Author Archives: Hue White

I’ve been thinking for a week about Andrew Sullivan’s contention that

But this complexity misses something important — the contingent importance of individuals in human history. And the truth is: we would not be where we are now without Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone. He is unique in American history, a president who told us in advance he would never accept any election result that showed him losing, and then proved it. He tried to overturn the transfer of power to his successor by threats and violence. No president in history has ever done such a thing — betrayed and violated the core of our republic — from Washington’s extraordinary example onwards. The stain of Trump is as unique as it is indelible.

Without wishing to mitigate the guilt of the former President, I must point out that it takes two to tango, that without a receptive audience the former President, well, he’d just be Donald J. Trump, strongly disliked by most of his hometown of Manhattan, and probably known as a screaming nincompoop.

In other words, the training of the conservative base to accept the baseless contentions of the former President, from Crime is at a terrible peak! to All the elections I lose are rigged! to Migrant caravans of rapists!, the willingness to swallow such ludicrous claims without limit, it’s all an indictment of a civil society that failed to properly bring these people to political maturity, and thus an indictment of that segment of society vulnerable to these depredations.

Before someone mutters Your political maturity may be my political brainwashing, a position I understand and respect, I believe that such a position cannot be maintained in the face of the spectacle, the avalanche of evidence illustrating the absolute credulousness of this segment, from sources such as the televised hearings of the January 6th panel to the egregious behavior of many state GOP parties, such as my neighboring State’s, the exceptionally clownish and embarrassing Wisconsin GOP. We can list everything from the endless grifting, much like H. Ross Perot’s Endless sucking noise, but into the wallets of the deeply dishonest Donald “No, there’s no Election Defense Fund” Trump and his allies, the lies, all the way to Every Single Believer in the Prophetic Movement.

These are the American citizens who’ve abandoned common sense, who’ve harassed anyone who stood in their path to power, and have forgotten what brought them freedom and prosperity: democracy.

And they, moreso than Donald J. Trump, are the biggest threats to the United States of America, because without dynamite, the match to the fuse is nothing more than some amusing sparks.

This nomination is a bit shocking, as it’s January 6th insurrection witness “Rusty” Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House, who described being asked to cheat (and refusing), and how his family and his terminally ill daughter were physically harassed by Trumpists. You have to wonder if he was gelded or something.

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.” [AP]

If it was that great then why was Trump dismissed overwhelmingly by the voters? And he doesn’t appear to be paying all that much attention to Trump’s impact on the country, does he?

If I’d only waited a day for the June 21st primaries to complete. Sigh….

• In Alabama, Katie Britt defeated crushed Rep Mo Brooks in the Republican primary runoff yesterday. Britt has former President Trump’s endorsement, but quite possibly only because Trump despises Rep Brooks for a social faux-pas of a comment he made in connection with the January 6th insurrection investigation. Minus a scandal or black swan event, or perhaps Brooks shrieking about election rigging, Britt should easily defeat the Democratic candidate, Will Boyd, and Alabama will continue to have a far-right Senator.
• Senator Crapo (R) of Idaho will be facing David Roth (D), who appears to have little political experience and little chance of winning. This was determined back in May and I was just a bit flippant about Democratic chances in Idaho. I fear I remain flippant.
• North Carolina’s Beasley-Budd race has a poll I missed yesterday, as WRAL/SurveyUSA’s poll from a week or so ago shows Beasley up by 4 points, 44% to 40%, the first lead for the former NC Supreme Court Justice. How much of this is Trump’s, Biden’s, or the candidate’s influence is difficult to tell. It has to be encouraging for the Democrats of North Carolina, in any case, and should give them some impetus.

There, all caught up. Yeah, sure I am.

I finally got around to taking a look at this year’s Texas GOP’s party platform. I couldn’t finish it, as it struck me not as a coherent document – and, to be honest, I’ve never read one of these before, so perhaps coherence isn’t a virtue in these things – so much as a litany of personal grievances, dressed up in lawyer language and never really discussed. For example, Section 46:

46. Energy Production: We support free–market solutions and immediate removal of government barriers and direct subsidies to the production, transportation, reformulation, refining, and distribution of energy. We oppose federally directed plans and proposals that favor renewable energy sources that may constitute a nuisance, or otherwise have a substantially negative impact on neighboring landowners, including harming property values of our neighborhoods, farms, and ranch areas.

I can’t help but notice how they ignore the dangers in such installations. Government direction of just such regulations keep farms and ranches safe. Or, despite their advocacy of unfettered free market principles, is Section 72.

72. Personal Data Privacy: We demand that all rights to privacy that individuals have in their homes should be extended to all digital data via the use of strong public key encryption technologies. We call upon Texas to prohibit vendors of the State of Texas and its subdivisions from selling or sharing data captured in providing services to Texans. We support laws limiting the ways in which internet providers, electronic applications, websites, schools, government entities, and others may access the electronic communications or documents of all Texans.

Since I don’t have a benchmark, it’s hard to render a really fair judgment. But I just have to say this just strikes me as something a bunch of fourth-raters would put out. In particular, I noticed that the word fetus was verboten, in favor of the ridiculous pre-born human. With no mention of the woman’s health or desires; she’s apparently just a baby crib with legs rather than wheels.

But they yelled at Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Cruz (R-TX), so that’s a point in their favor.

For those who keep mumbling that Biden’s to blame for gas prices because of dad-gum this and dad-gum that, including Erick Erickson and other right-wing attack dogs – I can’t bring myself to write pundit – this WaPo article on the refining industry may be a real eye-opener. First quote:

“I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in an interview with The Washington Post this month.

“It’s been 50 years since we built a new one,” Wirth said. “In a country where the policy environment is trying to reduce demand for these products, you are not going to find companies to put billions and billions of dollars into this.”

That’s a shocker. We – or at least I – never hear how much it costs to build and operate a refinery. And then there’s that thing called maintenance:

In the absence of any offers, LyondellBasell plans to shut its 700-acre operation on the Gulf Coast no later than the end of next year. Quitting the refining business, the company said in a statement, “is the best strategic and financial path forward.” The company did not comment on industry speculation that a fire that knocked part of its century-old Houston facility offline last week may push the closure date even sooner, as LyondellBasell faces the prospect of costly repairs.

The facility refines about 264,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

“These are aging physical plants where steel needs to be replaced, equipment needs to be overhauled, new pumps maybe needed,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

“Just getting the equipment you need could take three years….”

Even the pro-fossil fuel Trump Administration could not persuade the industry to keep refineries open. It’s not so much electric vehicles themselves as the ratio of profit to cost is so small, and the magnitude of cost is so large, as to render the equation existentially dangerous to the companies involved. Add in the cost of accidents, including their fiery, explosive nature:

A 38,000-pound fragment of the plant was hurled across the river by the explosion. Nobody was killed, but 3,271 pounds of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid leaked into the community.

And the entire refining industry is distinctly unappetizing. It leaves me actively wondering how solar and wind power compare for future maintenance and expansion. Wind is fairly easy, as putting up a windmill isn’t a new technology, and I don’t think there’s a great deal of toxic waste to worry about, once the blades are built. They do need a bit of grease, though, and regular maintenance. Too bad about your views, millionaires, but it’s this or lights out.

Solar I’m less certain. And nuclear has some immense costs which must be brought down.

That article is something of an eye-opener.

Some updates of interest:

• In California, VP Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) appointed successor, Senator Alex Padilla (D), will be facing attorney Mark Meuser (R), as expected, in Padilla’s first elective race for this seat. As this is a jungle primary, with the top two advancing to the general election, the primary also functions as a poll – at least for my purposes, which is to stay informed. The results: Padilla has 53.5% of the vote, while Meuser was well behind him at 14.3% of the vote, but no one else in the field had more than 6.7% of the vote. [Yahoo! Entertainment] Padilla just has to avoid stepping in potholes.
• In Georgia, the ability of a gibberish-spewing candidate to potentially successfully compete against a sitting Senator and pastor of a storied church continues as Senator Warnock (D) is tied with Herschel Walker (R) in a recent poll. Color me gobsmacked. Are Georgians really that lacking in self-respect?
• Something I didn’t know, courtesy a concerned, or maybe panicked, post by Erick Erickson: In Missouri, the primaries do not have a runoff if no one reaches 50% in a given race. One election, the winner moves on to the general without regard to the percentage of ballots won. And that means disgraced former Republican Governor Eric Greitens, currently leading in the GOP primary for the Senate nomination (June 8th on RealClearPolitics) by 6 points with 26% of those polled could win outright. But this Greitens ad may have thrown the Republican Senate primary into doubt, as it could alienate undecideds. Absent a strong Democratic contender, I do not think the Senate seat is in danger of slipping from Republican hands, but this is yet another, expected sign of a political party that, having lost its guardrails against extremism, is proceeding to eat itself, and won’t stop until only its own tail protrudes from between its fangs.
• North Carolina appears to feature a close race between Trump-endorsed Rep Ted Budd (R) and former State Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley (D), as MSN reports from ten days ago: The most recent polling for the Senate contest was conducted by Civitas/Cygnal on behalf of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think-tank. That survey showed Budd ahead by only 2 percent, well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.95 percent. The Trump-backed Republican was supported by 44 percent of likely North Carolina voters compared to 42 percent that backed Beasley. Carried out from May 21 to 22, the poll included 600 respondents. That and another poll also cited were awfully darn small, though. Wait for bigger polls or bigger gaps before pinning your political identity on the results of this race.
• BayNews9 reports that incumbent North Dakota Senator John Thune Hoeven (R) won his primary easily and will face engineering professor and political newcomer Katrina Christiansen (D). This seems to change little in the political calculus.
• The Utah primaries have not yet been held, but the most likely matchup has been polled, and shows incumbent Senator Mike Lee (R) with a slight lead over Evan McMullin. Let’s wait a month and see if Senator Lee has incurred the wrath of Utahn voters, or merely a frown.
• Like Utah, Vermont primaries have not been held, but in this race for an open seat currently held by the Democrats, Rep Peter Welch (D) reportedly polls at 62%, while the likely Republican candidate, former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, was favored by only 27%. I hadn’t heard of any Republican expectations of a pickup of the Vermont Senate seat, and that’s probably just as well.

Updates as warranted. No warranties apply.

And the stories concerning the dark side of cryptocurrencies keep coming:

In 2018, Alex Mashinsky held a dinner at an upscale restaurant in New York. The entrepreneur’s goal was to attract “whales” — crypto-speak for large-scale currency holders who can move markets — to invest in a nascent entity he’d created called Celsius Network.

The Ukraine-born, Israel-raised businessman spoke charmingly and passionately, according to a person who was at the dinner and described it on the condition of anonymity because it was a private event. He laid out his mission of “unbanking,” in which investors can deposit cryptocurrency outside the traditional financial system. Central to the pitch were unusually high yields for depositors in his Celsius Network — as much as 30 percent — made possible, the New York-based Mashinsky explained, because their money would be loaned out at high rates to those needing it for short-term crypto investments.

“It was incredible to watch — everyone in the room was enthralled,” said the guest. “The whales were excited and ready to write checks. Even people who might have been skeptical were on board.” [WaPo]

Sounds like a classic grift. Charismatic representative, referencing utopian ideals and, more importantly, appealing to the dark side of the human, or at least Western, psyche: Greed. Replace whale with mark; whale is far too euphemistic. If you don’t know the what of a mark, go look it up and get out of crypto now, and don’t return until you’ve learned to sniff out the con man.

Still having doubts?

Yet many of Mashinsky’s adherents have refused to give up. They see the freeze not as a sign of malfeasance but as one more piece of evidence that traditional finance wants to destroy crypto and will stop at nothing to realize its aim.

“Everyone take a look. If this is true, it’s a coordinated attack to take Celsius out. My anger is not at Alex & Celsius but at the short sellers. Spread the word!!!” said a user with the handle @evanrodts, referring to a theory that the company has been victimized by those betting on its failure.

“I have all my savings in Celsius because I trust your company,” noted the Celsius advocate @MichalMike18. “Please pull through.”

All set to throw good money after bad, which is a classic psychological symptom of someone thoroughly taken in. Even if this wasn’t a grift – and guaranteeing 30% returns sound like a grift to me – those with stars in their eyes are acting out, while others are going to swallow their losses and never say a thing.

Ego has its day.

The televised January 6th panel meetings keep rolling along, and per usual I shan’t try to summarize this one. But I will point out that this is another bend in the path of the condemnation of former President Trump for corruption. It consists of two points:

1. The official view. This consisted of three witnesses who had contact with various members of Trump’s inner circle, including himself, and showed the clumsy dance of Trump’s Dance Ensemble trying to ride that line between plausibly investigatory and corruption. Trump led the way in irreversibly crossing that line, as summarized in the replayed clips from his hour+ phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in which he solicits corruption from the Secretary of State. I really do encourage my readers to watch those clips, and if they seem alien or even reasonable, rewatch them. They are a near-master’s class in the Art of the Bully, employing first the carrot, then the stick, suggesting the cheat wasn’t really a cheat, and that no one would blame him for being “late” to find those votes. Raffensperger was too smart, though, to fall for the mixture of rewards, threats, and blandishments, even if he was a fool to support Trump in his reelection bid.

   Also present was elder statesman and Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who described the bluff of Sure, we have the evidence, we’ll send it to you, with an implicit After you do us a little favor from Trump and Giuliani. He never received the said evidence.And Raffensperger’s COO, Gabe Sterling, described his interactions with the Trump circle, underlining its mendacity.

2. The personal view. Raffensperger, Bowers, and Sterling also presented the personal affects of computer-powered harassment, a maneuver that should fill everyone who participated with crippling shame. But the real stars of this part of the hearing were Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, her mother, and her grandmother, who had been accused by name by Trump’s inner circle of corrupting the Georgia elections. Moss and her mother appear to have PTSD. The story she told, presumably confirmed by law enforcement, was horrific; the idea that “patriotic” Americans would have invaded her grandmother’s home in order to try to perform a “citizen’s arrest” is, again, so shameful that I’d recommend those people emigrate to Russia. Immediately.

These two views should serve to alienate independents from ever voting for Trump, or a Trumpist, again. The slight change in strategy of using the Moss family, whose political affiliation, if any, are not stated, as well as Sterling, once again political affiliation unstated, rather than staying with Republicans, current or former, was necessary as they are witnesses and victims with the most impact.

And that was a lot of impact.

I hope more and more Americans are watching, so that they understand this monster who occupied the Oval Office for four years too many.

University of Minnesota chemical engineering researchers have come up with something clever – a way to replace expensive catalyzing metals with cheaper metals:

A team of energy researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have invented a groundbreaking device that electronically converts one metal into behaving like another to use as a catalyst for speeding chemical reactions. The fabricated device, called a “catalytic condenser,” is the first to demonstrate that alternative materials that are electronically modified to provide new properties can yield faster, more efficient chemical processing. …

The catalytic condenser device uses a combination of nanometer films to move and stabilize electrons at the surface of the catalyst. This design has the unique mechanism of combining metals and metal oxides with graphene to enable fast electron flow with surfaces that are tunable for chemistry.

“Using various thin film technologies, we combined a nano-scale film of alumina made from low-cost abundant aluminum metal with graphene, which we were then able to tune to take on the properties of other materials,” said Tzia Ming Onn, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota who fabricated and tested the catalytic condensers. “The substantial ability to tune the catalytic and electronic properties of the catalyst exceeded our expectations.”

It seems to be a programmable device to make one metal look like another, rather like Field Programmable Gate Arrays can be used to simulate a CPU or other device. OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s still cool.

Unless you’re a catalytic converter thief. But with electric vehicles being the future, they already knew their future is limited.

Colorado Pols evaluation of the 2022 Colorado primary elections includes a dollop of snark:

(R) Joe O’Dea (25%)↓
The only thing O’Dea has to talk about is what other people are doing that he doesn’t like.

And that’s not the only bit.

Our pink front yard peony has just one bloom on it this year.

Perhaps a bit eager for the camera.

Well, that’s another step up.

We are sick and tired of the Republicans in Name Only surrendering to Joe Biden & the radical Left.

Order your RINO Hunting Permit today! pic.twitter.com/XLMdJnAzSK

— Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) June 20, 2022

Mr. Greitens is running for the GOP nomination for the soon-to-be empty Senate seat in Missouri. In this ad, which may or may not also be on television, Greitens alienates all the moderate Republicans who might otherwise vote for him, and probably horrifies most of the independents.

No doubt, Greitens is trying to close the deal with the Missouri GOP base, but this could be a costly mistake, depending on who wins the Democratic primary, and how much support they get from the national Democrats.

Lefty Coaster on Daily Kos has put together a collection of tweets from the Texas GOP Convention that documents, among other issues, that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the latest victim of the frantic rightward slide of the GOP, at least in Texas. Here’s one tweet:

Ted Cruz gets heckled and harassed by a right winger at TX State GOP Convention, who calls him a coward and a globalist, asks him how he can like Trump after he called his wife ugly, then finished with Cancun. pic.twitter.com/L1hEvN8nV5

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 19, 2022

My long time readers will be unsurprised that Cruz is no longer a favorite of the far right of the GOP, but instead probably could not get nominated for the Presidency because he’s too … liberal.

But the other element of interest is the use of globalist as an epithet. While there’s certainly some legitimate concerns for unskilled and semi-skilled labor in a global market, and these should be addressed, it’s a bit ironic in a state that, because of its oil industry, has become as rich as any due to the global economy.

Isolationism connotes control, because one cannot control what’s happening on the other side of the world, and this increasingly jibes with the GOP, from its stance on abortion to the attempts of the GOP to punish those companies that don’t toe the Party line, to even their stance on guns – so long as they see guns as effective personal protection.

Which is mighty odd for a Party that is otherwise supposedly based on faith.

Something a bit alarming to read on awakening:

BIG SUNSPOT ALERT: Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it’s enormous. The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours: movie. AR3038 has an unstable ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that habors energy for M-class solar flares, and it is directly facing Earth. [Spaceweather.com]

Granted, M-class is not X-class, but still.

Costs are apparently quite high for cryptocurrencies – especially the human costs:

People are already losing their savings after buying into misguided hype. In Argentina, where inflation reached 61% this year, some hoped to protect their money by placing it in TerraUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar. Then, when Terra entered a death spiral last month, they lost nearly all of it. “I invested in a stablecoin that today is worth $0.08,” one woman in Buenos Aires told Rest of World. “I feel sickened and helpless.” [“Crypto Crash Dashes Dreams In Latin America,” Alex Kantrowitz, Big Technology]

Quite disheartening. Will any of the crypto-community ride to the rescue of those discovering the risks of the cryptocurrency world the hard way?

I doubt it.

But …

If there’s a saving grace in the current meltdown, it’s that cryptocurrency proponents in Latin America haven’t yet convinced a critical mass of people to join them. So the crash has spared many. In Ecuador — where the switch to the dollar worked out well enough after the initial pain — it’s currently illegal to buy goods with Bitcoin, though you can buy Bitcoin as an investment. In El Salvador, where Bitcoin is legal tender, most people still don’t use it for transactions. “People don’t ask to pay with it,” said Nelson Rauda Zablah, an El Salvadorian journalist at El Faro. “There’s a lot of micro speculation going on there.”

Speculation in currency isn’t unknown, but when it’s the only thing happening, it suggests a real failure to meet the putative function.

In Pennsylvania, it appears the Democrats have some hopes of flipping retiring Senator Toomey’s (R-PA) seat:

According to the poll, 46% of likely Pennsylvania voters said they would support Fetterman to represent the state in the Senate, while 37% said they would vote for Oz. Thirteen percent of respondents said they were undecided, while the rest said they would support other candidates. [Fox News]

There’s still time for Fetterman to stumble, but I suspect the guy is too canny. I rate this a likely Democratic pickup.

And then there’s this lady, who did most of her acting through her eyes. My Arts Editor called her “goat’s eyes.”

Pilot X (1937, aka Death In The Air) is a bit of an odd bird. On the one hand, it’s a clumsily constructed murder mystery in which all the killings take place via World War I style planes attacking their victims, also in World War I planes. The group of suspects, except for the tallish dude, are all World War I vets and practically visually indistinguishable from each other, even with two European pilots among them. Nor are they permitted to build sympathetic bonds with the audience, which means we are neither shocked when X’s identity is revealed, nor tragically affected by his murder of his victims. And this idiot doctor telephones someone to tell him he knows the identity of the murder, come quick! Yeah, he didn’t come quick enough. An irritating trope of the genre.

Yet, there are some positive elements. The special effects were surprisingly good for the era, in particular the guy who dies from his cockpit catching fire, an almost upsetting scene. The “stock footage” (according to Wikipedia) is actually fantastically well photographed for the era, including the planes fated to enter their terminal dives. And there was a scene in which time passing and alcohol being consumed was implied by just a few seconds of scene cutaways. However, that nice bit of cinematography was wasted, as I didn’t know who was drinking heavily, and why it mattered.

Most importantly, though, was the acknowledgment of PTSD (not so-named, of course, in a film of this age) being suffered by several of the suspect pilots. While the portrayal was perhaps a trifle hysterical – I recommended to my Arts Editor that one actor get dental work done after all the scenery chewing in response to PTSD – it was a note of reality that the military was, at the time, resistant to embracing.

All that said, I don’t recommend this unless you’re a big fan of those old planes and their crazy looking dogfights. I found the movie more than a little irritating.

Fast fashion:

The term fast fashion refers to a large sector of the fashion industry whose business model relies on cheap and speedy production of low quality clothing, which gets pumped quickly through stores in order to meet the latest and newest trends.

The term was first coined by the New York Times in the early 1990s when Spanish apparel giant Zara arrived in New York, to describe the brand’s mission to take only 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to being sold in stores. Some of the biggest and most notable fast fashion brands in the world include the likes of UNIQLO, Forever 21 and H&M.

The fast fashion business model involves rapid design, production, distribution and marketing, allowing brands and retailers to pull large quantities of greater product variety and allow consumers to get more style and product differentiation at a low price.

However, a system that relies on such cheap and rapid production only encourages excessive consumption as people are inherently attracted to low priced goods, many of which are slaves to the latest trends. For individual consumers, it is also easier and more economic to snatch up cheap clothing that have short life spans compared to splurging on high quality, long lasting items that will very shortly fall out of popularity. [Earth.org]

That’s a new one on me, but my Arts Editor is knowledgeable. Noted in “Fast fashion is ruining the planet – here’s how to make it sustainable,” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (4 June 2022, paywall):

A FRIEND of mine runs a vintage clothes shop in north London. Every few weeks, she visits a vast warehouse on the edge of the city to rummage through piles of discarded clothing. Most of it is worthless, but if you know what you are looking for, there are diamonds in the rough.

The warehouse has a long history. It was once a clearing house for the low-quality wool scraps called shoddy that were used to make cheap clothing for the masses in Victorian Britain. A century on, little has changed. Nowadays, it is full of modern-day shoddy: low-quality cotton, polyester, viscose and nylon, all in the form of cheap clothing made for the masses around the world. Except that this stuff is going to landfill and incinerators, not being reused.

The items are the products of an industry that, in the past 30 years, has become one of the most successful and also most destructive on the planet. Known as fast fashion, it has filled our wardrobes with cheap and cheerful clothes. But after three decades of remorseless growth, the model is butting up against fundamental environmental limits and there is widespread agreement – even from within the industry – that it is time to hit the brakes.

How about if we just get rid of fast fashion? Just have a negative, noticeable reaction everytime you sight someone wearing fast fashion. You’ll be punched only two or three times, I’m sure.

I must admit to being charmed by the nouning of the word shoddy. Rather like C&H, but different.

From WaPo on public opinions on transgenderism:

Cherisse Villanueva, 34, a pharmacy technician in Honolulu, said she knows more than 10 transgender people and believes society should be accepting of them. “Everybody’s human regardless of how they feel or what they were born with,” she said.

But Villanueva said she does not believe that transgender girls and women should compete against cisgender ones. “Not to be mean, but biologically they’re built like a male, even though they identify as female … so of course they would have the advantage of winning.” Villanueva, a tennis player, added that she is “already intimidated when we play co-ed tennis and there’s a male on the other side.”

Villanueva said she didn’t know how to resolve the question of mental health repercussions for transgender female athletes who are not allowed to compete against other women and girls. “This issue is such a dilemma,” she said. “It’s hard to make it equal.”

That seems both typical and acceptable to me. Resolving such questions is why we have debate and discussion, rather than people running around screaming “bigot!”

This is known as the dead cat flop:

Totally unposed.

Steve Benen is upset that Jim Marchant has won the GOP nomination for Nevada Secretary of State, which is responsible for state elections:

As unhinged conspiracy theorists go, Marchant is not a casual advocate of ridiculous ideas. On the contrary, the Nevadan has been an enthusiastic proponent of discredited nonsense. The report added:

Marchant told NBC News then he would not have certified the 2020 election if he had been the secretary of state. He also said that he wouldn’t rule out, if he was to hold the office in 2024, advocating for an alternate slate of Trump electors if Trump were on the ballot. (Marchant pushed for an alternate slate in 2020.)

If elected, the Republican also intends to eliminate early voting, voting by mail, and all electronic voting machines — not because Nevada has a history of problems in any of these areas, but because Marchant is fully committed to a Trump-inspired vision.

At one point during his statewide primary campaign, Marchant went so far as to argue, “Your vote hasn’t counted for decades. You haven’t elected anybody. The people that are in office have been selected.”

Here’s the thing: if Marchant is elected to his sought-after position, he’ll be under the spotlight. He wants to eliminate voting machines and early voting? Fine. Count the votes by hand, and Nevada can look bad when their results are the last in.

And if the results are in line with polls and previous elections, he gets a stronger reputation as a breathless, hair-on-fire conspiracy theorist.

That’s where things get interesting. These folks come with their own dollop of ego, and in order to protect his ego, Marchant may decide to indulge in what he’s claiming is happening – a bit of corruption.

Of course, this is a tricky business. Corruption is a well-studied phenomenon, and its detection is not an impossible task. Add in the fact that Marchant, through his campaign tactics thus far, has a less-than-stellar reputation. The most successful corrupt people are those with great reputations, typically, with a charismatic – or so I’m told – like Trump a standout exception. Depending on how you define that a nation recognizes a corrupt personality, of course.

So Marchant would then enhance the reputation of Trumpists as a pack of disreputable grifters.

And maybe Marchant discovers “something.” I personally give that a 1% chance of happening, given the surveillance that many institutions apply, but I’ll give it a 1% chance. Then that’ll be interesting, and good for the nation, too.

There’s certainly risk if Marchant wins election, but generally this seems more win-win to me. Especially since he’ll discredit the Trumpists even more.

From the CDC:

One wonders about error bars. The map at the link is interactive, and adds an interactive table.

Significance I leave to the reader.

I just finished reviewing the third televised meeting of the January 6th panel. It’s becoming clear that the Republicans divide into two camps: those who are old-line, intellectual, loyal to the Constitution, and the new Republicans, loyal to the guy who gave them their positions, perhaps believing their own propaganda concerning the ‘evil’ Democrats, and … not particularly bright. Given the statements of and critiquing Professor Eastman, whoever awarded him that doctorate should be ashamed and reverse the conferral, and that appears to be Claremont Graduate School.

But long-term readers should not be unsurprised.

I also observed, in the montage clip of the actual violence at the Capitol, that I think the rioters were quite earnest in their beliefs concerning the theft of the election.

A Baptisia of Hope.

But, and this is important, sincerity is not an excuse. Just as easily resolvable ignorance is generally not considered to be an excuse for committing crimes, an inability to understand and think rationally about the political and legal system we use to keep ourselves in a relatively peaceful and prosperous ways is not optional. It is a duty for Americans. Understanding the philosophical concerns of corruption and its negative impacts on society, the competing concerns of government of Law vs Man, the importance of specialization, and recognizing that ‘common sense’ is rarely applicable when it comes to technical issues concerning, say voting, is, or should be, necessary to an American’s informal education. That is, they should go and seek it out.

These are so important that now people are going to jail because they didn’t pay attention, and did not learn to be rational. They are non-rational actors who allowed themselves to be used, and are now paying, or going to pay, the price: punishment of various and unpleasant sorts.

We can call it a failure of education, but, really, this may be deliberate malpractice by portions of society. We need to find a solution.

The modern mob-boss:

It’d be a cryin’ shame if you were to become a bin liner!

Courtesy my Arts Editor.

And may moss roses smile on your destiny.