Category Archives: Uncategorized

You may have heard it alleged that some Michigan precincts have been found to have had turnout in excess of 100%. There’s a teensy weensy little problem with that theory, and I’ll let John Hinderaker of the far-right Powerline elucidate:

Here’s the problem: the townships and precincts listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 of the affidavit are not in Michigan. They are in Minnesota. Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi–these are all towns in Minnesota. I haven’t checked them all, but I checked a lot of them, and all locations listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 that I looked up are in Minnesota, with no corresponding township in Michigan. This would have been obvious to someone from this state, but Mr. Ramsland is a Texan and the lawyers are probably not natives of either Minnesota or Michigan.

Evidently a researcher, either Mr. Ramsland or someone working for him, was working with a database and confused “MI” for Minnesota with “MI” for Michigan. (The postal code for Minnesota is MN, while Michigan is MI, so one can see how this might happen.) So the affidavit, which addresses “anomalies and red flags” in Michigan, is based largely, and mistakenly, on data from Minnesota.

This is a catastrophic error, the kind of thing that causes a legal position to crash and burn. Trump’s lawyers are fighting an uphill battle, to put it mildly, and confusing Michigan with Minnesota will at best make the hill steeper. Credibility once lost is hard to regain. Possibly Trump’s lawyers have already discovered this appalling error, and have undertaken to correct it. But the Ramsland Affidavit was filed in Georgia just yesterday.

Laughter. It seems like every time a conservative makes a legal move, it’s another candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election Blooper Reel. Seriously. See this Word Of The Day for more. See the results of their court challenges, even in front of Trump-appointed judges. See Dr. Scott Atlas’ crazed recommendations.

And that last one should clue every American in that incompetency isn’t confined to the Trump legal team, it’s a pandemic fully in its own right, infecting the far-right with the belief that amateurs such as Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, most of the GOP elected officials, can just do this sort of thing off the cuff.

They are proving that their only real competency is in marketing (see professional GOP marketeer Frank Luntz, who last I noticed seemed a bit aghast at the monster he’s helped create) and bullshitting. Or is that redundant?

But don’t worry, Powerline proves that they remain convinced that the Democratic Party is just as bad as themselves:

A postscript: has Mr. Ramsland inadvertently stumbled across evidence of voter fraud in Minnesota? I seriously doubt it. The venues in question are all in red Greater Minnesota, not in the blue urban areas where voter fraud is common.

Hinderaker, if you’ve got proof then present it in court. Maybe you can save Minnesota for Trump! (Says this Minnesota political independent in sickly horror.) Otherwise, just can it. And sell it as soda. It might taste good, but …

Affiant:

An affiant is someone who files an affidavit, which is a written statement used as evidence in court. In order to be admissible, affidavits must be notarized by a notary public.

The notary public is there to ensure the validity of the signature and guarantee that the signature was applied voluntarily and without coercion. Once the affiant acknowledges signing the document for its intended purpose and signs the affidavit, the document is notarized and becomes a sworn affidavit. [Notarize]

Noted in an Erick Erickson email:

In Michigan, upon examination of 234 pages of affidavits, a judge tossed the fraud claims. The claims amounted to no more than 1000 votes out of 148,000+ votes cast and, more importantly, upon the testimony of the affiants, it was clear they just didn’t understand the process and had not shown up for their training.

Which is what I would expect from the incompetency infecting what passes for conservatives these days. From the same email:

In Arizona, people filed scores of affidavits about the voting system there and the use of sharpie markers on the ballots. Not only was it physically shown that the ballots could be counted with sharpies and bleed-through of the markers was not an issue, but the affiants, under examination, all recanted their affidavits. That is important. All these people swore out affidavits and under examination walked back their claims.

I’ve certainly critiqued and even laughed at Erickson over the years, but at least, perhaps due to his training as an election lawyer, when an election isn’t going his way, he’ll admit it.

Unlike the clowns he favored in the election.

Rudy Giuliani really didn’t want to win in court today because, well, loyalties can be bought and delivered:

Earlier on Tuesday in an appearance on the Fox Business Network, Giuliani seemed to suggest the outcome of the hearing before Brann, an Obama appointee, was unimportant. He said the Pennsylvania case was a “vehicle” to get the election before the Supreme Court and its 6-3 conservative majority, which Trump has long hinted should deliver the election to him.

“Frankly, this is a case that we would like to see get to the Supreme Court,” Giuliani said, suggesting the campaign might lose battles along the way due to Democratic-appointed judges. “We are prepared in some of these cases to lose and to appeal, and to get it to the Supreme Court.”  [MSN]

Or can those loyalties be bought?

This is an echo of President Trump’s proclamations over the last few months, not to mention the spike of hypocrisy displayed by the Republican Senate in getting Barrett confirmed. My suspicion is that Trump, who continually gives off clues concerning his limitations, believes human behaviors are a constant.

They are not.

In Trump’s private sector world, loyalty is bought as a transaction: place someone in a place of power and prestige and they’re forever loyal. Or at least until they get stepped on by the guy who doesn’t follow the rules. Like, say, Trump.

And, it is true, some of this has leaked into the government sector, much to its detriment. But this leakage is not wholesale, and in SCOTUS it may be the least effective. Justice Gorsuch, IJ^[1], has displayed a great deal of independence in his decisions, such as this potentially monumental Oklahoma decision, while Kavanaugh has also shown some independence; Barrett remains an unknown.

Keep in mind that SCOTUS is the crown jewel of the judiciary, and a Justice tarnishing that jewel through adhering to political party loyalty regardless of the weakness of the Trump case in front of them, risks tarnishing their name, their legacy, the names of their clerks, and everything about them. That will be out in public for one hundred years and more, embarrassing descendants and relatives.

It’s not much like the private sector. You have to scrabble to get publicity in the private sector. In the public sector, it can descend on you like a vulture.

It doesn’t hurt to remember that SCOTUS ruled 8-0 against Nixon when it came to whether or not he had to give up the White House tapes in his possession, despite three of the Justices being Nixon appointees (a fourth appointee, Rehnquist, equally honorably recused himself). It’s an implicit precedent and reminder that raw party loyalty should take a back seat at SCOTUS.

If Trump gets a case to SCOTUS and it’s as weak as the lower courts have suggested, I’d expect to see at least 5-4 against – and possibly 8-1, with either Alito or Thomas in dissent.

And it would pay Rudy dividends to remember that not everyone in the judiciary can be bought.

¹ “Illegitimate Justice,” for newer readers. If I make a case for Gorsuch, then I cannot for Barrett. Neither’s dog sled trail getting into SCOTUS is admirable.

Arizona Secretary of State’s statement on the election includes this:

This should be a time for thanking voters and election workers for their incredible commitment during unprecedented challenges. In that spirit, I offer my gratitude and express my admiration for the Arizonans who inspire trust in our democracy.

And so do I! While the election in Minnesota appeared placid and untroubled, those election workers in the closely contested states have had to work hard in difficult conditions, sometimes shamefully harassed by partisans. The latter should not happen, and it’s worse when it’s encouraged by political “leaders” of any stripe.

Kudos to the election workers! They are one of the last bastions of democracy!

Heard during The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night:

Colbert: Mr. McConaughey, will you run for Governor of Texas?

Matthew McConaughey: … Politics seems to be a broken business. Politics needs to redefine its purpose. …

And that’s certainly worth talking about. To me, the Democrats are interested in governance; the Republicans these days are, at their most innocent, only interested in winning a trophy to put on their mantlepiece, and those who are not so innocent are doing their damndest to monetize politics, or, as the rest of us know it, corruption.

There was a time when the Republicans believed in governance. That time seems to have passed.

And what would that be?

First predicted in the 1980s, Mercury’s tail was discovered in 2001. Its source is Mercury’s super-thin atmosphere. Mercury is so close to the sun, pressure from sunlight itself can push atoms out of the atmosphere and into space. The escaping gas forms a tail more than 24 million km long.

The tail is rich in sodium–a substance sputtered from Mercury’s surface by solar wind and micrometeorite impacts. That’s why [Dr. Sebastian] Voltmer’s yellow sodium filter did such a good job revealing the gaseous stream. [spaceweather.com]

There’s a lovely backyard picture of it at the above link, but I shan’t steal it.

It makes sense, of course, but that with the addition of a yellow filter your telescope can see it caught me by surprise. And pleases me.

Closing up this thread, Georgia has concluded its President Election recount:

The state of Georgia announced Tuesday that an official audit of its voting machines found no evidence of fraud or foul play during the 2020 elections.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who had ordered a certified testing laboratory to conduct an audit of a random sample of Georgia’s machines, said that the probe was both complete and successful in ensuring that the machines hadn’t been manipulated.

“We are glad but not surprised that the audit of the state’s voting machines was an unqualified success,” Raffensperger, a Republican, said in a press release. “Election security has been a top priority since day one of my administration.”

No surprises, no drama. Then again, the deviance of the President election from the polls in Georgia was well within the margin of error. It’s too bad Florida or Ohio, also considered close by pollsters, but not in the final result, are not also doing a hand recount to verify their machines are not corrupted.

And – I’m relieved. The anger and violent threats Raffensperger reported receiving was appalling and shameful. If he had found the machines had been corrupted towards the Republicans rather than the Democrats, well, I suspect he’d be the victim of violence.

Victor Davis Hanson engages in the age old practice of frightening the partisans, a practice not unique to conservatives:

If Democrats pick up both seats, first anticipate the end of the Senate filibuster. With its disappearance after 180 years will go the last check on hard-Left power. Then expect a 15-person Supreme Court. With the end of that 151-year tradition will come the birth of a new “living” and fluid Constitution.

Watch for novel efforts, by hook or crook, to navigate around the amendment process of the U.S. Constitution to end the 233-year-old Electoral College. With all the reins of power, perhaps the Left will figure out a way, on Obama’s prior prompting, to admit two new states (and thus four more reliably Democratic senators).

Don’t count out efforts to see congressional legislation to override state legislatures’ voting laws and enforce on the states lunatic new protocols of the sort we saw this November. The effort will be to “broaden” the electorate, discourage “voter suppression,” and enhance “equity and inclusion” — everything from enfranchising 17-year-old voters, ex-felons, and legal non-citizen residents to mandated early and mail-in voting and rules against requiring an ID to vote.

Georgia’s outcome will determine whether federal legislation will likely smother gun rights akin to Europe’s restrictions, strangle the First Amendment to prevent “hate speech,” and re-create an open border and with it hundreds of thousands of new illegal aliens — future progressive constituents all in need of amnesties. Knocking down the wall seems absurd, but such nihilism may offer powerful iconic and psychological relief to the unhinged Trump-hating Left and their Never Trump allies. [National Review]

With nary a mention of the extremism and incompetency displayed by the Trump Administration. Balance, shmalance, eh?

If the Democrats do win the Georgia Senate races – a feat I consider unlikely but not outside the realm of possibility, especially given the recent concerted effort of the Georgia GOP to melt down, as noted by Hanson’s colleague Rich Lowry – then this will be an opportunity for the conservative reader to evaluate their pundits and leadership. I say both because Hanson’s piece is not an outlier, but a nearly iconic example of how both conservative categories manipulate their readers.

As I was saying, the first step is to either print out Hanson’s article, or, preferably, extract from it all of his prophecies of doom, and print those out. Find a magnet and place it prominently on your refrigerator. Now, the important part: as each prophecy is fulfilled, put a checkmark next to it. You’re always passing by the refrigerator, so you’ll often be reminded of the burning skies that must surely be descending upon you.

At the end of 2022 or, if you feel the Democrats need more time, 2024, tot up all the fulfilled prophecies. For those so checkmarked, if any, evaluate whether the United States is a smoking ruin.

Or just seems to be the same, or even better.

The conservatives love to manipulate emotions, so it’s important to be methodical when examining their claims. Hey, I’ll be even-handed – most political parties manipulate emotions, and, while subjects differ – libertarians find taxation terrifying, but don’t seem to care much about abortion, which can obsess both Democrats and Republicans – the methods are often the same.

The question is whether the facts on the ground match the shrieks of apocalypse in the pages of the writers and leaders.

And then whether the audience has the intellectual honesty to demand change, or leave.

This has been causing quite a lot of chatter:

Rep Louis Gohmert (R-TX):

East Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, insisting the election has been stolen from President Donald Trump, has urged like-minded supporters to consider “revolution” like the Egyptian uprising seven years ago and colonial America’s revolt against England.

“They rose up though all over Egypt, and as a result of the people rising up in the greatest numbers in history, ever anywhere, they turned the country around …. If they can do that there, think of what we can do here,” he told thousands of cheering Trump supporters in downtown Washington at Saturday’s “Million MAGA March.” …

“This was a cheated election and we can’t let it stand,” said Gohmert, a Tyler Republican and former trial judge who easily won a ninth term this month. [The Dallas Morning News]

The very extract of internecine hatred.

Chad Bauman on Religion Dispatches thinks he understands President Trump’s incessant claims that he won the election:

With diffuse roots but emerging most forcefully midway through the twentieth century in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, prosperity theology draws selectively on biblical passages (chief among them John 10:10, in which Jesus says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”) to insist that God desires our physical and financial prosperity. Our task, in a phrase popularized by the movement (and its detractors), is to “name it and claim it.”

The most virtuous and effective act in prosperity theology is positive confession, in which one claims and expresses gratitude to God for the health and wealth one expects to enjoy—even if it seems implausible one’s expectations will be realized. The most sinful act, accordingly, is sometimes called “negative confession”; that is, admitting failure, ill health, poverty, or disappointment. In prosperity theology, words matter; “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Those who lay claim to victory actualize it, while those who admit defeat find themselves hopelessly entrenched in it.

And Trump was brought up in the church of one of the most famous pillars of the movement, Norman Vincent Peale.

Not only does this lens bring Trump’s reactions to the election into focus, it explains his fairy-tale predictions for Covid-19: that it would disappear, that it was well under control, that it was all a hoax. He was trying various magical incantations to make it go away. He was trying to claim victory over it. But that victory was an illusion and a quarter million Americans have died from that smoke.

Indeed, his many other pronouncements, such as bringing jobs back to the United States, being responsible for the greatest economy in history, passing the greatest legislation and nominating the best judges, are all congruent to Bauman’s observation and explanation.

Even for a man notorious for his ignorance of the Bible, religion permeates his life – and leads to actions that are dangerous to the Republic.

And Americans wonder at their fellow citizens who adhere to agnosticism or atheism – or even Satanism.

But what happens to the prosperity theology movement if Trump finally admits defeat? Or has to be escorted from the White House and have his name put on the White House’s Never to be admitted list? Do they crumble? Or do they find a way to rationalize the loss?

Yeah, the latter. Get ready for that.

Fascinating stuff.

Addiction is pursuing activities that make you feel better even in the face of contraindicating factors like, oh, death. So reading Friendly Atheist’s remarks on Pastor John Magee made me realize that, in some essential regard, everyone connected with his church is an addict:

Just over a month ago, we learned that John Hagee, the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, tested positive for COVID.

His son Matthew made the announcement at the time: [Tweet omitted – HW]

Notice that Matthew said his father was “receiving extremely good medical treatment.”

He’s lucky he can afford it. That’s not necessarily true of the congregation he’s putting in danger by hosting in-person, indoor, mask-optional, not-very-socially-distanced services.

Yesterday, the elder Hagee was back in church. He said he spent 15 days in the hospital with “double pneumonia” but he was better now. But you can see from the video below [link added – HW] that the church hasn’t made any adjustments for COVID. It’s still in-person, indoor, jam-packed, and mask-optional.

Let’s enumerate.

• We have the congregation. They’ve received the news of their pastor becoming ill, thus making Covid-19 immediate and real. Are they addicts? Sure. They go to a church rich in superspreader potentiality, and they know it. But it makes them feel good to go and participate in services, because that makes them part of the Chosen.
• And we have the clerics. They are all vulnerable; even Hagee, who presumably was told by hospital staff that reinfection is quite possible. But there he is, up and preaching. He knows the risk to himself, his fellow clerics, and his congregation. All it takes is one asymptomatic shedder of the virus to infect attendees. But Hagee? He’s popular, powerful, he has prestige. History teaches us that power is as much a drug as meth, and often just as hard to shake. He’s an addict.

It’s a classic depiction of addiction, willfully pursued in the face of danger to both self and others. I wonder if it would help to keep that in mind when communicating with clerics and their congregations. I’m sure they’ll dislike the characterization. Perhaps it doesn’t apply to all congregations – although I suspect those that are not addicts are also not putting themselves and their fellows at risk.

A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT

— New Day (@NewDay) November 16, 2020

I think – no, I know – what catches my attention is the total commitment of those dying to their myth and delusion: … they’re filled with anger and hatred.

Hatred of who, I wonder. I’m honestly puzzled. Hating reality seems like such a waste of time and energy. But that puzzle suggests that these patients, in one of the strongholds of what’s become the far-right, and thus of Covid-19 denial, are the victims of an ideology and theology that seeks to deny reality when it’s not compatible with ideological or theological tenets.

And when those tenets are more important than the facts on the ground, this is what happens. Reality slaps you down and holds your head underwater, and, often enough, there’s no succor for you.

And because these tenets are the spawn of a pack of religious grifters and their political kin, it makes me angry.

I know I advocated for Pete Buttigieg for Press Secretary, but now I have a new favorite.

Whoever runs the Steak-Umm Twitter account.

friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. (good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

And this just goes on and on.

It’s no surprise that I missed this back in April, as I am not a Twitter user. The account has won awards, and motivated Administration-snark tweets such as this:

When you get more responsible information from a frozen meat than from the President of the United States.

Thank you, @steak_umm. For the yummy steak sandwiches and the info. https://t.co/gq2lAYuC2Z

— Toots of Four Seasons 🤲🚿😷 (@TootsTheRed) April 10, 2020

As this Twitter account is demonstrating a better track record than Spicer, MacEnany, and whoever-it-was between them (I honestly don’t care who that was, since they never held a press briefing!), it might be best to bring corporate Big Frozen Meat on board. They seem to be far closer to truth and reality than the Republicans.

And it’ll embarrass the crap out of them.

(My thanks to Dr. David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine for his blog post on the subject of the Steak-Umm Twitter account.)

As your day goes from bad to worse. I’ll bet the owner of the arm has a final in quantum physics later today, too.

It’s the old slice ‘n dice story in Sea Beast (2008). A deep sea fishing boat returns home after surviving a storm which took one of its crewmen, not realizing that something has trailed it back to port. Once arrived, the bodies quickly begin mysteriously piling up. Or disappearing. Depending on how hungry el Monster happens to be at the moment.

Why is it mysterious? Because our monster is invisible! Not a relation to this ridiculous critter, but its own special power is a paralyzing venom it can spit, leaving prey more or less looking like an audience member, eyes wide in horror, drooling a bit, hoping this all comes to an end quickly, but without that wide-mouthed CHOMP –

Think of parasitic wasps. You know, those little insects that turn spiders into paralyzed meals for their offspring. Those things that convinced Darwin there is no God.

In any case, there’s a lot of running around, use of ineffective guns, a little bit of cleverness, and an inventive use of a cigarillo. Sheesh, I hadn’t seen one of those in decades.

The acting was fairly earnest. The special effects, the plot, the dialog: mediocre at best, embarrassing mostly. Yeah, avoid, avoid, avoid.

SpaceX launches its first bird with a full crew today. The actual launch is at around 6:30, give or take. This is from CBC, the Canadian Broadcast Corp.

Ibrahim X. Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist has been a must-read for the left side of the political spectrum in 2020, and there’s a lot to be said for it. It explores the author’s experience as a Black man growing up in America in an episodic series of events, from his childhood to his achievement of finding a position in academia.

From this journey, he draws lessons, definitions, and prescriptions, using not only the experiences of himself, his family, and his friends, but historical incidents as well. His subjects cover a number of areas: biology, culture, and class are just some. His findings are cast not just at the White community, but the Black community, the Asians, as well as previous generations, along with the current generations. As we should expect, the findings are rarely comforting for any of them, as Kendi suggests his own parents had shared in widespread misconceptions in the Black community of how race should be handled in America, along with the necessary blame of the southern slave owners of the years previous to 1865, that the researchers of the 20th century got key conclusions completely wrong, often based on preconception rather than actual research.

Each chapter contains definitions of his key antiracist concepts, pronounced in a manner that is grating, and almost certainly intended to be that way; a recounting of incidents from his life that help illustrate his point; and prescriptions drawn from them. This approach can be a trifle bracing, particularly in the first category of definitions. As they tend to lead each chapter off, they can come across as unsupported, but by doing so, they provoke the reader to react and, hopefully, organize their thoughts on the subject. The personal anecdotes then give valuable insights into the thought processes of Kendi, perhaps leading to a better understanding of why the matter of race has never been a transactional process.

The prescriptions can range from the relieving, such as the observation that anyone can be racist, rather than just Whites, to the puzzling intellectual error that suggests that if a non-racial group’s racial composition doesn’t reflect surrounding society’s racial composition, then it should be changed until it does, which completely ignores the realities of statistical mechanics.

And it leads to perhaps the most important omission from this book: the role of merit, or excellence, in any group, and how that interacts with a historically racist society. The negatives of promoting someone based on something other than ability is well-known, even as it continually occurs in nepotistic and other non-merit based environments world-wide; yet, just such an excuse from that realm, i.e., a fallacious use of He’s just not good enough, is also well known to be an excuse for satisfying racist impulses. How does Kendi propose to balance the proposition of enforced racial composition against that of the requirement of excellence? He doesn’t say.

Like any book that strives to break new ground, sometimes it gets off the trail and plunges into the river, and that’s all well and good: it shows striving. I don’t accept all, or even any, that I read; in particular, his suggestion that racism started with the Portuguese makes me wonder if an anthropologist trained in evolutionary theory would agree.

But the fact that I finished this two months ago and only now have written a review suggests that, along with the time taken up with the recent election, it took time to absorb and think about the proposed debating points, and that’s not a bad thing.

You may not like it, you may hate it, but it might make you think.

“He bids 24 hearts? No, he cannot play bridge until he’s defrosted from that block of ice!”

For a movie generally found on B-lists of science fiction movies, The Thing From Another World (1951) is actually not laughable. It’s not even disappointing. Indeed, the worst part of this flick may be its unwieldy title, although I confess nothing better springs to mind.

When a scientific research station in the Arctic reports a mysterious flying saucer passing nearby, followed by an explosion, the US Air Force dispatches a plane (a lovely C-47, a descendant of the famous DC-3) and crew to investigate, lead by Captain Scott. Teaming up with their itinerant newspaper reporter and the station personnel, they get to the crash site, only to find the saucer deeply buried in ice. An attempt to thaw it out using “standard” thermite bombs results in its ignition and final explosion, but the crew does come away with one prize: a block of ice with a body inside.

Returned to the research station, the chief scientist, Dr. Carrington, wants to examine the body, but is denied by Captain Scott. A few hours later, though, the unthinkable has occurred: the ice block has melted and the body isn’t a body – it’s animate and dangerous.

Carrington and his team take samples and discover they’re dealing with a plant, a mobile plant that feeds on blood. Carrington becomes the stereotypical scientist-before-man, unable to separate the pursuit of knowledge from the need to survive, and is thus the least believable of the characters.

But the battle for survival is believable. Bodies pile up. The Thing is trying to survive, as are the humans. The acting is competent or more than competent, and the plot’s depictions of both official and personal reactions are more than believable. These are important components of the movie, because, after all, we’re dealing with the unbelievable: a visit of a creature from outer space.

Does the movie have problems? No doubt. Certain cultural attitudes are on full display, for example. But these flaws are not the howlers you often see in old science fiction movies. To its credit, this flick is really beautifully filmed, and if it’s not filmed on location, it sure feels like it.

I won’t recommend it, as it’s not that compelling. But if you’re looking to spend an hour or so meditating on the possible dangers of the Universe, this is not a bad movie to contemplate. It surprised us at how we didn’t object to it, and that’s no bad thing.

Gybe:

A jibe (US) or gybe (Britain) is a sailing maneuver whereby a sailing vessel reaching downwind turns its stern through the wind, such that the wind direction changes from one side of the boat to the other. For square-rigged ships, this maneuver is called wearing ship.

In this maneuver, the mainsail will cross the center of the boat while the jib is pulled to the other side of the boat. If a spinnaker is up, its pole will have to be manually moved to the other side, to remain opposite the mainsail. In a dinghy, raising the centerboard can increase the risk of capsizing during what can be a somewhat violent maneuver, although the opposite is true of a dinghy with a flat, planing hull profile: raising the centerboard reduces heeling moment during the maneuver and so reduces the risk of capsize. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “We can harness the solar wind to sail to the farthest corners of space,” David Hambling, NewScientist (31 October 2020, paywall):

As any sailor knows, the wind isn’t a perfect source of propulsion because you can only sail so close to it before you have to start tacking and gybing. This means any cosmic sailing ship would clip along nicely when going away from a star, but would struggle to turn back.

All about solar sails. In case you’re curious, here’s the The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission page, although to my eye it appears to be broken at the moment. If you were wondering, its predecessor, LightSail 1, made orbit but suffered a malfunction and didn’t complete its mission. I also have a vague memory of The Planetary Society launching something else using an obsolete Soviet Union ICBM launch vehicle that blew up before payload release, but I can’t quite remember the details. Anyone?

Lately I’ve been meditating on the idea that today’s crop of right wing Christians are really quite the arrogant bunch. There’s nothing new in the thought; for all that humility is supposedly an important attribute of the prototypical Christian, it’s difficult to see it in the Evangelical.

Why do I say this? Well, I came to this not through direct observation, but while I was considering my own agnosticism, by which I mean that, when it comes to spirituality, or the divine, or religion, whichever term you prefer, I don’t know.

Does a Divinity, singular or plural, actually exist? I don’t know.

What’s it’s name? I don’t know.

What does it care for me? I don’t know.

What are its plans for, oh, anything? I don’t know.

It’s rather the catchphrase for me, as an agnostic. Maybe there’s a Divinity. Maybe there’s not. Maybe there is, but he doesn’t much care for me. I don’t know.

It even applies the other way. Does the Divinity want our society to be more just? I don’t know. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t ask.

And then I thought about the Evangelicals – this was during the campaign – and their painful certainty about how the world should be ordered, and that their God wants it that way. That God favors the United States (aka Manifest Destiny). That God ordained that Donald J. Trump, Father of Lies, should be President. That, in the 2004 campaign, George W. Bush had been selected by God to be President. (That didn’t end well at all for us, did it?)

One of the finest examples of this arrogance came through my email this morning, from the ever persistent Erick Erickson:

I am weary.

Truth cannot be what any campaign says it is. Truth must be true and Christians must have an obligation to the truth.

Yesterday, between the phone calls calling for me to be fired from radio and emails encouraging me to shove Omaha Steaks up my ass, die in a fire, and calling me a sissy who should die of cancer for the offense of telling people the truth, I had a Christian tell me that God’s will is for Donald Trump to win and the church to be purged of all the pretend Christians like me who did not really support him. This Christian truly believes that we are about to watch God perform a miracle and generate enough votes to shift the Electoral College to President Trump.

I ended the day with a Christian telling me there’s no way God could ever want Joe Biden as President because he’ll persecute the church so how dare I say if Biden gets elected it would be God’s will.

If you go through the various quotes of Erickson I’ve pulled over the years, it’s clear that he’s quite arrogant himself, between his views on abortion, how Trump’s Administration is part of God’s plan, and perhaps even his views on how the Democrats will destroy the economy.

But arrogance is not a uniform phenomenon. For different folks, it affects different facets of their beliefs with different magnitudes. Worse – much worse – arrogance decreases tolerance. The more certain a belief, the less tolerance there is for divergence. Stripped of context, this isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it’s merely an observation of human behavior. For example, if the context is homeopathy, the belief that drinking water that was used to dilute a poisonous substance until it’s chemically indistinguishable from water will cure one of the same affliction, and the belief, based on extensive research, is that homeopathy is ineffective, then having little tolerance for those advocating using homeopathy to cure anything is a good arrogance, if perhaps a little grating.

But basing one’s arrogance on a Divinity for which there’s no evidence, on a Divinity whose plans, if any, are plainly marked as being mysterious?

Intuitively, it seems clear that the less plain evidence is apparent for supporting an arrogance, the stronger that arrogance must become simply to survive. It’s as if a mouse is gifted with a megaphone so that it may shout, I’m a monster! just to stop the mountain lion from eating it. And I think with Erickson, we’re seeing him caught in the grinding gears of arrogance. He has dared to be not quite so arrogant as those he has often written for. It is, in a sense, for the man who had the arrogance to write of Trump Derangement Syndrome, as he called those who loathed Trump the Liar, a comeuppance, even karma, as his fellow Evangelicals exhibit behavior that, truly, appears to be deranged to their fellow citizens.

But Erickson’s arrogance isn’t quite as strong as many of his fellows, and, in their intolerance, they’re grinding him up. He’s not exhibiting as strong an arrogance as they, and in their intolerant certainty, the upbraid him for his perceived lack of faith.

Am I arrogant? Some will yell yes! I think I’m only middlin’ arrogant, and I try to mitigate it by often asking myself about the foundations of my belief systems. I shan’t go into that topic here, though.

Now, I think Erickson is a little baffled, and it’s because he misses a bit of emotional logic here.

I’m weary of the self-imposed victimization of people who, when things don’t go their way, concoct conspiracies to avoid confronting problems. Four years ago it was Democrats who believed Russia stole the election. Today, Republicans believe voting machines did.

Joe Biden is President-Elect and too many people who rather play victim, cry, scream, and believe a whole lot of lies. We are more than a week away from the election and his lead keeps growing. Is there voter fraud? There’s always voter fraud. Is it enough to scrap the election? No. Why? Because Biden won overwhelmingly with lawful and legitimate votes.

Here’s the thing: the pastoral grifters and con-men, as well as the earnestly mistaken, who’ve been leading the Evangelicals, have spent years telling their congregations of Trump’s selection by God. Even now, with Biden the clear winner, we have Kenneth Copeland stoking the hatred and arrogance:

Erickson is missing this bit of logic: If Biden does win the Presidency, against all the prophecies of the huckster pastors who proclaimed Donald J. Trump a holy icon, then not only does it mean the pastors are wrong, but it means those congregations have been repudiated.

Repudiated by God.

And if you’re part of these congregations, that arrogance of which they’ve imbibed cannot permit such a thought. They tithed, they believed, they lived their lives by the canons promoted by their clerics, they promoted their faith, they may have even committed acts of dubious public morality, because cults sometimes require such acts in order to retain membership.

By promoting truth over their arrogance, Erickson threatens their position in society as the Chosen of God. For the arrogant, that prestige factor, even if it’s only self-perceived, is most important. For the humble, who know of their own ignorance, the selection of Biden to lead the nation, even if personally repugnant, doesn’t carry this emotional logic and weight.

Erickson should not be surprised. He has, after all, been promoting the far-right ideology for decades, and, judging from his emails, imbuing it with the fragrance of the Divine. To be puzzled now is a measure of just how far he’s bought into the mythology of a divine creature for which there is no objective evidence.

And that is arrogant.

Alabama voters chose political novice, failed hedge fund manager, and retired football coach Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to replace incumbent Doug Jones (D-AL), and they did so by twenty points. Alabama Daily News sat down with him for an interview, and he had a couple of gems for the reader:

Question: You mentioned the majorities and they are going to be razor thin. I mean, right now it looks like one or two seats in the Senate for Republicans, maybe 14 or 15 seats for Democrats in the House. And that’s as close as it’s been in a long, long time. Do you think the Democrats are going to have to work with Republicans and Republicans are going to have to work with Democrats? You see that being possibly a more productive situation?

Tuberville: Yeah and that’s how our government was set up. You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive.

Urp #1. The Founding Fathers worried about entrenched interests and accumulation of power. This guy doesn’t understand that the Judiciary is the third branch. What are we to make of this? Well, that he’s just another Republican amateur. What are the Alabama voters thinking? The Republican Party could have at least picked First Lickspittle Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, an experienced, if radical nutcase, former Senator to resume his position.

Question: Other than the obvious, I mean you won your race, and so that’s obviously a big takeaway. Other than that obvious point, what kind of takeaways did you take from the election, both state and nationally? What do you think voters said?

Tuberville: Well, it’s a little concerning to me that, just as a citizen this time last week, I look at it and I see what country I grew up in and what it’s meant and the direction that we were going, and it’s concerning to me that a guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a Socialist type of government, you know, one-payer system in health care, raise taxes 20%, when the other half the country is basically voting for freedom, let us control our own lives, stay out of our life. And that’s concerning to me that we’re to the point now where we’ve got almost half the country voting for something that this country wasn’t built on. Very concerning and, you know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism. Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 percent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism. So we’re fighting it right here on our own soil. We’ve got to decide, you know, over the years which direction we’re going, and that part’s concerning to me.

Urp #2. World War II was about fascism, not socialism. Now, I know the fascist party in Germany used to be called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, so it can be confusing – but as he incorporates this fallacious point as the center of his argument against socialism in general, this intellectual mistake cannot be excused. Inserting the proper name and definition destroys his assertions.

But even worse is this: Fascism is a creature of the right, not the left, where socialism generally originates. Now, I know that I find little difference between communism and fascism, but for the politically aware, Tuberville’s far-right ideology is housed in an apartment right next to that holding the smoking remains of fascism.

I suspect this is a strong contender for the Clown of the Senate.

Mark Joseph Stern speaks to a remarkable speech delivered by Associate Justice Alito, appointed by former President George W. Bush, to the Federalist Society:

On Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The Federalist Society, a well-funded network of conservative attorneys, has come under unusual scrutiny after Donald Trump elevated scores of its members to the federal judiciary. Its leaders insist that it is a mere debate club, a nonpartisan forum for the exchange of legal ideas. But Alito abandoned any pretense of impartiality in his speech, a grievance-laden tirade against Democrats, the progressive movement, and the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Alito’s targets included COVID-related restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, Plan B, the contraceptive mandate, LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, and five sitting Democratic senators.

Ironically, Alito began his prerecorded address by condemning an effort by the U.S. Judicial Conference to forbid federal judges from being members of the Federalist Society. He then praised, by name, the four judges who spearheaded a successful effort to defeat the ban—or, as Alito put it, who “stood up to an attempt to hobble the debate that the Federalist Society fosters.” Alito warned that law school students who are members of the Federalist Society tell him they “face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.”

These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself defied the basic principles of judicial conduct. [Slate]

A faux-pas by Alito? Or could this signal something more important?

A retirement from SCOTUS in, say, the next week or two?

It’s not entirely insensible. Justice Alito is 70. Assuming Biden holds true to his word in 2024 to not run again, we may see a President Kamala Harris from 2024 to 2032, which would mean , if Alito is a team player for the conservatives, he would still be holding on grimly at age 82.

Or he can retire now and let Trump nominate a far younger conservative.

That begs the question of why Justices Thomas (age 72) and Alito are still in their seats. Partly, that can be attributed to the right-wing epistemic bubble that insisted President Trump couldn’t lose. Today, Arizona and Georgia have been called for Biden, and if I think Georgia’s call is premature, that’s really neither here nor there. Biden has thankfully won and, regardless of my disappointment in so many of my fellow Americans, firmly planted his boot up Trump’s ass.

We can also attribute their continued presence in their pleasure in doing the work and occupying preeminent positions in society. I don’t begrudge it, unlike Erick Erickson. No doubt they worked long and hard to achieve their positions.

But Alito and Thomas now face at least four years of a Democratic President, and a good chance of twelve years of Democratic occupation of the White House – and I suspect that the very survival of the Republican Party in its current form during that time is up for debate. If Thomas and Alito leave their positions during that period, the liberal fear of far-right dominance of SCOTUS for decades will suddenly transform into a liberal majority on the Court.

So this could be a signal that Alito is about to retire. If he does not, he may find himself being asked to recuse on cases that can be plausibly linked to this rhetoric, and that is embarrassment in itself – a self-inflicted wound, as it were.

Who’s up for some more SCOTUS drama? Quite frankly, I’ll take a skip. By the time a nomination could be made and the requisite votes taken, Senator-elect Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat, would have replaced Republican Senator McSally, but that’s not enough.

And, finally, one of his comments show how much he’s bought into conservative anti-expert sentiment:

For instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a “constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.

The last remark is a classic far-right whine, and is quite ironic since Alito himself qualifies as the worst sort of expert: someone who tells other people how to act.

The New York Times reports that my concern about voting machines is shared with … President Trump.

A Dominion ImageCast precinct-count optical-scan voting machine, mounted on a collapsible ballot box made by ElectionSource.
Source: Wikipedia

President Trump on Thursday spread new baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, fueling a conspiracy theory that Dominion “software glitches” changed vote tallies in Michigan and Georgia last week.

The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts.

One of the areas that had me worried was the age of the machines, but, at least in Georgia, it appears that concern has been addressed:

When it comes to the government handoff, the Trump Administration isn’t going to make it easy, but the Biden team is on it.

The Biden team has drawn up lists of recently departed senior officials at key agencies to help transition officials get up to speed on ongoing projects, budgets, trouble spots, technology and personnel, a senior transition official said, describing “a whole plan for this contingency where we don’t have cooperation but have to move forward.” The plan was put in place to anticipate refusals of some agency heads to engage even if the GSA declares Biden the winner, the official said, for example from John Ratcliffe, the Trump-appointed director of national intelligence.

Over a decades-long career in Washington, Biden has cultivated a long list of friends, associates and former aides with deep ties in just about every corner of government. Those connections and that experience are reflected in the team he has assembled. Now, their abilities to prepare for a new administration under extraordinary circumstances are being tested. [WaPo]

It shows forward thinking and planning.

So what worries me? It’ll go too well. Biden, with his team and their vast experience and contacts, will assume responsibility so smoothly that we’ll never realize just how well they’ve done their job. The far-right fringe will yammer, Fox News “hosts” will amplify the yammering, and then we’ll end up with a pack of incompetents winning another election in 2024.

Even if the Biden Administration discloses the messes they have to clean up, it’ll never get to the Fox News regulars.

Ugh.

Except … apparently former Mayor and Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) has become quite popular on Fox News. How about Mayor Pete for Press Secretary or Communications Director or Fox News Liaison?