Un-effing-believable:

A Texas woman who bragged in a Facebook live stream about storming the U.S. Capitol can vacation in Mexico later this month, a judge said Friday, as the defendant’s case expanded significantly with new federal charges.

Jenny Cudd’s attorney had asked the judge to let her travel this month to Riviera Maya on a four-day trip with employees of her flower shop — “a work-related bonding retreat for employees and their spouses,” attorney Farheena Siddiqui wrote in a motion, saying Cudd attended her scheduled court appearance and has stayed “in constant contact with her attorney.”

Noting that neither Cudd’s pretrial services officer nor the government opposed Cudd’s request for “pre-paid, work-related travel” Feb. 18 through Feb. 21, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote that the defendant has no criminal history and said there is “no evidence before the Court suggesting the Defendant is a flight risk or poses a danger to others.” …

The new charges are more serious. The most significant, obstruction of an official proceeding, is a felony that falls under a section of federal law related to tampering with a witness, victim or informant. It carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and potential fines. [WaPo]

A willing, even eager participant in a riot that turned into an insurrection, as well as an avowed anti-masker who has therefore endangered public health, is permitted to take a planned working vacation because … why again?

Of course, there’s a flight risk. Given the evidence, the Court hasn’t thrown out the prosecution, suggesting it has a good chance of success. The defendant is accused of very serious charges, and more charges, including attempted assassination of members of Congress are quite possible.

And she’s not a flight risk?

And then there’s this pack of goofs:

The Supreme Court’s order late Friday night that California must allow churches to resume indoor worship services reveals a conservative majority that’s determined to guard religious rights and is more than willing to second-guess state health officials, even during a pandemic.

Under restrictions imposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), almost all of the state was under an order to ban indoor religious services as officials battle the raging coronavirus pandemic. It is the nation’s most severe restriction, and the court said in an unsigned opinion that it violates the Constitution.

Instead, the justices imposed their own rule: The state must allow indoor services but may limit attendance at 25 percent capacity. The court left in place — for now — a ban on singing and chanting at those events, activities the state said were particularly risky for spreading the coronavirus. [WaPo]

Does SCOTUS have the public health expertise to make these sorts of judgments?

No.

On the other hand, the state of California has the expertise and the data to make these judgments. You can see SCOTUS‘ uneasy acknowledgment of this fact: The court left in place — for now — a ban on singing and chanting at those events, activities the state said were particularly risky for spreading the coronavirus.

Once again, we have fact-free reasoning – the equivalent of mental masturbation, and about as productive – of Neil Gorsuch, IJ^[1], who wrote

I keep waiting for pews to appear in my local grocery store or slaughterhouse, where the faithful cluster together and yet, somehow, don’t become super-spreader events.

Look: Gorsuch’s words are not the words of a considered legal opinion. It’s the words of a carefully trained, paranoid theocrat-wannabe, who is convinced the State Executives are replete with atheists, agnostics, and members of various non-standard sects who are using the pandemic to diminish the influence of the properly religious.

Given the facts on the side of his perceived persecutors, he’s not going to win this article on rhetorical points. No, he’s going to win this argument using the sheer power of sitting on SCOTUS. And that is quite shameful.

¹ Illegitimate Justice.

Do you need to exercise your pet fruit flies? Here’s how:

Carcinisation:

Carcinisation (or carcinization) is an example of convergent evolution in which a crustacean evolves into a crab-like form from a non-crab-like form. The term was introduced into evolutionary biology by L. A. Borradaile, who described it as “one of the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab”. Most carcinised crustaceans belong to the order Anomura. [Wikipedia]

Noted here in xkcd:

In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, explicates on the conundrum facing American Evangelicals these days, namely not being gullible:

Should ministers on Sunday mornings be delivering messages about how to sort fact from fiction and discouraging their parishioners from seeking truth in these darkest corners of the Internet peddling lies?

Absolutely, absolutely. Mark Noll wrote years ago a book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,and he was talking about the lack of intellectual engagement in some corners of evangelicalism.

I think the scandal of the evangelical mind today is the gullibility that so many have been brought into — conspiracy theories, false reports and more — and so I think the Christian responsibility is we need to engage in what we call in the Christian tradition, discipleship. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” So Jesus literally identifies himself as the truth; therefore, if there ever should be a people who care about the truth, it should be people who call themselves followers of Jesus.

But we have failed, and I think pulpits and colleges and universities and parachurch ministries and more need to ask the question: How are we going to disciple our people so that they engage the world around them in robust and Christ-like ways? — and I think part of the evangelical reckoning is we haven’t done that well.

I have no wish to be brutal, but I think Stetzer and his like-minded allies in the Evangelical movement have an uphill battle, with issues rooted in the very bedrock of their belief system.

First, they believe in God, a belief for which there does not appear to be any objective evidence. This faith, definitionally despite a lack of evidence, makes them open to other such evidence-free beliefs – such as QAnon.

Second, they believe they have a personal relationship with God. This is, again definitionally, private, subjective knowledge. To accept that others are having valid communications with God, even though they cannot access and verify that alleged fact themselves, is to be inclined to accept that anyone claiming to have such knowledge is telling the truth.

Third, there are a number of pastors of large, influential megachurches that claim to have such communications. They claim that God has selected Donald Trump to do important things, that just happen to play to the legitimate concerns and the illegitimate prejudices of the evangelicals. While other pastors call out these leaders as grifters and con-men, this is hardly enough to nullify these malignant pastors.

Fourth, much of the evangelical movement is found in prosperity churches. Trump himself grew up in a church run by Norman Vincent Peale, an advocate of the prosperity gospel. This blasphemous variant on Christianity provides an easy proxy for determining who is the favored of God: wealth. Trump claims to be excessively wealthy and the evangelicals flock to him on the assumption that he’s selected by God; they conveniently forget the behavioral expectations set by the Bible, because those are much harder to accept and execute: prudence, moderation, caring for the poor. It’s much more comfortable to chase wealth and be wealthy.

Fifth, the evangelicals are human, and many have that human love of drama. “End Times” are the ultimate drama for the evangelical, when there will be literal rivers of blood, battles of the righteous against evil, etc etc. Series of novels written around that theme have been popular for decades in the evangelical movement. Wanting to believe that they are at the center of the greatest drama humanity will ever witness is only, well, human. And, as a story junkie myself, it’s addictive. It gets the pulse pounding, and brings a little more color to the world.

None of these are new observations. The Catholics are well aware of the problem, although frankly their standards for accepting someone as a saint, or the need for an exorcism, are suspect. But how could they not be? Those who are responsible for making those determinations are themselves subject to most or all of the above weaknesses.

But these characteristics of evangelicals, who smugly and arrogantly believe they are the select of God, if only they keep trying to spread the word, makes Stetzer’s task that much more difficult. He uses the word gullible, and it’s so very, very accurate, and, quite frankly, I have no idea if those evangelicals can be rescued from their error.

Or if we’ll have to wait for them to die of old age.

Last I heard, the evangelical movement is having a problem with attracting the younger generation, and, as I’ve said before, I suspect it’s because they’re getting an eyeful of the results of being an evangelical.

And they’re not liking it.

I wouldn’t normally publish another post in this series so soon after the last one, but Rep Gaetz’s (R-FL) remark is simply too deliciously absurd to ignore:

Movie star looks doesn’t mean shit when it comes to performance in these circumstances.

[Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] told [Steve] Bannon he would “absolutely” resign from Congress to fight for Trump on the Senate floor if the former president asked him to.

“I would leave my House seat. I would leave my home,” Gaetz declared. “I would do anything I had to do to ensure that the greatest president in my lifetime, one of the greatest presidents our country’s ever had, maybe the greatest president our country has ever had, got a full-throated defense that wasn’t crouched down, that wasn’t in fear of losing some moderate Republican senator, but that was worthy of the fight he gave to the great people of this country for four years.” [TPM]

Former President Trump must have been hooting with laughter at this statement. And what do the voters in Gaetz’s district think they’re doing? This ain’t a circus, voters. Selecting a Representative is serious business. Sending a clown just makes you look bad.

A reader comments on the latest nominees for the prestigious Earl Landgrebe Awards:

Yet another example how the R party has lost its way. Can there really be this many damning pee-pee tapes in underground circulation to blackmail them all? Or are they all just airheads?

I thinks there’s a couple of motivations.

Folks who owe their elective position to Trump’s influence are going to naturally try to find some way to thank him, no matter how much drivel they think they must spout. I see Trump as third-rate, and I suspect most of these folks are also third-rate, at least in the political arena.

And then there’s the kindred souls effect. Trump is your basic barstool blowhard, with a lot of money, no ethics or morals, ambition (or desperation), and a touch of acting talent. That stubbornness inherent in the barstool inhabitant, absolutely certain they’re right in the face of every bit of evidence that they’re not, touches a lot of regular barstool blowhards, especially those who happen to agree with Trump. In Trump’s victory, they see vindication; contrariwise, the humiliation of Trump’s loss, the rejection of Trump and his way of doing things by the electorate, is a rejection of themselves.

They’ve had their taste of prestige – if only in their own minds – and it’s really hard to let it go, especially when Trump was chanting for the last five years that the elections are rigged. It’s easier to believe that Democrats, independents, and Republicans conspired to deny the incompetent Trump a second term, than it is to admit that the way he, and therefore they, lead their lives has been decisively rejected.

It probably seemed easier to invade the US Capitol than deal with the intellectual challenges of that electoral rejection.

Thus, the intellectual drivel.

In connection with my ailing Arts Editor, a friend met the challenge when I suggested dancing to ancient polyphonic music might be difficult with this video:

Thanks, LDC! It was fascinating!

Nope, it’s not a medical condition. Are you tired of this?

So here’s a splash of color from my Arts Editor’s bouquet, received from MRK on the occasion of her rotator cuff surgery. It’s a week old and still going strong.

Thanks! It’s been a lovely lifter of spirits!

This is a horrific report on the Catholic Church in Germany:

A jarring report outlining decades of rampant child sex abuse at the hands of greedy nuns and perverted priests in the Archdiocese of Cologne, Germany, paints a troubling picture of systematic abuse in the German church.

The report is the byproduct of a lawsuit alleging that orphaned boys living in the boarding houses of the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer were sold or loaned for weeks at a time to predatory priests and businessmen in a sick rape trade. The men involved in the lawsuit say as boys they were denied being adopted out or sent to foster families because selling them for rape lined the sisters’ coffers for their “convent of horrors.” Some of the boys were then groomed to be sex slaves to perverts, the report claims.

The alleged abuse went on for years, with one of the males claiming the nuns even frequently visited their college dorms after they had left the convent. He said the nuns often drugged him and delivered him to predators’ apartments. The Order of Sisters of the Divine Redeemer did not answer multiple requests for comment about the allegations. [Daily Beast]

Jarring? Is that your best adjective?

And about these clerics, what are they looking for? Sexual gratification? Monetary gain?

Or what? Did the clerics involved really believe they were doing God’s will? If so, the arrogance is truly appalling.

And that they got away with it. This is what makes it difficult to trust any cleric, regardless of sect.

Ever wonder if whoever took the Parler information is in legal trouble? Parler is the social media platform used by the far-right fringe for discussing their woes and plans before and after the Insurrection. After it was taken down by Amazon Web Services for service policy violations, word came out that someone had found a way to scrape much or all of the information on the users and their posts from it – including deleted information.

Grayson Clary doesn’t think they’re facing any real legal trouble:

It’s worth handling carefully the sort of language that can get a person sued or prosecuted, and the Justice Department has, in fact, tried unsuccessfully to prosecute similar conduct under the federal anti-hacking statute: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). But what donk_enby seems to have done was really just scraping—automating the collection of the same information that a user with no special privileges could have retrieved by hand—and it can’t be said often or clearly enough that scraping is not a crime. That’s very far from saying, of course, that this conduct carries no risk; unfortunately, the fact that the best reading of the CFAA doesn’t punish this conduct hasn’t been enough to protect scrapers from litigation, or even criminal charges. (As Swift on Security put it, this argument “is not legal advice to enumerate random APIs.”) But the value of the Parler archive highlights, in that vein, the importance of shaking the clouds that still hang over techniques on which journalists and researchers have every right to rely. [Lawfare]

Makes it all feel a little Wild West, doesn’t it? It’s an Either know your shit or don’t come to play deal.

Maybe the best way to think of it is just like garbage cans – put a URL out there with unprotected data on it, it’s legal for anyone who can find it.

Republican Ohio State House members Jon Cross and Reggie Stoltzfus:

Two Ohio Republican state lawmakers want to designate June 14 as an annual state holiday honoring former President Donald Trump.

In a memo sent last week to members of the Ohio state House, GOP Reps. Jon Cross and Reggie Stoltzfus called on their colleagues to co-sponsor their bill, which looks to declare June 14 — Trump’s birthday — as “President Donald J. Trump Day.”

The pair wrote that Trump “against great odds, accomplished many things that have led our nation to unparalleled prosperity.” [CNN/Politics]

That would also be known as the Big Lie. Not only has there been greater prosperity, Trump did very little, rode Obama’s policies and work, and screwed up what he did do.

Good luck, Jon and Reggie! You could be big winners of an Award.

Anamorphic:

Anamorphic describes a projection or drawing that is distorted, though when observed through a particular viewpoint or method, it appears normal. For instance, some artists draw, paint or print a flat image which appears to be distorted in shape and perspective, but when its reflection is viewed in a cylindrical mirror, it appears normal. Another example involves the anamorphic lens, a type of film lens that stretches the image into a wider, higher quality image. Originally, anamorphic was a geological term describing certain types of metamorphic rock. The word anamorphic is derived from the Greek word anamorphōsis which means transformation. [Grammarist]

Noted in “Christmas crafts: How to make your own amazing optical illusion,” Daniel Cossins, NewScientist (19 December 2020):

Anamorphic illusions, from the Greek word for “transformation”, have been popular since at least the Renaissance, when artists like Leonardo da Vinci were experimenting with perspective. Perhaps the most famous example is a 16th-century painting called The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger, in which a distorted shape at the bottom of the picture is revealed to be a skull when viewed from an acute angle.

It also includes instructions on how to do your own anamorphic illusion.

I’ve seen this in a couple of places, and Professor Richardson provides the clearest description:

If there is any need to prove that Trump’s big lie is, indeed, a lie, there is plenty of proof in the fact that when the leader of the company Trump surrogates blamed for facilitating election fraud threatened to sue them, they backed down fast. The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems was at the center of Trump supporters’ claims of a stolen election, and its owner has threatened to sue the conservative media network Newsmax for its personalities’ false statements. When the threat of a lawsuit first emerged, Newsmax issued an on-air disclaimer.

Today, even as Trump’s lawyers were reiterating his insistence that he really won the election, the issue came up again. When MyPillow founder Mike Lindell began to spout Trump’s big lie on a Newsmax show, the co-anchor tried repeatedly to cut him off. When he was unsuccessful, the producers muted Lindell while the co-anchor said, “We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations…. We just want to let people know that there’s nothing substantive that we have seen.”

He read a legal disclaimer: “Newsmax accepts the [election] results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view.” And then he stood up and left the set.

I would only add this: This is not cancel culture, the right’s favorite new talking point.

This is Consequences Culture.

As in, you’ve done something bad and now you’re going to suffer the consequences.

You know, what good parents do. Let their kids learn that doing something bad has consequences.

And, finally, I beg of my readers:

DO NO MORE BUSINESS WITH MyPillow UNTIL LINDELL CUTS ALL TIES WITH THE COMPANY.

Actions have consequences. To Lindell and all of his supporters, make sure your actions are just or risk having consequences that you don’t like.

The Gamestop incident may be nearing its end as the GME stock share price dropped 60% today to $90/sh, and a bit more in “after hours” trading. Its high during this episode was $468/sh. A month ago? $17/sh.

It may have a ways to drop. AMC, while also dropping, still has a way to go. Buying now, hoping for a rebound of interest from the reddit army, would take some real brass balls and an appetite for risk greater than mine – and I’m told I’m a few standard variations away from the average when it comes to risk.

Analyses of past and current events are beginning to come in. Here’s CNN:

GameStop stock madness is still going on, now with rogue online investors apparently turning their interest to silver. Silver prices yesterday jumped 13% to an eight-year high after some online investors suggested dumping money into silver would hurt big banks they believe are artificially suppressing prices. However, others believe the new push is being co-opted by hedge funds to move pressure off the GameStop rally. The CEO of Robinhood, the trading app used by some of these investors to buy stocks, says the company’s clearinghouse asked it to pony up $3 billion in capital following last week’s surge — a sign of the intense financial pressure facing the startup.

I’ve always considered the precious metals fiends to be conspiracy-minded, led back in the day by now-retired Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), father of the flake’s flake Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who advocated a return to the gold standard and was apparently quite vociferous on the matter – without, perhaps, quite understanding it.

But the other half of the analysis, the suggestion that the reddit army is vulnerable to subversion, rings true to me. After all, there’s not much in the way of verification on the Internet, while the operations of communication are greased by the Internet. The possibility of manipulation by larger players seems quite likely. Here’s WaPo on the same subject:

This tale of small investors vs. large institutions also is not as straightforward as it seems. Along with the retail hordes on Reddit, wealthy investors played an important role in GameStop’s rise. The company’s largest shareholders, according to the most recent securities filings, are Fidelity Investments and BlackRock, two of Wall Street’s most powerful players.

Some of the average investors on the popular message boards have financial industry experience, including at firms like Goldman Sachs. And many analysts say that some of those posting on the site are probably institutional investors posing as individuals.

“This is not entirely a David v. Goliath story. There are some sophisticated resources on both sides of these trades,” said Tyler Gellasch, executive director of the nonprofit Healthy Markets Association and a former Securities and Exchange Commission counsel.

The suggestion that BlackRock may be the real power behind the Gamestop, AMC, and other manipulations of company stocks is certainly a believable assertion, and no joke.

This is still an evolving story, and should prove quite interesting.

Governor Jim Justice (R-WV) on the response to the Covid-19 crisis:

“I believe forevermore that it was ridiculous beyond belief to have Democrats and Republicans fighting and couldn’t pass a stimulus package for months,” he said. “It was godawful. That’s just all there is to it. You had people that were suffering that needed to pay their power bill, needed to pay their rent or their car payment.

“At this point in time in this nation, we need to go big. We need to quit counting the egg-sucking legs on the cows and count the cows and just move. And move forward and move right now,” he added. [The Hill]

Egg-sucking legs on cows? I suppose it means something along the lines of near-mythical problems, as in Don’t worry about trivialities, let’s go fix the problem.

Justice used to be a Democrat.

One of the often mentioned talking points regarding former President Trump was his deal-making abilities and his alleged ability to play multi-dimensional chess in the political arena.

Given how little substantive legislation passed under his management, the big droop in American prestige abroad, the loss of the House to the Democrats in 2018, and the Senate and Presidency in 2020, it’s not hard to give him an F+ grade^[1]. His lack of civil engagement with the Democrats, his lack of creative offers, and his lack of stability marked him, at best, as a mediocre amateur; they may have been signs of dementia.

So how is President Biden doing? He and Vice President Harris met with a group of ten Republican Senators last night who have put together a proposal of their own to bring aid to Americans who are suffering in the economic downturn sparked by Covid-19. Following the meeting, White House Press Secretary Psaki issued this statement:

The President and the Vice President had a substantive and productive discussion with Republican senators this evening at the White House. The group shared a desire to get help to the American people, who are suffering through the worst health and economic crisis in a generation.

While there were areas of agreement, the President also reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently, and noted many areas which the Republican senators’ proposal does not address. He reiterated that while he is hopeful that the Rescue Plan can pass with bipartisan support, a reconciliation package is a path to achieve that end. The President also made clear that the American Rescue Plan was carefully designed to meet the stakes of this moment, and any changes in it cannot leave the nation short of its pressing needs.

The President expressed his hope that the group could continue to discuss ways to strengthen the American Rescue Plan as it moves forward, and find areas of common ground — including work on small business support and nutrition programs. He reiterated, however, that he will not slow down work on this urgent crisis response, and will not settle for a package that fails to meet the moment.

There’s a lot going on here.

First, Biden and Harris met with the Senators for two hours, a substantial amount of time. Since then, there have been no wild-eyed denunciations by either side. This is how Biden worked as a Senator, reaching out to the opposition to see what can be done. Reaching out implements unity.

By noting that the reconciliation process, by which a filibuster can be avoided, thus allowing the 51 votes possessed by the Democrats in the Senate to be sufficient to pass their own proposal, is available, Biden signals that his first allegiance is to the American citizen, not to undue compromise. He’s concerned that the Republicans may take advantage of the Democrat’s belief that governing is an important duty, which Republicans implicitly dispute and believe simply winning office is the end of the game.

The reference to the reconciliation process also functions as a threat. You’d better make positive contributions, Senator, or we’ll use this generational threat & response as a club to drub the Republicans in the next election. The President and VP know they have the power, so they’re hinting that they’re willing to use it. Biden was a witness to Republican behavior during the Obama Administration, and is unwilling to bend over backward for the Republicans.

By the same reasoning, Biden is showing, very politely, that he is tough. He knows the common citizen is in trouble, and that’s his priority. Playing nice is not part of the playbook.

And all of this is a fulfillment of my first comment on Biden: experience. I still worry about his age, but truth be told, his experience, from his Senatorial career to being Vice President, has equipped him supremely for moments like these. In this simple meeting, he’s fulfilled a number of strategic objectives. If he can get real Republican contributions to the bill in exchange for a small compromise, he looks great in one way; if the Legislature must use the reconciliation process to pass Biden’s proposal, he looks great in another way. All the while, the radical Republicans are at risk for being shown up as a bunch of rank, objectionable amateurs, sheep who don’t know what they’re doing.

And all this without much drama.

This is experience being used well.

¹ The ‘+’ is awarded only out of politeness.

In a post demonstrating repeated flaws, Erick Erickson leads off with this one:

Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be stripped of her committees and the GOP in the House should fight for her to stay on her committees. This is a dangerous precedent the House Democrats are setting and one easily applied to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whose irresponsible rhetoric about concentration camps cost a man his life as he tried to firebomb an ICE facility.

Democrats want to make an example of Greene because of January 6th and they cannot do it to the overwhelming majority of the GOP House members who sided with Greene in objecting to the Electoral College. So they have to wrap that in Greene’s pre-election views and conspiracy theories.

Erickson conveniently ignores the fact that Greene has publicly endorsed the murder of Democratic officials such as Speaker Pelosi, the fact that Greene has endorsed the QAnon nonsense, which has, among other claims, suggested that a pedophilia ring exists in D.C. that involves top federal government officials, and the fact that she continues to behave in an aggressive manner.

If someone threatened to kill Erickson and rape is wife, would Erickson vote for him to be mayor? If this monster were elected mayor, would Erickson invite the mayor-elect over for a congratulatory meal, and, Sure, you can bring in that rope and gun!

This is truly absurd on Erickson’s part.

Here’s the problem: Erickson doesn’t really believe the conservatives have a moral problem. Oh, he sort of gets it intellectually – sure, he’s written a number of posts questioning the behavior of his fellows. Yeah, he called for the insurrectionists to be shot, even if I think he was indulging in hyperbole.

But, as can be seen in his attempts at moral equivalency in other posts, he still believes the conservatives have the moral high ground, mostly based on the topic of the abortion debate, an issue which is too often results in conversion of typical voters into single-issue voters – the knife in the back of America. His problem? There are no Democratic equivalencies to the January 6th Insurrection. If there ever is, the democratic experiment that is the United States will be in its final, terminal condition – brutal and failed.

So he papers over this rhetorical failure with soft words and sleight of hand.

Look: If an expert in public health policy were elected to Congress, would it be wise to ignore the “previous” experience and put them on the Budget Committee rather than whatever committee would have public health as its responsibility? Has the excellent and lauded service Rep Porter (D-CA) rendered in the previous Congress taught us nothing?

If someone who’s avowedly anti-government and signals they’re willing and able to commit murder of opposition party officials is elected to Congress, they are clearly a threat to the entire Congress. Congress is clearly within its legal as well as moral rights to kick their ass right back out. Either we have standards, or we don’t have a competent government. Hey, and we can let the voters judge the conduct of those who vote for the expulsion of such elected officials. After all, that’s the Republicans’ defense of not convicting Trump the first time. (Yeah, that’s sarcasm.)

There’s so much more wrong with this post, because Erickson made the mistake of covering two or three disparate topics, and doing it badly. His condemnation of the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline needs a remark: If we’re going to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, it has to start somewhere, dude. His charge of cruelty is specious.

But I’m a working dude myself, and will spare the dedicated reader the rant I can feel bubbling up inside me.

Briefly getting back to the Covid-19 epidemic, this particular bit of statistics is a useful reminder that Covid-19 is not the flu:

it helps to think about what Covid has done so far to a representative group of 75,000 American adults: It has killed roughly 150 of them and sent several hundred more to the hospital. The vaccines reduce those numbers to zero and nearly zero, based on the research trials.

Zero isn’t even the most relevant benchmark. A typical U.S. flu season kills between five and 15 out of every 75,000 adults and hospitalizes more than 100 of them. [The New York Times]

A death rate, in the current medical knowledge and services context, that’s more than 10X the flu’s death rate.

This is in the context of every single vaccine so far announcing results eliminates death as an outcome, which is a very good result indeed.

I assume you would agree that any vaccine that transforms Covid into something much milder than a typical flu deserves to be called effective. But that is not the scientific definition. When you read that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 66 percent effective or that the Novavax vaccine was 89 percent effective, those numbers are referring to the prevention of all illness. They count mild symptoms as a failure.

“In terms of the severe outcomes, which is what we really care about, the news is fantastic,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

Chins up, folks, and stay vigilant until you’ve had the jab + 3 weeks.

Following complaints to the media, The Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver is withdrawing from TLP. There are allegations of his making unsolicited sexual overtures to several young men, including at least one under the age of consent.

Despite the yipping of conservative media and pundits such as Ryan Girdusky of American Conservative and Erick Erickson, I see little to really comment on; I’m just be sad that Weaver was caught up in the old Homosexuality is evil trope.

But I did want to note that Weaver does know how to write an apology note, unlike so many weasel politicians.

Weaver did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. Two weeks ago, he acknowledged the “inappropriate” messages in a statement to Axios and apologized, saying he had been closeted.

“The truth is that I’m gay. And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place,” Weaver said in his statement then. “To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry. They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you.” [WaPo]

Acknowledgment of error and remorse. This is how you get it done. The conservatives can be all bulgy eyed over this guy, whoever he was on the conservative side of things. Unlike so many of them, he is honest in his disgrace.

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), that rare animal who is both a Tea Party member and a Republican who voted for the articles of impeachment in January, is experiencing some disappointment with his family:

But the backlash isn’t just among the public and other lawmakers. In a new interview with [Business] Insider opinion columnist Anthony Fisher, Kinzinger says members of his own family have turned on him due to his vote:

“My dad’s cousins sent me a petition – a certified letter – saying they disowned me because I’m in ‘the devil’s army’ now,” Kinzinger said in a phone conversation on Thursday. “It’s been crazy, when you have friends – that you thought were good friends that would love you no matter what – that don’t.” [Yahoo! News]

And I want to know is this: How did Kinzinger respond to these daft relatives of his?

The right wing decepto-mail stream is coming back online, and it’s time to disassemble an example. Here’s the entirety of the email:

It makes President Biden look terribly hypocritical, doesn’t it?

But only if you’re skimming quickly and pre-disposed to believe anything negative about President Biden.

For the properly skeptical reader, one of the very first steps is to ask about the context. There is information provided, to which I’ll stipulate, and then a quote, again to which I’ll stipulate.

I can do that because the two don’t go together, actually.

The Biden quote refers to using Executive Orders (EOs) to implement what should be legislated. As a former long-time Senator, it makes sense that Biden would find the use of EOs to do what was essentially his shared responsibility repugnant, thus the alleged hypocrisy.

But does that applyp here? Here’s CNN’s list of the first 30 EOs. Let’s pick a couple out for analysis. Here’s his first EO:

Directs OMB director to develop recommendations to modernize regulatory review and undoes Trump’s regulatory approval process

That has nothing to do with legislation, but instead directs an Executive Agency to do some research on improving a regulatory process, while undoing Trump’s amateur hour effort. That’s entirely within Biden’s purview. How about the second?

Requires executive branch appointees to sign an ethics pledge barring them from acting in personal interest and requiring them to uphold the independence of the Department of Justice

Nothing legislative here, obviously. Picking at random, here’s #6:

Reverses the Trump administration’s restrictions on US entry for passport holders from seven Muslim-majority countries

Reversing a previous EO requires an EO; again, it’s not a usurpation of legislation. #11:

Cancels the Keystone XL pipeline and directs agencies to review and reverse more than 100 Trump actions on the environment

Again, this is within the Executive wing and is completely appropriate.

For my conservative reader, no, I’m not picking and choosing. These are random selections. I did go through all of them, and perhaps an argument could be made for a single EO:

Fortifies DACA after Trump’s efforts to undo protections for undocumented people brought into the country as children

This would require believing that DACA itself is un-Constitutional, and that is a position that the Federal Judiciary has not taken, despite opportunity.

The lesson here? Believing what you’re pre-disposed to believe will lead you into error. If some piece of mail plays to your inclinations, put on your Skeptical Mask and read it again. In this case, remember: Biden is an institutionalist through and through. He believes in the checks and balances system that is at the core of our government; he believes in divided responsibilities. His whole life has been built around it. He’s been a compromiser as a legislator while passing large pieces of legislature. He knows how things work in Washington.

Why would he suddenly shift to dictator mode?

This sham piece of mail isn’t meant to convince the non-MAGA voter of Biden perfidy; it’s meant to keep the MAGA voter firmly in line by engendering contempt for the hypocritical Democrat.

The only problem: the Democrat is not a hypocrite. Biden, having decades of experience vs Trump’s zero experience, knew to have his aides begin work on how to retract the damage done by Trump and his amateur hour aides from the moment he started campaigning. Biden came in ready: he knows the problems, he knows how to attack them, and he won’t put up with bullshit or playing to snowflake sensibilities.

And that is evidenced by his jump off the sprinters’ blocks.

Panglossian:

Dr. Pangloss, professor of “métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie” (English: “metaphysico–theologo-cosmolonigology”) and self-proclaimed optimist, teaches his pupils that they live in the “best of all possible worlds” and that “all is for the best”. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “This year could come to be regarded as a turning point in history,” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (19 December 2020):

As Nobel prizewinning economist Esther Duflo at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pointed out, the pandemic is a “dress rehearsal” for the much greater challenge that is climate change. I think the world has performed the dress rehearsal better than expected, and there is now cause for confidence that we can meet other problems ahead.

The defeat and imminent defenestration of that one-man environmental wrecking ball, Donald Trump, also adds to my cautious optimism.

I am no Panglossian – no new dawn is ever as bright as we hope – but my feeling is that 2020-21 will come to be regarded as one of those turning points in history, like 1848, 1918 and 1945, when the old world order was swept away and something new emerged. New doesn’t necessarily mean better. But I believe it is possible. Then I will happily go back to being a dog in a time of tranquillity.

Methinks Mr. Lawton should spent a month in the United States. Reports of vaccination sites being blockaded by anti-vaxxers are vastly disquieting.

Continuing on the coordinated reddit army of investor’s attack on hedge funds shorting Gamestop, Sinan Aral of MIT has some observations on the situation in WaPo that rings bells for me. For example, the fact that a crowd can be heterogenuous:

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday it is reviewing the recent volatility in GameStop and other stocks. Good. Not nearly enough is known about the perverse incentives and feedback loops driving these market movements. For example, who is in this “crowd”?

And were the individual investors hapless dups of other corporate entities?

And what role has been played by hedge funds standing to profit from the dizzying price increase? Yes, some hedge funds were short-squeezed and lost a fortune, but other institutions — such as BlackRock, owning 9 million shares of GameStop — likely made more than $1 billion on the madness.

But most importantly is a point I’ve been trying to make:

There are also perverse incentives created by Robinhood and other retail investing sites that purport to give the little guy a seat at the Wall Street table, but that actually earn large swaths of their revenue from institutional investors by processing trades through market makers, including Citadel Securities, that provide the other end to the trade. …

Perhaps most important, if social media can disrupt markets, it creates an incentive for economic terrorism and provides an opening for America’s enemies. If Russia saw an opportunity to disrupt U.S. elections with disinformation on social media, imagine what Moscow must be thinking about the prospects for interfering with the U.S. economy. The results of the SEC’s GameStop review cannot come fast enough.

Much like a discussion about anonymous participants in news and discussions in which we cannot know the true motivations of the participants with any certainty that I had long ago on UMB, the motivations of the players in this game – especially those with greater leverage, whether financial or communications-related – are not certain. Profit without ethics? Damage to institutional entities such as the hedge funds? Maybe the next shot will be to take down an important financial institution, such as Bank of America? Or a defense contractor?

Was this a test run?

But this paragraph reminded me that a lot of pundits are ignoring an important distinction between pump ‘n dumpers and this incident:

But what has transpired lately with the stocks of GameStop, the AMC movie theater chain and the BlackBerry tech company breaks fresh ground. The problem is that the world is witnessing this plane crash in real time: Right now, the plane is still at 30,000 feet, but countless small investors could be wiped out when the inevitable crash comes — when the market tries to find the appropriate prices for stocks that are untethered to companies’ underlying value.

A pump ‘n dump has the same characteristics that Aral & other observers assume they’re seeing here: a sudden and unjustified jump in price motivated by one category of investor, the dishonest pumper, and brought to fruition by the second category of mislead investors who put money into a misperceived opportunity, followed by the perpetrators dumping the stock for profit, and the long ride down to low prices for those who bought at the top.

But in the Gamestop incident we have a third player: the victim hedge fund, Melvin Capital. Because the short squeeze means they are being forced to buy shares of stock at higher and higher prices, far higher than they originally sold their borrowed stock for, this means a vast injection of cash into the financial web surrounding the Gamestop stock^[1] is occurring. This may mean that the small investors are not as vulnerable to being wiped out as they would in a pump ‘n dump situation. I would guess the reddit army will come away with vast profits, derived from Melvin Capital’s requisite buying of shares on the open market. Naive investors who went where the action is may, on the other hand, suffer significant losses when the Gamestop share price settles down to more reasonable levels.

If it does. As I noted in my previous post on this thread, Gamestop’s new board members may be able to convert the company into an online entity that is capable of generating the profits necessary to keep the share price high. That remains to be seen.

Speaking of the naive investor, a reader writes about his naivete:

I played the short game in the past. I think it’s akin to riverboat gambling. A $30,000 one-week loss convinced me that is not a game I will play again. It was an expensive lesson.

I considered playing some shorts. I ran an informal experiment and decided I was not equipped to be successful, and so I never plunged in. However, I did a bit of, oh, month trading for a short while. The first two trades made some money. The third was another story, which, come to think of it, I still own after all these years. I’m surprised the company is even still around. No more of that, I say. Long term investing means not having heart burn, not paying fees like mad, and occasionally getting lovely surprises.

Ya gotta like it.

¹ If Gamestop is holding any of its own stock in its treasury and sells it at this time, it also benefits from an unexpected cash injection. Whether they do, did, or not, I do not know.

Beau speaks as a conduit of understanding, and it’s worth a listen.

For the record, I would at least be interested in his explication of one claim, but I won’t mention it here – no spoilers.