Author Archives: Hue White

I subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer, which investigates everything from religious miracles to Bigfoot and other cryptids to creationism to other mysterious occurrences, usually deploying mundane explanations of what probably happened and that sort of thing.

Including Havana Syndrome, dating from 2016 in Havana, Cuba, and referring to incidents where

U.S. and Canadian government officials and their families reported symptoms associated with a perceived localized loud sound. The symptoms lasted for months and included disabling cognitive problems, balance problems, dizziness, insomnia, and headaches. Havana syndrome is not recognized as a disease by the medical community. [Wikipedia]

I always thought the proffered explanation, a variant of psychosocial illness as I recall, seemed a bit weak.

It may have been weaker than I realized.

Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world.

The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decade-long quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs).

These results were discovered by a Havana Syndrome skeptic, so points for him, and bolsters the case for actual, working weapons being deployed against U.S. and Canadian personnel. They were released recently

Well, this should make either the next issue, or the issue after that, of Skeptical Inquirer quite interesting. There’s nothing on their website’s front page about this development, but this is recent enough that they may not have developed a response.

Will there be a retaliatory response from the current Administration?

I cannot find a full, clean quote, but I love what I’ve seen and will go with it:

Kash Patel

“[FBI Director Kash Patel is] going back to the one skill that he thinks he has, which is self-promoting: diving into the media, diving into social media to compensate for his complete ineptitude at being the director of the FBI, which should not surprise anybody,” [former FBI counterterrorism division senior executive Christopher] O’Leary said. “He has no leadership experience, no operational experience, no investigative experience.”

In other words, Patel is little more than a neutering of the FBI. Why? Because they’re a great danger to President Trump. And, I suppose, his family.

Pozzolan:

Pozzolans are a broad class of siliceous and aluminous materials which, in themselves, possess little or no cementitious value but which will, in finely divided form and in the presence of water, react chemically with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) at ordinary temperature to form compounds possessing cementitious properties. The quantification of the capacity of a pozzolan to react with calcium hydroxide and water is given by measuring its pozzolanic activity. Pozzolana are naturally occurring pozzolans of volcanic origin. [Wikipedia]

I just stumbled across pozzolans, unknown to me, while researching this post. Noted in the Wikipedia article, “I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge“:

In the concrete comprising the drilled shafts, piers and footings, a significant proportion of the Portland cement was replaced with slag, fly ash and other pozzolans.^[36] These materials reduce the embodied energy of the structure and allow the concrete to resist the ingress of water and dissolved solids such as chloride ions. This allowed the structure to be designed to resist deterioration for much longer than structures made with conventional concrete.

I am not a civil engineer, but I know one. I might have to ask him to clarify this to me. Or maybe not. Embodied energy, while perhaps self-explanatory, eludes my sense of significance.

It would seem there’s a bit more to the story of Trump & the bridge than I had envisioned, according to The New York Times:

The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.

Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.

Well. President Trump as hit-man, eh?

To play devil’s advocate, I’ll also note this:

The new bridge was fully paid for by Canada but is owned in part by Michigan, and is expected to ease congestion in the busiest trade corridor between the United States and Canada.

There is something to be said about private vs public competition, although I must say the situation is rarely as clean as a libertarian, who will emphasize the vast public resources available to the state, make for unfair competition, might have you believe. I did a bit of research on the privately owned entity, the Ambassador Bridge, in Wikipedia, which claims the bridge’s condition is, oh, I don’t know, let’s say marginal and getting worse. However, it also notes the various permissions to repair the bridge have been difficult-to-impossible to obtain, again, my words. It may be that both public and private have dirty hands, but that’s for other researchers to debate.

All that said, the state, err, states in this case, have a possibly critical interest in a dependable and speedy transport link over the Detroit River; if the Ambassador were to collapse, replacement would take years. Yes, I know the I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, which replaced the collapsed I-35W Mississippi River Bridge, took roughly 13 months to complete, but managers who bank on setting construction records rarely have good outcomes, and this would be a far larger project. Canada and Michigan might justify the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge on these concerns alone, and have a good case.

And to learn the Ambassador Bridge was once owned by a public company, before the Morouns bought it up!

This is concerning:

Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval, the analytics firm confirmed on Feb. 11.

Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the Washington, DC-based management company began tracking the president’s job performance 88 years ago.

Gallup told USA TODAY it will no longer publish “favorability ratings of political figures,” a decision it said “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.” [USA Today]

In today’s societal pressure cooker, you have to wonder about this – really them deciding that, or succumbing to pressure? Here’s former Rep, former Republican, and MS NOW contributor Joe Scarborough:

With the company dependent on government contracts — and Donald Trump’s own ratings hitting historic lows — many conclude that Gallup trashed its longtime legacy to avoid the president’s wrath.

The Presidential approval poll is virtually their iconic offering, so I’m puzzled that they decided to dump it.

It’s a causal change reaching all the way back Newt Gingrich^[1]:

1. Gingrich decrees the primal importance of win, win, win for the Republicans in the 1990s.
2. Republicans, already caught up in the faux philosophy of the divine, true or false, and shocking arrogance, discover the simpler decision-making becomes, the more likely they can gather votes. See Senator Goldwater’s prescient warning concerning pastors in the Republican Party.
3. This leads to the ascendancy of ideology and the denigration of experience, mo****, humility, compromise, and all the other attributes of adults who’ve discovered governing is not a simple checklist procedure, but a complex balancing of interests – sometimes international – that are rarely found in ideological precepts.
4. Republicans previously valued by their Party for their experience, flexibility, and humility begin leaving the Party, or at least leaving leadership positions. In more cases than might be thought, they are actively expelled from leadership or Party; see the highly respected Senator Lugar (R-IN) for a classic case; Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) both practiced running out moderate Republicans and experienced being run out himself.
5. Consequently, leadership eligibility in the Party became a list of policy positions and performative assertion of same, combined with the deliberate smearing of all opponents, rather than the Party-enhancing sober, honest debates. This is Politics as Entertainment, and while I’ll skip selecting a peak moment, the 2016 Presidential Republican Primary debates were certainly deeply silly, as was the Alabama Senatorial Republican primary contest, in which far-right wing Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) was accused by backers of other Republicans of being an ISIS supporter, among other things. Leadership became a shrill pack of ideology shouters, with no positional incentives to moderate positions or act like, well, adults; position became dependent on purity; this translates, in power terms, to extremism. “Extremism in Defense of Liberty is No Vice” became the slogan, and then everything vociferously hid itself in Liberty’s hem. The end result were carriers of ideology.
6. Such folks are deeply vulnerable grifters and those who pursue power for its social advantage without regard to responsibility. Trump, once he had captured the imagination of the Republican base, forced out all leaders who’d compete, who’d not support him. Replacing them were the Trump supplicators and ideological specialists, sweating to find coveted positions, previously thought unobtainable, now in their grasp. All became political.
7. Trump wins and in they flood, replacing not only political appointees of the previous Administration, but even the non-political upper-level members of the bureaucracy.
8. And then they discovered the FAA actually requires competency.

Lots of stuff omitted, and some irrelevancies inserted. Such is the fruit of a head cold. But if you want to know what’s going on in El Paso and its airspace, closed and then opened, here’s an MS NOW report:

Two congressional officials told MS NOW that the dispute between the FAA and the Pentagon that led to the closure began when FAA officials raised concerns that the laser had not been properly vetted for use around a civilian airport. Military officials said the FAA was fully informed of their plans.

Smith said the agencies’ contradictory accounts were unacceptable and an example of the Trump administration’s poor management.

“The big issue here is the unbelievable incompetence of the Trump administration,” Smith said. “A major airport is shut down for 10 days without explanation. A full day later DOD, FAA and CBP can’t even come close to telling us what actually happened, and the White House, responsible for all of them, is just sitting around with their thumb up their ass.”

While undoubtedly a political report, it is deeply congruent with my expectations of the Republican Party, not just Trump. They’ve descended into the madness of ideology because that’s their perceived source of success, and their ego daren’t let them leave the morass, even as it solidifies into concrete and is carried to the edge of the water fall.

¹ No, no links; this head cold has me down. None of this is really new or hidden and can be easily found by the casual observer.

Border czar and lead officer on the ground in Minneapolis announced today that the ICE surge is over, and they’re leaving but not quite out of here.

The protesters and anti-ICE intelligence experts should keep an eye on known members of ICE in Minneapolis, as uncertainty over their presence and purpose could cause disruption for Minneapolitans. Some will remain, just as some were present prior to the surge, acting as assistance on international crime. Can folks of Minneapolis tolerate this?

We’ve already seen Trump and Homan claim the surge worked, a ridiculous claim on its face because such evaluations require balancing costs vs achieved goals; regarding the latter, measurement of progress is difficult when it comes to crime. Measure this very instant? Measure in three months? Which is more meaningful?

And the costs!

Ah, now I can’t find the link. Shipping, room, board, all those accompanying costs means Trump’s blithering cost the nation a lot of money, along with two lives and the serenity of a lot of citizens.

Evaluations are better done a few months out.

But I still greatly admire the citizens of Minneapolis and those who came to help out. Some of them are my friends!

Congrats!

But the situation is a bit too serious.

But it really does look like adults trying to correct a child who refuses to take any of the hints.

Federal judges in Albany, New York, appointed a new U.S. attorney on Wednesday, exercising a rarely invoked legal authority to appoint top prosecutors in regions without a Senate-confirmed nominee.

Their choice lasted less than five hours on the job.

Donald T. Kinsella, a 79-year-old former prosecutor and registered Republican, was summarily fired via an email from the White House later that evening, Justice Department officials said. [WaPo]

The President has the responsibility to nominate prosecutors acceptable to the Senate. Trump is, as always, falling down on the job, frantically insistent that he have loyalists in important, dangerous offices, even when they’re rejected by both Senate and the Judiciary. His problem?

The Jan. 8 ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield made Sarcone the latest prosecutor appointed by the Trump administration to be found to be improperly in their position. Judges have issued similar rulings against top federal prosecutors in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia. [syracuse.com]

Can you guess?

Yep. Fourth-raters he can trust, but the first and second-raters who would be nominated for such offices will not work for Trump. They know he’s a corrupt bully who, everyone hopes, will soon go down in flames so we can get back to the serious business of governance.

I think Erick Erickson is beginning to question his own eyes in talking about AG Bondi’s performance in Congress yesterday:

In 2016, talking to Howard Stern, actress Tina Fey told Stern, “I always like it when someone is articulate at these things, because let’s face it, actors are very stupid.” In the same way, in 2019, Sir Anthony Hopkins sat for an interview with Brad Pitt and said, “I don’t have any opinions. Actors are pretty stupid. My opinion is not worth anything.” Actors themselves very frequently acknowledge that actors are stupid.

Unfortunately for America, President Trump decided to choose people from central casting who looked the part, more than fit the role. When one goes to central casting, one does not often find the best and brightest. One might wind up with a puppy killer at Homeland Security and Bondi at the Justice Department.

Or a lush, harassing former military man whose conception of the military is little more than inflicting violence on whoever gets in the way at the Defense Department. He happens to have been a Fox News host.

And I’m sure I could go on with a Cabinet that often seems to exist only to praise the President, but I’ll leave off with the most obvious: the big guy himself has only had success in dramatic roles: The Apprentice and getting himself elected; don’t mistake the latter to mean he was a success as President, only that three times he put on quite a show on the campaign trail.

I think Erickson nailed this one.

Which is A Bridge Too Far, the title of a famous movie and non-fiction book.

President Trump has inserted himself into the scheduled opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which is in the finishing phases of construction and will link Michigan to Canada at Detroit and Windsor, in a most aggressive and petulant manner:

Trump on Monday threatened to block the opening of the Canadian-built bridge across the Detroit River, demanding that Canada turn over at least half of the ownership of the bridge and agree to other unspecified demands in his latest salvo over cross-border trade issues.

“We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset,” Trump said in a lengthy social media post, complaining that the United States would get nothing from the bridge and that Canada did not use U.S. steel to built it. [MS NOW]

Sure, everyone’s responded to him, but I don’t think they understand what’s really happening: President Trump is distracting attention from the Epstein Files release and examination.

I think respondents, at least Americans, should have responded by not addressing Trump and his issues; maybe repeat how close the bridge is to completion and how it will enhance both countries, and that sort of thing.

If Trump gets mad about being ignored and yells about his issue, then respond so very sweetly like this:

We’re very pleased to keep this issue out of President Trump’s face as he deals with the grave issues raised by the release of the Epstein Files.

Recognizing and reacting effectively to the tactics of the adversary are a key part of winning a war.

Later in the day, in connection with a dinner with the President with the nation’s governors, the President heaped blame on everyone else for the invitation list, starting with Governor Stitt (R-OK), and then called Stitt a RINO (Republican in Name Only), which I’ll leave to my reader to characterize in their mind.

On Wednesday, however, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), the [National Governors Association] chairman, told governors that Trump would be inviting all governors to the White House on Feb. 20 for the NGA’s business breakfast. [WaPo]

But not dinner.

And I’m not taking about Governor Walz (D-MN). Here’s the AP:

“Because [National Governors Association’s] mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for [the Association’s annual business meeting, hosted by the White House], and it is no longer included in our official program,” [Governor and NGA chairman] Kevin Stitt [(OK-R)] wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

In other words, this Republican governor just told off a President from his own Party. We may be seeing more cracks opening in the Republican establishment.

On a side note, I don’t monitor Governor Stitt, but he’s pulled some dumb stunts, such as this one. I think this action indicates he’s come a ways and may realize that, no, the divine is not going to come down and save his ass. He has to do his own ass-saving, or even simply the right thing.

Congrats.

I think we can guess from this CNN headline (content for CNN subscribers only):

Grand jury declines to indict Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to disobey illegal Trump orders

Grand juries have been a thorn in the side of AG Bondi, DC US Attorney Pirro, and, ultimately, President Trump, because they do have minds of their own and are more difficult to coerce. As President Trump prefers to signal his intentions via the demonization psychological op, I expect we’ll soon be hearing how grand juries are a cancerous growth on the hide of democracy.

Read: They’re not under Trump’s control and thus must be done away with. So speaks arrogance.

But will MAGA and the Republicans tolerate the removal of grand juries from the judicial system? Or will the proposal begin ringing warning bells for the supposed conservatives in our country.

Stay tuned.

Ichnofossil:

A trace fossil, also called an ichnofossil (/ˈɪknoʊˌfɒsɪl/; from Ancient Greek ἴχνος (íkhnos) ‘trace, track‘), is a fossil record of biological activity by lifeforms, but not the preserved remains of the organism itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of parts of organisms’ bodies, usually altered by later chemical activity or by mineralization. The study of such trace fossils is ichnology – the work of ichnologists. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Ancient Bees Found Nested Inside Fossilized Bone — A Behavior Never Seen Before,” Anastasia Scott, Discover:

There is no evidence that the insects drilled into or reshaped the fossils. Instead, they made use of hollow spaces that already existed and closely matched the size and geometry of their nests. What remains is not the bees themselves, but physical traces of their behavior — an ichnofossil preserved within the remains of much larger animals.

H. L. Mencken once wrote,

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Which came to mind when this Tweet was thrown in my face:

In case this disappears …

Previous administrations have similarly invited increased beef imports with the same expectation that increasing imports would lower consumer beef prices. In practice consumer beef prices were not reduced but instead, increased imports correlated with the shrinking of the U.S. cattle herd, the exodus of U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers, and higher consumer beef prices.

What is everyone missing? The cost of delivering beef, from birth to table, has limited flexibility. If the farmer or rancher feels the accompanying risk may result in bankruptcy rather than profit, they’ll liquidate their herds. There’s Mencken’s complexity, and why the simple answer is wrong.

And that leads smaller American herds and higher beef prices.

Sometimes the lever you’re grabbing blindly will break your fingers.

I’ve been suggesting compromise is the only way forward, not just because other people have differing opinions, but because governance is hard.

And now Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, has been beating the drum for decency, civility and compromise more than any other prominent elected Republican in the country, and perhaps more than any official in either party. …

Cox made his “Disagree Better” initiative the focus of his chairmanship of the National Governors Association in 2023 and 2024. Since then, he has continued hosting joint appearances with Democratic leaders from across the country to model civil discourse. For his latest, at the cathedral, he sat with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat who was the victim of an arson attack earlier this year. [Dana Milbank, WaPo]

For the politically immature, compromise can be hard as it forces the compromiser to admit that they can be wrong – and so often we climb the ladder of power & prestige by not being wrong, or, like the President and his minions, never admitting to it.

Nice to see.

It’s been 39 days since I last talked about DJT (Trump Media & Technology Group Corp), when it had a stock price of $12.64/sh. How it’s done since? This is a 1 month chart from yahoo! finance.

In a word, Poorly. DJT has dropped 20% in the last month, so the announced merger with TAE was little more than sugar water for the stock price.

But, if you’ve actually invested in DJT, what of the impact of cryptocurrency on DJT? What of $TRUMP?

If you like the apple tree, I’m sorry to inform you that fire blight made it as valuable as $TRUMP. We had it removed.

If that was your voice we all just heard, I’m sorry to inform you that $TRUMP is doing even more poorly. Having opened at $45/coin, it’s been just about all downhill right from the beginning; today, CoinMarketCap gives a $TRUMP coin a value of $3.32, or a 92% drop. Much like Bitcoin and its negative assessment, the point that it brings no unique utility nor better major functionality to the game means $TRUMP does not function as a stable currency or even a noteworthy investment, an observation I’ve been pushing for years with regard to Bitcoin.

Its function has really been a way to attract MAGA folks who wanted to appear sophisticated, to contribute their cash to the Trumps on a worthless investment, building a sordid community that functions to strip enthusiasts of their cash reserves, while pretending to build moats around them.

The collapse of $TRUMP means that DJT’s treasury of cryptocurrency has become an anchor in their underwear. If they sell out, they take a loss; if they don’t sell, they risk losing more and more money as $TRUMP and Bitcoin, assuming that’s also part of the treasury, collapse.

Which brings up the question: Were ICE agents sent to Minneapolis and/or National Guard sent to DC paid in cryptocurrency?

DJT, to this investor but not a financial advisor, continues to look like a repellent investment, best avoided entirely.

The string of Democrats winning special elections may be continuing, although Ballotpedia is not yet confirming, as the occupants of the mayor’s seat (and certain one council seats) of Leander, TX’s election of yesterday:

Kathryn Pantalion-Parker 16.92%
Na’Cole Thompson 57.01% (W)
Mike Sanders 25.88%

[Data extracted from here.]

I do have to take the word of bilboteach that Thompson is a Democrat.

H/T to @taniel.bsky.social and bilboteach@Daily Kos, the latter of whom adds

Leander, Texas is a moderate to conservative suburb in Williamson County. That’s in the orbit of Austin. Trump won 51% of the vote here in 2024.

Insert the usual boilerplate concerning special elections here. In other news, the Democrats retained Louisiana House of Representatives District 60 in a special election as Chasity [not misspelled] Martinez won with nearly 62% of the vote. The Downballot notes:

Donald Trump won the 60th by a 56-43 margin in 2024, according to calculations by The Downballot.

Martinez will be considered by some to have scaled the heights unexpectedly. However, given the state of the rural economy, treatment of standard civil rights, and even the anti-abortion stance of the GOP, I think then-candidate Trump’s carrying of the district to be the surprise. Still, congrats to Martinez. May you have a long and happy career.

A couple of days ago I commented on Bitcoin’s recent slide. Yesterday I went looking for explanatory incidents.

Bitcoin seems static, give or take, since Thursday. Nothing on the web really stood out for me, which in some ways is even more disturbing. This morning Molly White’s (no relation) Web3 is Going Just Great reported a $44 billion hiccup for Korea’s Bithumb exchange, but most of that was quickly recovered.

Still, smaller incidents (call it thievery) keep on occurring, and I’m thinking that current cryptocurrency users are beginning to transition to past tense, having tired of watching, or even experiencing, losses in their and others’ ‘virtual assets’.

And then there’s this:

Richard Farr, chief market strategist and partner at Pivotus Partners, has issued a stark prediction for Bitcoin (BTC-USD), setting a price target of zero for the cryptocurrency.

“Our BTC price target is 0.0. That’s not just for shock factor. It’s where the math takes us,” the strategist said, noting that Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has failed to function as a dollar hedge and instead operates as “a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq.” …

The strategist also criticized Bitcoin’s environmental impact, stating that miners “are bleeding cash” while the network remains “horribly inefficient as a transaction processor and wastes tremendous amounts of energy.”

Farr’s assessment aligns with warnings from Michael Burry, the investor known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, who cautioned that falling Bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices could trigger a self-reinforcing “death spiral.” [Seeking Alpha]

I have no idea who might be Pivotus Partners, but I cannot help but pay attention as the above remarks concerning cryptocurrency’s functionality, external costs, and volatility has a strong correlation with my own observations over the years.

In other words, I’m sure glad I’m not in cryptocurrency because the speculators, and if you use cryptocurrency, don’t kid yourself, you’re a speculator, may be riding a raft into a real maelstrom of disaster. Right now it appears they may have sprung a leak.

Here’s a summary provided by WaPo, itself perhaps swirling around in a vortex of doom.

Such a quick repetition of President Trump’s mental illness, too. Via Maddowblog:

The good news is that the president recently signaled a willingness to release the resources [for the Gateway tunnel construction project] that would allow work to continue. The bad news is the specific condition he has in mind. Punchbowl News reported:

President Donald Trump offered to release the funding for the massive Gateway infrastructure project if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agrees to support renaming both Washington-Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station after Trump.

The Trump administration directly made the request of Schumer, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

No doubt he sees it as dominance; I see it as rank foolishness and narcissism, the sort of man who consistently fails and manages to delude himself into thinking he’s a success.

Fortunately, names are easily reverted.

Dummymandering:

As MS NOW host Chris Hayes explained in November, “dummymandering” is the term for what happens when a gerrymandering scheme backfires, usually because the ruling party creates vulnerable districts for itself that it then loses. It’s a scenario that at least seems possible in a place like Florida, which is already gerrymandered heavily in Republicans’ favor. And the scenario seems even more possible in light of recent electoral wins for Democrats in Florida and beyond, as backlash toward the GOP’s agenda grows — even among some of Trump’s supporters. [MS NOW]

From the National Prayer Breakfast, itself a dubious institution:

“They rigged the second election,” said Trump. “I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego. Beating these lunatics was incredible, what a great feeling. Winning every swing state. Winning the popular vote. The first time they said I didn’t win the popular vote. I did.” [RawStory]

Putting his own needs over that of the nation – and then announcing the fact in public. Textbook example of pathological narcissism.

And so pouty, too.

Erick Erickson has an appalling story concerning the Department of Homeland Security:

The Washington Post has a very interesting story about an American citizen who fired off a letter to Joseph Dernbach at the Department of Homeland Security. Dernbach’s contact information is easy to find on Google. Dernbach was the lead prosecutor on a DHS case against an Afghan citizen the Trump Administration was attempting to deport.

Jon, whose last name is not revealed by the Washington Post, is an American citizen who gave up his British citizenship for his love of America. Jon is very clearly a progressive.

Within hours of sending his letter to Joseph Dernbach, Google sent Jon notice that Google had “received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to [Jon’s] Google Account.” The Department of Homeland Security retaliated against an American citizen for sending a letter to a Department of Homeland Security lawyer …

And if you want to see this letter, which is basically a reprimand of DHS for attempting to deport a former ally, follow the above link. The story does get worse:

Google did not tell Jon what information the government wanted, but told Jon he’d have to file a motion in court to stop it. But Google provided no information for Jon to do that and did not send Jon a copy of the subpoena for Jon to fight because the Department of Homeland Security also instructed Google not to tell Jon anything about their subpoena.

My bold, and I’m bolding prime evidence of corruption, I think. It’s certainly deeply disturbing, and Google’s failure to ignore that specific instruction is indicative of a company that is submitting to the instructions of a power-mad xenophobe rather than the American Constitution and body of law.

Erickson, though, goes off on a tangent where he claims the Democrats will do the same thing when they’re in power, so the Republicans should curtail such activities. Certainly, there’ll be a lot of howling, but how this is adjudicated will be up to judges moreso than lawmakers. Although “Oh For Some Republican Sanity on This” is a good title, the article might have benefited from a direct condemnation of this un-American behavior.

As a postscript, Steve Benen suggests DHS’s existence may be limited:

Miles Taylor, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s chief of staff during Donald Trump’s first term, told MS NOW last week that he now believes the Republican president has done irreparable damage to the department. Taylor told Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” that he had resisted calling for the dismantling of DHS, but he’s recently “come around” to the idea that it’s necessary.

He’s not alone. The Atlantic recently published a good report on the debate over the department’s future. It quoted Seth Stodder, who worked for Customs and Border Protection under George W. Bush and the DHS under Barack Obama. After seeing Trump-era abuses, Stodder concluded, “It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea.”

Contrapposto:

The contrapposto definition is a relaxed and life-like standing pose [for a statue] in which the body’s weight is rested on one leg. The figure does not stand stiff and upright but distributes the weight of the body at ease. The classical contrapposto pose requires artists to understand the various counterposed components of the figure. [Art In Context]

Noted in this YouTube video, “Contrapposto Explained,”

Or see its home site at smarthistory.