
MAGA: I’m not lying-
ME: Then Biden won the election after all?
MAGA: What, no he didn’t!
ME: Why?
MAGA: Because God told my favorite pastor that Trump won!
ME: Wait. God is dictating the outcome?
MAGA: Well, no. There was mass fraud –
ME: Hold on there. We here in the freedom-loving half of the United States have procedures for detecting fraud: evidence is found, presented to Courts, who rule as to whether the evidence is credible, and what relief is correct. Trump’s lawyers have failed in this regard. To the best of our knowledge, our procedures were valid and there was no fraud.
MAGA: No, no, no –
ME: So God dictated that Trump would win?
MAGA: YES! HE BLESSED TRUMP AS –
ME: And you hate freedom.
MAGA: No!
ME: In a free society, if we love freedom, we, en masse, must have the freedom to choose those who’ll govern us. No divinity can dictate that, or we are not free. In order to avoid chaos, we have to accept that if someone other than our favored candidate wins by the accepted procedures, then we accept that the winner is entitled to assume the position for which they ran.
That’s freedom. With freedom comes responsibility.
MAGA: There was fraud, I tell you! It was just so good it couldn’t be detected!
ME: Hah! If it was that good, then maybe Biden deserves to lead because he’s so smart? No? Oh, you still believe he’s a broken-down old man? No. Present credible evidence of fraud, or be an adult and accept that Biden won. That’s what Clinton supporters did in 2016. Why can’t the MAGA-ites be as good as the Clinton supporters were?
MAGA: I – no – (head explodes)
Short version: If God is dictating outcomes, then there is no freedom. If someone disputes the electoral outcome based on God, then they hate freedom.
As the medical staff at [United Memorial Medical Center] witnessed the psychological effects of isolation in patients, [chief of staff Dr. Joseph] Varon instructed staff to wear large photographs of their faces hung around their necks, so that patients could recognize the person who was caring for them behind those “space suits.”
One day, he went in to see patients with a picture of Brad Pitt attached to his personal protective equipment suit, eliciting laughter from even those who were the sickest. [WaPo]
The Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) that was abandoned by President Trump still may have a life, if the Iranian leadership can hold on:
Iran’s president Wednesday dismissed a bill that would reduce Iran’s compliance with international regulations on its nuclear energy program.
On Tuesday, Iranian lawmakers voted for a draft bill that would significantly increase Iran’s nuclear enrichment. The 20% jump would put Iran above the 3.67% enrichment rate Iran agreed to under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
However, on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he disagrees with the bill, calling it “harmful to the trend of diplomatic activities,” state-run Press TV reported. [AL-Monitor]
But its fate may lie in higher hands, as President Rouhani can be overruled by Supreme Leader Khamenei:
It is unclear what will come of the proposed law. On Wednesday, the speaker of the parliament officially asked Rouhani to implement the legislation. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has yet to take a position on it, Reuters reported.
Khamenei is quite elderly and, reputedly, ill. What the Biden Administration will be facing when it comes to Iran is hard to decipher. But there may be a good chance to cleaning it up, according to this follow up article:
Rouhani: Biden can just sign the “good piece of paper”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week called for President-elect Joe Biden to reenter the Iranian nuclear deal by reversing sanctions imposed by the United States after the Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal’s formal name, in May 2018.
Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the next president “can put a good piece of paper on the table and sign it nicely so that we could return to the first place, and it does not take time at all.”
His message echoes that of his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said last month that if the incoming Biden administration revokes “only three executive orders” that imposed sanctions on Iran, there is no need for “preconditions or negotiations.” [AL-Monitor]
We’ll have to see how Biden and his advisors like this idea. Keep in mind that current Secretary of State doesn’t qualify as an expert, so we can ignore this:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement Friday that “the international community must not reward the regime’s dangerous gamesmanship with economic appeasement.”
I recognize I’m pathological on the subject, but I think Erick Erickson is a sort of barometer for the far-right. He’s more honest in his evaluations, has some relevant expertise as a former elections lawyer, and I hope – but not expect – that others will gradually follow him down the path of reluctant rationality:
I am truly disappointed with my own side for the hucksterism, lies, and denial of reality. Too many friends have no knowledge they are wet. They cannot appreciate the real world around them and live now in a fantasy land of grievance, theft of elections, and mythology. Principles have been abandoned and all that remains is coveting power and keeping power.
Some good friends have even signed a letter wanting multiple states to ignore their voters and appoint replace electors to the Electoral College. It is disappointing to see.
I just assumed my side was better than the left, which has spent four years lying about 2016, engaged in petty grievances, and screaming about stolen elections and Russia. Turns out, in the end, everybody sometimes disappoints. Lord knows a lot of you are disappointed in me for merely trying to tell you the truth.
He’s not all that far down the path, though, is he? That last paragraph is worth contemplating for how he clings to his own truths, while admitting his fellows are worse than himself. Perhaps he needs to review the Mueller Report and its indictments, particularly of the Internet Research Agency. Asking voters to operate on false information does, indeed, result in a stolen election.
One of my minor themes when it comes to political blogging – which I hope will decrease as the Biden Administration takes its place and begins to undue the damage of the Trump Administration – is that the third-raters leading the far-right “conservative” movement are well aware that they are third-raters, and for that reason they try to paint the Democrats as similarly third-rate. It’s part of the strategy of retaining relevance and position as the years pass and demography works against them. For that reason, I assume nothing will come of the recently announced investigation into Hunter Biden.
And Erickson made the mistake of thinking that, because his fellows were ideological brothers, they must all be great. Or good. Or at least passable.
And now he’s coming to the bitter realization that many are fairly awful: arrogant embracers of victimhood. Unwilling to learn, unwilling to leave the right-wing epistemic bubble, they have the taste of Trumpian power in their mouths and they find it addictive.
This problem is the result of three conservative mistakes in confluence. We’ll start with the mistake of prioritizing ideology over competency and character. Look, I agree a competent Communist is not what we want in a legislature, as their description of the world, humanity, and how it all works is at serious divergence from how most Americans think about it.
But a corrupt or incompetent Democrat or Republican is little better. But the Democrats – strictly from informal observations – appear to be better at not electing despicable specimens such as Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), or Paul Ryan (R-WI). Why? Long time readers may be surprised to see me not cite toxic team politics, which, given the performance of Republican Congressional candidates vs the performance of President Trump, may be fading a bit if the ballot-splitting hypothesis holds true, but rather single-issue voters.
I suppose I should stop right here and say that, having made this observation to myself a few days ago, I then asked if I was a single issue voter. It’s a bad phrase, in a way, because nearly everyone will have an issue which will be their sticking point.
Mine? It’s this: If a candidate campaigns on the promise to abolish democracy if they win, well, no vote for you, dude. I’ll either not vote at all, or, if your opponent isn’t equally bad (think Cthulhu), I’ll vote for the opponent.
Does it seem ridiculous? Yes, it does. But it’s worth discovering and acknowledging that my sticking point is one which I don’t expect will ever come into operation. Now, back to the flow:
Right now, I consider single-issue voters to be the knife between the shoulder blades of the United States. The most popular issue appears to be abortion, and so what we see in the storm of deeply radical Republican candidates is the ability to do the anti-abortion polka with great facility. Add in a bit of the 2nd Amendment Absolutist rag, and a trifling bit of Christian Paranoia waltzes, as demonstrated at various times by Erickson, as well as recent candidates Reprensentative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA, currently in the runoff for reelection to her seat), and many, many others, and there’s no need for any candidate to demonstrate their competency and character. I hate abortion (Erickson), I love machine guns (Kobach – he lost his race for governor of Kansas, but he’s emblematic of so many others), I hate experts (Ryan) – hell, on this last one, if you’re willing to conflate competency with expertise, the conservatives loathe this key American virtue.
The point is that these positions determine the voting preferences of many, many voters, with no reference to character or competency. In Republican primaries, everyone must take these positions and demonstrate just how conservative they have become, for fear of being RINOed. Here’s just one example – one I actually admire for its artistic merit in a political context – during Loeffler’s run against Rep Doug Collins (R-GA) for the Senate seat to which she was appointed, in the jungle primary which left her and Rafael Warnock (D-GA) as the runoff survivors:
If they don’t, they fall victim to ridiculous accusations – and this is from their own ideological cellmates!
This required ideological rigidity by single-issue voters is vividly illustrated by the pathologies on display by the far-right that currently controls the GOP. I hope we’ll be seeing a gradual diminishment in the numbers of single-issue voters, particularly with regard to abortion and gun control, as more and more of these mistaken voters come to the reluctant conclusion that the dancers, no matter how loudly they shrill their favored issues, do not get to advance without demonstrating other positive attributes.
And, if those attributes are not demonstrated, perhaps their rivals, whether in primary or the general election, deserve their votes more than the merely power-hungry dancers.
A reader responds to my ignorance concerning recent wars and how we really waste money:
This is precisely why people are mistaken about the military being grossly inefficient and wasteful. It’s not the military itself that causes the most egregious expenses, it’s the politicians. Those extra airplanes? That’s so the manufacturer makes more money, so that the elected officials in the districts where they are manufactured make more money, and those officials get re-elected. Same with the submarine. Same with the Pentagon’s repeated attempts to close unneeded bases which are likewise repeatedly rebuffed by Congress. There’s likely waste within the uniformed ranks, as well, but it’s like nickels and dimes compared to these huge, corrupt expenditures.
I agree. And the political problems of closing bases has been approached through bipartisan commissions, which make recommendations that cannot be amended, only voted up or down.
The military has always been a black hole as far as politics go, regardless of the governmental system in use.
The Democrats have more than one club to use on those Members-elect of Congress who signed on to the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania, which sought to invalidate the votes of citizens in Pennsylvania and three other states:
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today called on House leaders to sanction Members and exclude from the 117th Congress any Members-elect who are supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 presidential election. Pascrell cites the text of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment which disqualifies from service any individuals who seek to attack American democracy, as well as Congress’s power to exclude Members by majority vote as acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court in Powell v. McCormack.
“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend,” Rep. Pascrell writes House leaders. “Consequently, I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.” [Insider NJ]
I fear this is only meaningful if Speaker Pelosi actually undertakes to prevent the seating of those House members who signed on, and I don’t see that happening; meanwhile, the electorate won’t give a shit. They’re tired of the drama. I know I am.
That said, this is illustrative of the ball-breaking machine that the Republican Party has become. The tenet of toxic team politics has bred a culture of Yes-men, a culture in which the only way to get ahead was to agree with the figures higher up the ladder (or RINO them out of the Party). They’ve done the anti-abortion polka dance, kissed asses above, taken advantage of gerrymandering and the Republican marketing machine, and seized for themselves a position of prestige and power.
But now they find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, the legendary monsters from Greek myth which ground incautious Greek ships and sailors mercilessly to their doom. Republican House members, frantic to remain in the good graces of the would-be dictator, supinely do his bidding and find themselves caught in a shredder, brought on by their own lust for power, misunderstanding of what it means to lead, and, if they were in earnest, the foolishness of the entire abortion issue.
Ah! If only it were all true, that I have written! But I’d be surprised if this even makes it into national news, much less actually occurs. I think Rep Pascrell has a case, but it doesn’t seem practical to cast out more than half of the incoming Republican class of 2020.
Which is too bad. I’d guess filling the empty seats could lead to some real surprises.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a long-shot bid by President Trump and the state of Texas to overturn the results in four states won by Democrat Joe Biden, blocking the president’s legal path to reverse his reelection loss.
The court’s unsigned order was short: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas said they did not think the court had the authority to simply reject a state’s filing, a position they have taken in the past. But they said they would not have allowed Texas more than that.
“I would . . . grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue,” Alito wrote in a statement joined by Thomas. [WaPo]
No remarks from Trump’s prize judges, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, either. Will angry remarks be made about their failure? A word to the US Marshals: keep an eye out for threats to those Justices. I’ve never heard of a Justice being assassinated, and I don’t want to start now.
Will Trump give up? I’m inclined to agree with the view that this is the Shearing of the sheep phase of his political life, and the money will dry up if he concedes now.
So he’ll fight on – hopelessly, painfully, to no legitimate purpose, but he’ll suffuse his coffers with wealth stripped from the credulous far-right fringe who call themselves conservatives, rich and poor alike, and all quite possibly in order to satisfy his creditors. The next few weeks may prove bumpy.
In the next hundred years, many Ph.D.s will be awarded to historians for research on this Presidency. And political science types will be exploring the various rips and tears that this has opened in the flank of the governance system called Democracy, and its incompatibility with religion.
The Texas lawsuit against four other states concerning voting procedures, rejected just hours ago by SCOTUS, was, in reality, a publicity platform hosting a number of stunts – and not just for a desperate Texas AG who has the FBI on his tail, or GOP members of Congress trying to pacify a thuggish base. This one may be more serious than it first appears:
The GOP’s desperate attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn the results of the presidential election has attracted powerful support from … states that have yet to come into being, according to a Thursday court filing.
The “states” of New California and New Nevada filed an amicus brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to have the Supreme Court block states that voted for Joe Biden from casting their electoral votes for the president-elect.
Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?
For now, New Nevada and New California are represented by Pahrump, Nevada attorney Robert E. Thomas, III.
From his erstwhile capital of Pahrump, Thomas has been nurturing the fledging state of New Nevada since the 2018 midterms.
According to Thomas’s website for the “New Nevada” State Movement, he began to assemble insurrectionists after being angry about GOP losses in the 2018 midterms.
The movement’s slogan is “What Would You Change, If You Could Do It Over Again?,” a reference to the state slogan as well as being a potential descriptor for the kinds of thoughts in which introspection among the plaintiffs could result.
Armed with that slogan and his website, Thomas has been fighting for nearly two years to divorce Nevada’s rural counties from Las Vegas, leaving the gambling mecca (home to a Trump hotel and top GOP fundraiser Steve Wynn) to wither on the vine as the state’s bucolic heartland presumably unites under the banner of New Nevada.
New polities are often started by angry people – after all, that’s the definition of a revolutionary.
So it appears Thomas found a short-lived but high profile platform for advertising what he thinks can be a paradise, if only they can break away from the sins of the big city.
Can he succeed? Hard to say. Without a doubt, he’ll be hearing from people who surveyed the amicus briefs of the ill-fated Texas lawsuit and found in his filing references that rings their bells. The problems, though, pertain to how many respond: if not enough, then he won’t have the population to try to split either state, and, if too much, he’ll have those damn cities popping up, and stable cities will attract liberals, and, oh, there goes the whole deal.
But I think it’s more interesting than most folks would consider. If Nevada split, that’d make for four Senators representing a remarkably small number of people; meanwhile, for decades I’ve been hearing of proposals to split California into four regions, and given how blue California is currently, you have to wonder if that would result in a net gain – and possibly a large one – for the left side of the political spectrum.
A simple five-page per curiam opinion genuinely could end up in the pantheon of all-time most significant rulings in American history. Every once in a long while, the court needs to invest some of its accumulated capital in issuing judgments that are not only legally right but also respond to imminent, tangible threats to the nation. That is particularly appropriate when, as here, the court finds itself being used as a tool to actively undermine faith in our democratic institutions — including by the members of the court’s bar on whom the justices depend to act much more responsibly.
In a time that is so very deeply polarized, I cannot think of a person, group or institution other than the Supreme Court that could do better for the country right now. Supporters of the president who have been gaslighted into believing that there has been a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election recognize that the court is not a liberal institution. If the court will tell the truth, the country will listen. [SCOTUSblog]
Even if not all the Justices sign on, it would be effective. And if any of them did indicate an interest in assenting to the demands of the Republicans, an immediate petition for their retirement would be in order.
Chief Justice Roberts has had his run-ins with President Trump, so it may be that, at this very moment, he’s inveighing his fellow conservatives to sign on to exactly such an opinion. While it won’t have much effect on Trump cultists, the balance of the Republican Party may take a rebuff from the SCOTUS conservatives to heart.
And, if not, at least history will record that they did the right thing.
The Orlando Sentinelexpresses grief at its mistaken endorsement:
We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress.
We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy.
During our endorsement interview with the incumbent congressman, we didn’t think to ask, “Would you support an effort to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans in four states in order to overturn a presidential election and hand it to the person who lost, Donald Trump?”
Our bad.
Trust us, some variation of that question will be asked of anyone running for Congress in the future, particularly Republican candidates whose party is attempting to upend the way we choose a president.
Waltz, to our horror, was one of the nine Florida Republican members of Congress who, on Thursday, signed up to support a lawsuit brought by Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court that’s attempting to throw out the election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all states where Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
The Sentinel understands that its freedoms rest on the United States remaining a land of laws, not a land run at the whim of some dude in a big building.
We learned that’s the wrong way to run a country back in the 18th century, didn’t we?
Without that foundation, the Sentinel’s soul would soon be swallowed up in butt kissing and paying bribes.
I hope someone makes it their business to track down all of the media endorsements of the fools in Congress that are signing on to this insane lawsuit, and asking those endorsers how they feel about their endorsements now.
It’s one way to differentiate the honest media source from the partisan hacks who shouldn’t be trusted.
NOTE: Representative Emmer (R-MN), a leader in the House, didn’t receive the StarTribune endorsement this year. He did sign on to the insane lawsuit.
Because the [Catalpa] worms are also native, they have ample natural predators, including various wasp and fly parasitoids. Worms from the catalpa tree have long been valued as fish bait, and some fishermen plant the trees just for this purpose. When fully grown, they’re around 2.5-3 inches long, and somewhat variable in color, though primarily either dark or pale with a black stripe or dots down the middle of the back.
I’ve never heard of a tree that’s only 3 inches long. Poor little guy.
During World War II, one of the burdens the Japanese unconsciously carried was philosophical: they were always looking for the one great battle that would wipe out the United States.
The United States, while it participated in such battles as those of Midway and Coral Sea, preferred to pick and pick and pick away at the Japanese, stretching and weakening the enemy when it could. Given the superior resources of the United States, as Admiral Yamamoto had pointed out before the war started, it was a foregone conclusion of American victory, absent any superweapons.
So I think E. J. Dionne Jr. is somewhat mistaken if he thinks President-elect Biden’s opening tactic of Listen to the science will win the war in a single battle:
President Trump’s success in politicizing mask-wearing has been destructive to human life. By encouraging his followers to ignore the advice of scientists, Trump has made the pandemic worse. None of this means that repeating “Listen to the science” as a quasi-religious mantra will undo the damage he’s done.
It won’t work because it’s a sentiment that appeals only to the already converted. It feeds the war against expertise that has become a favorite propaganda tool for the political right. And without intending to, it reinforces the deadly and false dichotomies that Trump has ginned up to avoid accountability.
Except it’s not. Listen to the science is a reminder to those who voted for Trump out of habit, or out of allegiance to the words Republican Party, or those who believed the Republican assertions that their opponents are socialists, or devotees of Critical Race Theory, or that Biden is so weak that Harris will push him out and push her own, radical agenda.
As these baseless allegations become apparent for what they are, those who have the ears to listen, the brains to think, and the humility to admit fault will hear and remember Listen to the science. It’s a reminder that, at one time, we put men on the Moon, that we invented vaccines for TB and polio, that we invented machinery to do the hard jobs and the dangerous jobs. To this day, we utilize science to do amazing things.
And, contra-Dionne, it’s a reminder of what the war on expertise has cost us: world leadership, nearly 300,000 lives and counting, farming income, manufacturing jobs, a monstrously inflated Federal deficit, and our honor..
Dionne, unconsciously, wants that home run that solves the problem of the far-frantic-right, and there’s no one that can hit that home run. It takes time for people to think, to act, to acknowledge error, and begin to correct it. Some will come at it quickly, encouraged to return to sanity by the illnesses and deaths of friends and family, or the close observation of the failure of Republican policies. For others, their deadly delusions, whether of a divinity that’s killing them, or a political drama that they can’t have lost, will hold them longer, and only with vast reluctance will they change, a bitter pill that will leave them bitter.
And, of course, there will be a core that won’t change: the leaders addicted to power and prestige, and their followers, those that have made up their minds, they’ll follow Paula White and Kenneth Copeland into the depths of Hell and still chant that This must be Heaven. There will always be those who won’t dare to deny what has made them important, self or in the eyes of others, in the world: the ego is a terrible thing.
But Biden is chipping away at those who can be convinced. He’s not saying, Hey, dumbfucks! See how wrong you were! Now stop being stupid and be a progressive! Progressives can grate on my nerves, too, just as they grate on the nerves of conservatives.
Instead, Listen to the science. Biden’s message is non-threatening, even diplomatic, but it is a reminder that reality will slap away those destructive delusions, and that rationality is how one understands reality.
And, with luck, silently and with an embarrassed air, hundreds, thousands, and eventually even millions of Americans will, so reluctantly, look around at their devastated friends and family, and finally let go of those delusions.
Last night there was some excitement about coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun hitting the earth and sparking northern lights. It was, apparently, a big fizzle, as Spaceweather.comexplains:
Every CME brings with it some magnetic field from the sun. If that magnetic field points south, it opens cracks in Earth’s magnetic field, allowing solar wind to flow inside and fuel auroras. On the other hand, if the CME’s magnetic field points north, it seals cracks in Earth’s magnetic field, blocking the solar wind and quenching storms.
This CME brought a storm-killing north magnetic field. So, even though the velocity of the solar wind in the CME’s wake flirted with a high value of 600 km/s, it was ineffective in causing geomagnetic storms and auroras.
Every CME brings with it some magnetic field from the sun. If that magnetic field points south, it opens 
