Monthly Archives: April 2023

Irruption:

1. The action of irrupting or breaking into; a violent entry or invasion; an inbreaking; an intrusion.
   The Trojan irruption into the Greek camp is related in Book XV of the Iliad.
2. (ecology) An abrupt increase of an animal population.
   Extreme rainfall events predict irruptions of rat plagues in central Australia.
3. (by extension) An abrupt increase in the size of a movement or organization.
   How can we explain this irruption of young people self-identifying as socialists? [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Massive waves of squirrels once roamed America. No one knows why.”, John Kelly, WaPo:

From the retired Hawking partner Bernard Carr in NewScientist (1 April 2023, paywall):

Recently, however, I have become interested in an even more exotic possibility: that some black holes could be older than the universe itself. It is a wild idea, but not inconceivable. And new research suggests that we might one day be able to positively identify them, a breakthrough that would radically change our understanding of cosmology.

It requires replacing the acyclic, or “Big Bang”, model of the Universe with a cyclic, or “Big Bounce” or “Big Crunch” model. I wonder if that would let us return to a Universe with a set of universal laws that don’t vary over time, or if we’d still be seeing such speculation.

My mind has been broadened.

Jibboom:

a spar that extends the bowsprit [Advance Dictionary]

Noted in this 9 Chickfield Lane cartoon strip.

A recently released Hubble Space Telescope find, complete with caption:

This Hubble Space Telescope archival photo captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble’s cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the universe. This unusual event happened when the universe was approximately half its current age. Credits: NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Fascinating, yet plausible, speculation.

I see that President Biden is finally beginning to acknowledge the huge mistake the Democrats made in the management of the transgender issue – a sentence I write with greater precision than most.

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed new regulations that would allow schools to bar transgender athletes from participating in competitive high school and college sports, but disallow blanket bans on the athletes that have been approved across the country.

The rules would narrow when discrimination of trans athletes would be permitted. But they also would offer guidelines for when schools could bar their participation.

Under the proposal, schools would need to consider a range of factors before imposing a ban on trans athletes and would need to justify it based on educational grounds, such as the need for fairness. So, for instance, a school district could justify a ban on transgender athletes on their competitive high school track and field team, whereas a district would have a harder time making that case for an intramural middle school kickball squad. [WaPo]

But notice how much more difficult of a process this has the potential to be. Rather than a quicksilver debate, in which points can be made rapidly, digested, and responded to, now we have the painful, blocky, and undoubtedly politically ugly process of proposed rules changes. Those who promulgated or approved of the original Title IX rules changes in the Obama Administration will be outraged, it’ll move quite slowly as those who bought into, or were bullied into, have to think it through.

It’s potentially a mess.

And it’s an embarrassment for the Democrats, but I suppose that’s better than actually acknowledging their abrogation of the foundational tenet of liberal democracy, that of not imposing profound new rules on society, but rather engaging in discussion, debate, and persuasion. Such an acknowledgment, itself improperly handled, could make them look like they operate on the same level as that pack of fourth-raters who call themselves the Republican Party these days.

Predicting a long and messy campaign for society to figure out how to manage transgenderism.

Erick Erickson, whose own agenda isn’t the cleanest, illuminates the entire mess of 2020 shenanigans clearly:

For the sake of argument, let’s agree 2020 was stolen.

Donald Trump lost in 2020 while in control of the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. He had Republicans in charge in Georgia and Arizona, with legislative majorities in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  And the race was still stolen. Now, with Christopher Wray still at the FBI and Joe Biden in charge of the federal government and Democrats in charge of Arizona, fully entrenched in Pennsylvania and Michigan, in charge now of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and with Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger still in Georgia — how exactly will the election not be stolen from Trump?

So, speaking of argument:

For the sake of argument, let’s agree 2020 wasn’t stolen.

So what to do? He discusses that on his radio broadcast, so I guess I just don’t get to find out. But he’s done a service with that simple takedown. Now if he’d just consider the possibility of the Republican stand on issues, as well as the tactics they use, being wrong and needing modification, or even rethinking.

Today’s nominee hails from the great State of Georgia,

“Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today,” she said during an interview with Right Side Broadcasting in New York. “Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”

She said Trump joins the ranks of people who have been arrested and persecuted by “radical, corrupt governments. And it’s beginning today in New York City, and I just can’t believe it’s happening, but I’ll always support him. He’s done nothing wrong.” [USA Today]

If you had Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on your bingo card, you win! And extra points if you can hear Mandela spinning in his grave.

As I read Professor Richardson’s statement that newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Protasiewicz, a de facto ally to the Democrats, is estimated to have won her election by ten points or so, a figure I presume comes from behind the paywall at The New York Times, I was at first somewhat disappointed, as this will be a 55% – 45% victory, which seems scant.

But then it occurred to me that there’s an intellectual error in marrying a name too tightly to meaning. By this I mean, in this case, that political parties’ character changes over time; they are fluid. The Wisconsin Republicans of today are not those of 50 years ago, or, before that, of Senator McCarthy (R-WI).

As the Wisconsin Republican Party continues to lose, the moderates will begin to learn that the nature of the culture of their party, toxic team politics, is the reason they’re losing. They’ll quietly rebel against its strictures by not voting for extremists; indeed, strident extremists may very well find themselves unceremoniously ejected and shunned.

The entire leadership could be asked to leave.

Will they try to change their spots? Sure. Such is the lure of power for the extremist. But they won’t succeed. There’s little point in concealing one’s extreme positions during a campaign, followed by attempting to consummate them after winning. Voters get angry.

So I don’t see margins getting much larger for the Democrats, and that’s OK. I’d rather see a sane Republican Party that contributes to governing and not a Gingrich Doctrine dominated Party devoted to winning, regardless of the consequences for the Party’s makeup.

Catherine Rampell’s summary in WaPo of the ongoing debt ceiling debacle is really a summary of the consequences of one of my favorite wish-it-were-dead horses, toxic team culture.

To wit: [House Republicans] won’t raise taxes (to the contrary, they have pledged to cut taxes further); they won’t touch Social Security or Medicare; they won’t slash defense or veterans’ programs; and they won’t zero out the rest of the nondefense discretionary budget, as would be required if they chose to extend all the Trump tax cuts and took all those other spending categories off the table, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. …

Republicans, on the other hand, appear to have abandoned any pretense of a counteroffer. They have no budget, nor even the basic outlines of one.

In a letter in late March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused the president of being “missing in action” on debt negotiations. Never mind, apparently, McCarthy’s lack of concrete positions of his own, beyond platitudes about “reducing excessive non-defense government spending” (which ones are excessive?) and advocating “policies to grow our economy and keep Americans safe, including measures to lower energy costs.” (Okay, how?)

Yeah. They won’t raise taxes, and, in fact, will exacerbate the situation by lowering them again, while swearing up, down, and sideways to leave so much of the budget alone during the cutting process that they actually cannot accomplish what they wish to do.

Here’s the raging clue: Reading about the ringleaders of this mess leaves one wondering just which asylum they have escaped from. Comer (SC), chair of the Oversight Committee, doesn’t seem to understand that big countries comes with big budgets, and that failing to raise the debt ceiling will enshrine our country as no longer trustworthy in the financial world; Gaetz (FL) wants to bring Federal agencies that investigate Republicans “to heel” or defund them; Greene (GA) of Jewish Space Laser fame foams at the mouth as she proclaims Democrats are pedophiliacs; Biggs and Gosar of Arizona are so scatterbrained I don’t know where to start; Boebert (CO) doesn’t seem to understand that the Establishment Clause really exists, and that no matter how many ways she asks a question, the unexpected answer remains the same (public urination in D.C.).

And Speaker McCarthy (CA) runs around making random, useless remarks. We’ve gone from one of the most effective Speakers in modern times, Pelosi (D-CA), to someone whose guiding principle appears to be What do I need to say and do to hold my position? There’s no hint of a real, live moral principle in McCarthy’s public pronouncements. Just studying what he says makes me see him as a deer in human clothing, staring blankly at the oncoming car lights.

And how do they get elected in the first place? Standard political wisdom states it with brevity: Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. That’s right, they line up and vote for the Republican candidate without discretion. This is the rule for general elections; primaries, on the other hand, can degenerate into appalling brawls. Just ask former Congressman Mo Brook (R-AL), accused of supporting the Islamic State during a Senate primary run. (Brooks, himself an extremist, came in third.)

Why?

Experience and moderation are no longer important, and are in fact burdens; it’s about ideology. Abortion: Evil. Taxes: Evil. Regulation: Bad. Democrats: Evil. Deep State: Persecution. Compromise: Evil. Losing: Evil (see Kari Lake (R-AZ)). Guns: Unlimited good. Look at how Republican primaries go these days: candidates exhibit how extreme they can get on the various issues mentioned, plus a few more, and then sit back and hope their performative ideology appealed. An incumbent exhibiting any violation of “the rules” instantly becomes vulnerable to being primaried by some bozo who has no problem backing every single one those rules, whether they personally believe in them or not.

And why does that work?

Because the idea of honor has been banished in favor of Gingrich’s Dictum: Win at any cost. The primaries, as I noted, are already a circus, to the extent that Democrats have been over-performing using Republican admissions and accusations.

But it’s important to extend those “rules” to understand why Republicans don’t seem to understand how America works anymore. Anyone paying attention knows that many Republicans continue to talk about and put forward laws restricting abortion now that Dobbs‘ has overturned Roe. They didn’t get it, pundit and candidate alike, in the 2022 election, and as a result, it’s fairly argued, the Democrats lost just a few seats, instead of the projected sixty, in the House, and shocked the political world by picking up an empty seat in the Senate, shifting the balance of power further to the Democrats.

Yet, local and national Republican legislators openly discuss and put forward proposals to restrict abortion.

When you’re a fourth-rater, yeah, that’s what you do. Persuasive arguments? Nyah. Watch the polls and see how their keystone issue of abortion is going for them:

Gallup

Not at all persuasive. And are they paying attention? No. The Republican epistemic bubble, reinforced by their default labeling of anything anti-Republican as evil, prevents them learning that their positions are not respected. Oh, not all Republicans, but the elected officials, those that Erick Erickson, conservative/extremist pundit, actually has to yell at, don’t seem to get it.

The “rules,” along with a healthy dose of profound arrogance, leads them to think that by achieving a law, they’ve won. They’ll have gained the Promised Land and it’ll never be taken away.

But it doesn’t work that way. If you can’t persuade through argument, and people refuse to be ashamed in the face of vulnerable women dying, well, that poll is a predictor that any abortion-restriction laws that are passed will be prime targets for repeal when the women of America get their act together and bounce the anti-abortion partisans out on their heads. It may take a while, but it will happen. Bloody death trumps bad reasoning, even with a possibly non-existent God being invoked, mistakenly, by everyone.

So the entire House mess, led by McCarthy, is actually easy to understand how it arises from the toxic team politics of the Republican Party – and why the current iteration of the Republicans is doomed to implode, eventually.

Droughts are not abnormal, but the drought afflicting Tunisia seems to have graduated to extreme status:

Tunisia is cutting off water supplies to citizens for seven hours a night. The extreme measure is a response to the country’s worst drought on record.

The water will be cut off daily from 9pm until 4am, with immediate effect, state water distribution company SONEDE said in a statement on Friday.

The country’s agriculture ministry earlier introduced a quota system for drinking water and banned its use in agriculture until 30 September.

Tunisia is battling with a drought that is now in its fourth year. [euronews.green]

Tunisia is a North African nation, sandwiched between Algeria and Libya, with a goodly shoreline onto the Med. The land of Italy and Europe beckons:

Source: Operation World

And this should come as no surprise:

The new decision threatens to fuel social tension in a country whose people suffer from poor public services, high inflation and a weak economy.

Farmers have also been urged to stop irrigating vegetable fields with water from dams and in some cases face limits.

Tunisia already has food supply problems due to high global prices and the government’s own financial difficulties, which have reduced its capacity to buy imported food and subsidise farms at home.

The drought has pushed up fodder prices, contributing to a crisis for Tunisia’s dairy industry as farmers sell off herds they can no longer afford to keep, leaving supermarket shelves empty of milk and butter.

Soon, farmlands will become empty. People are already leaving, and until the new carrying capacity is reached, or the weather changes and brings rain, they will continue to leave.

I hope this isn’t the future for much of the world, but I fear it may be.

A problem with something like the Conservative Movement, which emphasizes hierarchy and loyalty, is that true leadership and wisdom is harder to exercise and have recognized. Consider this:

With little fanfare, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Monday allowing residents to carry a concealed loaded weapon without a permit.

DeSantis signed the bill in a nonpublic event in his office with only bill sponsors, legislative leaders and gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, in attendance. [NBC News]

In the wake of the recent Nashville shooting, in which 3 children and 3 adults died, along with the shooter Audrey Hale, it’s no surprise that Governor DeSantis (R-FL) decided to avoid the spotlight:

It was a notable departure for a governor who regularly holds splashy news conferences and bill-signing ceremonies.

But this could have been a moment for DeSantis to show some leadership. He could have vetoed the bill and used that moment to deliver a speech that explains why more guns does not equal more safety, that mankind is an animal that can be rational, but is not a rational animal, and a dozen more reasons to explain why it’s bad policy to assume the Second Amendment is an unlimited right.

Good leaders do not simply echo everyone else. Those are just sheep, not leaders. No, good leaders jump up and use their podiums to explain why the crowd is wrong, and to propose a better way.

But the hierarchy and loyalty, not just to other personalities but to ideologies and tenets as well, implicit in the Conservative Movement, its absurd belief that unlimited gun rights makes more sense than a safe society in this case, make the truly ambitious politician’s plans difficult to impossible to execute. If they don’t hew to the ideological line, their ideas aren’t examined and weighed carefully.

No, instead they are chased away by the enraged partisans who place loyalty over thoughtfulness.

And that’s part of the reason the Conservative Movement is a crippled movement, an example of how not to structure an institution to those who acknowledge man’s need to be humble.

From ICT comes news of a cessation of arrogance at the Vatican:

The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.

A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.

I don’t know how many people would have agreed with me at the time, but I recall learning, as a teenager, that Pope Alexander VI, in 1493, assigned newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal:

The Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World. [Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]

Rather the height of arrogancy, in my young eyes, and these older eyes find little with which to disagree.

I must admit to some amusement at this part of the ICT article – a little tap dance from a Jesuit, I think:

Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Canadian Jesuit whose office co-authored the statement, stressed that the original bulls had long ago been abrogated and that the use of the term “doctrine” — which in this case is a legal term, not a religious one — had led to centuries of confusion about the church’s role.

The original bulls, he said, “are being treated as if they were teaching, magisterial or doctrinal documents, and they are an ad hoc political move. And I think to solemnly repudiate an ad hoc political move is to generate more confusion than clarity.”

He stressed that the statement wasn’t just about setting the historical record straight, but “to discover, identify, analyze and try to overcome what we can only call the enduring effects of colonialism today.”

No, no, you were all confused for centuries!

In the end, this was all about worldly greed, a world in which might made right – and that message came about from the supposed center of Western Civilization, the leading moral light. It was appalling.

It snowed last night.

And a reminder that summer is nearby.