Monthly Archives: November 2023

I’m guessing that’ll be a movie title fifteen years from now. But the opportunity is not for him.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville reportedly told Republican Senators on Tuesday he will find a way out of the stalemate caused by his holds on military promotions and nominations.

Tuberville said he will do so before Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) brings a resolution to the floor in coming weeks that would “swiftly confirm the hundreds of highly qualified and dedicated military leaders being held up by Senator Tuberville before the end of the year.”

That is according to posts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, from reporter Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News.

“Listen, everyone. I got y’all into this mess. I’m gonna get you out,” Tuberville reportedly said during a closed door lunch. [AL.com]

I’ll not try to insert a tiny picture of the Senator into this tableau. Use your imagination.

The opportunity is for the Republican Senators. They’ve already partially grasped the nettle by forcing through a few of these promotion approvals at the highest of levels for which they are responsible, perhaps motivated by the heart attack of the commandant of the Marines, who was reportedly doing two high-stress jobs due to Tuberville’s antics.

But it’s dumb. Tuberville’s blocking of promotions in protest of Secretary of Defense Austin’s policy that military members in need of abortion care will receive free transport is wrong on a number of levels: abuse of his Senatorial privileges, attempted circumvention of proper democratic debate and voting, imposition of religious views in violation of the Establishment Clause, and, of course, all of his lying and mischaracterizations of the situation are deeply dishonorable.

Nevermind the repeated unanswerable rebuttals to the anti-abortion arguments.

So what’s the opportunity? With just a little support from the Democratic side of the aisle, the Republican Senators could easily arrange for the expulsion of Senator Tuberville.

Seems unlikely? Sure. But it carries a few positives for the Republicans.

1. For a lot of Democrats and independents, the allegiance of Republicans to the United States has become an open question. Tuberville, representing a crippling force to the American military, is the iconic example. By kicking him out, the Republicans will go a ways to repair that reputation.
2. Those Republican Senators who vote against expulsion self-identify for being extremists themselves, and become targets for being primaried – by moderates.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey is a Republican, and I think she gets to appoint the replacement, so there’s no threat of the Republicans losing the seat immediately, and if the Alabama GOP can avoid nominating Judge Roy Moore again, they’ll retain it in the special election. And since the Republicans are currently in the minority in the Senate, it’s not of consequence if they go down a vote for the couple of days a replacement takes.

Right now, Tuberville is making the Republicans look terrible. If they were to recognize this opportunity for what it is, it’s a remarkably cost-free way to rebuild their tattered reputation, and to shore up a military that is apparently in some distress.

And be rid of an ignorant, incompetent ass.

I’ve read most of the Lawfare article explaining what’s going on here, but it still rings false to me:

In September, a Southern District of New York (SDNY) judge ordered Argentina to pay $16 billion in damages to two minority shareholders of YPF, a state-controlled Argentinian oil company. The judgment was the result of a breach of contract related to Argentina’s 2012 nationalization of a controlling stake in the firm, and it is the largest-ever judgment against a sovereign country in a U.S. court. For perspective, it dwarfs the $2.4 billion settlement that hedge fund Elliot Management won, also in SDNY, in its (in)famous attempt to collect on Argentina’s defaulted public debts.

It’s not just the size of the penalty, which seems out of scale, but the fact that a Federal court can order a sovereign state to pay a penalty.

I wonder if it’ll ever be paid:

I see the Republican Party continues to tear itself apart with the advent of what might be considered a traditional power play in a very non-traditional environment:

The influential network associated with billionaire Charles Koch will throw its money and influence behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary, the group announced Tuesday.

The decision could dramatically reshape the Republican field – roughly seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses – as Americans for Prosperity Action deploys its vast resources and standing army of conservative activists on behalf of the former South Carolina governor.

The endorsement marks the latest sign that powerful Republican donors are coalescing behind the candidacy of the former US ambassador to the United Nations. She has seen prominent figures join her campaign in recent weeks, particularly after South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott exited the race. [CNN/Politics]

The problem here is that the Republican Party, which had been based on a Party loyalty so strong that it rendered questions of experience and competency tragically meaningless, is grappling with the ultimate in selfishness and self-absorption, which is symbolized by former President Trump, and becoming more and more the norm as old members of the Party leave or die out, to be replaced by far right extremists.

I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth reiterating: the inability to compromise, the arrogance that drives these new members and faux-leaders, effectively makes the Party into a collection of mini-Parties, centered around principles of dubious worth, personalities, grudges, and other ephemera ill-suited to a mature approach to politics and, more importantly, governance. Bitter internecine primary fights result in partisan voters reluctant to vote for the Republican who opposed their Republican.

Into this pit of magma is driving the Koch Network, a traditional power house built on the riches of oil-drilling. While long-time political analysts apparently are seeing this as a potential game-changer, the real power in conservative circles has transitioned to the “base,” the collection of voters who prefer the former President and his brutal proposals to the more knowledgeable and nuanced ideas of his fellow Republican would-be candidates for the job of President, such as DeSantis, Haley, Hutchinson, Scott, and others. It’s worth mentioning that I may slightly overstate the case. Add in the unknown assistance rendered by foreign adversaries backing the most incompetent President in modern times, and the Koch Network faces a formidable mountain to climb.

In the base’s eyes the former President retains his magic, and so far there’s little to suggest a mass retreat in his support can be brought about by anything, although it’s hard to say how many voters, in dribs and drabs, have opened their eyes and seen; the blunders of the Democrats also complicates matters. Given Trump’s frantic protection of his taxes, it may be revelations concerning his alleged riches are his weak point, but that’s not entirely clear.

But I expect the Koch Network support of Not you, Trump! to be yet another big fizzle. It will enrage the former President even more, as his immaturity won’t permit him to graciously defeat and then use Koch’s powers to enhance his campaign; it’ll be necessary to destroy the Koch Network, and humiliate all the major players, thus neutering them not only for themselves, but as useful representatives of Trump himself. Voters won’t trust them. Worse yet, Charles Koch and his late brother are/were billionaires, a status that Trump deeply desires and has claimed without evidence. His antipathy towards Koch and those they back will be strong.

This feels like another part of the Big Rip afflicting the mislead GOP.

Photographic auroras:

Photographic auroras (visible to the camera, but not the eye) descended to mid-latitudes. “Today brought yet another photographic aurora here in the southeast of England at latitude +51N,” reports Jamie McBean of Herne Bay, Kent, UK. “This is my 14th aurora on camera this year, which I find incredible considering I had never believed I could get anything from here a mere year ago!” [Spaceweather.com]

Some fascinating pics, as usual.

It’s becoming all about the blowback, I think.

City Journal has a report on gender-affirming care and, in a twist I hadn’t thought of, illegal conversion therapy, as in, Are they the same?

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination.

And the sad thing is that if the transgender advocates had followed standard democratic practice by submitting the entire issue for public debate, extending over several years, suits like this could have been avoided, and appropriate administrative and psychological procedures could have been developed and implemented to manage the difficult question of transgender, juvenile members of society.

No guarantees, of course.

And along with the big ticket items, such respectable folk as Sir Richard Dawkins and J. K. Rowling could have been spared the mud-slinging by the gullible left and independents, too much in a hurry to “protect” the transgender that I think we’ll find needed more advice, less surgery, and more patience, outraged at the very thought of having an actual debate over the question.

Well, let the meat-grinder get to work, now.

Sheep are not harmless. Usually.

We like to sample foreign, unsung movies for our holiday movies. Sometimes, this leads to disaster, but sometimes, such as with the Finnish Rare Exports (2010), we have a rollicking good time.

Lamb (2021, Icelandic: Dýrið) falls midway between the two extremes.

Ingvar and Maria are a married couple, farming an isolated plot of land, whose children passed away, and their lack of offspring weighs on them.

Heavily.

So when a child appears in their sheep flock, they name her Ada and raise her as their own. Told in a spare, quiet style that I tend, accurately or not, to associate with European movies, it dances on the tightwire over the sea of vapidity, and mostly retains its balance; watchers will only scratch their heads two or three times as the pair, and a later addition of mysterious Pétur, brother to Ingvar, care for swiftly growing Ada.

And then, one day, Ada’s father shows up, and he has no patience for nonsense. He has such an abrupt manner that, oddly enough, when Maria discovers the results of the unnamed father’s return, I half expected her to dab blood under her eyes and assume the guise of Frigg, wife of Odin, before taking vengeance.

No such luck.

Not having any sort of Icelandic background, this was an interesting peek into the Icelandic psyche and mythic landscape, but it does take patience and curiosity. Good luck.

Perhaps the most extreme example of morbid humor I’ve ever seen. Don’t bail before 1:15.

It's an epitome
   of self-pity!

From CNN:

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said in a newly released interview he was “prejudiced against” for being a “rich, White billionaire” when he was arrested for driving while intoxicated in 2014.

Irsay pled guilty later that year to one misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated but, in an HBO interview that aired on Tuesday, the 64-year-old cited his wealth and status as the reason for the arrest.

“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, White billionaire,” Irsay said in an interview with Andrea Kremer on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.

What? Isn’t entitlement and self-pity traditional American rights?

Well, they are, actually, although we do tend to call them Manifest Destiny, which is morbidly amusing seeing as most Americans are the cast-off detritus of Western Europe.

I wonder how else Irsay will humiliate himself.

CNN headline: Daryl Hall files restraining order against John Oates.

Restraining order?

Yeah. It’s sad when the idols of your youth fall to fighting among themselves.

They were our idols?

Yeah. We called them Eric. Remember?

In a WaPo article concerning a proposed coal power plant replacement with an experimental nuclear unit in Kemmerer, Wyoming, I was struck by this political observation:

Nicole Anderson, 30, was motivated to open her own accounting firm downtown. She said most reservations about [Microsoft found Bill] Gates — long the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories stemming from his support of vaccines — are overshadowed by hope.

“I think people still think of him as a figment of your imagination,” Anderson said. But he’s put Kemmerer “on the map, which none of us ever saw happening.”

Of course, being a science groupie, I was tiredly outraged by the remark concerning vaccines. You look at the change in death antecedents following the introduction of a vaccine, and the case is generally closed. The most likely conclusion is that vaccines simply do work, and most are “safe” in the statistical sense, which is to say that, yes, I do actually know someone who suffered an attack of myocarditis following a Covid shot, so he’s probably one of the < .001% who suffered a negative, dangerous reaction to the vaccine.

That does not make the vaccine generally dangerous. The statistical definition of generally dangerous may be up for discussion, but < .001% is not generally dangerous. The vaccine in question is safe within the general definition.

But, to return to the point, every political movement is speckled with fallacies, misconceptions, and other detestable aspects that accompany being human. Politics is about acquisition of power in order to implement political philosophies; political philosophy, on the other hand, is an accretional theory about how humans, and human societies, both do work and should work.

Because political philosophies are mixtures of earnest theories of human behaviors and self-interested “theories” designed to carry their progenitors to power, evaluation of political philosophies must carefully differentiate between the two, marking as negative the latter while critically evaluating the former.

Because the former can easily be as wrong as the latter.

What am I saying? Every political philosophical aggregate will inevitably have ingredients, forcibly introduced by those of a ruthlessly ambitious nature, that are simply wrong. Keeping in mind the scientifically accepted findings of researchers of vaccines, those “suspicious” of vaccines are echoing the sentiments of those who are desperate to accrete power to their own ends, who talk through their hats in order to unite those inclined, through ignorance and suspicion, to disdain vaccines.

Meanwhile, transgender advocates, eager to be civil rights champions, bypass standard democratic values and procedures, quite potentially leading non-transgender down the irreversible path of surgery and, almost certainly, depression, in their hurried quest for, yes, say it, fame.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

That teaches me that, yes, the conservatives are fools for disdaining vaccines, but the Left have their revered feet of clay, too, and us Independents have our treasured ignorance of governing. None of us are anywhere near perfect, but for those who know they are ignorant.

The company responsible for ChatGPT, OpenAI, fired its CEO, Sam Altman, over the weekend, reportedly over his desire to aggressively push AI in the marketplace, while the board of directors wished to move more cautiously. This morning, Microsoft is reported to have hired Altman to run their AI effort; Microsoft is reported to be OpenAI’s biggest backer.

I suspect we’re not seeing some inevitable historical current, but rather just another serpentine sign of greed.

ANYWAYS … the only real reason I’m posting this is that CNN added a picture of Altman, which struck me as being so ridiculously manipulative that it set my teeth on edge.

Ah, the picture of a man selflessly gazing towards a bright future of inanity for humanity for which he’ll sacrifice himself, now isn’t it? No doubt I sound bitter, but that would require the erasure of my dreams by his actions, and that has not happened; in fact, I’m simply waiting to be amazed by a humanity that has proven to be credulous about, well, what this morning I shall call a party trick, if I’m to believe the popular summaries of the technology involved.

That is certainly unfair to the AI researchers involved, and I duly apologize, but the only magic going on here is the immense amount of computer power being made available to the project. And, certainly, many will fairly proclaim it a boon to mankind as a sort of pre-digestive of whatever its data source has been fed to it. For many scientific and academic disciplines, the sheer amount of research published on a monthly basis really requires a mechanical and cheap way to organize new material for perusal by the humans involved.

But those efforts already existed prior to ChatGPT. I find it hard to get excited by the descriptions of ChatGPT. (I was rebuffed the first day it was available, and never returned to it. Not being an AI researcher myself, I do not feel abusive.)

Miraculin:

Miraculin is a basic glycoprotein that was extracted from the miracle fruit plant, a shrub that is native to West Africa (Synsepalum dulcificum or Richadella dulcifica). Miraculin itself is not sweet, but the human tongue, once exposed to miraculin, perceives ordinarily sour foods, such as citrus, as sweet for up to 2 h afterward. This small red berry has been used in West Africa to improve the taste of acidic foods. Since the miracle fruit itself has no distinct taste, this taste-modifying function of the fruit had been regarded as a miracle. The active substance, isolated by Kurihara, was named miraculin after the miracle fruit. [ScienceDirect compilation]

Noted in “Sweeteners: The bitter truth about low-calorie sugar substitutes,” David Cox, NewScientist (11 November 2023, paywall):

But perhaps we could one day get rid of sugar and its low-calorie mimics altogether, and still get a sweet hit. That is the promise of a range of sweet proteins found in the berries of various West African shrubs. These include brazzein, monellin and, the best known, miraculin, which comes from the [miracle] berry that made my lemon sweet.

Silly names, all of ’em.

A great lady has died.

I’ve long read references to the Mayan ball game, in which the ball can only contact the hips. Here, the BBC has a short clip covering a Mayan group that has recreated the game of their ancestors. Quite fun!

And I liked the body art as well.

In other news, for the last three weeks I’ve been dealing with an infection which appears to be defeated now. I hope to return to regular, though not prolific, posting.

He said he was going to show you his etchings, didn’t he? So who makes etchings of animal entrails?

Beetlejuice (1988) is a lovely, amusing, middle of the road movie concerning a young, newly married couple whose car goes off a bridge into the creek below. Their following travails function to illuminate themes having to with poseurs vs authenticism, the limits of asking for assistance, and snakes.

Big, colorful snakes. And how even the dead can die.

I was a bit fascinated with the interpretation by Jennifer Rubin of WaPo of recent poll results contrasts with that of Erick Erickson, far right pundit. First, Rubin:

Ohio GOP legislators’ reaction to the passing of Issue 1, an amendment to the Ohio State Constitution safeguarding abortion rights, as noted by Ja’han Jones of MSNBC:

After Ohioans voted Tuesday to enshrine access to abortion care in their state constitution, more than a third of the Republican caucus in Ohio’s House of Representatives issued a joint statement essentially vowing to keep up their fight to restrict abortion.

The statement says:

Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion. This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.

To my eyes, it appears Ohio conservatives don’t know how to read a room. And I suspect Ohio seats held by the GOP, both at the local and federal levels, are going to be rated as More likely to flip at the next election. There was a number of ploys of dubious morality employed prior to the vote by various conservative organizations attacking the Amendment. Assiduous reporting on those and what may be in the offing may become a hand grenade in the face of this bunch of arrogant, posturing fools.

The Horsehead Nebula as imaged by new space telescope Euclid.

More information from the ESA here.

Noah Smith has identified a need that’ll make the hair of libertarians to stand on end:

I believe that the U.S. suffers from a distinct lack of state capacity. We’ve outsourced many of our core government functions to nonprofits and consultants, resulting in cost bloat and the waste of taxpayer money. We’ve farmed out environmental regulation to the courts and to private citizens, resulting in paralysis for industry and infrastructure alike. And we’ve left ourselves critically vulnerable to threats like pandemics and — most importantly — war.

It’s time for us to bring back the bureaucrats.

The aim of government is, or should be, to be in service to citizens and provide for the common sense. Corporations and non-profits? Generally, to make money, whether it be to pay investors or pay salaries. This difference in goals will, in many and even most cases, lead to undesired results and side effects.

Best to bring such expertise, as Smith notes, back in-house.

For years I’ve been suggesting the Republican Party was at risk of tearing itself to pieces as various factions, allergic to compromise, become more and more inclined towards orthodoxies peculiar to themselves, and of more and more absolute formulations.

Now I see far-right pundit Erick Erickson has come to the same conclusion. From Wednesday:

The reality is that the GOP as a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties. In parts of the country, Republicans must run wrapped in the MAGA label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble a coalition of disparate and often incompatible values.

At some point there may be a great rip as the MAGAs go one way, the evangelicals go another, etc, or, if the moderates have enough leverage, a great expelling of the extremists. Given the toxic culture of the GOP that advantages the extremists, the latter seems unlikely, but not impossible. Enough failures, blunders, tugs of war, and Pyrrhic victories like Dobbs, and disillusioned conservatives will gulp down their misery and not vote, or find conservative Democrats who are acceptable.

We may even see conservative Democrats break away to join with moderate Republicans and form a new party.

And the Grand Old Party will slowly fade away, as relying on ideological adherence, to the disdain of experience, competency, and the ability to compromise, leads inevitably to arrogant personalities such as Greene, Gaetz, and Johnson being in charge, who can do performative morality in front of the cameras, but are vastly incompetent at real governance.

Everyone hold their breath. Or is that plural?

We recently took the time to watch Deadloch, a series of episodes, or a very long movie, featuring an amazing average of at least two profanities per sentence, a collection of dead bodies sure to inspire jealousy in serial killers everywhere, and a theme or two driven home with a ballpeen hammer soaked in blood.

If you like crime dramas and kicking sand in the eyes of the patriarchy, and are not likely to faint at the least hint of an Aussie giving vent to their frustrations, this might be right up your alley.

So the numbers are in for the 2023 election, and let the goat entrail pulling begin.

• Tate Reeves (R-MS) retains his place in the governor’s mansion of Mississippi, and by about the same margin as in 2019, so it wasn’t too much of a struggle. Even so, Erick Erickson remarked “In Mississippi, Tate Reeves just isn’t that popular and ran a bad campaign. His embrace of the MAGA label probably drove turn out for him more than it alienated people.” A hate-race, apparently: Who did Mississippi voters hate more, the Democrats or Tate Reeves? Or at least distrust.
• In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) retained his seat with a five point margin, which is far larger than his initial victory in 2019. Steve Benen asserts “But Beshear prevailed anyway, in part thanks to steady and effective leadership over four years, and in part by running on abortion rights.” If true, it must be a galling remark in a state where the GOP has tried to make opposition to abortion rights a rallying cry.
• In Virginia, all the legislative seats were up for grabs, and now Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), noised about as a potential late entrant to the GOP Presidential nominating contest, is facing a Virginia House and Senate controlled by the Democrats, a shocking result that suggests his influence is weak. One of the main themes for both parties was proper management of abortion rights, with Youngkin and the Republicans proposing an abortion ban that started at 15 weeks and calling it reasonable. Apparently, voters didn’t quite buy it.
• And in Ohio, the State Constitutional Amendment #1 protecting abortion rights not only passed, but passed with ease, by 13 points, a staggering failure for the Republicans.

The results from Mississippi are disappointing, but not surprising, for Democrats. But the big lesson to be derived from the other positions and issue is that so long as the GOP clings to its anti-abortion position, its chances of winning swing districts is imperiled. Given that anti-abortion is a dearly held position of many in the Republican Party, it’s unlikely to change.

And, in a way, that’s too bad. I cannot help but wonder if Democrats are asking themselves why independents tend to be repulsed by them, or if they just shrug them off as bigots or ignorant or what have you, with no thought as to how it might be Democrats’ fault. If the Republicans were respectable, they could deliver a blow to the Democrats that would force them to self-evaluate and, hopefully, improve.

But the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are little more than performative puppets that suck the air out of the room.

I expect abortion rights to be the lead issue in 2024, followed by ranked choice voting in select locations, and possibly climate change in third. Trump and his allies have problems with all of these issues.

I expect abortion rights to have some staying power, too, since they involve the lives of expectant mothers.

The latest hit autobiography!

The Importance of Being Burnished: The story of the Tin Man.

The Christie original, which I’ve not read.
From https://www.raptisrarebooks.com/product/halloween-party-remove-term-agatha-christie-first-edition-agatha-christie-first-edition/, Fair use, Link

Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice (2023) is a merely adequate introduction to the post-World War II Poirot, an elderly and dogged believer in the power of rationality in the face of machinations that appear to be supernatural in origin, with a sad undertone for all those that he’s known and lost. It casts a long and strong shadow over a character best known for a droll sense of humor and a charm most disarming.

This is reinforced by an odd comparison of Poirot to one of the suspects in this story, a shell-shocked doctor who is accused of bringing death and disaster wherever he goes, but this is one of the cracks in a story that might have been better rendered. After all, once one reaches a certain age, friends and family do tend to start leaving, whether from accident or illness, and it will add up. Why try to throw such a wet blanket over a detective who brings light, not dark, to the scenes of often terrible crimes?

And Poirot, an icon of rationality, would realize this fact and at least mitigate any depression he might be feeling. But it is difficult to deny that, having reached advanced age with no family and few friends, any such person may feel discouragement, particular if the mental faculties seem to be failing.

As my Arts Editor points out, we have nary a reference to the little gray cells of which Poirot is so fond of mentioning in most stories, but instead an audio occasionally just muddy enough to render his accent difficult to understand at times; I detest having to struggle to understand what a character might be expressing at key moments, when other portrayals of a character have been clear in their expressions.

Insofar as the plot goes, it could have been better. One plot machination is used to explain far too much of the occurrences we witness, for example. On the other hand, a twist near the end was surprising and satisfying, so not all was a loss. Still, the internal meditations on advancing age are a logical, yet unwelcome, distraction from what Poirot usually does best.

And that’s not solve mysteries, but reveal the nuances of the human condition.