Monthly Archives: August 2022

As the fast moving events of the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid continue, for those who are a little fuzzy on the fine points of law enforcement – alleged criminal interactions, Lawfare has a slightly out of date tutorial available. I found this paragraph useful for clarifying my thoughts:

It is telling that the FBI sought a search warrant rather than relying on a grand jury subpoena for the documents in question. Subpoenas are typically used when the bureau has reason to trust that the recipient will hand over the information in question rather than obfuscating or destroying it. One possibility, raised by former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, is that the bureau and the Justice Department “could not be confident that the former President of the United States would comply with a grand jury subpoena.” Another possibility, assuming this was an effort to recover classified material, is that the bureau proceeded by search warrant because that is standard practice when attempting to recover spilled classified material.

I’m speculating that these boxes of confidential information have a certain monetary value to the right persons, and Trump was hoping to monetize them.

Which makes me wonder what had already gone out the door, sad to say.

There’s been a lot of muttering behind Democratic and other doors concerning the speed at which AG Merrick Garland operates, but I think that Garland is beginning to demonstrate how being deliberate and thoughtful can be just as useful as blazing speed.

And remember my comment that the former President has to control the narrative? I hope he didn’t have too strong a grip on the narrative, because otherwise he might be losing his fingers.

Again, a Twitter source, but it’s worth a quote.

I fully expect the court to grant DOJ's motion to unseal the warrant and we will see it soon, maybe even later today. This will be a substantive blast against Trump after Garland's procedural one this afternoon.

— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) August 11, 2022

Unsealing the warrant as well as the records of what was found.

And, from what I’ve read elsewhere, Trump really can’t oppose this tactic. Oh he can, legally, but politically it’s a bad looking move.

So now the Republicans who’ve been yelling about the politicization of the Department of Justice are about to get a full look at the FBI’s suspicions, as confirmed by a judge, as well as what was found.

And I can’t imagine Garland would walk down this path without some real goodies to show off.

The MAGA base will get to see it as well, and, having read Republican hysteria, will now get to compare and contrast Cruz, Rubio, et al, with reality. That’ll do some damage.

But worst of all for Trump is the loss of control. Control is part of his psychological makeup, and while I’m sure he’s used to losing control of narratives before, he’ll still be in danger of losing personal control with Garland’s foot up his ass.

And I still wonder if Trump has self-exile plans setup in case everything goes South in a hurry for him.

This may be a pivotal moment in the Trump investigatory era.

You’d think they’d tire of the sausage-maker of news.

• Progressives would like to believe the Florida matchup between Senator Rubio (R) and Rep Demings (D) is now even, but both cited poll sources are strongly progressive, so the grain of salt is large.
• Attempts to weaponize the mysterious Republican urge to not cap insulin prices for privately insured individuals may be alluring, but a strong message shouldn’t try to communicate a complicated thought.
• In Connecticut, incumbent Senator Richard Blumenthal (D) now knows his Republican opponent. Leora Levy is a Trump endorsee and won yesterday’s primary by 10 points. However, her political experience is, as one might expect of a Trump-endorsee in a blue state, extremely limited. Will a far-right extremist appeal to Connecticut independent voters? Back in May, Emerson College Polling, rated A- by FiveThirtyEight, gave Blumenthal a 16 point lead over Levy – but that was months and months ago. Time for another poll to see if intervening events have had an effect on Connecticut voters.
• In Vermont, Democratic Rep. Peter Welch won the Democratic nod to replace retiring Senator Leahy (D), winning more votes in his primary run than all the Republicans running in the Republican primary put together. Welch’s Republican opponent will be the inexperienced Army veteran Gerald Malloy, who only won with a plurality. I want a poll, but I expect Welch to cruise to victory in this blue stronghold.
• In Wisconsin, Tuesday’s primary yielded the expected Senate result: incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) vs Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D).
• Arizona’s Senate race now has its first poll since its primary last week, and it shows incumbent Senator Kelly (D) with a shocking 14 point lead over Republican challenger Blake Masters. The pollster is Center Street PAC, a new pollster, so it’s hard to assess whether or not they are credible, even as I’ve run across them repeatedly for this year’s races. Arizona is known to be tracking more to the left, at least since the passing of Senator McCain (R) in 2018, but a jump like this on general principle is unlikely. I suspect that Masters and his backers, former President Trump and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, all known extremists, are personally responsible for this poor polling result. I look forward to a poll from a known and A-rated quantity, such as Fox News or SurveyUSA, on this race, and for now cannot consign this race to be safe for either party. But it may turn out that Senator Kelly owes Masters’ two backers a Thank You! note or two.
• While the Republican hysteria over the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid has a number of factors, for Senate races there has to be some highly credible worries that the former President will act like a black hole in terms of potential damage to the empty shell of high morality Republicans like to project, as well as the very real and tangible damage that may occur for all Senatorial candidates who are perceived as tied, or allied to, the former President and his agenda, fragmentary as it is. Indeed, for one or two of them, this event may be the incident that pushes them into political oblivion; contrariwise, for any Democratic Senators up for reelection that were in trouble, few as they seem to be, this may be the lifeline that they climb to safety.
• The boomerang issue of the election season? Republicans love to portray themselves as law & order types, but, ya know, tax law is law, too. So why are the Republicans outraged at the idea of increasing funding for the Internal Revenue Service? This is the question that can bother quite a few voters, if it’s presented properly – and I’m sure the Democrats will so present it. Are Republicans trying to protect their patrons, as well as themselves, from tax investigations? They’re trying to stir up the ol’ fear thing, but the IRS has already stated that anyone making less than $400,000 will not have an increased chance of investigation.

The relentless flood’s predecessors are here. Your fellow audience members are below.

We’re starting to reach the goal of the tomato replacement project.

Sunflower seeds! For the bees!

Polychrome:

Polychrome is the “practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors.” The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery or sculpture in multiple colors. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “What if the ancient Greeks and Romans actually had terrible taste?” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:

In its new exhibition, the Met is pushing back against the general resistance, using speculative reconstructions by Vinzenz Brinkmann and his wife, Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, scholars based in Frankfurt, Germany, who have specialized in the study of what is called polychromy. These include a painted reconstruction of the Met’s sixth-century B.C. marble sphinx finial, in which the wings are red and blue with gilded feathers, the tail dipped in blue and the neck ornamented with a red-and-gold choker.

Well. Far be it for an artistic heathen like me to say anything. Harrumph.

This thread hasn’t been awake for a couple of years, but the story this time isn’t surprising, only sordid.

The private judging industry needs stronger oversight, California’s chief justice said, following a Times report last week on the role for-hire judges played in Los Angeles attorney Tom Girardi’s suspected swindling of clients out of millions of dollars in settlement money.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye called revelations about the conduct of the retired judges, including a former state Supreme Court justice, “shocking” in a statement to The Times, acknowledging, “There are not adequate safeguards regarding the business of private judging.” [Los Angeles Times]

How bad is this collection of cases?

For decades, Girardi paid well-regarded private judges as much as $1,500 an hour to help him administer mass tort cases involving thousands of clients. The Times described how Girardi traded on the names of these former jurists to deflect questions about missing money and how, in some instances, they aided his misappropriation of client funds.

In one settlement in which a former appellate justice was paid $500,000 to oversee the distribution of funds, Girardi managed to divert millions of dollars from a settlement account for questionable purposes. A downtown jeweler received $750,000 for what court records show was the purchase of diamond earrings for Girardi’s wife, Erika, of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” fame.

Classic pecuniary corruption, eh? But surely this can be corrected –

[The outgoing chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley)] said he was skeptical of a legislative fix to the problem, given opposition to prior proposed legislation to bring more transparency and public safeguards to the arbitration industry. Those measures, he said, were vigorously contested by corporations and business groups that favor the system that allows them to settle disputes out of public view, adding, “I’m not sure these ethical lapses bother them that much.”

“Those are very, very difficult bills to get through the Legislature, because those who stand to benefit from the way the arbitration system works oppose us at every turn, and that is to the detriment of consumers,” Stone said.

This isn’t to say that public justice is without corruption; the oversight of the judiciary by the Senate speaks to the negation of such a foolish assertion. And, of course, attorneys can also be corrupt.

Properly understood, this sort of article rebuts any claims that private justice is immune to corruption. Worse yet, the multiplication of avenues of corruption, as Assemblyman Stone narrates, further taints the idea of American justice; it suggests that private justice is worse than public justice when it comes to corruption.

Private justice isn’t about justice, but about minimizing the cost of wrong-doing by corporations.

Two days ago they flowered, today they’re gone. Here’s some pics from their better days.

While I’m a little dubious of citing Twitter sources, I think the importance of the story concerning the contents of the Mar-a-Lago warrant and the option of the Trump operation to release the contents of that warrant make it worth the risk.

“No, we’re not releasing a copy of the warrant.”

~A source close to Trump suggested last night to me that the burden of transparency rests with the DOJ to lay out its reasoning for the search warrant.

The source noted the “complete circling of the wagons” around Trump by GOP. https://t.co/wl7sb4WKTZ

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) August 10, 2022

As I wrote about yesterday, the answer is ‘No.’ In fact, though, I’m surprised it came out so quickly, as I expected some dancing to and fro as a delaying tactic. Perhaps the Trump operation is in disarray, which would not be surprising from a herd of fourth-raters like them.

I also appreciate the note that the question of confidential records at Mar-a-Lago had been under discussion, as Erick Erickson has been whining that the raid was unnecessary, all the FBI had to do was ask. Drat, now I can’t find his post.

Based on the above, maybe they did. Again, it’s a Twitter source, so take it with a lump of salt.

Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh at cryptocurrency think tank Coin Center may think they’ve made an effective argument over Tornado Cash, which I’ll have WaPo explain first:

The service, Tornado Cash, is what is known as a mixer, and it pools digital assets to obscure their ownership. Since its launch in 2019, the program has laundered more than $7 billion in digital assets, according to the Treasury Department. By adding the service’s website and 45 associated crypto wallets to the sanctions list, the administration makes it illegal for any American to transact with them.

“Despite public assurances otherwise, Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks,” Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

Here’s Brito and Van Valkenburgh:

Moreover, while limitations on speech are often constitutional when applied after the fact (e.g. defamatory speech can be penalized), prior restraints on speech are typically unconstitutional. OFAC sanctions, unlike a defamation claim, operate as a regime of strict liability, meaning that no prosecutor or judge needs to make any public showing of fact to add a name to the sanctioned persons list, and transactions with anyone on that list are banned–a prior restraint–irrespective of the specific details of any particular transaction or the motivations of the transacting person. The Constitutionality of that regime as it is typically applied has not, to our knowledge, been challenged on First Amendment or due process grounds. This particular usage of OFAC raises heightened constitutional concerns because it is, again, not a ban on one non-US person’s ability to use the financial system, it is instead a ban on effectively every American’s ability to use a particular open source software tool.

While I’m no lawyer, their arguments appear to be a mess:

1. Tornado Cash is a platform, not an open source software tool. The sanction appears to be against the platform. Whatever tool it’s built on, it’s not banned, at least that I can tell.
2. But tools, despite decades of “warranties” that warranty that software has no particular use, are built with particular uses in mind. I’m a software engineer, trust me on this. And, yes, like any tool, people unconnected with the development of a tool often find really cool things to do with it. But a tool that enables anti-social activities to an extent thought to be far greater than its hypothetical enablement of a social good may be a target for banning that I, and many others, would consider valid. Keep in mind one person’s social good may be someone else’s social evil, with thanks to Heinlein.
3. Same applies for a platform using said tool(s).
4. Especially when the platform’s history demonstrates that its most popular function happens to be illegal, cf. WaPo.

In the end, given the apparent bias of authors Brito and Van Valkenburgh, I’d be a little cautious about taking their arguments at face value. Like I said, I’m no lawyer, but a plain English reading suggests they either don’t understand the difference between a tool and a platform, or they’ve deliberately confused the two.

Dysgenic:

Dysgenics (also known as cacogenics) is the decrease in prevalence of traits deemed to be either socially desirable or well adapted to their environment due to selective pressure disfavoring the reproduction of those traits. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Slightly Against Underpopulation Worries,” Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten:

The claim isn’t that fewer people will have PhDs in the future: colleges will certainly solve that by increasing access to education and/or dumbing down requirements. It’s a dysgenic argument where we assume at any given time the people with higher degrees have on average higher genetic intelligence levels. If they’re reproducing less, the genetic intelligence level of the population will decrease.

Which is decidedly simplistic.

The big news concerning the FBI “raid” of Mar-a-Lago home of former President Trump has given rise to a political hubbub new to me: Trump is being badgered to release the warrant under which the FBI performed the search. Here’s Steve Benen’s lead-in on the story:

Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, is aware of the Republican pushback against the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago. On MSNBC today, the Supreme Court lawyer responded with a challenge to the former president:

“Donald Trump, you have a copy of the warrant. It explains what they were looking for, what statutes they think were violated, and what judge signed off on that. Release the warrant. You called on [Barack] Obama to release the birth certificate and all sorts of nonsense. If you believe this is such an abuse, let us see the warrant and let us decide for ourselves.”

Trump certainly could. But will he?

My money says he’ll publicly play with the idea, but eventually reject it. Trump’s success is greatly dependent, like any conflict, on controlling the narrative. In war, they call it shaping the battlefield. In Trump’s case, as one of the world’s greatest con-men, he’s been successful by giving out, as facts, information that plays to his advantage. Crime is climbing. He’s a genius. Migrants are rapists. The people he’s screwed over deserved it. Etc.

Is the FBI somewhere in this picture?

The warrant will spell out the facts, the legal theory justifying this intrusion into Trump’s home and properties. Facts, once out in the open, are difficult to spin, and thus are not generally of advantage to Trump.

Of course, the details of the warrant may change my analysis.

But this is my expectation. The more incontrovertible details are out there, the less Trump looks like a genius, a victim, a saviour, whatever he needs to be, and more like a mere criminal, or, even worse, an incompetent. That spins the narrative out of his control.

He may tease about it, he may claim he has no such right, he may find other excuses. In the end, it’ll remain a bit of a mystery.

He can’t even follow paperwork rules!

Mark Elias has the insight on the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and home:

The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.👇 pic.twitter.com/3BdI9NA9Az

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 9, 2022

… shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.

Well. That’d put an abrupt end to a 2024 Presidential run, now wouldn’t it? I wonder if DeSantis, et al, are madly cheering the FBI on?

And it’d relieve Trump of the burden of actually running. He can blame the Feds, call it all fake news, fund-raise some more, and not have to face the quite likely defeat in 2024. Indeed, if his replacement stumbles then he can point a finger at that and proclaim how it wouldn’t have happened to him.

I wonder how much more patience the MAGA base has left for these shenanigans?

“Gentlemen, ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. [Great applause.] But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet to-night as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. [Loud and prolonged cheers.] And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war. [“Good,” “good,” and loud cheers.] Many convictions have sunk so deep into our hearts that we can never forget them. Think of the elevating spirit of the war itself. We gathered the boys from all our farms and shops and stores and schools and homes, from all over the Republic. They went forth unknown to fame, but returned enrolled on the roster of immortal heroes. [Great applause.] …”

General James A. Garfield
Campaign speech, New York, August 6, 1880
(Sharper Iron)

I think the point that impresses me the most is that such mundane things as loot are not mentioned. The war was fought on principles, on the Union side, of equality and cohesion, which, while seemingly abstract principles of justice, were, and remain in the end, the pillars upon which societal survival are mounted. The citizenry, by the very nature of these principles, are called upon to work together, to sacrifice for the greater good.

For those who would snort and point at the continued racism of both North and South, I must reply that, yes, progress is never instantaneous, and malevolent forces continued to work after the Civil War to thwart justice, originating in the South, as well as the traditional views of many of both Northern and Southern origin.

But, speaking of the South, they worked to defend, directly, the prosperity attained via the institution of slavery. It’s important to remember that such prosperity is not founded on a communal spirit, but on that of competition and violence. There is no valid appeal to principles that lift mankind from its animal origins, merely cries of fear that the prosperity will disappear.

And I think it’s this difference that elevates this speech.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is on, and we saw three shows today.

The Shrieking Harpies Improv – based on audience contributions, these three singers and a keyboardist create a story. Fun!

Finger Lickin’ Good – perhaps a bit one note and more to the male taste, this production of the Colonel Harlan D. Sanders story should be admired for the bravery of its lead actor.

Swords & Sorcery: The Improvised Fantasy Campaign – for members of that community it seemed to be quite a hit. I am not a member, and thought it was fun but not memorable.

We hope to see two more shows, since we’ve already paid for them, but have not decided what. Warning: prices are up to $15/single show at the box office, $18/single show reserved ticket. If you can still buy a 10 show pass, there’s a discount, but that option may be gone by now.

And you have to buy a one-time button.

Yes, there’s a news stream. It’s behind the old Potter place. Why do you ask?

• In Connecticut, as they await the August 9th primary, a Republican-sponsored poll gave this result: McLaughlin’s poll for Jordan found [incumbent Democratic Senator] Blumenthal with an 11-point lead over his closest Republican challenger, Themis Klarides, similar to the results of an Emerson College poll conducted for WTNH in May. But respondents were unfavorable when asked if Blumenthal “deserves” to be reelected. [WSHU] Maybe not all politics is local, but a big chunk qualifies.
• 

  Senator Moran’s On The Issues summation.

  The Democratic nominee for the Kansas Senate seat currently occupied by Senator Moran (R) is minister and former mayor Mark Holland. He is thought to have little chance, but here’s an “among the voters” piece from KCUR. On The Issues rates Senator Moran as quite the extremist, which may enhance Holland’s chances. My latest on Kansas here.

• Bad news continues in Pennsylvania for Dr. and candidate Mehmet Oz (R), as his opponent for the open Senate seat, Lt. Gov. Fetterman (D), has won another poll. A Center Street PAC poll show Fetterman ahead 52% – 38%. A key observation that will apply to many Republican candidates: Almost all voters know Oz, but they don’t like him. Oz’s un-favorability levels are staggering among unaffiliated voters and Democrats, and his Favorability among Republicans is barely above neutral. This suggests a huge disconnect between PA GOP primary voters and the general electorate, but then voting for the inexperienced fool’s gold hawker Oz in the first place, apparently based on his endorsement by former President Trump, demonstrates the deeply fallen nature of the PA GOP.
• Center Street PAC remains a polling organization of unknown quality, but it’s worth noting that their latest Ohio Senate poll, a Republican seat in which the incumbent is retiring, has Rep Tim Ryan (D) leading lawyer and author J. D. Vance (R) 49% – 38% among likely voters. If SurveyUSA or another A-rated pollster released numbers like that for reddish Ohio, I’d be happy, as Vance is not really qualified for the seat. For the moment, it merits a contingency “if accurate”, but suggests Republican arrogance may be turning off Ohio voters. This would be another invalidation of the Republican wave thesis that has been such a favorite among the timid pundit set.
• A-rated SurveyUSA has a poll out showing that the Missouri Senate race between State AG Schmitt (R) and former nurse and heiress Valentine (D), taken in late July, prior to the primary that selected each, has Schmitt up by six. As noted before, a poll prior to that one showed Schmitt with a thirteen point lead. How about a poll since the primary? For reference, in 2018 Senator Hawley (R) won his general election by roughly six points.
• In North Carolina and the competition for an empty Senate seat, currently held by Republicans, Cheri Beasley (D) is finding the climb steep against Rep Ted Budd (R). She’s down by 5 points, according to a Civitas poll. FiveThirtyEight does not appear to rate Civitas, so it’s difficult to gauge this poll’s credibility.

Previous allegations, unsubstantiated as they are, are here.

This NewScientist article (16 July 2022, paywall) was, at first, bewildering, and then bemusing:

Artificial intelligence can use your brainwaves to see around corners. The technique, called “ghost imaging”, can reconstruct the basic details of objects hidden from view by analysing how the brain processes barely visible reflections on a wall.

Ghost imaging has been used before to reveal objects hidden around corners and normally relies on using video recordings of faint reflections cast by an object onto a nearby wall. Daniele Faccio and Gao Wang at the University of Glasgow, UK, have now replaced the video component with electroencephalography (EEG) brain scans.

In their experiment, a single person wearing an EEG headset connected to a computer stands in front a white wall and next to a wall painted grey, which obscures the view of an object and a projector. This projector is controlled by the computer and casts a series of special patterns onto the object.

Some of this patterned light reflects off the object and hits the white wall or diffuses through the room. The person can’t see the object in the reflections. However, a ghost-imaging machine-learning algorithm can build a basic 16-by-16 pixel image of the object using the EEG data. [“AI can use your brainwaves to see things that you can’t,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan]

It’s a bit astounding, and then a bit mundane: as data processors, there are some data making it into our cerebral cortex that we either don’t or can’t use – and probably of which we have no awareness.

There’s something distinctly ghost-like, and, yet, so dull as to be a “so what?”, even though it’s being used to recognize a reality that our unaided senses couldn’t.

An odd melange of opposites.

It’s not in the least uncommon to hear political references to the State of Kansas being prefaced with the phrase ruby-red, meaning solidly Republican. This, despite the fact that it has a Democratic governor, a position that is up for reelection this fall, Governor Laura Kelly (D). She succeeded, in the elected sequence, former Senator, Governor, and Ambassador, in that order, Sam Brownback (R).

Remember him? Brownback, and his allies in the State Legislature – a pack of extremists – cut taxes while leaving spending in place, confident in the magic of the Laffer Curve, the idea that cutting taxes will lead to economic prosperity sufficient to cover the governmental budgetary hole left by cutting taxes. Five years later, with an unexpected, gaping, pus-filled hole in the State budget, and a Federal court hounding the State to properly fund education, most of Brownback’s allies went down to unexpected defeat, either in the primaries to moderate Republicans, or to Democrats in the general election. Once in power, the victors modified, mostly by rolling back, the tax policies to cover the gap, overriding Brownback’s veto in order to do so.

And Brownback? He resigned to accept the position of U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He went down screaming defiance (or “patience!” as he might have put it), but, truth be told, it was disgrace. That’s what we call it when a person’s policy fails so disastrously that the tenets upon which it rests burn down with it. His Lt. Gov., Jeff Colyer, took over – I didn’t mention him before as he came to this position through inheritance, not election – and when he ran for a full term, he lost in the primary to well-known extremist and former State AG Kris Kobach (R).

So. Back to Governor Laura Kelly. How did she win the seat? Remember Kobach? It’s widely accepted that Kobach, as an extremist, repelled so many independent and moderate Kansas Republicans that Kelly snatched victory from the Republicans. And it’s true, she won only with a plurality, even if by five points.

There’s a pattern here, and I think it’s this: Kansans dislike extremists. And who is currently running for power in Kansas? On the Republican side, from what I can gather from random reading, a bunch of anti-abortion extremists. For Kansas voters, my impression is this would be fine if Roe vs. Wade were still in force, but with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, the power dynamic in Kansas, as it is already proving in certain other States, may be changing. There is already evidence of a power dynamic change in the rejection of the Kansas Constitutional Amendment that would have rejected abortion protections of just this week.

Could we see a Kansas legislature of a vastly different nature after this November’s election? I’ll skip analysis, as I know little to nothing about local Kansas politics, but as a general rule, extremists are kicked out by voters once they appear to be imminently dangerous.

Does this give Governor Kelly (D) a lift in her re-election run?

And what about Senator Moran (R), also up for re-election. Until now I had him marked as a safe seat, but now I wonder. His On The Issues summation is on the right. It’s clear that he’s no moderate, and the OTI page quotes him:

Life from conception is sacred and must be defended.

The last Senate election in Kansas, of Roger Marshall (R), found Democrats to be short of the 50% mark by 8+ points. Can they make that up against a sitting incumbent with the aforementioned added boost?

I have no more facts than that, no polls, just that and the knowledge that the same primary that yielded the rejection of the Constitutional Amendment also yielded Mark Holland as the Democratic nominee. He claims to be or have been a pastor and mayor, but little detail is present on the source Ballotpedia page.

That first poll will speak to whether the rejection of the Constitutional Amendment was a one-time event, or if the Kansas electorate will continue to safeguard their right to abortion by showing Moran the door and giving the seat to the inexperienced, but pro-choice, Holland. I do not envy them their choice.

I enjoyed the cinematography in this movie. Here, we see Paul’s soul leaving for better surroundings. What? No? Maybe it’s the Emperor Palpatine’s? No again? Crap.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948; aka The Spiritualist) tells the story of two predatory men, grifter Paul, who married and then “died” in a burning car, and spiritualist Alexis, expert at the technology of the seance and the haunting. Caught between these two men are Martin’s widow, Christine, and her younger sister, Janet.

It’s been two years since Paul’s body was discovered in a burned out car, and Christine is only beginning to date again, in this case lawyer Martin. But she’s been hearing voices, and when Alexis appears out of nowhere on a beach, he proves to know information that Christine cannot believe he knows. Alexis works the situation until he gets Christine and Janet to his place for a seance.

He doesn’t realize, though, that Martin, alarmed at Christine’s behavior, is investigating as a lawyer of the era might. He makes a surprise appearance at the seance with a detective in tow, but Alexis avoids a terminating exposure through some fancy footwork.

All the while, though, lurks the specter of Paul. Paul, who can hardly exist without a drink in his hand and a cruel quip on his lips. Paul, who holds all the cards.

Paul, a genius at the piano.

Paul, who has leverage over Alexis.

But when it’s time to dispose of Christine, something slips. Badly. Paul may be an unreserved devotee to the life of corruption, but Alexis, bewitched by Christine’s sister Janet, relapses into chivalry, and now Paul has a problem.

What to do with Alexis. And Martin. And his detective. And then the rest of the police force. Damn, it’s getting crowded.

For the era, it was probably quite a tense story, what with seances and men of few morals lurking around heiresses. But today, Christine and Janet are annoying spineless victims, even when they fight back, and so the story is really less than satisfying.

In the face of the conservatives’ failures in the Senate, principally the initial rejection of the Honor Out PACT Act, the transformation of the conservatives’ wine of the Dobbs decision into the fly-ridden sand of the overwhelming rejection of a proposed anti-abortion Kansas Constitutional Amendment, the legions of right-wing extremists who are fourth-rate politicians who think their failures at the ballot box are due to cheating rather than their manifestly inferior views on a variety of subjects, and – to put a premature stop to this litany of extremist failures, and this is my prediction only – not only the failure of a Republican wave to materialize at the ballot box this fall, but victory for many Democrats expected to fail, well, take a deep breah, Erick Erickson has to do something to keep the conservative faithful, errrrr, faithful, as it were.

Per usual, he’s determined to show that the liberal elites are just as guilty of perfidy and excess as the conservatives.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our republic. I respectfully disagree with a man whose whole family I adore.

I actually think bipartisan establishment lassitude toward China is a bigger threat to our republic than Trump. The whole reason we got Trump is that a large segment of the population can accurately perceive the American cultural/political elite decided our time is up and want to cash in while managing a decline in China’s favor. Our socio/economic and political elite have given up on America.

The American people believe we are in a recession, so we are in a recession. Our national cultural and political leaders believe our best days are over, so they are — it’s preventable and reversible, but not with a leadership that has quietly embraced the idea of China’s inevitability.

Does he mention the visit of House Speaker Rep Pelosi (D-CA) to Taiwan just this week? Incredibly, he does manage it – a few paragraphs beyond the quote, and carefully stripped of her undeniable membership in the liberal elite crew, because acknowledging that would invalidate his entire thesis. He doesn’t mention the fact that we finally left Afghanistan, as arranged by his President Trump and fulfilled by President Biden, in order to concentrate on China, nor Trump’s well-known affinity for China’s Xi, not to mention Russia’s Putin and North Korea’s Kim – autocrats all.

But as a spreader of fear of “the other,” which in this case is fellow Americans, it’ll certainly work on the unserious reader. By “demonstrating” the liberal elites’ supposed lack of nationalistic oooomph, he can excuse the conservative failures. He can even argue that extremists and incoherent odd-balls should receive conservatives’ votes, because, well, surely conservatives are better than them thar baby-killing liberals.

Ahem.

The rest of his little multi-topic post is equally ludicrous, in particular his attempted condemnation of the public health system. It seems he really wants to equate monkeypox with Covid. Does monkeypox even have a measurable death rate? Is the hospitalization rate of monkeypox comparable?

No. So his frantic condemnations are all ridiculous.

I don’t know if Erickson realizes just how much trouble his “movement” is in. Over the last few weeks he’s been incoherent with joy at the failures of the Democrats, at least what he perceived as their failures. Faced with the conservative failures above, plus those unmentioned, such as the January 6th Insurrection, he’s not been silent, but notably restrained.

But I read a post like this as a frenzied attempt to keep the conservatives from fragmenting, or even defecting into the moderate conservative camp. It’s hard to feel sympathetic. I see this as a symptom of the hard-line anti-abortion movement, much like the temperance movement, melting away as they begin to recognize that, fallacious or not, anti-abortion as a single issue vote is a disaster for the nation. It has been carefully cultivated for fifty years, its followers protected from the intellectual ripostes by hiding the faithful in the skirts of the Divine, but the biggest Divinity of all, Reality, is reaching up and whacking them in the head.

And the anti-abortion movement, along with a few other single-issue voter fabrications, are beginning to fall apart as the electorate really sees the end-result.

The childish antics of GOP candidate for Arizona Governor Kari Lake have been a subject of lively discussion in the pundit world. What did she say before her August 2nd primary election?

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is warning voters that “stealing” is already underway in Tuesday’s primary election.

Ms. Lake, a former television news anchor who has former President Donald Trump’s support and backs his stolen 2020 election allegations, delivered the warning about more election fraud in a speech this week to the North Valley Constitutional Republicans.

“I’m telling you right now, anybody trying to steal this, first of all, we’re already detecting some stealing going on, but you guys know I’m a fighter right?” Ms. Lake said, according to The Arizona Republic. “You haven’t seen me when they try to steal something. I’m gonna go supernova radioactive. We’re not gonna let them steal an election.” [The Washington Times]

A lot of pundits are still puzzling over how anyone can be this disrespectful of the process of democracy – in a partisan primary.

But I think the Democrats, nation-wide, should look at this as a gift and opportunity. Most politics is local, to paraphrase an old aphorism, but once in a while an issue comes along that can be used on a national basis, such as the “tax and spend” tactic used over the years by the Republicans against the Democrats.

Here we have a simple issue – respect for democracy. So here’s an idea for a nationally usable ad:

We’re the Democrats, and we’re occasionally a bit ugly. But here’s the Republicans today.

<insert video of Lake’s statement, above. Use authentic video if available, otherwise hire a lookalike and tape it.>

Ask yourself, friend, where does this end? Will we still have a democracy after Lake goes after all her opponents this way, shrieking that she was cheated?

This is what Republicans nation-wide are doing. Go check for yourself. And then ask yourself – do any of these so-called election-deniers deserve your vote? They don’t respect, you, your vote, or democracy. Why should you vote for them?

<insert usual patriotic music here>

And are they really doing this nation-wide? The AP provides a partial list here.

It needs a bit of sharpening up, but it’s a rare national opportunity. The Democrats should thank Lake for her narcissism.

A reader writes concerning American concern for native ecology:

I’ve been saying for more than 20 years that the immediate area around Lake Mead drawing water from it was a disaster in the making, and mostly insane. Flying into Phoenix in 2002, it was crazy to see the amount of green growing stuff that should not be there — golf courses, lawns, orchards, crop fields. Plus the huge amount of urban sprawl just since the last time I flew over that area in 1994, much less the amount of metro growth since I passed through on the freeway in the mid 1970s.

From “Organic Farming in the Desert of Wadi Rum,” Charismatic Planet.

There’s a couple of related theories in my mind for our attempts to landscape the desert. The first is that we arrogantly believe that we can reshape the world into what we want it to be, without repercussions. We see this in China, throughout the United States, etc. Some people call these MegaProjects.

And then there’s what I call the graffiti theory. Mankind’s signature signal for mating is its ability to make a mark on the surrounding environment, such as climbing a water tower to decorate it with graffiti, or building Stonehenge. You do it to attract the attention of the sex to which you’re attracted, because that’s how humanity works.

So when you see a verdant farm in the middle of a desert that doesn’t need to be there, it’s not about feeding the fellow citizens so much as it is about leaving a mark, bending the environment to your will, and letting whoever you might want to mate with know about it.

And when the population is nearing the edge of the carrying capacity of land, well, we get madness like what my reader observes.

It’ll soon be August 2nd. Then it’ll be August 2nd. And then it’ll be past, and maybe some news will blow in through the door, riding a rogue tumbleweed.

• In New York, the latest Emerson College poll finds incumbent Senator and Majority Leader Schumer (D) leading challenger and radio pundit Joe Pinion (R) 53% – 31%.
• In Missouri, as if that election is not enough of a dumpster fire, independent John Wood claims to have collected and filed enough signatures on petitions to make the November ballot. It seems likely that this enhances the Democrats’ chances in this election, as Wood claims to be a lifelong Republican, but it’s hard to be certain. And it may not be enough. Especially with Trump’s endorsement of “ERIC”. On the other hand, the dumpster fire was damped down by the GOP when they selected relative-to-Eric-Greitens moderate and current Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt over Greitens, who came in third, and second place finisher Rep Vicky Hartzler (R-MO). Schmitt must still contend with the results of a bitter primary and the presence of Mr. Wood on the ballot. Meanwhile, Trudy Busch Valentine, who is politically inexperienced, a nurse, and heir to the Anheuser-Busch fortune, won the Democratic side of the Senate primary. The safe bet in this contest is Schmitt. A May poll from A-rated SurveyUSA showed Schmitt with a 13 point advantage over Valentine, but a lot has happened since then. We need a new poll.
• Is Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s decision to do a deal with Senator and Minority Leader McConnel (R-KY) in order to pass the Honoring Our PACT Act a mistake? After all, it seems to make a nice club for Democrats to use on Republicans. However, there are some problems with that reasoning. If it’s not passed, then veterans may choose to blame both sides, so in this way the Democrats get some extra points; and not many actual Republican candidates in the Senate voted No, maybe two by my informal count, so its usefulness was somewhat problematic. I think Schumer has simply wrung a few more drops from the rag.
• Wisconsin incumbent Ron Johnson (R) either knows more than I do about the electorate, or is committing political suicide-by-voter. From Madison.com: Saying programs like Social Security and Medicare suffer from improper oversight, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on Tuesday called for turning every government program into discretionary spending programs, meaning Congress would have to allocate funding for the programs each year. You don’t need to listen carefully, the shrieks from the AARP should be REALLY LOUD. It’ll be fascinating to see how the first poll of Johnson vs Barnes turns out.
• In Arizona Blake Masters, political novice, endorsee of the former President, and funded by Peter Thiel, won the GOP Senate primary and will be challenging incumbent Senator and retired astronaut (US Navy Captain, ret.) Mark Kelly (D). Arizona has been shifting from a strong Republican state to a more ambiguous status over the last five years, with Kelly winning a special election two years ago over the appointed Senator McSally (R), who exhibited a record and presence that had a lot in common with Senators Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), both of whom also lost in that year. Masters seems emblematic of the next stage of the GOP toxic culture evolution, sending arrogant candidates into contests that are certain that, if they lose, the loss indicates cheating rather than simply losing, dependent on one or two “strong-men” rather than any personal appeal of their own – and perish the thought of a demonstrated personal competency in government! Even the anti-abortion waltz or anti-gun control jig is optional; one must snuffle up to the strong men of the party, an extreme example of what I’ve been predicting for years. Anyways. Waiting for the first poll, but I suspect independents will be so repelled by Masters that it’s Kelly in a walk. Kelly was thought to be vulnerable, so this may be another dodged meteorite by the Democrats. Sorry ’bout that.
• The biggest news out of the August 2nd primaries was Kansas’ voters rejection of a proposed state Constitutional Amendment to permit the Kansas legislature to ban abortion in some form, as I discussed here. Kansas is considered to be safely Republican, despite the Governor being a Democrat, so this rejection is a surprise – a 20 point surprise. Adding to the significance, kos of Daily Kos has some new information, although he doesn’t source it: “That means at least 75,000 Republicans voted no, plus the overwhelmingly majority of the 160,000 voters who came to vote only on this amendment and didn’t vote in either party’s primary.” There are two facets here, the first being that voters will come out simply to vote against threats to their (or their partners’) abortion rights, and secondly that a good portion of the moderate-to-conservative base resent the loss of those rights. In the latter case, this may result in a failure to vote for a candidate, or even switching a vote to an opponent or using the write-in option. While Republican pundits, as well as candidates such as Senator Johnson (R-WI) and Adam Laxalt (R-NV), have been trying to claim the Dobbs decision overturning Roe will have little impact in November (see the Daily Kos link, above), it appears that every election featuring a fervently anti-abortion candidate will be impacted, just as every left-leaning pundit, and many independent pundits like myself, suspected. The conservative tendency towards an epistemic bubble, as well as a fixation on improper metrics (the Justice Thomas mistake, to coin a phrase), seems to be leading them not towards victory in November, but a shocking failure against a bumbling Democratic Party that still has not addressed its failures in managing the transgender issue.

Previous irreligious thoughts regarding the election here.

Evapotranspiration:

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a term used to refer to the combined processes by which water moves from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. It covers both water evaporation (movement of water to the air directly from soil, canopies, and water bodies) and transpiration (movement of water from the soil, through roots and bodies of vegetation, on leaves and then into the air). Evapotranspiration is an important part of the local water cycle and climate, as well as measurement of it plays a key role in agricultural irrigation and water resource management. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “‘Corn sweat’ is making the air in the Midwest oppressively muggy,” Barb Mayes Boustead, WaPo:

During summer, the Midwest can experience some of the most oppressive humidity in the country. Fields in Iowa can be muggier than beaches in Miami. The culprit? Billions of stalks of corn.

Akin to a person breathing, plants exhale water into the atmosphere through a process called evapotranspiration. Some call it “corn sweat.”

I hate mugginess.

Abortion is one of those issues that are difficult, because it evokes strong emotions on both sides, as prospective mothers who find their situations difficult, socially or medically, demand a safe and respectable ‘out’, while those who think of abortion as ‘killing a baby’ are understandably upset. Intellectually it can be confusing as well, as a life is created and then is sustained at the heavy, even deadly, expense of the vitality of the pregnant woman. Evaluating such a situation a priori is a headache due to subjective factors involved, particularly those masquerading as being connected to Divine opinions.

So it’s best to remember that American law and morality, as much as the clerics and their followers may wish to dispute it, are a consensual matter, as befits a liberal democracy. We have an honest discussion, come to a conclusion in which everyone who wishes contributes, and make laws, or not, based on those conclusions.

So what happened in yesterday’s various primaries that might be of interest?

Kansas had a state Constitutional Amendment proposal on the ballot that would “… affirm there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion, and would reserve … the right to pass laws to regulate abortion.” If it didn’t pass? Then the Consitution, as currently formulated “… could restrict the people … from regulating abortion by leaving in place the recently recognized right to abortion.”

It was added to a primary ballot in which there was no pitched battles on the Democratic side, only the Republicans’ side, thus theoretically not likely to bring out many Democratic voters. Democratic voters in Kansas, I might add.

And then there appears to have been a conservative-led attempt to mislead voters:

The text claimed that approving that measure, which could allow the Republican-controlled legislature to outlaw abortion, would safeguard “choice.” If the amendment fails, constitutional protections would remain in place, buttressing current law that allows abortion in the first 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“Women in KS are losing their choice on reproductive rights,” the text warned. “Voting YES on the Amendment will give women a choice. Vote YES to protect women’s health.”

The unsigned messages were described as deceptive by numerous recipients, including former Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius, who also served as health and human services secretary in the Obama administration. She told The Washington Post that she was “stunned to receive the message, which made clear there was a very specific effort to use carefully crafted language to confuse folks before they would go vote.” …

But the messages were crafted by a political action committee led by Tim Huelskamp, a former hard-line Republican congressman from Kansas, and enabled by a fast-growing, Republican-aligned technology firm, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the advertising blitz. The people and groups behind the campaign have not been previously reported. [WaPo]

For a lot of observers, this has a flavor of an Expected maneuver, at least on the left, while on the right, Erick Erickson doesn’t even mention it, at least not in his non-subscriber postings. Did any others?

And what was its fate?

Kansans rejected the Amendment.

Overwhelmingly. Last number I heard was by 18 points.

From polls and from nurses’ anecdotes, from votes on Constitutional amendments, it’s becoming clear that the conservatives have lost the argument at the bedrock of liberal democracies: the attempt to convince their fellow citizens.

But they persist in attempting to change the law and in getting out over their ski tips. And how about a little thumb on the scales? Oh, sure, that’s OK, too.

I think it’s time, it’s past time, that they acknowledge that, on abortion, most Americans disagree to some degree with them. The law should reflect the sober discussions, vs the unsettled irrational passions for which the Bill of Rights and Amendments exist to restrain, of the citizenry, not those passions that have been fanned by power seekers.

These politicians who compete on the metric of who can be most extreme should, for the sake of the Nation, read the hint that’s being thrust in their faces.