Monthly Archives: October 2021

If you’re a wasp, that is.

When you’re playing poker with an alligator, do you ever dare think it’s a bluff?

The Alligator People (1959) sounds like your typical B-list movie, doesn’t it? Some B&W weird horror movie, with people in rubber suits terrorizing the populace to the amusement of the mad doctor responsible for the infernal results, and alligators carrying off fainting maidens for some casual ravishing and refreshment.

Well, it is B&W. Actually, a well done B&W cinematography, even during the bayou rainstorm.

And one guy does have an alligator head on at the end.

But … I’d be really careful about turning my back on the two female leads in this story. One, Joyce, is looking for her husband, Paul, who disappeared during a very short stop of the train on their honeymoon night. She’s been left by her war-hero, freshly married husband before even sharing the marriage bed!

It’s jitters, and she’s frantic.

Six months later, Joyce is following her last clue, an address in the Louisiana bayou, left at her husband’s college frat. That’s right, nothing stops Joyce, a nurse, and she’s smart. There she finds a hostile older woman, Lavinia, ensconced in an old, Victorian home, complete with terrified servants – except the one who’s handless, drunk, and heavily armed, named Manon. He doesn’t like alligators, on account of one of them taking his hand.

Staying the night out of necessity, the charm of a piano tune lures Joyce out of her room, where she encounters the shy piano player, who dashes from the house into the swamp before she can get a look at his face. Probably just as well.

Soon enough, Joyce digs out the truth – Lavinia is Paul’s mother, although she doesn’t want to explore the topic. Refusing to leave, Joyce resolves to trap her husband, but it’s a downpour that night, so when he shows up and runs again, she not only can’t catch him, but gets lost and has to be found by Manon, who’d like a little bit of gratitude, if you get my drift. Paul shows up just in time to discourage Manon’s advances.

And the mandatory mad scientist component? Meet Mark Sinclair, M.D., a charming older gentleman who also tries to discourage Joyce, eventually lets on that, as a result of his experiments with alligator extract on horribly injured patients, he saved Paul from a lifetime of being crippled, or worse – but discovered later that there were certain unfortunate side effects to the treatment. Pressed by Lavinia, Paul, and Joyce, he’s consented to an experimental treatment for Paul.

And in the midst of this treatment comes a vengeful Manon, out for the return, if only metaphysically speaking, of his hand, not to mention his frustrated romantic notions. The treatment spoiled, Paul runs off into the swamp, Joyce in hot pursuit, in what might qualify as a metaphor for the desperate need of American women of the period to marry in order to advance in society. This doesn’t end well.

The two female leads are strong roles, as my Arts Editor commented, but not so much the servants’. The mad doctor’s motivations are completely believable, which is a relief; Manon was a quirkily repulsive example of primal male chaos. Paul demonstrates the male’s path from primal violence to civility, and how easily it can be foiled by a lack of path or guidance.

And all the alligators, who appeared to be actual live animals? They must have given the actors quite a thrill.

While I’m not recommending this one, it definitely performed far above expectations, even if its theme was a little hard to discern. Maybe it had none. And the alligator suit was a bit of a laugh. But I enjoyed this story far more than expected.

We’ve come to the end of the analysis of the toxic email from the conservative bloodstream. We’ve seen how these pictures that made up the email have generally worked together to reinforce divisions in American society, often by stripping away context that puts the claims in a more understandable context.

I’ve also dropped a pic or two that seemed to be nothing more than binder. Not every picture is toxic, and, if they were, even the most obtuse reader might find the result overly rich and become suspicious.

Here’s the last pic:

The problem here is false equivalence. Are the assumptions and foundations of these two subjects equivalent?

Given current society, we need to be able to drive to get groceries, go to work, or wallow at the beach.

Guns? Not so much.

Or, better yet … are cars built to kill people? No, of course not, despite the outcry of my friends dedicated to bicycling.

Are guns? Despite the bewailings of target shooters, the bald truth is yes. Guns, in their most primitive form, replaced arrows as weapons of war; their efficiency evolution is driven by their role as weapons of war, even to this day.

This false logic is an example of the difficulties of focusing on the argument as presented, and forgetting that foundations and assumptions are at least as important as is the presented argument. Taken on its face, this presented argument permits the receptive reader to gain that emotional reaction of having superior intellect to their hated fellow Americans; because it is deceptive, because it actively conceals the important assumptions, because it depends on an emotional reaction to conceals its inferior foundation, this sort of argument is emblematic of this entire email: not an honest argument, but instead just deception, designed to increase the size of the abysses that separate us. And that’s what makes this picture, and the entire email, despicable and dishonorable.

Thanks, folks, for reading.

I just like the beautiful seasonal blue.

A classic case of orbital trash in the foreground.

Europa Report (2013) asks the deceptive question What is success and what is failure in deep space exploration? This is the central theme haunting this story of a manned mission to Europa, a real moon of Jupiter thought to harbor liquid water, and enough heat, generated by tidal stresses brought on by the gravitational field of nearby Jupiter, to nurture one-celled organisms. The mission’s goal is to discover whether or not such organisms exist.

The price? Space is a cold and dangerous place, as has been stressed by innumerable story-tellers over the years, but the story-tellers have made a critical error – we’re not invested in these characters manning this mission. The story becomes an objective investigation into the question of success, rather than a subjective and emotional realization of the question, the answer, and the price of playing the game of exploration.

Not that there isn’t a lot to like here. Having paid the price of traveling from Earth to Europa – in what appears to be record time, I might add – they manage the landing on Europa’s desolate surface sans communications, which has been damaged in an accident. This facet of the story could have been clarified, as I did not pick up on the possibility of repair, at the price of their rocket systems, and so was a bit puzzled – although this wasn’t a suicide mission.

But in the end, the story makes the point that a chosen goal does not define success or failure; it’s attaining knowledge about the state of the system. This is where our lack of bond to the characters really impacts the story, as their sacrifice to get that information back home in the face of the overwhelmingly unexpected could have been far more impactful if we had felt connected to these characters and their hopes, dreams, and private feelings.

But in other respects, this is well done. The special effects seem flawless, and the cinematography is beautiful, in particular the extreme close ups of the characters in their spacesuits – unless skin pores bother you.

In the end, I cannot give a strong recommendation of this story, but it certainly is interesting, and you won’t be shouting Stupid! at the screen. If you have some time, give it a shot.

In a way akin to how President Clinton stole the policy issues and positions of the Republicans back in the ’90s, here comes a Christmas Tree ….

A Parade of Bigfoots Will Lead the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree

Yep. From mysterious, frightening half-glimpsed creatures in the forests of the Northwest, to utter ridicule as a band of faux-Sasquatchii haul mythical Santa’s Christmas Tree, celebrating, in some twisted fashion, the uncertain birth of some dude in a country on the other side of the world.

Ya gotta love the insanity underlying Americans and, indeed, all humanity. While being very, very frightened.

This X1 solar flare is causing some commentary and, more importantly, cool videos:

Easy Tyger
This is what a tiny part of the Sun did for 2 days recently.
Lots of processing / repair.
Made with data from SDO pic.twitter.com/r1LKUP2P3R

— Seán Doran (@_TheSeaning) October 28, 2021

[h/t TW]

My thanks to my friend Kevin for posting this story to FB and making me laugh this morning.

For those readers who think the Sun is an unchanging light in the sky and nothing more, Spaceweather.com has an alarming report:

MAJOR X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: Earth orbiting satellites have just detected a major X-class solar flare from sunspot AR2887 (following two lesser M-flares described below. The blast at 1535 UT on Oct. 28th created a massive tsunami of plasma in the sun’s atmosphere and almost certainly hurled a CME toward Earth. Stay tuned for images and updates about this event.

I should imagine the impact of the hypothesized CME would take a couple of days. Let’s hope it does little to no damage, otherwise we’ll have Republican ignoramuses trying to blame it on Biden. Here’s a NASA pic of a solar flare from 2014:

Geoeffective:

Capable of causing a geomagnetic disturbance [Wiktionary]

Noted in “SOLAR ACTIVITY INTENSIFIES,” spaceweather.com:

Just wait until [sunspot] AR2891 is actually facing Earth. For the next two weeks it will transit the face of the sun, increasing the geoeffectiveness of future flares. Stay tuned.

Erick Erickson warns of a potential disaster:

Democrats, including Joe Manchin, intend to impose an actual and real tax on people’s imaginary money. They are, however, claiming it will only affect the rich. Like the income tax when it was originally enacted, for now that is true. But just as the income tax spread out across the rich and middle class, so too will this real tax on imaginary money.

It is called a tax on “unrealized gains” or an “unrealized capital gains tax.” How it works is very simple. …

This is a terrible precedent. It will also be deeply economically destabilizing. It will require the wealthy sell large amounts of capital to pay a tax on imaginary dollars. That will cause market turmoil. It will cause capital to flow to uncharted places as the wealthy seek to avoid the tax. More importantly, as Nancy Pelosi conceded this past weekend, it will not raise the money Congress needs in any measurable way. This is all about the future precedent of coming after you.

Yahoo! Finance has a report on the proposal:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced legislation on Wednesday requiring taxpayers with more than $1 billion in assets or more than $100 million in annual income for three consecutive years to pay taxes on unrealized capital gains.

“There are two tax codes in America,” Wyden said in a statement on Wednesday. “The first is mandatory for workers who pay taxes out of every paycheck. The second is voluntary for billionaires who defer paying taxes for years, if not indefinitely.”

The so-called “Billionaires Income Tax” would apply to around 700 taxpayers and raise “hundreds of billions of dollars,” according to the proposal, which comes as Democrats discuss ways to fund their reconciliation package over the next decade.

Unlike other types of income like wages, investors pay tax on capital gains only when they are “realized” — meaning when the assets are sold — compared with a worker who pays taxes as they earn it.

Deferring capital gains taxes allows rich Americans to earn returns on untaxed money until the assets are sold — at which point investors can time the sale to blunt any tax burden. In the meantime, those untaxed gains can be used as collateral for loans.

“If you don’t pay tax on the annual increase in value of your assets, you continue earning returns on money that you would otherwise pay in tax,” Samantha Jacoby, senior tax legal analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, previously told Yahoo Money. “It’s an important tax advantage that allows wealthy people to continue building wealth over time.”

Skipping standard inflammatory rhetoric on Erickson’s part, he’s probably not wrong on this proposal. While his headline, “Democrats to Impose a Real Tax on Imaginary Money,” as well as the article, ignores the advantages of unrealized capital gains in favor of ridicule, in its essence it is not wrong: I am not the only investor to have seen outsized, unrealized returns disappear nearly overnight (for the record, I was an investor in the now-defunct NetBank, and while I got out before the collapse, I didn’t escape with my unrealized gains intact; it was, in fact, a salutary and frustrating lesson). The urge to tax the unrealized market gains is not balanced by the actuality of unrealized market losses and how they will be accounted for; I could see millionaires going under because one year they’re taxed for doing well, but cannot balance their losses the next year because that money’s gone.

The urge to avoid taxes – an urge which I fear actually perturbs market behaviors to the extent that it damages many investors’ prospects, legal standing, and emotional stability – is indeed a problematic facet of this proposal. The lack of predictability, and, I even wonder, the possibility of a positive feedback loop, might roil markets and damage economic growth in the long-term.

And I have to wonder anytime complexity is proposed to resolve what is resolvable by other, less complex means. This proposal, so simple in its summary, will be devilish to implement on both sides of the teeter totter – and, as Erickson suggests, it may not be worth the time.

Meanwhile, we know to a reasonable degree of certainty that simply raising taxes will help resolve the funding problem without damaging the economy. How? Because of the utter failure of the Tax Reform Bill of 2017 to accomplish its goals. Rather than spark an economy, via corporate tax cuts, that was already moving right along, it did nothing more than fill investors’ pockets with dividends and accounts with the results of share buybacks. There was no long-term surge of prosperity for workers or anyone else who didn’t have access to the corporate cash register.

I don’t care if Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) think that raising taxes will discourage the economy, because the available evidence suggests that higher taxes, invested properly into our shared infrastructure, is a net positive, generating jobs and smoothing the bumpy economic road for many businesses. We know this because we’ve traveled the Laffer Curve in Kansas and watched Kansas crash and burn; we can certainly travel the other way on the Laffer Curve and likely see no problems at all, so long as we remember there’s a bell curve involved.

And, in the end, the proposal promises to tax a few hundred people. There’s something to be said for shared pain. While I don’t advocate everyone should see their taxes rise in this proposal, I think it should cover far more people so that we can all say that we’re in this together. This is an inherently divisive proposal, and I worry that we’re just destroying asabiyah (social cohesion) more and more.

Daniel Drezner expresses concerns about GOP support for an assessment of a new Cold War in the light of a surprise test launch of a new Chinese hypersonic missile:

So, yes, my concern about Chinese intentions has been elevated. But so are my suspicions of this [Financial Times] article. As the New York Times’s David Sanger noted last week, the “cold war” talk about China is equally problematic: “Governments that plunge into a Cold War mind-set can exaggerate every conflict, convinced that they are part of a larger struggle. They can miss opportunities for cooperation, as the United States and China did in battling Covid-19, and may yet on the climate.”

Cold wars can also incentivize hawks to use well-timed leaks to undercut dovish members of a foreign policy team. As CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported over the weekend, “China’s test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile has given new fuel to critics of President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda to scale back America’s nuclear arsenal.” She goes on to note that “news of the launch is coming to light publicly as the administration nears the end of its nuclear posture review. Biden’s national security team has been working toward a policy of increased restraint and more limited spending on nuclear modernization and production.” This news arrives as one of Biden’s nonproliferation experts has left the Pentagon and another faces GOP opposition for confirmation.

It is worth reading Bertrand’s article in full to see who is quoted sounding hawkish and who is not. GOP congressional staffers sound pretty hawkish. Nonproliferation experts do not. And between these two communities, I tend to trust the nonproliferation experts more.

The question of how to approach a rising China (though maybe not rising for much longer) remains a fundamental foreign policy debate on which reasonable people can disagree. One cannot dismiss the concerns of China hawks out of hand. But I can wonder if reports about the hypersonic missile test are being leaked and hyped for reasons of bureaucratic politics and not national security. [WaPo]

My bold.

I was not aware of this incident, or the Financial Times article, but based on this it’s hard to disagree with Professor Drezner. The fourth- and fifth-raters now resident in the Republican Party, desperate to distract from the many offenses of the former President, Donald Trump, and his adherents, such as Representatives Gohmert, Greene, Boebert, etc., are beating the war drums in hopes of distracting the voters.

What they don’t realize is that a true Cold War would force the Republican Party to moderate its positions and come together with the Democrats to, once again, steer through the choppy waters of foreign diplomacy, as we did during the first Cold War. And they would be asking a base to accept compromise – a requirement for which their base has little patience.

Look for this drumming to swiftly fade away in discord, because asabiyah is not yet permissible.

When your opponent may not be honest, perhaps a bit of thinking outside the box is called for. An example might be candidate for the Senate from Ohio Josh Mandel (R-OH), who Steve Benen describes this way:

In Ohio, the top Republican contenders in the state’s U.S. Senate race met for a debate, though as Newsweek noted, former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel raised a few eyebrows in the afternoon with this tweet.

Ahead of the debate, Mandel tweeted that the country should “shut down government schools and put schools in churches and synagogues.”

For those unfamiliar with Mandel and his political style, it’s worth noting for context that much of his campaign is built on making outrageous political statements, which he peddles in the hopes that his provocative rhetoric will be denounced, which in turn empowers Mandel to effectively boast to the GOP base, “Look at all the liberals who are mad at me.”

With that in mind, I’d recommend this – Don’t take unserious candidates seriously.

Instead, I’d hire a critic, a critic of comedians. Have the critic go through Mandel’s positions and performances over the years, with an emphasis on Mandel’s more ridiculous positions.

Let them loose. It should be an honest evaluation from a comedic point of view. And if Mandel deserves it, heap some praise on him for his ridiculous positions – a carefully designed praise. A bit like this:

Tonight, Mr. Mandel reached new heights of political humor through his innovative use of ludicrous political suggestions to drive home the extremism of his “competitors” for the Senate seat. As is well known in the state of Ohio, Mr. Mandel is not a serious candidate, but instead has chosen to attempt to rehabilitate the Republican Party of Ohio through his subtle use of ridicule, bringing to bear positions that only far-right fringers, desperate to control the education of the typical conventional Ohioan “Buckeye” family, with no regard as to how anti-competitive the results will be for those children.

In terms of delivery, Mr. Mandel cannot be matched. His dry and expressionless delivery will bring tears to the eyes of the audience, once they believe, if only for the duration of each performance, that he honestly believes these satiric positions. That they resemble political positions of those who are serious concerning this race only makes the comedic aspects that much more sharper, much like an ice knife forged in a Norse Hell and then plunged into the back of some ancient victim of the Norwegian Kings.

Like I said, hire a real critic.

Hemolymph:

Haemolymph nodes are enigmatic structures that in both histological and functional terms appear to be intermediate between ordinary lymph nodes and the spleen. Whether they occur in man is debatable, but they certainly occur in the pig, sheep, horse and rodents, including the rat (Sakita et al., 1997; Kazeem et al., 1982; Kazeem and Scothorne, 1982; Hogg et al., 1982). Turner (1969) reported a detailed study of the vascular tree of the haemal nodes of the rat. Haemolymph nodes are characteristically dark red or brown in colour, and have been reported at the edge of the thymus, between the spleen and the pancreas, and bilaterally close to the aorta near the origin of the renal arteries. Haemolymph nodes differ from ordinary lymph nodes in that their lymphatic sinuses contain many red blood cells, which are thought to pass through the walls of rather permeable venous blood vessels. Sakita et al. (1997) suggested an open circulation (see discussion of the spleen) with blood cells entering the lymphatic sinuses by crossing their walls. The function of these unusual nodes is obscure. [Science Direct]

Noted in “Devious Parasite Grants Host the Gift of Eternal Youth, But For a Price,” Spooky, Oddity Central:

Temnothorax-nylanderi is a relatively common species of small ants that live in forests throughout Central Europe. They form small colonies on the forest floor, inside acorns or wooden branches, and most importantly, they serve as an intermediate host for the tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis. Up to 70 parasitic larvae can survive in the hemolymph, the body fluid of insects, but instead of competing for resources with their hosts and slowly killing them, the parasites appear to extend their lives considerably, possibly even indefinitely.

[h/t TW]

That was a bit too much strawberry jelly on that PB&J, young lady!

Odd Thomas (2013) is one of those movies where a guy finds he has an odd talent and feels constrained to use it, probably for good.

Mostly because he’d otherwise end up dead.

Fortunately, he has a little bit of a sense of humor about it, and, for a change, the cops aren’t after his ass – well, I don’t think so.

In fact, Thomas’ motivations are more believable than those of the bad guys, whoever they might be. Well, the human bad guys. Who seem to have chosen to be bad for random reasons. If that even makes sense. Maybe They found being bad gave them a sense of power, and since it didn’t cost them, er, yeah, this is really the crux of the problem of the story. If you can’t, by the end of a story, state the motivations of the antagonist in short, precise sentences, then you either have a genius story on your hands, or a story with a big hole in it.

Reader, meet hole.

And then there’s the, well, supernatural bad guys. They’re attracted by … we’re not exactly sure. Something to do with the future. Could they be addicts? Could this be a story of how supernatural addicts to future disaster will kill and maim just to ensure they get their weekly entertainment?

If that sounds silly, congratulations. It was silly.

But all that said, I enjoyed Odd Thomas. The critical information is measured out by the teaspoon, not the cup, and the characters on the side of the protagonist feel plausible. The cost to Thomas of being Odd is made apparent, and his reaction to that, admirable.

Add in some believable special effects, and it’s not a bad little movie. It’s not particularly memorable, but it’s a pleasant way to spend an hour and more.

In a slightly gruesome way.

I’ve been reading Paul Fidalgo’s The Morning Heresy for two or three years now – purely for the articles! – and it’s only today that I became confused and thought I was reading an issue of the news parody The Onion:

The two parents of five children both died of COVID–19, and the husband’s last words were, “I wish I would have got the shot.” Anti-vaxxers are calling the story “fake news.”

No, no, I agree with the anti-vaxxers. The guy’s last words were probably on the order of I was such a dumbass fool.

Foreign Policy reports: “In the first months of the pandemic, the U.S. Army failed to warn most soldiers about Chinese and Russian coronavirus disinformation, according to a survey conducted last year…”

A new style of warfare, a new way to fail.

Morgan Gonzales at Kaiser Health News profiles “COVID vigilantes,” folks working to spotlight businesses with good pandemic practices in areas where, you know, things are lax.

I actually had to read this paragraph several times before taking it in a positive way.

PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests for COVID–19 are not implanting any microchips, despite the claims of “The Celestial Report” and its “Jesus-centered Interactive News and Community.”

Also known as GIMME GIMME GIMME ALL YOUR MONEY. Oh, my apologies to everyone offended by my truth-telling and, uh, feel free to send some of your money MY WAY. I’ll donate it to a good cause. Freethinkers work for you?

Fox News host Neil Cavuto is telling his viewers to get vaccinated, and that he only got through his own COVID bout as well as he did because he was vaccinated. Fox News itself is ignoring him.

He’s that embarrassing guy at the Thanksgiving table who says, well, anything that goes against the family mythology. Bonus points if he didn’t marry into the family, but, well, perhaps I shouldn’t discuss that manner of joining the family.

PolitiFact rates a conspiracy theory about “RNA-modifying transhumanism-nano-technology” in COVID–19 vaccines to be “Pants on Fire.” No, really, the nanotech will ignite your trousers!!! Everyone panic!!!

Too tired. You do it for me.

For your generally daily, work-day-daily, sometimes not, dose of snark (a German word meaning our robotic overlords will ride around in nano-technology), imbued with nano-tech that will make you trackable by GPS at any time of the day or, especially, night, which is when Bill Gates likes to logon to his computer and track you, yes you, personally, read The Daily Heresy.

Or The Onion.

Yesterday something obscure that goes under the stock symbol DWAC had a bit of a jump. Here’s its five day price chart:

What’s going on?

Trading in Trump-linked SPAC Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) was halted after shares soared following the announcement of former President Trump’s new social media network, Truth Social.

Digital World Acquisition’s stock was the most actively traded stock on Fidelity, as well as the consolidated tape of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq listings, CNBC reported.

The company’s stock skyrocketed more than 130 percent before trading was halted for a second time on Thursday, the outlet reported. At one point, the stock surged by up to 160 percent.

More than 260 million shares of DWAC had been traded by midday.

Trump announced the launch of Truth Social on Wednesday night, saying it would “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” [The Hill]

Big words. From a big liar. And for that reason I don’t plan to put a penny anywhere near this stock. I probably won’t even pay attention to it. Why? In a phrase, a history of failure. As tempting as big moves can be for investors, both shorts and longs, the fact is that failure and lying make it damn near impossible to predict what is hiding behind any statement issued by Trump and his proxies.

In fact, anyone with enough leverage could be manipulating its price in an attempt to get the fraud-based profit making rolling.

So this statement …

The planned merger values TMTG at an initial $875 million, with the potential of $825 million in additional earnout for a cumulative valuation of $1.7 billion, the press release said.

… sounds like simple madness to me.

A trebuchet is a clever cousin to a catapult … and should probably be used if & when this clown is expelled from Congress:

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ill.) sent numerous letters claiming to be the ranking member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the committee’s Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) revealed Thursday. [The Hill]

No matter how amused I am by this dimwitted stunt, I’d just call it fraud and kick him out. The Republicans would faint at the thought of being held responsible for their actions. And there sure are a lot of them that’d have to be carted out of the building, now isn’t there? Some 200+ of them.

I suppose I could write a righteous tome about how this is symbolic of the Republicans these days, but I think I’ll pass. For one thing, Rep Liz Cheney (WY-R) reported the incident. And another? It’d have no impact. These folks just don’t get it – just as they’ve been taught.

In an unexpected capper to the story of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) and his bounty for voter fraud, we have a winner … and it’s not who, in terms of category, I might have expected:

Nearly a year after offering up a hefty bounty for evidence of voter fraud in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has handed out his first reward.

But instead of going to an informant who smoked out fraud by Democrats, Patrick’s five-figure payout went to a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania whose tip led to a single conviction of illegal voting by a registered Republican.

The unexpected outcome reveals the political dangers of cash bounties. With few strings attached, and more cases of alleged GOP voting fraud still in Pennsylvania courts, Patrick may be asked to shell out even more cash to his opponents.

This case also undercuts unsubstantiated GOP concerns that widespread voter fraud helped hand the White House to Joe Biden, political experts said. In Pennsylvania, a state that was central in Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election, around five cases of voter fraud from last year’s election have been prosecuted, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer — four involved Republicans. [The Dallas Morning News]

Kudos to the Lt. Governor for following through, although it remains a silly political maneuver designed to throw doubt on a political process that continues to look secure and stable every time it’s examined.

Vice notes another lurid fantasy connected to Covid-19:

Fuellmich isn’t a familiar name to most people. But for many of those sucked into conspiracy theories around COVID-19, he has become one of the most influential figures in the world. Thousands of people worldwide are clinging to the fantasy that he will soon be leading a major prosecution of world leaders, scientists and journalists, placing them on trial for “crimes against humanity” for their role in supposedly engineering a false pandemic.

His followers believe these trials will carry global historical significance, so much so that they’ve become known as “Nuremberg 2.0” in reference to the trials of Nazi leaders that took place after World War 2. Jan Rathje, a political scientist and researcher at German anti-extremism think tank Cemas, said the notion of a “second Nuremberg” – framed as mass trials of treacherous “elites” – was already familiar to many in the far-right before becoming synonymous with Fuellmich’s legal battle.

“The concept of a second Nuremberg trials has been present in far-right circles for a number of years, and it’s connected to ideas of revenge,” he said.

This push for a “Nuremberg 2.0” is gaining traction within the increasingly-interconnected global anti-lockdown scene. Rathje said that mentions of the term in German Telegram groups jumped from virtually zero to over 1,000 a day in April. The term trended on Twitter in the UK this summer, and in August, a man interrupted a police press conference in Sydney, Australia, shouting “Nuremberg 2.0”.

And how do you punish a guy like this?

Ignore him. Let him crash and burn and then never hire him for important work again. Let him represent DUIs in court. I think that, because he was involved in the recent Volkswagen cheating scandal, he’s willing to see conspiracies everywhere.

Or maybe he’s on the up and up?

The committee’s “findings”, which are broadcast weekly on his website in multi-hour-long sessions, read like a glossary of every COVID conspiracy going. Hosted by Fuellmich and three other lawyers, it comes across as an official-looking enquiry – similar to what a government might set up after a national disaster.

But it’s really just a series of interviews with various figures from the international conspiracy milieu, pushing myths about COVID-19: that the pandemic was planned by secret global elites, that vaccines are a deadly form of population control. According to Rathje, the committee has been the source of viral disinformation, such as a claim that vaccines violate the Nuremberg Code established after World War 2, because they are medical experiments that people haven’t consented to. This is, of course, not true.

Conservative apologist and moral equivalency guy Erick Erickson thinks the Democrats are annoyed that President Trump, much like President Clinton liked to do with issues, has stolen one of their favorite tactics:

Stacey Abrams says she was not entitled to become the governor of Georgia. Stacey Abrams has, long before Donald Trump … Stacey Abrams peddled “the big lie”, as the media likes to call it. Stacey Abrams peddled the lie, a lie that the 2018 election was stolen from her. She was not entitled to become governor. You know what? I wasn’t entitled to become governor either. I’m sorry. Apparently, this is fairly common. The Democrats and the media have allowed Stacey Abrams to peddle a mythology to explain to them the way the world works, that Republicans stole the election. She said that ironically campaigning for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. Terry McAuliffe himself still to this day claims that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. In fact, when confronted, Terry McAuliffe in the last few weeks has continued to deny that they were legitimate elections, just that we have to move on from those elections, but he doesn’t believe they were legitimate elections. He still believes that these elections were stolen from the Democrats.

This is Democratic mythology that is pervasive. When the Democrats lose, it is because Republicans stole the election. What is so ironic about this is here comes Donald Trump in 2020 and he doubles down claiming the election was stolen. The Democrats, mainstream media, and major companies are like, “You can’t say that. That’s the big lie,” equating it to Nazism and Hitler.

While, on the surface, it may appear to be an equivalency, it’s not. The Democrats can easily point at various tactics used by Republicans to discourage voters, while Republican screaming about the stolen election have exactly … nothing.

Oh, I’m sure a few cases can be made for poor sportsmanship by the Democrats. After all, they were accused of gerrymandering Maryland. Where there’s temptation there’s often weakness.

But I think what catches my attention here is how these two sides, bereft of an existential foreign opponent, have settled in for victmhood, fantasies, and trench warfare. Is Professor Turchin going to be proven right (OK, he’s made no such prediction of which I’m aware, and he was talking about agrarian societies, but the parallels are a little frightening), and the internecine elite warfare will remove a large number of elite from standing, and in the process decrease community wealth, power, and prestige?

Or can we find a way out of this morass?

Or is Erickson really all about his endless campaign to make the Democrats and Republicans moral equivalents so that Independents – the true power holders these days – will forget that the Republicans are now chiefly fantasists who do not see the world in a realistic fashion?

I’ll be quite interested to see how New York Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs ends up after commenting on why he’s not endorsed the winner of the Democratic primary for nomination for the mayor of Buffalo, India Walton:

“Let’s take a scenario, very different, where David Duke, you remember him? The grand wizard of the KKK? He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, and he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so,” Jacobs said.

He continued, “Now, of course, India Walton isn’t in the same category, but it just leads you to that question, ‘Is it a must?’ It’s not a must. It’s something you choose to do. That’s why it’s an endorsement. Otherwise they call it something else, like a requirement.” [New York Intelligencer]

He has since suggested that the analogy, as caveated as it was, was offensive. The question, though, is why?

He explicitly excluded Walton from the entire category of whatever David Duke, an otherwise fairly pathetic KKK creature, may be representative; the entire point was to suggest that finding a candidate to be ideologically repulsive means a party chairman is not obliged to endorse the candidate.

And there’s really no other way to read what the Intelligencer transcribed.

But there have been cries of racism, there have been cries for resignation.

I don’t see it. A simple, vivid analogy is not racism, especially with appropriate limitations. To cry out otherwise is to avoid the substantive question of whether the ideology of Walton, whatever it may be, is truly so awful.

But now the first question is whether Jacobs brushed some legitimately raw nerve endings – or if we’re seeing some strategic anger. Either way, full comprehension and sober consideration does not appear to have been exercised here.

At least, if you’re a Protestant:

Note that 0 means either a round-down or a not measured that year.

Protestants can take partial comfort in the thought that Christian (non-specific) may contain sympathizers, but in the end it's a little hard to get around the notion that the Protestants have fallen a long ways from their dominance of the late 1940s.

I think we're seeing a graphic demonstration of two kinds of people here: those who insist on seeing miracles and God in everything, and then everyone else, who often discovered praying doesn't get you anything but some physical rest. Or was that in poor taste?

Otherwise noteworthy? The well-publicized rising of the Nones, from virtually nothing to 20%. The exact content of this group is a little more confusing than others, though - it's not a mob of eye bulging atheists, if that's your worry. It's more of a catch-all for those who don't fit in anywhere else; I'm sure there are many "spiritual" types, which is a category I've never understood.

What does it all mean? Well, the evangelists, who are mostly Protestants as I understand it, are getting a little frantic, as does any group that finds itself transitioning down the social ladder, especially when it's from being #1. Not that they're off the top of the ladder just yet, but they can see the cessation of their dominance from where they dangle.

And thus the apocalyptic cries to which we're subjected these days.

Otherwise, it's really a sort of empty graph. Finding knowledge in it is a bit of a quest.

I suppose I should thank Ian Leslie of The Ruffian for his semi-formalization of a notion that’s been bothering me for the last decade, although elsewhere he admits to getting the idea from Andrew Sullivan. What does he call it?

MLK Syndrome:

Many middle-class people in Western societies carry a covert longing to have our moral mettle tested in the crucible of history. I’ve sometimes felt that urge myself. We want to know how we’d have behaved in societies where overt displays of racism were the norm, and laws explicitly discriminated against people on the basis of race, gender, or sexuality. Would we have meekly accepted such wrongs and even endorsed them, like many or most of our historical peers? Surely not. We’d have stood up and fought for justice, wouldn’t we? We’d have been heroes.

Following the social and political liberalisations of the last century, modern Western societies have provided little opportunity to take sides in genuinely momentous moral contests. We are no longer in conflict over whether different races deserve equal rights or women can vote or – a more recent achievement – gay people can marry. Public attitudes have consistently become more liberal. For all the fuss about populism, most of us agree on the fundamentals of liberal democracy; we’re just arguing over how to optimise it. That means the stakes are lower than they were. The closest many of us get to a test of political integrity is whether we’re willing to spend more on eco-friendly washing up liquid. It’s all unsatisfyingly undramatic.

I love the name, I love the definition. I thought of the necessary transformation of society as a result of climate change as a possible exception, but that hardly has the same personification of injustice as does, say, the beating of the pacifist heroes of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge by the police in 1965. Climate change is not being brought on by deliberate evil or racism or anything of the sort, but by human limitations and overpopulation.

Much of the drama over transgenderism, homosexual marriage, vegetarianism, the anti-vaxxers, the legit skepticism movement, and many other momentary as well as long-running controversies can be attributed to MLK Syndrome, but I think I’ll omit the obvious ones. Instead, I’ll mention a new one that is annoying the skeptics.

The Catholic Church is in the midst of moving the late Pope John Paul I (aka Cardinal Albino Luciani), he who was Pope for all of a month in 1978, down the path of sainthood. What’s the alleged event that justifies claiming he’s responsible for a miracle?

The Vatican said that the healing, of an 11-year-old girl [in 2011], took place in Buenos Aires, the birthplace of the current pope, Francis. She had been afflicted with acute brain inflammation, septic shock and other grave medical problems and was deemed on the verge of death by doctors. A pastor of the parish associated with the hospital caring for her took “the initiative to invoke Pope Luciani,” the Vatican said. [Religion News Service]

Yeah. I can see why the skeptics movement finds this sort of claim to be dubious in the extreme. The guy had died in 1978; 2011 is thirty three years later!

But I can also see the notion that the Catholic Church is desperate to propagate its version of reality, a version in which God still stirs the waters with his finger, saints can be made by the Church, and dead Popes can still stride forth and heal little girls.

After all, the Church is slowly fading, isn’t it? Science is encircling it, discrediting its explanations of natural phenomenon; everywhere it operates it seems to be infiltrated by philanderers and pedophiles; former adherents are now moving on to the charismatic Protestant sects, at least in Central and South America; the dubious reputation of the Pope previous to the current Pope, who dared to retire rather than die in the chair, rests heavily on its shoulders; and the influx of recruits to the priesthood, at least here in the United States, has dropped off sharply as its reputation has become tarnished.

The yearning for a supernatural occurrence, for a new saint, must be compelling for the faithful, especially members of the power structure, who seem themselves, no matter how true to their putative beliefs, as becoming more and more irrelevant to today’s society and, perhaps more importantly, history. The divine and its evidence are the stuff which justifies the decisions of the faithful, and thus MLK Syndrome, or a cousin, very much comes into play: the belief that the drama and importance of the Catholic Church has not been consigned to history, but continues today.

And justifies this thin play for a new Saint.