Context is a word that I often assert is what’s missing from a false argument; long time readers are no doubt annoyed at how often I push it.

But this is what occurred to me as a controversy has broken out on the left side of the spectrum. The source? WaPo’s Charles Lane has the report:

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, cities and towns are belatedly but necessarily purging public spaces of the names and images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the soldiers who served his treasonous, pro-slavery cause.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s school board has voted to start replacing the names of the Union’s president, Abraham Lincoln, and Union officers such as James Garfield and William McKinley (also former presidents) from public schools, ostensibly for the same cause of historical truth, equity and justice.

Why Lincoln?

Lincoln [is] to be scoured from an 80-year-old high school because, in 1862, he presided over the hangings of 38 rebellious Native Americans in Minnesota.

Lane is on the context problem:

Far from pursuing Native Americans in the Minnesota uprising, [Lincoln] took huge political risks to prevent federal troops from hanging many more of them (as my colleague David Von Drehle has shown). Yes, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation as a war-winning measure as much as a liberationist one; he harbored anti-Black sentiments, which is why Frederick Douglass regarded him with mixed feelings.

Even Douglass, however, ultimately reached a positive verdict on Lincoln’s public acts and private attitudes, calling him “one of the very few Americans, who could entertain a negro and converse with him without in anywise reminding him of the unpopularity of his color.”

But legendary figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are also on the chopping block. How should a liberal defend such figures?

Let’s begin with an assertion concerning morality. Morality changes; indeed, morality evolves^[1]. As we observe, however messily, that a modification to the societal morality system in use improves that society, we adopt those changes; those changes that bring chaos and disaster are rejected.

Key to this understanding is that the constituents of society are not always agreed upon. A liberal may define society as all people present in a geographical location; a conservative may wish to exclude illegal immigrants; a white supremacist may wish to limit society to white people, or even white people who espouse white supremacy.

From each of these viewpoints the evaluation of a change to the morality system commences. For those who base their morality on a concept of justice being integral to a peaceful, prosperous society, changes towards bringing more justice are considered positively; for the American white supremacist, who grounds their alleged supremacy on a triviality, their societal position, and therefore power, will be threatened by such changes, and therefore rejected.

It is the clash of acceptance vs rejection which often fuels the culture wars, to which I’ll forebear to add more.

Next, let’s agree to admit that no one is perfect; about this point, I hope there is no disagreement. Equally trite and true, everyone is a product of their culture: the ultimate contextual statement. Many, or perhaps all, Founding Fathers had slaves. Most were racists. Just like everyone around them. Terrible, yes. While I feel a philosophical kinship with Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin for their basic liberal dispositions, I doubt I could hold a civil conversation with them. The contexts are too distant.

Most people are simply elements of their society; what marks a person as exemplary? I suggest it’s their magnitude and direction as an agent of moral change.

So let’s use this to differentiate between, say, Generals George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

Washington owned slaves, and no doubt punished them. Yes, he did. But, in concert with the other Founding Fathers, he acted, as an agent of moral change and someone who put life and fortune on the line for it, in effecting the transition for the colonists in America from the absolute monarchy of the English government, subject to the murderous and thievish whim of a member of a religiously-crazed monarchical family (see this link for more on them in the context of the importance of America being a secular society) to a self-governing society based on justice.

Government is a matter of utmost moral standing, because historically it has great capacity to do evil and to do good. The absolute monarchy has many examples of the former and few of the latter, and while representative democracy has had some truly dreadful moments, such as the slaughter of the American Indians, it has also had moments of reaching for the peaks of humanity’s goodness. More importantly, the mechanisms with which it’s implemented means it doesn’t depend on the goodness of a single person; and it has demonstrated the capacity for improvement, a characteristic saliently missing from the absolute monarchy.

The Founding Fathers were critical to that transition, and possibly none more so than Washington, although of course many made vital contributions. Washington’s actions as an agent of positive moral change within the context of his society, despite his tragic ownership of slaves to the day he died, marks a man who managed to emerge from his societal matrix and direct society along a path of improvement, through risk and self-sacrifice.

Moving on to Robert E. Lee, the principal general of the American Confederacy, let’s examine his context. In the eighty years that had passed between Washington’s participation in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War in which Lee filled a leading role, morality in Western Civilization had evolved to express revulsion at slavery, the issue at stake in the Civil War. The American South had stubbornly held on to its notions of slavery being a proper business, despite its own near-terror that they might see a slave rebellion result in the overwhelming of many slave-owning families. It was, despite its pretensions, a pocket of moral depravity, a pustule on America’s ass requiring removal if America were to continue to progress, morally speaking.

Historically, America was one of the last of the Western nations to ban slavery.

Lee, through his actions, defended the institution of slavery, and disputed the idea of racial equality. For those who dispute it, slavery is the endpoint, is it not? By leading the armies of the South, he defended those who believed slavery was a legitimate institution, and those who believed Blacks were subhuman.

Lee sought, consciously or not, to be a retrograde agent of moral change. That is, what he defended and advocated was, in the end, a negative contributor to societal morality. Sure, he was also a traitor to the United States, and, as a commissioned officer in the US Army, probably deserved death as a punishment. But it’s that, as his defining characteristic, he defended an institution widely regarded as being an institution of evil is the differentiator between him and George Washington – who was instrumental in birthing an institution widely considered to be a positive contributor to morality.

Nobody is perfect, and that common denominator gives all people the chance to achieve greatness. That they don’t do so in all aspects of their lives may be tragic, but it’s also unavoidable; the greatness lies in what positive and extraordinary contributions they do make, throwing off the shackles of their upbringing, to the understanding and implementation of a better morality, to the improvement of society for all.

If we demand perfection from our exemplars, then we’ll have no exemplars. A society without exemplars is a society without direction, without hope, without a future.

And a society with a lot of nameless schools.

¹ For the reader appalled at the thought that morality can fundamentally change, implying an all-knowing Divine is changing its mind, let me observe that, much like Platonic ideals and their real-world instantiations, and assuming a Divine exists, its ordination of the rules of morality, and your perception of same, may easily be at variance. Morality changing as time passes is then simply humanity gaining a better understanding of those rules, not the rules themselves changing.

Retrograde:

adj.

1. Moving or tending backward: a retrograde flow.
2. Opposite to the usual order; inverted or reversed: the retrograde form of the melody.
3. Reverting to an earlier or inferior condition: a retrograde way of thinking.
   … [The Free Dictionary]

For use in a future post.

But I can’t help but take note of the following. First up: The Hill’s report on Republican voters, entitled Tens of thousands of voters drop Republican affiliation after Capitol riot:

More than 30,000 voters who had been registered members of the Republican Party have changed their voter registration in the weeks after a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked the Capitol — an issue that led the House to impeach the former president for inciting the violence.

The massive wave of defections is a virtually unprecedented exodus that could spell trouble for a party that is trying to find its way after losing the presidential race and the Senate majority.

It could also represent the tip of a much larger iceberg: The 30,000 who have left the Republican Party reside in just a few states that report voter registration data, and information about voters switching between parties, on a weekly basis.

And that report is almost two weeks ago. It leaves me wondering: if we reran the Presidential election today, would Trump’s losing count of 71 million votes be reduced to below 50 million?

Next up: the price to be paid for voting for the Articles of Impeachment for Rep Tom Rice (R-SC):

The South Carolina Republican Party’s executive committee formally censured Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) on Saturday over his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

“We made our disappointment clear the night of the impeachment vote. Trying to impeach a president, with a week left in his term, is never legitimate and is nothing more than a political kick on the way out the door,” said SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick in a statement Saturday.

“Congressman Rice’s vote unfortunately played right into the Democrats’ game, and the people in his district, and ultimately our State Executive Committee, wanted him to know they wholeheartedly disagree with his decision,” he added. [TPM]

A spectacularly dishonest statement by McKissick, as the size of the balance of the term in office does not legitimize any action that might not be otherwise legitimate. I suppose McKissick should draw an Earl Landgrebe Award Nomination for the absurd loyalty, and lack of intellectual integrity, he’s demonstrating in that statement.

Fellow voter for the Articles of Impeachment, and #3 in the House GOP leadership ranks, Liz Cheney (R-WY) has also drawn fire for doing the obviously right thing:

One of former President Trump’s top supporters in Congress held a rally Thursday in Wyoming to blast the state’s sole House member – Rep. Liz Cheney – the most high-profile House Republican to vote two weeks ago to impeach Trump.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, standing in front of a boisterous crowd gathered at the steps of the Wyoming state capitol, delivered a populist speech as he repeatedly slammed Cheney as a member of the Washington “establishment in both political parties have teamed up to screw our fellow Americans for generations.” [Fox News]

Yep, Pretty Boy Gaetz traveled from Florida to interfere in Wyoming politics, no doubt to win more points with his Master, former President Trump. Cheney has also been promised a primary challenge. It’s not as if Rep Cheney is a moderate Republican, either, as she ends up with a TrumpScore of 92.9%, and has a reputation as a hard line conservative Republican.

But also one from a Republican dynasty, as her father, Richard, was also a Representative, as well as holding other roles in Washington, DC, such as Vice President for eight years. Incidentally, her father’s possibly best known for shooting a hunting partner in the face with a shotgun; perhaps those who’ve been allegedly threatening other Republican House members to keep them in the Trump drum line would rather not go up against a tough old gunner like Cheney. Either one.

But that didn’t stop the Wyoming GOP from censuring Rep Cheney today:

In the motion to censure Cheney, who easily survived a House Republican Conference vote to remain in her leadership spot earlier this week, the state Republican Party also called for her to “immediately” resign. The party intends to “withhold any future political funding” from her, the motion said. It also called on her to repay donations to her 2020 campaign from the state GOP and any county Republican Parties.

The beat goes on in Arizona. The Arizona GOP voted to censure Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, as well as former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and the current governor Doug Ducey (R-AZ). In Ducey’s case:

Ducey is being targeted for his restrictions on individuals and businesses to contain the spread of COVID-19. While it’s not mentioned in the proposed censure, he had a high-profile break with the president when he signed the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. [CBS News]

Ducey does the right thing, and his Party throws a shit fit.

Incidentally, the Arizona GOP Chairman, Dr. Kelli Ward, barely won the race for that position recently. When calls for a recount emerged, she, apparently without a sense of irony, refused to allow it to go forward.

And the the other House Republicans who voted for the Articles of Impeachment are also facing political challenges from the far right fringe, as this Newsweek article makes clear. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans continue to abandon their party because of its accelerating race to the right, as Steve Benen summarizes:

To a degree without modern precedent, the Democratic presidential ticket enjoyed considerable support from prominent Republicans in the 2020 elections. As regular readers know, former RNC chairs backed Joe Biden. So did former Republican cabinet secretaries and some Republicans who worked as members of Trump’s own team.

The list included former GOP governors, former GOP senators, former GOP House members, and several dozen Republican national security officials — from the Reagan, Bush/Quayle, and Bush/Cheney administrations — all of whom endorsed Biden.

And way more, as Benen makes clear – basically, any Republican who has held a position of responsibility is faced with the question of whether or not they want to be associated with the Republican Party any longer – and many are saying No.

I think, most inadequately on my part, that the reason I’m writing this post is that impulse to say I Told You So. Not that there’s a reason to do so, of course. But the mad race to the right that I’ve noted, and predicted would continue over the years, has resulted in state GOP Parties that are throwing their most principled members under the nearest bus, while indulging in behaviors which may bring shame down upon them. Or as Catie Edmondson pithily notes:

Republicans fighting over their party’s future face a turning point on Wednesday as House leaders confront dueling calls to punish two members: one for spreading conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, and the other for voting to impeach former President Donald J. Trump. [The New York Times]

Much of the apparatus is in the hands of people whose notion of principle is to cling madly to Trump’s genitalia. Will the moderate Republicans win the day? I don’t think so, at least not before the 2022 elections. Why?

Former President Trump’s attempt to foment insurrection, whether he denies it or not, will result in an opening for the Democrats. For every member of Congress who failed to repudiate the riot, for every member of Congress who, in the wake of the riot, still voted to repudiate the Electoral votes of the States, for every Republican who fails to apologize for these monumental failures, the Democrats can respond to their reelection races with simply this:

Seditionist!

Trump tried every legal tactic to refute his failure at election, and failed. While his approach of spreading misinformation and doubt was reprehensible, it’s not clearly illegal.

But to foment insurrection is to set himself outside of Democracy, outside of how America conducts itself. Every single Republican who followed him in the riot’s aftermath is now also outside of Democracy. They are no longer fit for their elective offices, to hold any position of influence.

To even be considered Americans in good standing.

That’s the label the Democrats can pin on them. If it is successful, if the current speculation that the Democrats will lose seats at the midterms, as is traditional, is shown to be false, then the Republicans may suffer monumental losses which will discredit whatever passes for Republican governing offerings in 2022.

Add in stable governing, boring communications, and investigations into everyone who ran around spreading false information concerning the election, and the Republicans may face political extinction.

At least those fringe-right extremists who are currently in charge of much of the Party apparatus.

The results of the 2022 elections will depend, in large part, on how well the Democrats execute on their current governing plans right now. And if the Democrats are successful, the moderate Republicans who are currently disengaging from the Republican Party may have a chance to reassert control.

Or they may start their own Party. If the new Party were to become large enough, we might see calls for Ranked Choice Voting appearing from the right. That would be a turnaround and a signal of worry by the extremists.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes, when someone has balls of brass, it’s necessary to grab each one and clang them together until they break and the owner is sobbing. Here’s Rep Jeffries (D-NY) doing just that to new member of the House Rep Burgess Owens (R-UT):

This is 🔥 🔥 🔥. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) drags Utah’s new Trump-supporting Black Republican (@BurgessOwens) for coming in on his first day and lecturing Democrats about patriotism when Owens voted to overturn the November election even after the Capitol insurrection. pic.twitter.com/mJ7cUJ0RSH

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 6, 2021

Quite right. Voting to undo the votes of literally millions of Americans because of your allegiance to President Trump, purveyor of utterly baseless allegations concerning the election he lost, rather than an allegiance to the Constitution, doesn’t make one patriotic. Instead, it puts your worthiness to serve into question. An inability to understand that your allegiance is to the Constitution, rather than a Party leader, makes your presence in Congress questionable.

And your future performance is unlikely to be impressive.

Un-effing-believable:

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she’s not a flight risk?

And then there’s this pack of goofs:

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

¹ Illegitimate Justice.

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

Carcinisation:

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

Noted here in xkcd:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they’re not liking it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thinks there’s a couple of motivations.

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

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

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

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

Thus, the intellectual drivel.

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

Thanks, LDC! It was fascinating!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jarring? Is that your best adjective?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republican Ohio State House members Jon Cross and Reggie Stoltzfus:

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

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

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

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

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

Anamorphic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Consequences Culture.

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

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

And, finally, I beg of my readers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice used to be a Democrat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s a lot going on here.

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

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

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

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

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

And all this without much drama.

This is experience being used well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is truly absurd on Erickson’s part.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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