Monthly Archives: October 2021

We’re near the end of this extended analysis, and here’s the next pic:

This is a noteworthy example of stripping context while pretending this is the entire story.

The context? The stories behind each tax plans. I’ll note that I’ll omit a thoroughly warranted tirade concerning provision of sources, and simply stipulate to accuracy for the space of this response. It may not be, but the numbers are close to what I recall from the campaigns.

For Trump, a President already notorious for presiding over a surge in the Federal deficit that is directly linked to the 2017 tax reform bill for which he advocated and proudly signed, we have to wonder how Trump plans to shrink a Federal deficit – even a little – that he had promised to be rid of by the end of his term. Of course, his supporters can argue that he had planned to have eight years, rather than four, but his anti-progress on that front had been so terribly horrible that Trump advocates should be relieved, rather than appalled, that he was decisively defeated in 2020.

But this isn’t only about the size of the deficit, but Trump’s response as well. Already celebrated for deregulation, much of it turned back by the Federal judiciary in response to suits, that deregulation which was meant, if we dare to take Trump at his word, to spur the economy and lessen the cost of government, the serious must wonder how much more deregulation is necessary to make up the monstrous gap for which Trump is responsible. Worse yet, regulations are industry-specific and do not always have a financial aspect as their primary focus. Environmental regulations, eviscerated, may bring ecological doom down upon the lands they affect, for example, while saving a great deal of money: a fool’s bargain, sad to say.

The Biden plan, on the other hand, must be put in the context of another dreadful economic and deficit performance by a Republican President. A typical GOP argument against raising taxes, as deceptive as it is, that the economy will suffer, has been given a fatal blow by the utter failure of the aforementioned 2017 tax reform bill to generate the economic activity predicted by the hapless GOP officials who backed it. So Biden proposes raising taxes in order to cover a ballooning deficit fueled by the GOP’s mistaken cant.

The author finishes up with denigration intended to remind the conservative reader of their inherent, if only self-perceived, advantage over their liberal cousins. There’s nothing honest about it; ignoring the 30,000 lies of the former President as a reason to not vote for him – my first and foremost reason, and the reason that should have persuaded every so-called conservative to abandon Trump as well – while claiming it’s the result of mean tweets, identifies the author as someone unworthy of notice by the serious student of American government and politics.

But then, this is sheer and single-minded manipulation. Did you fall for it?

Our nominee is Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.):

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) insisted that the 2020 election was “indeed compromised.”

“We don’t know how much because investigations take time yet. As of January the 20th, 2021, Joe Biden was indeed inaugurated president,” Higgins said. “Listen good. On January 20th, 2025, we’re going to fix that. And Democrats will have an opportunity to deal with the real accurate and newly inaugurated President Donald Trump again.” [WaPo]

Yep, that’s someone who’s way too far into the partisanship vibe of the post-Cold War.

I personally have my doubts that Trump will run again, and that he could possibly be reelected when faced with a shitstorm of his lies descending on his head.

I wonder how Higgins will react if his idol decides not to run?

And I’m quite serious – this caught me a bit by surprise:

Oklahoma’s two-term State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister announced on Thursday that she is switching her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and challenging Republican incumbent Gov. Kevin Stitt in next year’s gubernatorial election, according to a video Hofmeister posted to Twitter.

“I believe Governor Stitt is running Oklahoma into the ground,” Hofmeister told the Tulsa World in an interview. “I am changing parties to run as a Democrat and that is because I also believe in the values of supporting public education, supporting quality and good access to healthcare, as well as rural infrastructure.”

Stitt’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic was a top reason for Hofmeister’s decision to challenge the incumbent, and she told the Tulsa World that if Oklahoma “had a leader who contemplated expert advice and opinion and set an example to help protect Oklahomans, we could have avoided thousands of people dying.” [CNN/Politics]

I figure that, at this point, most Republicans are very well aware of the extremist nature of their party and are OK with it.

Evidently, I have that wrong – or Hofmeister has a cast-iron constitution, metaphorically speaking. It’ll be interesting to see if we have more defections from the Republican Party, and if there is any correlation with the interests of the defector. For instance, the Republicans have jumped all over Critical Race Theory (CRT) making it into schools, which most teachers will testify hasn’t happened. Perhaps Hofmeister realized the Republicans were basically being dishonest on the matter, investigated other areas, and chose to exit the Party rather than continue to be associated with them.

But I speculate and look to the future.

When someone has the fast comeback to mindless propaganda:

Hollywood Blvd, Saturday, 11:22 AM:

ANTI-VAXX PROTESTER: Do you see all of these homeless people around. Are they dead in the street with COVID? Hell no. Why?

HOMELESS PERSON (walking by): Because I’m vaccinated you dumb fuck. pic.twitter.com/rPskpOqtKs

— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) October 6, 2021

The shadow reminds me that this is for real, not a painted backdrops a few hundred miles straight up.

Image Credit: NASA, Voyager 1, JPL, Caltech; Processing & License: Alexis Tranchandon / Solaris

The milwaukee sentinel journal takes note of the next fraudit debacle, coming out of Wisconsin …

The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn’t understand how elections are supposed to be run.

The admission by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman comes as he subpoenas mayors and election officials.

His comment raises fresh questions about how long Gableman’s taxpayer-financed review will take. He called an Oct. 31 deadline set for him by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester unrealistic.

This is not surprising, of course. But it’s worth noting that Gableman, being himself an admitted incompetent to the job, is a product of those employing him. A Party from which legislators, suffused with hubris, who are contemptuous of experts and expertise, will of course stumble and fall in its responsibilities.

What we’re seeing in the GOP is the arrogance of the incompetent and ignorant, who’ve been repeatedly told that this doesn’t matter by those who are striving for higher office, and are of the same general class of knowledge and skill: that is, little to none. But remember that former Speaker Ryan (R-WI) made exactly these comments, and turned out to be enormously incompetent as legislator and Speaker.

The point of making a fetish of disrespecting expertise is part of the strategy of legislators and wannabe legislators, who know little, to get elected.

It’s all about the sleight of hand: impress the marks by your clarion calls for absolutist First Amendment rights, or anti-abortion legislation, and don’t let them even consider questions of expertise, experience, or competency. This may be clothed in robes marked Freedom or Control of my Body or whatever, but it’s really all about getting elected.

In the ongoing Brexit story, it appears Bloomberg wants to pronounce it a disaster:

Lines of cars snake from gasoline stations. Fights break out among angry motorists trying to get fuel. Grocery staples are out of stock on store shelves. A charity warns that doubling heating bills will force a million households to rely on extra blankets to stay warm.

This was supposed to be the year the U.K. broke free of the European Union and forged ahead as a buccaneering free trader, delivering the benefits of a new, confident “Global Britain” to workers and companies at home. Instead, that picture of Brexit utopia is looking more like a dystopia.

As Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party gathers at its annual conference this week, the promise of self-determination has given way to a foreboding sense of economic isolation.

Much like the United States:

The immediate challenges facing the U.K. stem from the loss of a vital pool of labor after its transition out of the EU ended on Jan. 1. A dearth of truckers is raising fears not just about toys or turkeys for Christmas, but whether people will have enough fuel and food this winter.

The government said late on Sept. 25 it plans to issue short-term visas for truck drivers and poultry workers, though businesses say it won’t come close to filling the gap. Johnson said on Sunday the U.K. also won’t go back to relying on immigration to solve the shortage. There are also deficits of people across industries from agriculture and meat to hospitality.

So the United States is seeing similar problems without having Brexit to blame. I have to wonder if Bloomberg has it in for Brexit, rather than blaming the exceedingly poor timing of a pandemic which makes some jobs highly dangerous. Certainly, Brexit deprived Britain of cheap labor, which was a complaint of the Brexiteers; but just when the Brits might have stepped up and learned how to drive truck, now it’s more dangerous.

I’m just not sure I believe this article with any enthusiasm.

John Konrad on gCaptain has some definite opinions on the operation of the Port of Los Angeles, and where the dude in charge should be borrowing tactics:

The Marine Corps is not the only entity to latch onto [Air Force Colonel John] Boyd’s theories, the Toyota production system is heavily fashioned after his work, and so is the operations of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook today.

What does this have to do with port congestion and logistics?

Well besides the fact that we are obviously playing the game of attrition – building bigger ships and sending them hey diddle diddle, right up the middle from China to Los Angeles – which always leads to trench warfare and ultimate defeat… there is more to this story.

The academic study of logistics is fairly new. In fact, one of the first master’s degree program in logistics was started by Dr. Shmuel Yahalom at SUNY Maritime College. Guess who else ended up teaching at this small and relatively unknown school. General Alfred Grey, USMC (Ret) who was commandant of the corps during the Gulf War, with Captain Anthony Piscitelli who wrote the book “The Marine Corps Way Of War” which details the adoption of Boyd’s theories.

One user of a tactic is a footnote. Multiple users across multiple domains is noteworthy. If you’re involved in a War of Attrition, you might want to read his post.

In case you’re wondering about North Korea’s capacity to vaccinate for Covid-19, 38 North has a report from two months ago. Money quote:

The DPRK is highly capable of implementing national vaccination programs. Their measles vaccine campaign in 2007 showed how quickly and efficiently they can get the job done. Provided they had time to prepare, i.e., ensure the integrity of the cold chain and have sufficient stock of consumables, the North Koreans could, in theory, vaccinate the entire population of 25 million people in less than 10 days for single injection vaccines, and in under two months for two-shot vaccines. These projections are based on ideal conditions, and the real-world experience would likely be much different.

They have manufacturing facilities, but development facilities are not mentioned. Given the spotty performance reported for the Russian and Chinese vaccines, I suspect the West would have to supply vaccine formulas.

And that would be the right thing to do, for our own safety.

Loadstar, via gCaptain, has a disturbing report:

Persistent and mounting congestion at US west coast ports has caused some shippers to seek the sanctuary of the east coast to speed cargo through the supply chain – but this avenue is also becoming increasingly problematic.

As congestion at Pacific gateways worsened, the shift to east coast ports gathered momentum, but now these are struggling with increasing congestion – halfway through last week there were 24 ships waiting for berths at the port of Savannah, and Maersk Line called the situation at Georgia “increasingly challenging”.

The number of vessels at anchorage in San Pedro Bay waiting for berths at Los Angeles and Long Beach climbed to around 70 last week, signalling ever-lengthening wait times. …

Much of the problem stems from issues beyond all the ports, namely a congested rail network and shortage of trucks to move boxes off the docks. According to one report, in Los Angeles there are 16 containers waiting for every available truck.

Which leaves me to wonder: The Biden Administration has been struggling to manage the influx of illegal immigrants, but each has to be checked and put through the immigration courts. How about training some of them to drive trucks? Pair them with experienced American drivers, offer incentives – still to be invented – and perhaps the trucking problem, if not the rail problem, could be ameliorated.

It’s worth considering, at least. The shortage of truck drivers is well-known, and anyone arguing that it’s illegal immigrants stealing jobs can be kicked in the teeth, metaphorically, with the stats about the truck driver shortage.

Confronted by some anti-vaxxer spouting off about religious exemptions like these folks?

President Biden’s vaccine mandate is being challenged in a lawsuit filed by four active-duty US Air Force officers, a Secret Service agent, a Border Patrol agent, and four other federal employees or contractors. The lawsuit claimed that “convicted serial killers who have been sentenced to death receive more respect” than citizens who are required to take vaccines.

The lawsuit alleges that the vaccine mandate forces service members, federal employees, and federal employees to “inject themselves with: (1) a non-FDA approved product; (2) against their will; and (3) without informed consent.” Plaintiffs seek a ruling that the vaccine mandates issued by Biden and the Department of Defense “violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of substantive due process” and “the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.” (The Pfizer vaccine does have full FDA approval.) [Ars Technica]

Here’s my suggestion:

Please enumerate for me all lawful religious exemptions which directly endanger my health and life.

Let them sputter over that one for a while.

Telson:

The telson is the posterior-most division of the body of an arthropod. Depending on the definition, the telson is either considered to be the final segment of the arthropod body, or an additional division that is not a true segment on account of not arising in the embryo from teloblast areas as other segments.^[1] It never carries any appendages, but a forked “tail” called the caudal furca may be present. The shape and composition of the telson differs between arthropod groups. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Scorpions develop a sting in the tail before they are ready to use it,” James Urquhart, NewScientist (18 September 2021):

Songryong Li at Wuhan University in China and his colleagues studied two-day old Chinese scorpions (Mesobuthus martensii), which are translucent and still embryo-like, and found they already had venom stored in the end of their tail, or telson. However, their stinger was blunt and venom exit ducts were blocked, enabling the toxin to pool inside the tail.

Jennifer Rubin thinks Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY) might make a run for the Presidency, presenting the GOP with a chance to get out of the insane lane:

What is certain is that Trump will try to maintain the prospect of running in 2024 for as long as possible, both to stay in the limelight and make money as well as to position himself to characterize any prosecution as solely political. If he’s still hovering over the race in 2023, other Republicans may be frozen out of the contest (and deprived of donors) for fear of antagonizing the man whose wrath they fear. In that scenario, Cheney might be the only candidate facing Trump in a 2024 primary, at least for many months.

That’s all a long way off, but this much is clear: If Cheney can win in 2022, dealing a blow to the MAGA GOP, she might establish herself as the sole alternative on the right to four years of chaos, lawlessness, incompetence and corruption. That doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that she would win that fight. But it would give Republicans one final off-ramp from the road to democracy’s demise. [WaPo]

She may attempt to run, but she won’t attract votes from the current GOP – assuming they haven’t imploded by 2024 – because she embodies a strong reproach to their terrible behavior and deeply immature political state of mind. That, in turn, is a reproach to every GOP voter that thinks God meant for Trump to win in 2020. It’d be deeply humiliating for them to vote for Cheney for President.

Her only chance is if the Democrats go too far left, as Andrew Sullivan occasionally mentions, and the Hispanics and Black communities choose to go with Cheney, instead. She has not, so far as I know, displayed any xenophobia, and I believe she apologized for earlier anti-gay attitudes.

But that seems like an unlikely result. Biden’s too experienced to let that get too far out of hand.

Only just now did we get around to watching the Thursday night The Late Show, and the musical performance section, which was Theo Croker with Wyclef-Jean and Jon Batiste, inspired a conversation for my Arts Editor and I.

A fine collection of aperitifs….

Gamera the Brave (2006) is another reboot of the Gamera franchise, symbolically represented by … killing off Gamera.

In this return to the perspective of the children and “Gamera, friend to all children,” Gamera wins a battle with several Gyaos by committing a rather violent version of suicide, literally blowing up.

Years later, a boy named Katsuya, attracted by a flash of light on an island in the bay, finds an egg in a crystal holder, and inside the egg is a beautiful little turtle, thus completing the symbolic message of the reboot. He, his sickly neighbor Mai, and his friends conceal the baby turtle, named Toto, from his father, a ramen noodle shop owner named Kousuke who witnessed the gallant suicide of Gamera, because Kousuke has forbidden pets. This becomes a bit of a problem when Toto’s growth rate accelerates beyond belief. And he can hover.

But, damn, he’s cute. She’s cute. Whatever. Loved the CGI.

And meanwhile there are ships disappearing in the ocean. And survivors are being sucked under. Followed by lip-smacking. Well, not really – something worse. A big shark? A monstrous squid? A demented God?

When Mai must head off to the hospital for surgery on her heart, Katsuya gifts her the crystal for luck, and off she goes, just in time to miss the first clash of a half-grown Toto, which looks a lot like a guy in a rubber suit, with the kaiju Zedus. Toto interrupts Zedus as it’s munching on inhabitants of Katsuya’s little city in a most upsetting scene – I mean, if I were a ten year old I’d be upset – but cannot destroy Zedus, and must limp away, badly injured, which leads to his capture by government officials, intent on learning about him. They also bandage him up and infuse him with some mystical liquids.

Kept incapacitated, Toto is nearly destroyed when Zedus discovers him penned in a sports stadium, but Toto recovers his senses and, breaking free, resumes the free-for-all with Zedus. Mia survives her successful surgery, but is bothered by dreams about the crystal. Soon enough, the children of the city form a relay team to get the crystal from Mai to Toto (who is caught in a building in a scene reminiscent of Pacific Rim (2013)), which revives Toto/Gamera enough to finish off Zedus in a mind-blowing finale.

Sorry about the pun.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this is not a half-bad effort. Sure, the science is delusional, but the characters are actually well-drawn and react in plausible ways, the CGI is good, the guys in rubber suits – who may have been CGI for all I know – are quite traditional in the Gamera genre, and Gamera’s return to a slightly comic appearance, if not behavior, may be welcome to the target audience. The plot? The plot is infused with the important life lesson Never give up.

I’ll drink to that.

The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission to Mercury (and deep into the Sun’s gravity field) did another flyby and snapped some pics. Here’s the only one they seem to be releasing, annotated:

I recently read that there are remarkably few boulders on the surface of Mercury, reason unknown. And, beyond WOW!, that’s about all I can contribute.

The breaching of Epik by the Anonymous hacker group has caused quite a stir in the political community, as Epik was responsible for hosting a number of conservative and far-right websites.

However, this daily dot report, if accurate (I’m not sitting through a four hour long video conference!), is really a bit of a jolt:

Epik CEO Rob Monster, who did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Dot, would go on to hold a more than four hour long live video conference online to address the initial hack. The meeting would see Monster break out into prayer numerous times, make attempts to vanquish demons, and warn viewers that their hard drives could burst into flames due to “curses” placed on the hacked data.

Curses? Really?

A while back I talked about alternate models of reality, as in the competition between the dominant model of reason, and the alternate of, well, miracles. It appears to me that Rob Monster’s (RM) model of reality is not much like mine.

Why does this matter? Absent reports of hard drives magically bursting into flames, not only are the models divergent, it’s also clear that he and his team, because they do not have the same depth of understanding of reality as I prefer to have in people with whom I work. Rather than take security seriously, RM and his team place curses on data (pre- or post- hack … I have to ask, I really do). Hey, in their minds they may think they’re just as serious, or even more so, than I, but there’s an objective metric for this, isn’t there?

Objective reality.

Do the hard drives burst into flame when someone tries to illicitly use the data? Not that I’ve heard. Does proactive security work? Not only does my common-sense suggest it will, but so does the experience of security professionals. Not that it’s easy to do – it’s really not that easy – but it works.

So if I had the opportunity to use a service provided by RM and his team, even at a large discount, I would decline the opportunity. Alternate models of reality not only endanger lives, but also provide services inferior to that of those services based on other models of reality.

And social evolution will – eventually – remove or modify those inferior models.

Yes, I know, I know – this thing seems to go on forever. It’s that very length which contributes to the dangerousness of the mail. But here’s the next pic:

Unlike the last pic, which did a lot of heavy lifting, this one is designed to simply inflate outrage, thus deflecting & destroying analytical thought. But it’s important to note that this is the type of sub-message which can function acceptably on its own, as previous generations of Americans developed, to a degree, the ability to ignore, to tolerate the offensive expression.

After all, as a nation of many creeds, philosophies, and religions, friction is an inevitable result of the machine to which we are constituent parts. The philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre is not a comfortable structure for many Americans, nor is the strictures of the Catholic Church. In other countries, deadly clashes over creeds, philosophies, and religions are a daily occurrence, but in the United States we all agree to abide by secular law, and that associated dogma only applies to those who agree to abide by it.

So, on its own, this is a relatively inoffensive mockery of those who insist that being offended is a mortal sin.

But in context, that context being the entire mail under analysis, it plays a role of inflating emotional outrage, and thus deflecting the analysis which might otherwise show this mail is a shameless attempt to manipulate those of a conservative temperament.

And enrage the conservative against the composer of that email.

Clay Wirestone of the Kansas Reflector calls it as he sees it:

When the original medicine shows were popular, let’s say 1890, the average U.S. life expectancy was 44 years. Diseases struck children and adults down in their prime, with doctors helpless to intervene. Prayer and booze were all they had.

In the 130 years since, our life expectancy has shot up to nearly 79 years. Once-fatal diseases have been all but eliminated — thanks to vaccinations and other treatments — and we enjoy a standard of living our forebears could only dream about.

Which brings us one high-profile guest of this medicine show. In 1890, he might have been called the “professor,” the storyteller who knit the whole evening together.

Today, we simply call him Kris Kobach, former Kansas secretary of state and current candidate for attorney general. Defeated in runs for governor and U.S. Senate, Kobach knows all about failing upward, about taking a losing situation and making it sound preordained. Like the professors of old, he gets the grift.

Modern medicine has gotten most of the crowd to where they are, and, by gum, they’re not going to take it anymore!

While China has banned decentralized cryptocurrencies, other countries are exhibiting a more positive interest, as NewScientist (18 September 2021) reports:

El Salvador has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. Draft legislation may soon lead Panama down the same path, while China, the US and the UK are investigating launching their own cryptocurrencies. Here’s what you need to know.

Why are countries adopting bitcoin?

President Nayib Bukele hopes bitcoin will alleviate El Salvador’s prickliest economic problems: citizens sending money home from abroad account for up to a fifth of the country’s GDP, but they have to pay high transaction costs, and 70 per cent of people have no bank account. Bitcoin enables quick, cheap payments across borders, and doesn’t require banks.

Cryptocurrency is a spawn of the digital age, which makes it a challenge to use by those not connected to the Internet:

While many in El Salvador were posting their successful bitcoin purchases on social media, others were marching in the street in protest.

And the markets are spooked. The Financial Times reports that the yield on long-term Salvadoran bonds rose from 8.5 per cent in June prior to the bitcoin announcement to 11 per cent, meaning confidence in the state’s finances has dropped,

And bitcoin’s volatility makes it a dubious choice over the long term, if that volatility continues, as the article notes. But I don’t doubt there will be continued experimentation, as the advantages, imagined or real, can be alluring. Get ready for a new acronym: CBDC –

But we are likely to see central banks around the world launching their own digital currencies, combining benefits of cryptocurrencies and traditional money. Financial consulting firm PwC published a report earlier this year on these so-called Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The report claimed that 60 governments are currently working on one, and that 88 per cent are basing them on blockchains, the technology behind bitcoin, though not all CBDCs will be cryptocurrencies.

CBDC obviates two features of bitcoin, which is lack of central bank control and, therefore, algorithmic control of the amount of legal tender. While these features are advertised as positives, they strike me as potential negatives – and, by erasing them, we may see CBDCs succeed.

Oneiric:

of, relating to, or suggestive of dreams [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Karmalink review: An intriguing mix of Buddhism and nanotech,” Davide Abbatescianni, NewScientist (18 September 2021):

To record Leng Heng’s dreams and discover the secrets of his past lives, Srey Leak steals Leng Heng’s sister’s AUGR (short for “augmented reality”), a sort of forehead microchip that works through the injection of special “nanobugs”. During his oneiric explorations, Leng Heng meets Vattanak Sovann (Sahajak Boonthanakit), a neuroscientist and the inventor of the Connectome, a mysterious device containing “a digital replica of one’s consciousness” that can open “a path to enlightenment” through neural connections with the user’s past lives.

From Steve Benen on Maddowblog:

* The end of an error: “Pat Robertson, who turned a tiny Virginia television station into a global religious broadcasting network, is stepping down after a half-century running the ‘700 Club’ on daily TV, the Christian Broadcasting Network announced on Friday. Robertson, 91, said in a statement that he hosted the network’s flagship program for the last time on Friday, and that his son Gordon Peterson will take over the weekday show starting on Monday.”

Oh, sure, I could argue he got it right … but what fun would that be?