Monthly Archives: February 2022

It must be a little tough to be Erick Erickson, based on this:

The leader of the free world needs to be decisive and support freedom. Ukraine is fighting for its life. Europe has stepped up. For God’s sake, the Swedish are supplying arms to Ukraine while Joe Biden vacations in Delaware and dithers.

Even now, the Biden Administration will not restore American energy independence, but imports Russian oil. After refusing to ban Russia from SWIFT and giving Europe a veto over the matter, Biden finally prohibited Russia from the SWIFT banking system, but went out of his way to make clear the ban would not apply to energy related transaction.

He’s evidently forgotten that we’re the biggest nuclear power, and Russia is #2. If we sufficiently provoke Putin, he will increase the number of cities hit by nuclear missiles in the history of the world from two to three, four, five …

So, therefore, we move with great delicacy. We use proxies, such as Sweden. We push Germany into supplying more arms – and remember that we supplied hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to Ukraine just  a few years ago, despite the frenzied attempts of then-President Trump to stop those shipments.

Ahem.

I’m not taking Erickson too seriously these days when he critiques the Democrats. I’m sure he has some good points, particularly about the self-delusions of the far left, but digging them out of the manure he spreads makes the entire matter tiresome for a working dude. I find him far more credible when he critiques his own side.

Which, according to Senator Romney (R-UT), is populated with morons.

Professor Richardson summarizes the invasion of Russia so far:

Less than a week ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an assault on Ukraine, and with his large military force, rebuilt after the military’s poor showing in its 2008 invasion of Georgia, it seemed to most observers that such an attack would be quick and deadly. He seemed unstoppable. For all that his position at home has been weakening for a while now as a slow economy and the political opposition of people like Alexei Navalny have turned people against him, his global influence seemed to be growing. That he believed an attack on Ukraine would be quick and successful was clear today when a number of Russian state media outlets published an essay, obviously written before the invasion, announcing Russia’s victory in Ukraine, saying ominously that “Putin solved the Ukrainian question forever…. Ukraine has returned to Russia.”

But Ukrainians changed the story line. While the war is still underway and deadly, and while Russia continues to escalate its attacks, no matter what happens the world will never go back to where it was a week ago. Suddenly, autocracy, rather than democracy, appears to be on the ropes.

Let’s assume Putin is finished. Whether he’s thrust out of power, or out an upper-story window, it doesn’t matter. But let’s not ask the obvious question, which is What comes next, who will take over, will it continue as a corrupt autocracy or will it become a democracy, etc etc.

Let’s ask a question important to the United States: When Putin disappears, what will be the effect on the American right wing?

There’s a number of possible results.

• No change in behavior. This suggests the right wing is an organic movement.
• The movement begins to move back towards the center. This suggests Putin was pumping money into the movement in an effort to guide it into splitting the American political scene. When the motivation goes away, so does the behavior.
• The anti-vaxx subgroup begins to fade away. Once again, Putin funds them and they quit when the money stops flowing. I consider this as a low probability result because anti-vaccination sentiment has been with us for a very long time.
• QAnon disappears. The eponymous ‘Q’ hasn’t posted for a very long time, at least by Internet standards, so that suggests the continuing movement is self-sustaining. Still, ‘self-sustaining’ could be an illusion. Anonymous members, paid by Putin to keep the lights on, are difficult to impossible to identify, so if QAnon breaks up and shrinks, Putin’s hand may be discerned.
• Others?

Of course, the problem with the approach of measuring a change in our political scene that can be connected to Putin’s demise is that China may have also been interfering. Money, after all, is money, and those who are willing to take it corruptly rarely object to using a range of sources.

But for anyone puzzling over the polarization of the American political scene, the removal of Putin from the scene may turn out to be an eye opener. I seriously doubt that fake clergy like Greg Locke will be abandoning their ego-inflating gigs just because Putin loses, but, whether there’s changes or not, Putin’s debacle will teach us something.

By the eighth take, the gorilla, already deprived of a credit, was distinctly crabby.
Which was exactly how Laura likes her gorillas.

The Bride and the Beast (1958) is an odd collage of a film. The first chunk presents the new bride of African explorer and hunter Dan Fuller, Laura Fuller. Plagued by odd dreams about living with gorillas on her wedding night, Dan’s long-time pet gorilla breaks out of his cage and entrances Laura when she awakens. She is only freed of his influence when her husband finds her being led out of the house and shoots the pet gorilla to death. A later examination of her by a doctor, using hypnosis, reveals that in a previous life she … was a gorilla!

Then comes a long, long section of film best described as a safari documentary, utilizing what appears to be authentic video of the era, as Dan and Laura travel across the continent in search of … I forget. Probably gorillas. The cinematography throughout the movie is B&W gorgeous, and may make the movie worthwhile if you are a safari video aficionado.

Once they reach their destination, the movie reverts to the previous storyline, resulting in Laura being kidnapped, not entirely unwillingly, by the local gorillas, and, despite Dan’s frenzied attempts to rescue her, she is lost to the gorilla clan, much to his dismay.

It’s all a little disjointed, feeling more like the moviemakers happened to have some primo footage that had to be worked into what was otherwise a fairly hollow, even silly, story. But I have to admit that footage really was good, if violent, so I can see why they succumbed to its lure.

But in the end I fear I was overcome with incredulity.

Crypsis:

Crypsis, or avoiding detection by blending into the background, is one of the most common and successful defenses. Classical examples of crypsis include mantids and stick insects in the Mantodea and Phasmatodea, leaf-mimicking moths, and ambush bugs (Phymatidae) that resemble the flowers in which they hide. [Justin O. Schmidt, ScienceDirect]

Noted in “Competition, part II,” Heather Heying, Natural Selections:

Historically, though, male-typical competition is visible, overt, and finite in its nature. Female-typical competition is more cryptic and covert, and has boundaries that are looser. Overt games have clear borders, both in space and time, or at least they’re supposed to. In male-typical competition both the games themselves, and the rules of the games tend to be clear. In female-typical social competition, by contrast, both the game and its rules may be difficult to detect. And this difficulty of detection may precisely, in turn, be part of the game. Crypsis can be a powerful adaptive move—if your competitors can’t see you coming, they may well be less prepared, especially if it’s not even clear that a game is on.

… I’d just ignore it.

But The Lincoln Project is a NeverTrumper conservative organization.

So this is worth a gander.

So accurate.

And it’s worth noting that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been a favorite of Tucker Carlson to the extent that Carlson has broadcast from Hungary, has come out against Putin. It’ll be interesting to hear how Carlson adjusts to that.

I see CNN is claiming Ukraine survived the night in its war against the much stronger invader, Russia, and, if true, I think that may inspire and solidify American citizens’ backing for underdog Ukraine, who were also, incidentally, the victims of American aggression just a few years ago, leading to the first impeachment and trial of then-President Trump. Yes, the President, in the guise of his official duties, put illicit pressure on Ukrainian President Zelensky to initiate an unwarranted investigation of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s sadly flawed son, before delivery of promised military arms and assistance would commence, and that threatened the future of Ukraine. That makes us aggressors. And, sorry dude, but your false claims of a rigged election causing this invasion don’t match up with your own culpability. President Biden, if he hasn’t already, should apologize for his predecessor’s morally inferior action.

But I digress.

It’s the affects of the invasion and how they may rebound to Russia’s detriment that I think is most interesting.

Finland and Sweden have brushed off warnings from neighboring Russia that their possible joining of NATO would trigger “serious military-political consequences” from Moscow for the two countries.

A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry Friday voiced concern about what it described as efforts by the United States and some of its allies to “drag” Finland and Sweden into NATO and warned that Moscow would be forced to take retaliatory measures if they join the alliance.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Saturday that “we’ve heard this before.”

“We don’t think that it calls for a military threat,” Haavisto said in an interview with the Finnish public broadcaster YLE. “Should Finland be NATO’s external border, it rather means that Russia would certainly take that into account in its own defense planning. I don’t see anything new as such” in the statement delivered by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Haavisto said. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

Yeah, solidification of opposition. Russia may dare to invade a weaker neighbor under a pretext. It’s only a single front. But what if Sweden were to issue a statement like this?

We were messing around with Google maps today and estimate a column of Swedish tanks could reach Moscow in less than a week.

(Does Sweden have tanks?) Sure, I’m just spitballing here. And what if documentaries concerning the Swedish Empire (1561-1721) were to appear on Swedish broadcast television? For us Americans, “Swedish Empire” sounds almost like a contradiction, seeing that Sweden was neutral during World War II, but at one time the Swedes were the rampaging maniacs of the North and actually had designs on the throne of the Holy Roman Emperor, although they didn’t work out.

We may be understandably ignorant, but not the Russians. They’ll understand the threat.

And then the Finlanders could remark, ever so casually, on the inability of Russian radar to pick up on American B-2 bombers, and then add that the Ghost of Kyiv is sucking down so much Russian Air Force resources that a small flight of B-2s could probably make Moscow without visual detection. Which is utter nonsense, but, given Russian penchants for disinformation, a return volley of same is not out of the question.

We can be sure that Putin won’t pull in his horns, but we all know he’s a lost cause. The real goal here is to collapse support for Putin among both the common citizenry, and the oligarchs, as I’ve mentioned before, who have far more to lose.

One of the excuses Putin has used for this war, an excuse that might actually be sincere, is that he doesn’t want NATO neighbors. If Finland and Sweden join NATO, he’ll have an unintended consequence for Finland, and Sweden is right next door to Finland, which is built like a spite house – long and narrow.

How the countries of the world react to the survival of Ukraine may determine the war’s course more than we imagine.

Unexpected progress made on a scientific mystery:

Kicking off an occasional series on random views of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which exist in an environment antithetical to their aspirations, which is a singular, even unique existence. Search UMB on ‘NFT’ for my evolving thoughts on the matter.

From WaPo, covering an art exhibit of NFTs in San Francisco, where wearing Metaverse-style goggles isn’t just de rigeur, but actually required to see the art.

I was first attracted to this case by the petition to the for an en banc (all the judges on the circuit) re-hearing in this case concerning religious objections to the Covid-19 in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The initial attractor:

In sum, the majority’s “ongoing coercion” theory is contrary to all precedent, devoid of any limiting principle, and harmful to the employees it purports to protect. The en banc Court should put a stop to this madness.

A bit puzzling, if fun. It turns out that a three judge panel had ruled, 2-1, in favor of the plaintiffs, who were pissed that their religious accommodation for not taking the Covid-19 shot – that is, for not contributing to public health – was leave without pay from United Airlines. The dissenting judge claimed this violated many precedents, both specific to the Fifth Circuit and those from SCOTUS.

Going through the sections leading to the above paragraph impressed me by how it doesn’t address the primary motivation of the need for everyone to participate in public health, and that’s the potential damage and death, both directly and indirectly, the unvaccinated can cause. Quite frankly, the idea that religious “sensibilities” justify endangering society is exactly what we were trying to escape 200+ years ago when we engaged in the Revolutionary War, telling off Mad King George and, by implication, his monarchical ancestors and descendants who paraded about, murdered innocents, and took terrible arbitrary actions, all under the imprimatur of some Divine touch making them King or Queen.

Allegedly. Self-reported, one might say.

So I have little sympathy for the majority of the panel who rendered the decision which United Airlines is now appealing. One of the judges is a Trump nominee, the other from Bush II. If I’m to believe the dissent, it sounds like a sad commentary on the nominations of those Presidents.

Aposematic:

Aposematism is the advertising by an animal to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. This unprofitability may consist of any defences which make the prey difficult to kill and eat, such as toxicity, venom, foul taste or smell, sharp spines, or aggressive nature. These advertising signals may take the form of conspicuous coloration, sounds, odours, or other perceivable characteristics. Aposematic signals are beneficial for both predator and prey, since both avoid potential harm. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Join a Scientist’s Undersea Adventure,” Andria Greene, Discover (March/April 2022):

Nudibranchs are invertebrates — backboneless organisms in the kingdom Animalia — that include 2,000 different species, many of which are best known for their wildly diverse and colorful appearance. But what’s beautiful to humans is to other animals an aposematic signal — a warning not to eat this creature. Nudibranchs’ bright coloration is intended to indicate unpalatability, and comes from a diet rich in animals armed with cnidocytes, the stinging cells common to sponges, anemone, and coral. Not all nudibranchs parade colorful displays; some rely on near-perfect camouflage to avoid being eaten. But coloration and camouflage can’t protect these and other underwater creatures from every threat.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) gives his view of the Ukrainian situation:

Take a minute to watch this. It's tempting to view Putin as some world-dominating mastermind. But that's not what's happening here. At all. pic.twitter.com/3fvrkPCI4m

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 17, 2022

Does he know what he’s talking about? Is he being truthful? I sure wish I knew a historian with relevant chops, because this is beyond my expertise and time to research. I could say his body language and communications style suggests he’s being truthful, but such readings are not dispositive and can even be misleading.

The next few days will cast some light on Murphy’s message. Personally, as I implied here, I hope the Russian oligarchs will take note of their evaporating fortunes and suddenly impel Putin to either withdraw, or resign.

Take that as you will.

I hadn’t heard anything about the hacker group Anonymous for awhile, but I don’t pay much attention to hacker groups, either. But here they are, getting involved – and maybe taking their lives into their hands:

On Tuesday (Feb. 22), Anonymous hacked into the Chinese Culture website (http://www.chineseculture.com.cn/) and uploaded a rogue page including its logo and images of a Russian device that the group had hacked. The website was taken down within a day after the hack, but an archived version of the page changed by the hacktivists can be found on Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. …

In red text, the hackers condemn Putin’s recognition of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine as independent. Anonymous states the Russian leader should have instead waited for a UN-brokered peace plan to be concluded instead. [Taiwan News]

If they do enough damage, the Russians will remember them and try to hunt them down.

And it won’t matter if Putin survives this excursion into war or not. Russia won’t convert into a real democracy just because Putin fails, or even succeeds.

Hickey:

These terms all basically refer to a single offset printing phenomenon, best known as the hickey. A hickey is a spot or halo on the printed image that resembles a donut or bullseye.

A hickey occurs when a piece of dust or random mote sticks to either the plate or blanket of the offset printing press or the printing medium, which causes an imperfection on the printed page. Other potential causes include degradation in the press rollers, paper fibers and solid particles suspended in printing ink. [Sun Print Solutions]

This came up in conversation with my Arts Editor, who grew up in a family that ran a small publishing company for a living, while watching an old rerun of Carol Burnett, in which one of her camera men remarks she’s probably never had a hickey.

Which was fun, but not as funny as when an audience member asked about “boom microphones”, and Carol remarked they weren’t shotguns and the audience members in the first row could uncross their legs. She meant they could relax, but it came across as quite inappropriate and, therefore, funnier than Hell.

Which is a really odd remark – funnier than Hell – if you think about it.

Prior to the beginning of the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine, and since its inception, the Republicans were and are using the upcoming conflict as a platform for attacking President Biden and the Democrats, said attacks including It’s none of our business, we shouldn’t be there! (candidate for the Senator from Ohio’s seat and author J. D. Vance), It’s the fault of the environmentalists! (radio host Erick Erickson), and, most interestingly, this example, which stands in for a few other equivalent, if more shrill, examples from more prominent Republicans:

Lot of people will be angry by this… But I'm convinced that Putin would be a lot, LOT more hesitant to invade if Trump was President.

Biden simply does not evoke any sense of strength or danger to our enemies.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) February 21, 2022

In case the above disappears out of future embarrassment:

Lot of people will be angry by this… But I’m convinced that Putin would be a lot, LOT more hesitant to invade if Trump was President.

Biden simply does not evoke any sense of strength or danger to our enemies.

And this is quite mild; most others are hubristic claims that Democrats, using the examples of Obama and Crimea, Carter and the diplomats, and now Biden and Ukraine, are uniquely weak and thus unsuited to elected position.

This from the same Party that gave us George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, and about the latter Jennifer Rubin helpfully remarks in context:

This is just beautiful:

Credit: NASA/HST

A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured in a new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 143. The pair contains the glittery, distorted, star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2445 at right, along with its less flashy companion, NGC 2444 at left.

Astronomers suggest that the galaxies passed through each other, igniting the uniquely shaped star-formation firestorm in NGC 2445, where thousands of stars are bursting to life on the right-hand side of the image. This galaxy is awash in starbirth because it is rich in gas, the fuel that makes stars. However, it hasn’t yet escaped the gravitational clutches of its partner NGC 2444, shown on the left side of the image. The pair is waging a cosmic tug-of-war, which NGC 2444 appears to be winning. The galaxy has pulled gas from NGC 2445, forming the oddball triangle of newly minted stars.

From Angie Drobnic Holan on PolitiFact:

“The arts of the enemies of America are endless, but all wicked as they are various. Among other tricks they have forged a pamphlet of letters entitled ‘Letters from Gen. Washington to several of his friends in 1776.’ The design of the forger is evident, and no doubt it gained him a good beef steak from his masters. I would send you this pamphlet if it were not too bulky for the post, as it might serve to amuse your leisure hours during the inaction of winter.” – Richard Henry Lee, American Founding Father

A testament to the fundamental stability of the human personality. It’ll lie, cheat, and steal to gain advantage, especially in war time – formal or informal.

Something to remember during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling for skepticism about claims from both sides, and requiring careful proctoring of those claims up for acceptance. Recognition that certain political factions throughout the world will take advantage of the conflict to spread misinformation is an important facet of this discussion.

In regards to a State law with some religious implications:

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, R-St. Peters, who sponsored the bill last year, said it’s too early to comment on the groups applying to run the program. He said the law protects against religious discrimination by the educational assistance organizations.

“It’s pretty well established in American law that you can’t discriminate for immutable characteristics like religion,” he said. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

I’m sure everyone else has had their say about immutable characteristics, but I have to have my horse’s laugh as well. Dude, people are forever adjusting, changing, and abjuring religion. You should be ashamed to be trying to slip that particular bit of deceit by the people of St. Louis.

Hah!

CNN/Politics‘ Chris Cillizza makes the typical error of holding a variable constant as he panders to Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) from back in the latter’s more ambitious days:

This is from the Solar Orbiter, operated by the ESA and NASA:

The Full Sun Imager of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured a giant solar eruption on 15 February 2022.

Solar prominences are large structures made of tangled magnetic field lines that keep dense concentrations of solar plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface and often take the form of arching loops.

This is the largest solar prominence eruption ever observed in a single image together with the full solar disc.

Amazing. Good that when that explosion went off, it was pointed that-a-way and not this-a-way.

In the wake of the spectacle of a few power-hungry yahoos declaring their little chunks of eastern Ukraine are actually independent countries qualified to sign treaties with Moscow’s Vladimir Putin^[1], Edward Luce of the Financial Times (at least according to Professor Richardson) wrote:

Cannot be stated strongly enough: If the west – chiefly America, but also Britain – doesn't burn its financial ties to Russia's oligarchy then Putin will prevail. This means taking on Wall Street, the City, law firms realtors, the prep schools and western laundering outfits.

— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) February 21, 2022

It seems to me the proper procedure will be to freeze all assets, of all the Russian oligarchs, available, and then, one by one, confiscate them. Even go after those that seem beyond reach. Putin’s at the top of an oligarchic kleptocracy, which means he’s only there because he’s the toughest and most skilled at internal power struggles, which range from brutality to diplomacy. The latter depends on success; if a Russian oligarch finds themselves not so oligarchic any longer, they may decide the Putinesque diplomacy isn’t working and take a shot at removing Putin.

A tip into an informal Russian civil war will make it far easier for Ukraine to regain its territorial integrity.

¹ Which is so cartoonish that I’d be laughing, but the consequences for the Ukrainians are so potentially tragic that laughter is impossible. I’m not sure English has a name for the actual emotion.

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is upset about someone not thinking in Oklahoma:

A dangerous bill in the Oklahoma legislature would create a de facto blasphemy law for public school teachers, severely punishing them for teaching anything that conflicts with any student’s religious beliefs, and advocates for reason and secularism stand ready to challenge the law in court should it pass. Today, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) sent notice that if Oklahoma State Senator Rob Standridge’s “Students’ Religious Belief Protection Act” becomes law, CFI will see to it that the law is struck down as a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

But I have to wonder if threatening to take the State to Court really is the best course. I suggest that they write an alternative letter that suggests CFI will fund anyone willing to sue under this proposed law, regardless of their religious affiliation, over anything.

Say, when someone else sues because their delicate sensibilities have been bruised, CFI will also sue – the same teacher – for any offered apologies and mea culpas.

This Standridge brute would swiftly come under fire, some of it literal, for denuding all the schools, public and private, of the teachers.

And it would make the blundering foolishness of incorporating singularly religious values into state law visceral. The swirling madness of religion that so many think is right would be a pie to the face for a change. And get the law, if ever passed, repealed.

William Galston and Elaine Kamarck are, or should be, legendary within the Democratic Party for having analyzed the Democratic failures of the 1970s and 1980s and producing a set of recommendations that soon-to-be President Bill Clinton used in refashioning the Democratic message – and winning the Presidency.

Now they’re back, and when it comes to race, they sound remarkably like Andrew Sullivan:

MYTH 1: PEOPLE OF COLOR THINK AND ACT ALIKE

Early in the 21st century, many Democrats came to believe that long-term demographic trends would move the electorate inexorably toward a Democratic majority. The expectation was that decades of robust immigration from previously under-represented countries in the Western Hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific region would steadily increase the diversity of the U.S. population. As they entered the electorate, they would join forces with other people “of color” — especially African Americans and Native Americans — to strengthen support for the Democratic Party, especially its progressive wing. Underlying this projection was the assumption that these new groups would experience various forms of discrimination that would define their political identity and unite them with African Americans and Native Americans in demands for justice and equality.

For a while there was evidence that what some called the “Rising American Electorate” would indeed transform our politics. The coalition that gave Barack Obama a strong majority in 2008 was diverse in all the expected ways, and younger voters brought new and often progressive perspectives into the political arena. Black turnout has remained high, Hispanics continue to stream into the electorate, and turnout among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders rose by 39% from 2016 to 2020.^[5]

But more recently, developments among the largest segment of this coalition, Hispanic Americans, have called into question the belief in the basic similarity among people of color. It was widely recognized that the term “Hispanic” — a census category — covered an internally diverse community from dozens of different countries. It turned out that differences of national origin shaped political outlooks: It was one thing to flee countries dominated by brutal right-wing dictatorships, quite another to hail from socialist societies like Cuba and Venezuela. [Progressive Policy Institute]

This statement, particularly concerning People of Color, rings true in the wake of a 2020 election in which a substantial minority of the Hispanic vote went Republican; in the wake of reports that the Cuban-derived minority in Florida are strongly against the legalization of illegal immigrants, when they themselves went the entire route as prescribed by law; that the term Latinx has no popularity with the general Hispanic population, suggesting those pushing it are not listening to the feedback from their audience.

That, in turn, is in congruence with the analysis, thus far, of election results, most recently the Virginia elections, which the Democrats, under standard analysis, should have won, and instead more or less were run out of town. Their reaction to post-voting polls? That the voters are a bunch of bigots.

That’s called CYA, not honest analysis.

In fact, and with the admission I haven’t had time to read the entire report, this strikes me as a not-so-veiled shot at Ibrahim X. Kendi and the American far left who’ve settled into the position that If you’re White, you’re evil. The subsumation of non-White into a single group, the POC, is reflective of the ideology, the propaganda, spread by the far left, of White evil and everyone else victims – as well as their dictates that only racial power politics, an unstable and violent pattern as we see in the historical record, can restore justice.

It has never brought justice, in reality.

And how strong are these dictates? Just sitting here writing, I finally realize why I found Kendi’s book, How To Be An Antiracist, to be so grating: it’s not a book built on the liberal democratic support of intellectual persuasion, of buttressing arguments with evidence to make a point. Oh, he has some evidence, but I felt some of it was doubtful or inaccurate, but it’s mostly irrelevant. It’s a book of dictates mixed with some interesting anecdotes from his and other’s lives.

But it wasn’t persuasive. It was all about orders.

And most folks don’t want to follow orders in order to win a political contest and reap the prizes – which will be handed out as the leaders see fit. Too much brown-nosing. Rather, people want the chance to succeed through their own labor.

And if the left is going to demonstrate a system that undermines such an ambition, they and their allies won’t get the votes they think they deserve.

The Democrats had better start learning fast, or November 2022 could be a horrendous shock. I look forward to finding time to read further in Galston and Kamarck’s analysis. I want to see if they continue to dig at the foundations of intellectual bullying.

You should go read it, too.

Professor Blackmun gives us a quick description of a Federal Circuit’s social dynamics compared to the private sector:

Generally, workplaces are not static. Over time, leaders with different styles come and go. Organizations are restructured. Workers who do not work out will leave, or are asked to leave. New blood is brought in to reinvigorate the organization. And, if the workplace is failing, eventually, the organization itself may become defunct.

These rules do not apply to the federal courts of appeals. Their membership is largely static. New judges are added on an infrequent basis, while senior judges tend to stick around. There are no leaders. (No, the chief judge does not count). Every member of the court has an equal vote. And, with rare exception, judges who are unhappy remain ensconced in their life-tenured sinecures. Finally, federal courts cannot be abolished–well, they probably can’t be abolished. These unique dynamics of the federal courts of appeals make interpersonal relationships very different than in traditional workplaces. [The Volokh Conspiracy]

I don’t think sinecure is actually the right word to use here, but that’s a detail. The real fun is reading about the friction caused by judges who are less respectful of precedent than others.

There’s a real conundrum going on here:

“I’ve been to flat Earth conferences and I remember this guy said he used to contract with Nasa,” [Kelly Weill] said on the show.

“He said, ‘Quite frankly I think they’re lying about the shape of the earth so that we believe in aliens so that when Jesus comes down we’ll mistake him as an alien and we’ll shoot him.’”

Yeah, we don’t even know where to start with that one. [“Flat Earther claims that Nasa makes us believe in aliens so that we’ll shoot Jesus if he returns,” Harry Fletcher, indy100]

Where you start is with the question, If Jesus is God, a Divine creature, is s/he/it really going to give a shit about being shot?

Yeah?

He may be pissed off enough to do a War Of The Worlds gig on the shooter, but that’s a different conspiracy theory, isn’t it?