Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sometimes I just goggle over certain numbers, like this estimate of how much tax cheating will be avoided by increasing funding for the IRS:

On one key question — how much money will be raised by providing $80 billion to increase IRS enforcement on rich tax cheats — the CBO said it would raise $207 billion over 10 years, meaning the net savings would be $127 billion. …

The core dispute is over whether, in the face of IRS enforcement, wealthy tax cheats would find new ways to avoid taxes (as the CBO believes), or whether more would actually pay up. Treasury believes the latter, projecting new revenue will come directly (from people forced to pay what they otherwise wouldn’t), and indirectly (as enforcement convinces rich scofflaws to stay on the straight and narrow).

Giving BBB a big boost, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who has been critical of the Biden administration, argues that the more optimistic scenario is correct, noting that the way CBO calculates gains from enforcement “is conservative to the point of implausibility.” [WaPo]

Those are some amazing numbers, don’t you think? Tax cheats so bold as to cost us multiple billions of dollars?

Makes you wonder how many consider themselves to be good people, too.

Batman and his trust sidekick, Fabio.

Age Of Treason (1993), speaking of cross-genre movies, is another member of this group, and it’s a member of another group, of which there are few members. This story has the odd quality of having virtually no really sympathetic characters – maybe the executive assistant, Niobe, is the exception – and, yet, partway through, my Arts Editor commented she didn’t like the characters, but still wanted to watch the movie.

So what are we crossing here? Think a rather soft version of the Roman corruption movies & TV series, like Rome (2005-2007), without the explicit violence and sex, that more or less being implied, paired with …

A private detective story.

Marcus Didius Falco is a private dick in old, corrupt Rome, up to his eyeballs in debt, and well aware that in this year, the year of four emperors, the attention of members of the higher classes can be deadly to someone like him. Just to remind him, the colossal statuary head of the caesar he hates the most, the late Nero, seems to be following him around, dragged by slaves, and upsetting his concentration even more than the wretched wine he consumes by the bottle.

So it doesn’t help when someone tries to pay for his services by giving him ownership of the gladiator Justus, a deadly monster in the arena, a bit of a naive dude outside of it. Falco has little use for him, but must drag him along as he investigates two new cases: the disappearance of his own nephew, and a case he doesn’t want but must take for the money, the disappearance of Cato, the brother of the wife of assistant to the emperor Vespasian, Pertinax. Her name is Helena.

Falco wonders if his nephew is dead, and goes to the valley of the dead, where all the dead usually end up. You know, being dead and all. He doesn’t find his nephew, but there is a corpse he wasn’t looking for there: Cato’s. Returning it to Helena is a risk he must take, resulting in an entanglement with Pertinax, and soon Falco is flailing about in fine private dick fashion, finding connections between fertility cults, ambitious men and women – and all of it centered on the Emperor Vespasian.

Justus becomes useful, if not quite as anticipated, and soon Vespasian finds himself in desperate straits, with Falco holding the pivot upon which his life balances.

The story’s a bit ponderous, weighted down with Falco narrating the story. On the other hand, there may be anachronisms galore here – including Falco’s Cockney (?) accent – but there’s a sense of authenticity brought on by an attention to detail: the reproduction of the frantic hubbub of a Rome ruled by ambitious men to whom the law is little more than a warning. The simple act of trimming a roof so that a statue in transit can pass, which I noticed out of the corner of my eye, suggested some real thoughtfulness.

And, speaking of statuary, it’s unusual that a monstrous marble head can produce a bit of comic relief in a movie in which bodies, past and future, are piling up so fast, and yet Nero’s sneering head manages to pull it off.

I’m certainly, certainly not going to recommend this movie, and yet I will admit to a certain fondness for it, in retrospect. It made me laugh in a few places, and appreciate the work of actors who I’d never heard of, and may never hear of again. You’re unlikely to just stumble across it, but if you do, give it a gander.

Seigniorage:

Seigniorage /ˈseɪnjərɪdʒ/, also spelled seignorage or seigneurage (from the Old French seigneuriage, “right of the lord (seigneur) to mint money”), is the difference between the value of money and the cost to produce and distribute it. The term can be applied in two ways:

• Seigniorage derived from specie (metal coins) is a tax added to the total cost of a coin (metal content and production costs) that a customer of the mint had to pay, and which was sent to the sovereign of the political region.
• Seigniorage derived from notes is more indirect; it is the difference between interest earned on securities acquired in exchange for banknotes and the cost of producing and distributing the notes.

“Monetary seigniorage” is where sovereign-issued securities are exchanged for newly-printed banknotes by a central bank, allowing the sovereign to “borrow” without needing to repay. Monetary seigniorage is sovereign revenue obtained through routine debt monetization, including expansion of the money supply during GDP growth and meeting yearly inflation targets. [Wikipedia]

Noted in the article “Stablecoin,” Wikipedia:

Seigniorage-style coins utilize algorithms to control the stablecoin’s money supply, similar to a central bank’s approach to printing and destroying currency. Seigniorage-based stablecoins are a less popular form of stablecoin.^[9]

Significant features of seigniorage-style stablecoins are:

• Adjustments are made on-chain,
• No collateral is needed to mint coins,
• Value is controlled by supply and demand through algorithms, stabilizing price.

Basis was one example of a seigniorage-style coin.

This, in turn, was noted in “Crypto companies, on defense in Washington, scramble to assemble a lobbying machine,” Tom Newmyer, WaPo:

Financial regulators are not waiting to act. A Treasury Department-led group this month urged lawmakers to give bank regulators new authority to crack down on a type of digital token called stablecoins, arguing that left unchecked, their skyrocketing growth could threaten the broader economy. Separately, the Federal Reserve and other key regulators recently completed a review aimed at coordinating their approach to the industry. The agencies have not produced the findings yet.

I know there’s a lot of bitterness and disbelief concerning Kyle Rittenhouse being found innocent of all charges earlier today. I’m neutral on the matter, as not only did I not sit on the jury, I didn’t even follow the trial.

But I did read this CNN article in which they cite legal experts who were unsurprised by the verdict. That caught my attention, because I’m not an expert, and neither are most of the people – numbering in the millions, I’m sure – who are commenting on it. So what’s going on in the minds of the experts?

Wisconsin law allows the use of deadly force only if “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” And because Rittenhouse’s attorneys claimed self-defense, state law meant the burden fell on prosecutors to disprove Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.

And it was an uphill battle to climb from the start, because of the facts in this case, experts said.

“(Prosecutors) weren’t able to show that his response to each of these men, to each of these sets of threats was unreasonable,” criminal defense attorney Sara Azari told CNN’s Pamela Brown.

“When the jury came back a couple days ago and watched the videos… frame by frame, they were looking to see whether Kyle did something to provoke the threat and whether his response to that threat was reasonable in terms of using deadly force and they agreed with the defense that it was,” Azari added.

Putting myself in the shoes of the jury, if what they saw was someone reacting in self-defense to an existential threat, then just maybe he was justified in the moment. I don’t think he should have been there, as I think he betrayed severe immaturity in interfering with local authorities who were dealing with the situation, but he was there.

There’s a larger point inherent in what I’ve written so far, and it’s this: perhaps the left should take a big step backward, make the very-hard-to-swallow assumption that the jury got it right – remember, legal experts were unsurprised by this verdict – and ask themselves: What is wrong with their information-gathering and / or information analysis strategies?

So far, all I’ve seen are bitter claims that this is all about white supremacy, that the judge was prejudiced, that our moral system is wrong. These are all intellectually lazy, unless they come with detailed and persuasive arguments that engage with this specific incident, because they disengage the authors from any personal responsibility for their disappointments. Yes, that’s right – lazy. They point, without supporting evidence, at some terrible power as being responsible for what they perceive to be an injustice, then they shrug their shoulders, incidentally disrespecting a jury that put in something near three weeks of examining evidence and making judgments, and proclaim the system broken.

And then go off and hate their fellow Americans some more.

They may be right, maybe this is a result of a system informed by white supremacy, but to my mind, the jury, unless later proven to be prejudiced, did its duty to its best and found Rittenhouse, within the framework of applicable law, not guilty. If you were surprised at this, or not surprised but certain that it was the wrong verdict, perhaps, if you’re intellectually honest, you should be asking if there’s something wrong in your information sources – I know I was mislead into thinking Rittenhouse shooting at random – or in your analysis.

And maybe society is broken. But, perhaps, not in the way the left would have us believe. Or the right. If we’re so willing to hate each other, maybe that’s the clue to the real source problem.

Dais:

1. a platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it [Vocabulary.com]

Noted in “It wasn’t easy, but House Dems passed their Build Back Better Act,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chaired the proceedings and banged the gavel at 9:46 a.m. eastern. As she exited the dais, the California Democrat was greeted by celebrating colleagues who chanted, “Nancy! Nancy!” as she walked through her assembled colleagues.

Today Professor Richardson and Erick Erickson managed to echo each other in a way that is positively eerie, as if their epistemic bubbles are connected by some hidden tube, perhaps like the hypothesized connection between astronomical black holes and white holes. Richardson is up first, discussing, initially, the censuring of Rep Gosar (R-AZ) for his hacked anime of himself killing Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and assaulting another, before coming to a conclusion:

This is an important moment. It appears that all but two Republican lawmakers are willing to embrace violence against Democrats if it will lead to political power.

There is a subtle difference between their willingness to defend the violence of the January 6 insurrectionists, and today’s stance. When Republicans have defended the insurrectionists, they did so with the argument—false though it was—that the rioters simply wanted to defend the country from a stolen election. Today there was no pretense of an excuse for Gosar’s violent fantasy; it was defended as normal.

The march toward Republicans’ open acceptance of violence has been underway since January 6, as leaders embraced the Big Lie that the Democrats stole the 2020 election, and then as leaders have stood against mask and vaccine mandates as tyranny. Those lies have led to a logical outcome: their supporters believe that in order to defend the nation, they should fight back against those they have been told are destroying the country.

When Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, an organization devoted to promoting right-wing values on campuses, spoke in Idaho last month, the audience applauded when a man asked when he could start killing Democrats. “When do we get to use the guns?” the man said. “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk denounced the question not on principle, but because he said it would play into Democratic hands. He agreed that, as he said, “We are living under fascism.”

Erickson, also today, has to go back in history a bit to make a case, before coming to these conclusions:

According to a 2001 report, “Leftist extremists were responsible for three-fourths of the officially designated acts of terrorism in America in the 1980s.” They tend to be younger and better educated than right-wing extremists and they tend to live in urban areas thereby making high population centers more target-rich. (Source)

Most importantly, progressives have now internalized several propositions that make it very likely they are about to re-embrace their historic violence.

First, progressives believe they are now the majority in the United States. Progressives, bolstered by media, cultural, and academic institutions present themselves as the dominant actors, voices, and policy makers in the United States. As much as the right, in the Bush and Obama era, sought to run hardcore conservatives in moderate areas convinced they could win, now progressives are routinely rallying around progressives in moderate areas convinced their victories are inevitable.

Second, progressives view the GOP as a threat to democracy. In so doing, just as some Republicans have internalized 2020 was a stolen election, it has become dogma for Democrats that the GOP is suppressing votes. Voter suppression explains the Democrats’ losses and, again, the progressives believe they’re really dominant. As they internalize both that the GOP is suppressing the vote and that the GOP is a threat to democracy, as a wave election shapes up in 2022, we should expect the left to mobilize more aggressively to stop those they view as a threat to democracy.

Third, progressives have internalized both that we have only a decade to stop the irreversible destruction of the planet and that non-progressive forces are blocking solutions with the help of corporate interests. They truly believe we’re headed towards the end of humanity as we know it unless extreme measures are taken yesterday. They fundamentally, truly, and very literally believe the planet is at a tipping point and the United States must act immediately. But the United States will not act because of Republicans, Joe Manchin, and corporations.

There’s more points, but I’ll stop here. Except to note that his assertion that progressives live in their own little bubble sounds a lot like the right-wing epistemic bubble that has been recognized for twenty years:

Fourth, while only about a quarter of Americans are on Twitter, it is predominated by progressives who increasingly in the real world and online are more prone to self-isolate with likeminded people. It makes them less able to relate, more willing to believe their own narratives and mythologies, and less able to understand or tolerate dissent. It makes it more likely that progressives will both generate and believe online agitation against conservatives and bolster the first point — they think they are the majority. They think Twitter is real life. This is not my opinion. This is the actual data. See also this.

Bold mine – the words that describe the Republican Party stalwarts the best are what he uses for his political opponents.

There are a lot of “it’s worth noting” things in both posts. Erickson mentions the old Weather Underground group, a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, without noting that it was an anti-Vietnam War group. The Vietnam War is best known for the dubiousness of everything connected to it, from how the soldiers were treated by society, to the deceptions practiced by the military, right up to and including the Secretary of Defense, to the barbarity of both sides. He wishes to bring to the fore a supposed lefty tendency to violence, without mentioning the terrible tragedy of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, or the shocking actions of Kirk that Richardson mentions.

And there’s no mention of the admittedly difficult subject of measuring frequency of violence, nor the question of the morality of violence – when is violence considered justified? If someone takes a completely legal action that threatens someone else’s existential future, is violence justified or not in the face of intransigence? How about the suggestion that violence connected to the abortion issue is simply murderous violence would no doubt draw protests that they’re protecting unborn babies – a ridiculous remark to my ears, but justified to him.

Richardson, likewise, ignores her own side in favor of the other. Even today, though, we can see extreme actions by the left, such as this:

Two young women scaled a huge coal handling machine shortly before dawn on Wednesday, disrupting operations at the world’s largest coal port for several hours to protest what they say is Australia’s lack of action on climate change.

“My name is Hannah, and I am here abseiled off the world’s largest coal port,” 21-year-old Hannah Doole declared on a live-streamed video as she hovered high over massive piles of coal bound for export. “I’m here with my friend Zianna, and we’re stopping this coal terminal from loading all coal into ships and stopping all coal trains.” [WaPo]

It’s not precisely violence, but it is an extremism. How many more steps before murder becomes acceptable?

For me, I see this as another example of one of my favorite morbid subjects, the historical demographic shifts described in SECULAR CYCLES (Turchin & Nefedov), in action. There’s no doubt that each of these writers are elite members of society, one a professor on the left, and the other a lawyer and radio host on the right (who, incidentally, disclaims being an intellectual), and one of the observations of Turchin and Nefedov is the tendency of a disintegrating empire’s elite to engage in internecine warfare, once all existential foes have been vanquished and overpopulation has set in. Richardson and Erickson are each attempting to control the narrative by which the “warriors” essential to the power of the elites will be attracted to this or that faction, one by spinning stories that invoke American history, mostly from the American Civil War forward, the other using a religious foundation that preserves an element of irrationality and love of amateurs quite out of proportion to its destructiveness to society.

And which side will win? I remain a rationalist and agnostic, which means I find Erickson’s moral and intellectual foundation at least somewhat dubious. Nor is Erickson’s history particular encouraging. For example, his claim that the passing of Justice Ginsburg and the ascension of Judge Barrett to SCOTUS would result in riots and bloodshed, to the fault of Ginsburg, never came true. Some people turned red in the face, it’s true, but it wasn’t bloodshed. In brief, Erickson’s understanding of how the world acts is not something I’d put money on.

But the left, traditionally the resting place for at least pretending to respect science, has certainly diminished my confidence in the last few years. Between, again, violence, and the apparent dismissal of the liberal democracy under which we’ve lived for so long, in company with the use of debate as a way forward, in favor of near-religious decrees, it’s become hard to see a clear way forward without dismissing this political grab for power. When Erickson or, more credibly, Andrew Sullivan dismisses claims of meritocracy, or punctuality, or any of a number of other qualities as being merely tools of oppression, it is depressing – not because either is wrong, but because they are right, and it’s a self-condemnation of the left and its lack of intellectual rigor.

In the end, we may see violence on both ends, and whether this is a condemnation of political positions or religious institutions or civics education, I don’t know. I deplore it. But it may be inevitable.

I think I saw this guy in a Star Trek episode, too. Maybe he’s a real monster?

Lord Of Illusions (1995) is a fusion movie, an attempt to cross one genre with another. These can sometimes work, usually if each genre works to illuminate, or even add to, the tropes of the other genre – or if the storytellers’ tongues are firmly glued to their cheek.

Lord Of Illusions is unfortunately earnest. Private detective Harry D’Amour, hired to investigate an insurance fraud, stumbles into the murder of a fortune-teller, Quaid, who, prior to messily expiring, warns D’Amour that “The Puritan” is returning. D’Amour is then hired by Dorothea Swann, the wife of the famed illusionist Phillip Swann, who are both obscurely connected to Quaid.

D’Amour is to be Phillip’s bodyguard, but it’s an exceedingly short assignment: Swann dies that night in an accident during his stage show, shish-kebabed by a few swords while he struggles to escape.

D’Amour, annoyed and, perhaps, a bit shaky from a brush with an exorcist in a previous story, investigates the death, including a visit to the repository of true magic at the Magic Castle (a real place) and, amid the growing piles of bodies, discovers Swann could do real magic.

Soon enough, Dorothea is kidnapped by the followers of The Puritan, a narcissist by the name of Nix, and Phillip Swann, previously considered dead and gone, turns up, terrified enough to wet his pants, but feeling an obscure loyalty towards Dorothea, so we’re off and galloping into the desert, returning to the scene of a crime more than a decade go, where people go mad and demons flit about, and a final confrontation with Nix. His followers meet some disgusting ends, we have a final battle, and, well, it’s all rather dull.

The problem is that the supernatural horror side of this story is too dependent on pulling handkerchiefs out of its ear in order to plug plot holes. None of the characters are either interesting or sympathetic, although Nix’ resemblance of certain politicians of today is a bit jarring. Not supernatural-wise – I hope – but in the monstrous personality flaws he exhibits.

D’Amour fails to generate much interest, as he doesn’t seem to be world-weary, like Bogart, or pursuing any kind of character arc – it just seems to be a job. He may be getting more and more horrified as the story goes on, but that’s about it. He’s a bit worn around the edges, but just a bit nappy – nothing actually fun.

So, despite the fine special effects, I want those two hours back. Violent and boring is not a good combination.

In our orbit there’s not just us and the Moon, but also the Apollo asteroids, including this one:

According to a new analysis, a chunk of rock that hangs out near Earth’s orbital path along the Sun seems to be made of the same material as the Moon, suggesting that it broke off at some point to be flung into space. But how, and when, remains a mystery.

The rock is named 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, and astronomers already found it interesting before this latest development.

The object belongs to a class of asteroids known as the Apollo asteroids, which more or less share Earth’s orbit around the Sun; but Kamoʻoalewa is also what is known as a quasi-satellite, staying near Earth over long periods and multiple orbits.

Kamoʻoalewa is small, just 46 to 58 meters or so in diameter (150 to 190 feet), and can only be seen in Earth’s sky for a few weeks every April. It wasn’t discovered until 2016, and learning more about it hasn’t been easy.

In this most recent effort to learn more, researchers made use of one of the most powerful telescopes on Earth, the Large Binocular Telescope at Mount Graham International Observatory. In 2017, they obtained observations that included the asteroid‘s spectrum – the distinct pattern generated by the way Kamoʻoalewa reflects light from the Sun. [ScienceAlert]

Maybe the coolest part, though, is the name:

It was named Kamoʻoalewa, a Hawaiian word that refers to an oscillating celestial object. [Wikipedia]

No pics, though.

Hippophagy:

1. the practice of eating horseflesh. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in Tasting Forbidden Flavors, Max Miller, somewhere around the 2:00 mark:

This time the nominee is an entire state Party:

The Wyoming Republican Party will no longer recognize Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP in its second formal rebuke for her criticism of former President Donald Trump.

The 31-29 vote Saturday in Buffalo, Wyoming, by the state party central committee followed votes by local GOP officials in about one-third of Wyoming’s 23 counties to no longer recognize Cheney as a Republican. [AP]

At the very least, it’s a condemnation of the Party for it to expect Cheney to be its personal thumb-puppet. But, at least to my mind, it’s a betrayal of the country for not realizing that, yes, Trump’s actions were impeachable offenses – as a number of Congressional GOP members recognized.

Spaceweather.com has an unsettling report on human activity messing with us all:

SPACE WEATHER AND THE RUSSIAN ASAT STRIKE: Russia just destroyed one of its own satellites. On Nov. 15, 2021, a missile launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome struck Kosmos 1408, shattering the old satellite into thousands of pieces. Debris came so close to the ISS that astronauts took shelter in their crew capsules, just in case they had to abandon ship.

Littering Earth orbit with debris is never a good idea. Space weather could make it much worse. To understand why, …

Go follow the link. Losing satellites means losing cheap communications, accurate weather forecasting such as incoming hurricanes, etc etc. Hurricanes that kill more than a thousand people are a big deal these days; back at the beginning of the 20th century, Galveston lost somewhere around ten thousand people to the 1900 storm, a magnitude more than today. If weather does become more violent as a result of anthropogenic climate change, then losing warnings means more people killed, as well as more damage, due to lack of preparation.

This is old and popular, but new to me, so you’re stuck with it.

CNN/Business has a report on the latest Alex Jones hijinks. Jones is a source that has been more than generous in the past – for hijinks:

Sandy Hook families suing InfoWars founder Alex Jones have won a case against him after a judge ruled against Jones who has failed to comply with the discovery process.

Jones and entities owned by him were found liable by default Monday in a defamation case against them.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis cited the defendants’ “willful noncompliance” with the discovery process as her core reasoning behind the ruling. She specifically noted that they had not turned over financial and analytics data requested multiple times by the Sandy Hook family plaintiffs.”

All the defendants have failed to fully and fairly comply with their discovery obligations,” Bellis said at the virtual hearing.

It’s not difficult to imagine a correlation between analytics of content access and financial returns, is it? By connecting that information, Jones’ wretched rants concerning Sandy Hook will give the Court insight into just how much money is generated by such fallacious sensationalism.

And that all feeds into the basic tale of an adoration of wealth & prestige. It’s lead Jones to believe he should defy all lawful societal orders because, well, money.

Which really isn’t that far from former President Trump, former advisor Steve Bannon, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows – The hell with the lawful, we refuse to give up what’s not ours!

A bunch of very dangerous five year olds. But that’s the culture of the right, and it’s dangerous.

In case you’re wondering if the mainstream media is getting stories right or not, Andrew Sullivan suggests – quite strong – that they’re not (The Weekly Dish, paywall):

Think of the other narratives the MSM pushed in recent years that have collapsed. They viciously defamed the Covington boys. They authoritatively told us that bounties had been placed on US soldiers in Afghanistan by Putin — and Trump’s denials only made them more certain. They told us that the lab-leak theory of Covid was a conspiracy theory with no evidence behind it at all. (The NYT actually had the story of the leak theory, by Donald McNeil, killed it, and then fired McNeil, their best Covid reporter, after some schoolgirls complained he wasn’t woke.) Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The MSM took the ludicrous story of Jussie Smollett seriously because it fit their nutty “white supremacy” narrative. They told us that a woman was brutally gang-raped at UVA (invented), that the Pulse mass shooting was driven by homophobia (untrue) and that the Atlanta spa shooter was motivated by anti-Asian bias (no known evidence for that at all). For good measure, they followed up with story after story about white supremacists targeting Asian-Americans, in a new wave of “hate,” even as the assaults were disproportionately by African Americans and the mentally ill.

As Greenwald noted, the NYT “published an emotionally gut-wrenching but complete fiction that never had any evidence — that Officer Sicknick’s skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob until he died.” The media told us that an alleged transgender exposure in the Wi Spa in Los Angeles was an anti-trans hoax (also untrue). They told us that the emails recovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation. They did this just before an election and used that claim to stymie the story on social media. But they were not Russian disinformation. They were a valid if minor news story the media consciously kept from its audience for partisan purposes.

If indeed these are all true, the MSM has damaged itself badly in the name of seeing everything through the lens of white supremacy and anti-Fox News.

On Persuasion, Zaid Jilani comes to the same conclusion that I did concerning the Democratic left and the recent off-year election, only with far more authority:

While Americans watched Democrats ousted by Republicans all over the nation, another trend also became clear: across the country, the left wing of the Democratic party failed to displace the party establishment.

In Buffalo, New York, for instance, things initially looked pretty good for the left. Over the summer, Democratic socialist India Walton had managed to win a victory in the mayoral primary, besting a four-term incumbent mayor named Byron Brown. But Brown decided to continue through the general election even though his name wasn’t even on the ballot, asking his constituents to “write down Byron Brown.” Write-in victories are rare in American political history, and so it was easy to assume that Walton, who went on to earn the endorsement of both of the state’s U.S. Senators, had it in the bag.

But no, Brown won decisively – through emphasis on keeping traditional policing staff levels. Jilani goes on to talk about Minneapolis, just a few miles to my west:

But the bigger picture shows that the left repeatedly failed to win intraparty debates even on the fertile ground of progressive cities. I have some insight into why this might be, having reported on these intraparty debates for years.

I recall a reporting trip I made to Minneapolis in 2017, the year that Frey was first elected mayor. I embedded with a socialist named Ginger Jentzen, who was running on a third-party ticket against the Democratic Party for a city council seat. While this is electoral suicide in much of the United States, the city’s ranked-choice voting system and left-wing bent made her a viable candidate.

Jentzen was a seasoned organizer who had helped run the campaign that won a $15 minimum wage for the city. She had bold plans that included introducing rent control to Minneapolis. But as I went with her door-to-door canvassing, I noticed that she had trouble addressing some of the concerns that her potential constituents raised with issues like crime. When constituents would tell her they felt unsafe at times, she would try to steer the conversation back to some social or economic policy. She was clearly uncomfortable endorsing more policing as a response to public safety concerns. She ended up losing the race.

Leading to:

Yes, there are times when politicians compromise so much away that they barely change the status quo. But being unable to compromise on anything is just as politically sinful as being willing to compromise on everything. If the left wants to take power and influence policy, it needs to shed its ideological inflexibility in the face of elections.

I’d discard the phrase ideological inflexibility and use a phrase with a bit more sting: political immaturity, brought on by political hubris. The latter means certainty beyond justification, the mindset that you’re the group with The Truth. This is the basis of political immaturity, the lack of comprehension that American government is a team effort, and some of the members of the team may be at odds with you – but all agree that some problem needs a response, something has to change, and. as we all acknowledge, governing is hard.

Except the politically immature of all political stripes Don’t Get It. They’ve been in their epistemic bubble for too long and have forgotten certain universal truths, such as No, God Has Not Reached Down And Touched You With Perfection, or No, You’re Really Not As Bright As You Think.

It’s just how it is, but the politically immature don’t get it.

Look, there’s no doubt the Floyd murder indicates changes are called for. Did it indicate wholesale replacement in the middle of a crime wave that is killing men, women, and children? I don’t see it. The question that needs answering – and the left will claim they’ve already answered it, and so will the right – is whether the murder of Floyd is the fruit of the policing system, or the crime of an individual or a small conspiracy.

I fear the entire Defund the police effort, and its subsequent rejection, has drowned the project to reallocate responsibilities that most already recognize – including the police. I’m talking about moving police away from mental health incidents, as accomplished in Eugene, OR, via the CAHOOTS program. The We Know Best! approach to politics is both immature and damaging and needs to be discarded.

Of course, that diminishes the ego, and thus that won’t happen until a crisis that points at that bad attitude occurs. We may not survive such a crisis.

Ethogram:

You can think of an ethogram as a foreign-language dictionary for an entire species that covers actions as well as sounds. The concept dates back to the mid-20th century, when pioneering ethologists like Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz drew up the first ones for species whose behaviour they thought of as innate and stereotypical – mainly insects, birds and fish. Several now exist for the mouse, that staple of laboratory research. But intelligent, socially complex animals represent a much greater challenge, and you can count the number of ethograms that cover them on the fingers of one hand. For cetaceans, there is a book called The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins. For chimpanzees, says Whiten, the most comprehensive one is probably another book called Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild. And now there is the Elephant Ethogram. [“Do you speak elephant? With this new dictionary you will,” Laura Spinney, NewScientist (6 November 2021, paywall)]

I hadn’t seen / heard this version:

Remember the conspiracy theory Birds Aren’t Real? They’re still around:

Dozens of people gathered outside Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday under the banner of conspiracy theorist group Birds Aren’t Real. The group that believes that none of the birds in the USA is real because the govt has replaced them with surveillance drones, was demanding that the social media site change its logo that features a bird.

Ahead of the protest, the group had put up posters in the city announcing the same. The poster said that Bird’s Aren’r [sic] Real movement is going to hold a “protest demanding Twitter change their disgusting Bird Logo”. It said that every bird is a government surveillance drone and every use of “bird” imagery is intentional pro-bird social programming. The poster included the Twitter logo crossed out, to drive the point home. [OpIndia]

Maybe they can change their logo to be Cthulhu.

I wonder how many of these folks see themselves as unimportant or unessential and that drives them into weird systems like this one?

When your mummy’s head fossilizes?

The classic The Mummy (1959) endures for its connection to the primal animal which forms the core of each and every human.

No matter how much they wish to deny it.

Let’s take a deconstructed / reconstructed approach to this plot. Two or three thousand years ago, Princess Ananka of Egypt, on a trip to honor the god Karnak, dies of an illness. A high priest to Karnak, Kharis, will, for his love of Ananka, dare to sin a great sin and read from the Scroll of Life in an effort to revive the Princess. Caught in the act, Kharis becomes the bodyguard of Ananka … or whatever it’s called … sentenced to guard her mortal remains for eternity.

And then comes the middle stages of the archaeological uncovering of Egypt’s past, the mid-1950s in modern lingo, in which artifacts are valued not for the knowledge to which they hint so much as their physicality. They are prizes, to make short work of it. Three archaeologists, Stephen Banning, his son, John, and John’s uncle Joseph Wemple, have discovered the cave tomb of the Princess. John, laid up with a badly broken leg, can only absorb reports from their hired help. As Stephen and Joseph explore, Stephen happens to find the Scroll of Life, and, perusing it, goes mad.

Stark, raving bonkers.

Years later, Banning recovers his senses. The three men are in England now, and Banning warns them that he can tell that something is coming to avenge the desecration of the Princess’ tomb. Yes, it’s Kharis, who has been shipped to England by Karnak adherent Mehemet Bey, and soon enough Stephen Banning is dead, and the next night Uncle Joseph also cannot resist the clutching hands of the rag-clad guard, whose lack of life shields him from the weapons of today. And now it’ll be young John’s turn, isn’t it?

Yep.

But there’s one small detail: John’s wife, Isobel. Catching Kharis in the act of squeezing the life out of her husband, her mere appearance stops the avenging creature, and the mummy, confused by the appearance of a beautiful woman, loses focus to the rush of hormones and retreats.

Bey, unaware of the failure of Kharis, prepares to leave, but covers up his surprise admirably when John appears at his front door. But this leads to the next attack by Kharis, and he does appear to be unstoppable by conventional means.

But Isobel’s influence, while hardly unique, is an unconventional weapon, and soon we’re striding through the English swamps as Kharis’ primal need causes him to abandon his sacred duty, the third time his animal side has made him a disappointment to Karnak, and sweep Isobel up as a prize. She escapes him through sheer force of will, and he ends up falling over and sinking into the swamp, presumably lost forever.

The pace of this story is not as quick-footed as today’s popular stories, and requires a bit of patience, yet there is a strange satisfaction to it. Given the usual granting of a miracle or two to the plot, the story hangs together rather well, and there’s little feeling that new supernatural powers and creatures are being summoned to stuff into the plot holes. Instead, there’s a certain logic to the whole thing that’s really quite believable.

And that’s what makes this thing work. That, and the excellent acting and sets. While I shan’t recommend it, if you’re in the mood for an old-fashioned monster movie, this certainly fills the bill.

So pleasant:

I’ve been trying to ignore Erick Erickson’s post today, but it’s title, Gaslighting America, just screams … projection. Why? Let’s take a look:

Repeatedly, the Biden Administration has claimed wages are going up. This too is gaslighting. Wages have barely increased and inflation has far outpaced wages. Therefore, the purchasing power of each dollar now buys less than what a dollar bought just six months ago. It amounts to a wage cut.

Or does it? What if prices go down? Look, there are several components to prices, from the cost of inputs, including labor costs, to the effects of competition, right up to sheer greed. So let’s take labor costs: they’re going up at the moment, and it’s anyone’s guess if they’re coming back down. If they don’t then prices will have one supporting factor.

But another factor are supply chains, and those are currently in a shambles. This shambles means supply prices, whether food or components or whathaveyou, is at a premium. This causes price rises, but as those shambles are resolved, and as demand settles down – remember Kevin Drum’s chart at right? – supply prices should settle downwards.

Wages are up. Those can be permanent. Prices may go up, but they also may go down. I consider Erickson’s claims specious, especially an unquoted remark of his using the adjective skyrocketed. No, I grew up in the Carter years, when prices really jumped. I’m am not prepared to consider our 5-6% annual inflation to be a SpaceX rocket.

The Biden Administration is also gaslighting us on fuel prices. The official line is that oil is a global market and there is little the President can do. Take out even last year during the pandemic when no one traveled. Two years ago, fuel prices were lower.

Progressives in the Biden Administration have willfully worked to make fuel costs higher. Until it hit their polling, Democrats openly said fuel prices needed to be higher to reduce demand for fossil fuels. The Biden Administration cancelled pipeline plans, canceled exploration leases on federal land, and drove up regulatory costs for petroleum producers. These policies have contributed to the fuel scarcity. When Trump was President, the United States was a net exporter of energy. Now we are left begging OPEC to produce more.

And. So. What? Pipelines and oil fields are not built in a day or a year. To make this specious claim is to play with emotions, not deduce from facts. And maybe, just maybe, you want those “regulatory costs” a little higher. Hiding behind that bland little phrase are two facts: the quasi-religious Republican tenet that Regulation is bad, and the fact that regulation, properly implemented, safeguards life, both existentially and quality-wise.

So prices are a little higher. Snopes, of all sources, has an interesting quote I found in regards to the claim Did Biden Set US ‘Back 50 Years’ on Energy Independence Progress? made by Turning Point:

The Turning Point meme disregards entirely the existence of the year 2020. The omission of 2020 masks not only a decline in U.S. fossil fuel production that occurred, it also conceals a larger truth about U.S. presidents and the global energy market: Neither they nor their policies have a significant effect on the market compared to other global factors.

Remember how the price of oil jumped around prior to the pandemic? It was generally blamed on investors, but it’s also caused by transit costs, threats of war costs, and other factors. While I tend to think that Presidents have more influence than is suggested by Snopes, the club they wield isn’t known for its nuance, and must be handled with care.

So if Snopes suggests Trump had little to do with energy production, while Erickson wants to nastily imply that he did, without actually quite saying it, what is to be made of this?

Crude oil production did grow significantly during Obama’s presidency — up 77 percent — but experts, including the federal government’s Energy Information Administration, have said the growth is largely due to technological advances, such as fracking and horizontal drilling. [FactCheck.org]

I immediately noticed Erickson omitted this important fact when lamenting the price of oil, as if Trump alone were responsible – but, if Trump claims accolades, then on the same basis so does Obama. (Who did try.)

And if one doesn’t get any, neither does the other. Erickson’s claim and omission are painfully hypocritical.

Which is all quite sad because I think there’s something to consider here:

At this point, Democrats seem almost willfully trying to lose the 2022 midterm elections. After the Virginia elections, Democrats doubled down accusing voters of racism. Voters in Virginia elected the first black Lt. Governor for the state and first Hispanic Attorney General. But the talking heads in the press said it was just further proof of racism while still denying critical theory is a thing.

I don’t know if the racism claims occurred. Maybe they did. He provides no link. But I’m finding the entire school issue to be highly confusing. Some writers claim it doesn’t exist. Some claim it does. I don’t respect everyone, but some are worth the respecting and those stories are conflicting. The Democrats had better learn from the Virginia loss for 2022.

Or they will lose.

Some folks are finding this encouraging:

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming says that many fellow Republicans are “privately” thanking her for standing up to former President Donald Trump as she runs for reelection in 2022.

Cheney, one of the most well-known and vocal members of a small group of GOP lawmakers and leaders opposed to the former president, is one of only two Republicans serving on a special committee organized by House Democrats to investigate Trump’s role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by right-wing extremists.

“It’s a real reflection of the times in which we live that privately and behind the scenes, there are many Republicans who say, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing. We wish we could be more public,’” Cheney told Fox News on Tuesday. “People who understand that what the former president is saying is dangerous, is not true, and who know that our party’s got to be a party based on truth, that we can’t embrace the lie.” [Fox News]

But to me it’s a little odd and makes me wonder if this is indicative of a general mysteriousness in the culture of the Republican Party. Who else cannot name their supporters?

Donald J. Trump.

The former President was infamous for his anonymous validators, as Steve Benen called them, supposedly high-seniority Democrats and business leaders who’d call up Trump and cheer him on, but he couldn’t name them for obvious reasons.

And it’s hard to see a substantive difference between Rep Cheney and the former President here. Each claims support from groups that supposedly hate them. Indeed, Cheney’s lost her leadership position in the House GOP, and that would be because of them, while the President lost his position, although not so directly, because of the Democrats and the business leaders.

It’s not all that hard to extend this observation to the mystical side of the Republicans: the Divine presence, supposedly endorsing the President and his adherents, is a notoriously difficult entity to interview or even get a straight word from on current events; your best bet are proxies who are of either very dubious reputation, or appear to be self-delusional (your pick here). But the choice of believing the mystical, as much as there’s a lot of pressure on the base to believe the former President, remains with the base; if the claimant sweats it, fumbles the words, or is caught fondling the wrong person, the base may choose to disbelieve the claim.

That is actually an attractive alternative for people who don’t want to take the word of experts, who want desperately to assert their own competence to make this choice. There are, after all, no real experts. It makes for an inviting business.

Whether Cheney is good enough in the earnest claim business remains to be seen.

I can’t help but be struck how it appears the GOP is running down the slide to self-destruction:

But what’s striking about all of this is what constitutes outrage among GOP lawmakers. Wyoming’s Liz Cheney denounced anti-election lies, so Republicans kicked her out of the party’s leadership. Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger joined a bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, and he became persona non grata in his party. Thirteen members voted for a bipartisan infrastructure package, and now there’s talk of partisan retaliation against them, too.

In the meantime, those same House Republicans who demand consequences for perceived transgressions have a whole lot less to say about Arizona’s Paul Gosar, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, and other far-right members who actually deserve to be seen as scandalous extremists.

This isn’t a situation in which GOP members refuse to go against one of their own because of partisan loyalty. On the contrary, House Republicans are only too pleased to turn on their ostensible allies in response to ideological heresies that are considered unforgivable. [Steve Benen]

Outrage by the far-right extremists? Check. Punishing transgressions? Check. Whittling down the Party? Check. Cries for revenge?

The thirteen who voted for it surely voted on the policy, but on the strategy they gave the Democrats a win and a talking point. Ron Klain got to go on television and make the case the Democrats absorbed Tuesday night’s results and responded by passing the infrastructure plan to show they got the message. [Erick Erickson]

Check.

Parties contemptuous of compromise and dissent, that attitude being a signpost of the power hungry and politically immature, I think inevitably decline and fall as the variances in opinion on the difficult subjects of governance and reelection come to the fore – or those attitudes and members are ejected from the party.

I’ve been saying it for years: One day the GOP will consist of three members, and two will be on probation. Those seventeen that voted from the infrastructure bill can be considered to be on probation. The Democrats have their own problems, but so long as they stay away from the organizational model of the Republicans, they have a chance to reform their Party and stop giving the electorate reasons to vote for the Republicans.

Can they do it? I don’t know.

I see Erick Erickson is complaining about about what he views as the predictable: an “orthodox” Montana pastor who makes some income on the side as a realtor has been caught in a squeeze play in which the realtor association, to which he must, practically speaking, belong, has banned ‘hate speech’ – such as condemning homosexual behavior.

Which this pastor does.

So Erickson manages to wind up with this:

The real world implications here are pretty significant. If the left insists people give up their worldview to participate in the private sector, the right is going to destroy the private sector. The left will be just fine with that. But it won’t end well for anyone. If we cannot all mutually tolerate each other’s views, we cannot remain united States. Together, the illiberal left and right will burn it all down.

The National Association of Realtors knew pastors and people of faith could be targeted by their hate speech code. A lot of public discussion revolved around that at the time they enacted it. But the association proceeded anyway and now, as so many predicted, Christians are being targeted for punishment by the wokes. It was all foreseeable, predictable, and they did it anyway because more and more trade associations have embraced Woke-O Haram.

And, having read this, all I can think is Welcome to the other foot. Existential hatred of homosexuals was, and is, the stock-in-trade for many “orthodox” Christian churches throughout much of the 20th century and earlier. Keep them out of the military, out of the public square, chase them out of the private square.

Call them pedophiles and Satan worshippers and what have you. Engender murderous hatred where possible.

It’s just the other fungus-afflicted foot now, isn’t it?

But it’s worth noting this: while most homosexuals will tell you they have no choice about being homosexual, this pastor certainly has a choice. How do we know this?

Because interpretations of the Bible change over time. We already know they change from sect to sect, but we also know this because, in most locations, suggesting we have a good ol’ fashioned witch-burning would be met with understandable and civilized horror. But we know we used to kill them – or, more importantly, those so accused – such were the Salem Witch Trials, eh?

So what Erickson is inadvertently highlighting is an ongoing change in Biblical interpretations. It’s been going on for decades, because social change only occasionally happens instantaneously; even today, if you look hard enough, you can find a few Bible literalists who, honest to the end, cry out Death to witches, rather than appreciating that general Biblical practice no longer tolerates blood lust in that regard.

Whether or not the realtor association should be taking this position is something of an open question in my mind, although I am inclined to say yes, but remain open to argument. I also tend to see this as Erickson trying desperately to keep his conservative base together through the use of infuriating epithets and refusing to consider the entire situation.

But that’s a rant for another day.