Category Archives: Uncategorized

Regarding the extension of self detected by researchers when driving a car, a reader writes:

I turn the key, the truck starts, and I drive it. It’s as simple as I am. I don’t dwell on my extended self and I have no angst about losing control of who I am. Although I will confess to having driven halfway across the state and realizing I have zero memory of the last many hours behind the wheel.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Especially the time a cop went wailing by me as I drove along. I wonder if the cop had his siren going just to wake me up. They didn’t pull me over.

But I think the extended self is unconscious, the ability to know where the nose of the car extends to in relation to where you sit – learned through experience until it becomes akin to ‘muscle memory.’

The Princess Bride: Home Movie (2020) is a retelling of the beloved classic The Princess Bride (1987) which embraces the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic and the whimsy of the original to create a slightly slimmed down version of the story, featuring dozens of actors, each working out of their own backyard, and gloriously edited together to tell the story of evil men, swashbuckling, sword fighting, and the drive for revenge.

It’s all very silly and made me laugh way too much. My Arts Editor, recovering from surgery, snorted at me, closed her eyes halfway, and put up with it. In YouTube distribution from Quibi, here it is.

As my Arts Editor will be undergoing surgery, probably within the hour, for a torn rotator cuff, I may have to curtail posting to UMB for an unknown amount of time. Fortunately, I run the blog to vent steam, rather than make money or anything else that requires I keep a schedule.

Or it may not curtail posting.

Jacob Schulz on Lawfare:

“In Washington D.C., ruthless fanatic violence erupted in the halls of Congress,” the news opened.

Extremists had burst into the Capitol. They made a beeline for the chamber, looking for members of Congress. It was “pandemonium.” The anchor declared that the attackers had earned “the evil distinction of having perpetrated a criminal outrage almost unique in America’s history.” He decried the attack as “wanton violence that shocked and stirred the nation” but “only did harm to the cause” the attackers purported to represent.

Sound familiar? It should—except that the attack in question took place on March 1, 1954, at the hands not of #MAGA extremists but of Puerto Rican independence radicals.

I had no idea.

There’s been speculation about Republican tactics at the upcoming Impeachment trial of former President Trump. In case you were wondering if the team tactic of the Republicans – and, remember, they like to do everything as a team, and express outrage when someone goes off and thinks for themselves – is to simply not attend the actual vote, keep this in mind:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. [Constitution of the United States of America]

Present is the keyword here. I see no mentions of quorums, either. That means if the Republicans decamp en masse, the Democrats have an easy road to conviction, assuming the evidence presented by the House managers is convincing.

So enough Republicans have to be there to make the math work. A likely scenario is 55 votes for conviction, which suggests 84-55=29 Republicans would need to be present and voting nay for Trump to escape further disgrace.

I wonder how they’d go about deciding who doesn’t have to show up and who does? Sounds like quite the little war.

But they don’t want to vote on this, either.

The coordinated Reddit investment army of which I wrote yesterday continues to stir up comment and trouble. First, though, the markets had a mild recovery today, so either they don’t realize there may be a danger here, or have discounted it.

Now, Gamestop (GME) and AMC (AMC) stock prices slid down the greased rope towards their old (that is, of 6 business days ago), and possibly proper, values today during normal trading, but as I type this, it appears that in after hours trading the army is making a play to prop GME back up. After a 44% drop today, it’s back up 49%. Keep in mind those two percentages are off of consecutive baselines, not the same baseline, so look up the numbers for yourself – they’re changing until after hours trading closes up. The AMC share price is exhibiting a similar behavior. There were five stocks listed by news services as being part of the action, and the other three are Bed, Bath, and Beyond (BBBY), Nokia (NOK), and Blackberry (BB), all notable as formerly sexy stocks that have lost their luster. I have not checked their share price behavior today.

The most interesting bit of news to me is the report that Robinhood, the app that permits free buys and sells of stocks and is reportedly the app of choice for the coordinated army, has restricted trading in these stocks:

GameStop traders sent the stock on a wild ride Thursday. The stock plunged more than 40% Thursday after surging nearly 40% at one point earlier in the day. Adding to the drama? Robinhood said it was restricting trading in the red hot stock as well as several others.

“We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only,” Robinhood said in a statement, adding that it was also doing so for AMC (AMC), BlackBerry (BB), Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), Nokia (NOK) and three other stocks.

“Amid significant market volatility, it’s important as ever that we help customers stay informed,” Robinhood added.

The backlash was swift, and hours after implementing the restrictions, Robinhood appeared to backtrack, saying it would resume limited buys on those securities starting Friday. [CNN/Business]

I’d be interested in knowing the nature of the backlash. The army threatening to take its 2.2 million members and go somewhere else? Legal action? This latter reason is particularly interesting because I’m a little concerned that Robinhood’s action, while perhaps legal, is probably not ethical in the larger scheme of things. By that I mean the right to shut down trading in a stock without authorization from a higher authority amounts to trading manipulation, an old suspicion among amateur – and perhaps professional – traders towards the big market makers, firms responsible for the implementation of the market..

A reader writes:

From my reading, it appears that Game Stop was actually well positioned for success and growth, but that the short sellers were wrong but then sought to save their positions by further depressing the stock by buying more shorts. Then the long buyers on Reddit pushed it up, making it impossible for the shorts to cover their positions (short positions can be had for more than 100% of the stock available). So in this case, I don’t think the long buyers were artificially inflating Game Stop so much as pushing back against a fake downward pressure. I kind of like that some of the shorts got caught out.

From the above CNN/Business link:

Although the retailer reported decent holiday results and now has the backing of Chewy (CHWY) co-founder Ryan Cohen, GameStop is still losing money as the sales of video games have increasingly shifted from buying a cartridge in a box at a physical store to a download model.

I owned GME years and year ago, did decently, but got out for the same reasons as CNN cites – I didn’t see GME having a future with its then-business model, which I assume hasn’t changed much if they’re closing stores and losing money.

All that said, if the Internet were to suddenly collapse, GME would be an interesting opportunity.

And then there’s Erick Erickson, who sees everything through his far-right vision:

American history is full of stories of small entrepreneurs with good ideas displacing pre-existing giants in the marketplace. Over time, however, that has become less the case. Now, Goliath hires an army of lobbyists who help shape the regulatory code, the tax code, and draft legislation to provide competitive advantages for themselves or disadvantages for would be competitors.

The little guy cannot become the big guy because the big guy has lobbyists. It is no coincidence that Democrats are decrying the wealth gap and the inability of the little guy to become the big guy at a time the big guy is engaged in shaping federal policy and funding the Democrats. The Democrats’ solution is to make the little guy more comfortable, but also punish him if he dares to get too successful. The Republican solution has largely been to prop up the big guys and bail them out when they falter, equally ensuring there can be no competition.

The advent of the Web heralded a brand new wave of creative destruction – it hasn’t slowed it down. There’s a host of dead and dying retailers lying in the wake of Amazon and its competitors – of which there are a few.

And, somehow, the Democrats are the thumb puppets of Big Business.

But Erickson is stuck in his metaphor of David vs Goliath:

CNBC, the stock regulators, the business press, and various state Secretaries of State declare the regular Davids the bad guy for driving Goliath to a bail out. According to all of them, it is bad for David to slay Goliath because David might get hurt in the process. Ironically, these sorts of regular people trading are CNBC’s core audience and CNBC is vilifying them and protecting the hedge fund guys.

These guys on Reddit know that. They do not care. They know, with a subreddit called WallStreetBets that they are gambling on the stock market. They are not using it for a long term growth and income strategy.

But the system favors the existing large institutions. In the name of stability and paternalism, the regular guys driving up the prices are bad because they are destabilizing a system and possibly costing themselves money.

They have every right to do it, but the system is against them, which pushes the financial press against them, which makes me root for them even more.

The market will settle to the fair market value price. GameStop stock will go down. People will lose money. But I’m unsure why any of us should care that a group of multimillionaires or billionaire hedge fund guys lost their shirts to the regular guys when usually it is the regular guys losing their shirts and jobs to the hedge funds.

Or will it? He seems blind to the possibilities of this phenomenon – possibilities that have little to do with traditional stock markets. But I mentioned that in my prior post.

For Erickson it sometimes seems like every post is a chance to slime the Democrats and the left while propagating a political narrative, rather than exploring possibilities.

But readers are used to that.

But there’s even more politics related to this incident!

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday accused Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of “trying to get me killed” during the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and called for his resignation from the Senate, after the Texas Republican appeared to agree with her on the need for an investigation into Robinhood following chaos on Wall Street.

“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,” the New York congresswoman wrote in a tweet directed at the Texas senator Thursday. “Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

She continued, “You haven’t even apologized for the serious physical + mental harm you contributed to from Capitol Police & custodial workers to your own fellow members of Congress. In the meantime, you can get off my timeline & stop clout-chasing. Thanks.” [CNN/Politics]

And she’s certainly justified in that comment. Make it clear he’s no longer welcome in polite company, eventually he’ll clear out in shame.

This bit from NewScientist (12 December 2020) caught my attention:

We already know that when we use a tool such as a hammer, our brain’s body map expands to encompass it: the tool temporarily becomes part of an “extended self”. Something similar is true if you are a habitual driver. The vehicle becomes part of you – or perhaps you become part of the vehicle.

With digital devices now constantly in our hands, the extended self could become permanent. “Our identity partly depends on memories,” says philosopher Richard Heersmink at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Increasingly, we are outsourcing our memories to our smartphones – not just through notifications of what we should do, but through messages and images that recreate what we have done. The result? “A larger part of our narrative self is smeared out over our environment,” says Heersmink. You may extend further than you think.

Except that’s not really true, is it? Take the very example first given: driving cars. Supposedly, within a few years none of us will be driving cars; we’ll instead be chauffeured about by dedicated computing systems, perhaps even AIs – mislabeled or, frighteningly^[1], not. Will our extended self still include the car?

I doubt it. It’s the action of driving that engenders the car’s inclusion into your sense of self, because that’s part of being effective at driving. If it’s not needed, if you just hit the big GREEN start button and speak an address, there’s little reason to include the car into your extended self.

And if you then have to drive the car in an emergency?

I wonder about the unintended consequences of changes to our extended self concept. Are they all positive, or will there be some negatives? For some folks, even books are negatives rather than positives, because, in their minds, our memories have become inferior to those of our ancestors, who could recite, say, The Odyssey from memory. So, to some extent, positive and negative consequences will be a matter of opinion.

¹ Imagine having an entity that has self-agency controlling your vehicle. And it sours on you, or its existence, or …

Today the market indices dropped by more than 2% across the board. Here’s the DJIA for the last year:

I’m not alarmed by this. Market goes up, market goes down. Long term investors shrug and go about their business.

But that fact that Gamestop and AMC, the cinema company, have climbed precipitously recently did catch my attention. How much?

Gamestop (GME) is up nearly 10 fold in the last week.

Same for AMC (AMC).

So what’s going on?

GameStop, hedge funds’ most-hated stock, was targeted by an army of retail investors who marshaled forces against short sellers in online chat rooms. In the Reddit forum “wallstreetbets” with more than 2 million subscribers, rookie investors encouraged each other to pile into GameStop’s shares and call options, creating massive short squeezes in the stock. [CNBC]

And so we see the power of the Internet as a group of individual investors, a coordinated army, have successfully moved to boost the price of a stock in the face of short selling, resulting in a short squeeze^[1]. The shorts, in this case, are hedge funds, immensely large amounts of money that attempt to make lucrative, yet safe, investments through novel strategies not available to smaller investors. And sometimes fail.

This is the first time that I’ve seen retail investors take aim at the hedge fund industry, which, in my limited experience, are generally regarded with some suspicion by the individual investor as being entities which manipulate the market for their own profit, and other investors bedamned. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, and as a long-term investor I generally feel I can ignore the question, unlike day traders or short-term (not short position!) or even short position traders, all of whom are far too sensitive – in my opinion – to the eddies in the river of capital.

But the emergence of a coordinated army of individual investors declaring war – and quite successfully, as their target, Melvin Capital, was apparently badly hurt when GME shares took off – on a hedge fund is something new, and thus needs to be considered carefully. Why?

There’s an underlying assumption to the market, and that everyone’s in it for the same reason: to make money. That’s not entirely true, of course, because there’s investors who are investing to promote the social good, and there are some very few who hope to accumulate enough shares to take over a company. But, by and large, the statement is accurate enough.

But what about now? What if this coordinated army is mobilized towards some other end, not having to do with finance? That’s what’s stirring in my mind. How are such maneuvers to be recognized? If the general assumption is suddenly falsified, am I in trouble? is this army regulatable, and should they be?

Or is it really a significant phenomenon?

I can’t help but notice the similarity between this army and a traditional old pump ‘n dumper, a disreputable denizen of the penny stocks who selects one, goes about pumping out good, but false, news about it after investing in it at a low price, and when the pump results in an inflated value, dumps their shares for an ill-gained profit.

For the investors that invested at the top, they lose nearly everything, but so does almost everyone else, especially if they made the mistake of being patient. And how is this different for those who pumped up GME?

There are three classes of investor here: the coordinated army, the investors who don’t know any better and jumped on the rocket – and the targeted hedge fund who owes a hellacious amount of the targeted company’s stock. While the second class of investor will be contributing some of their wealth to the coordinated army, and so will members of the army itself in a case of cannibalism, consisting of those who got in late, the intended, and real victim, will be a hedge fund which eventually ends up buying the shares it owes at vastly inflated prices.

In a sense, this is a Robin Hood scenario in that a vast treasury was just raided by means that are not exactly ethical, but probably not quite illegal. Yet. If you don’t like hedge funds, this sounds like a good thing.

But I do worry that it could be turned against me, or people in some category to which I belong, and could thus negatively impact me some day.

Look, the market is ideally a way for people to lay bets on the future value of public companies. If this coordinated army screws with that purpose, then it’ll make it harder for honest investors to honestly make those bets.

But if the hedge funds do have an unfair advantage, then is this the way to even the board? I doubt it, and I say that as someone who was furious when Long Term Capital Management, an early, huge hedge fund, received a government bailout after making a series of bad investments. That should have never have happened, they should have just failed, and those who felt the pain would have been object lessons for everyone else.

But one must be partially divorced from emotions when evaluating situations like this. Sure, it might be nice to see a manipulative – if they are – hedge fund go down in flames. But is this coordinated army a general menace?

So when I look at that 2% loss in the market indices, I don’t believe that’s a sign of what’s to come in the shadow of the coordinated army of investors. In my experience, the market goes up, the market goes down – but rarely more than it’s gone up.

But I am going to keep this coordinated army incident in the back of my mind. Just in case.

¹ A short position occurs when an investor borrows some set number of shares of a stock from one or more investors, sells them on the market, and then buys them back for return to those who own them. The investor profits when the price drops from his sell point, and loses money when the price is higher and they are forced to buy back. A short squeeze occurs when the price of a stock is forced higher because a large number of shorts are in the market and on the wrong side of trades. They have to scramble to buy and return the shares at a loss – and if demand is high, the price skyrockets. A short’s profit potential is always limited, and loss potential is unlimited.

This Deseret News article on Senator Romney’s (R-UT) rational position on the recent Presidential election caught my eye:

Former President Donald Trump will never admit that he lost a fair election, but every elected Republican ought to be telling voters that as a step toward bringing the country together, Sen. Mitt Romney said Tuesday.

In addition to social media perpetuating the “big lie” that Trump is somehow still president and President Joe Biden stole the election, GOP officials, too, are contributing to that notion, the Utah Republican said.

“You have many of the Trump supporters in elected office, senators, congresspeople, governors, continuing to say the same thing, that the election was stolen,” Romney said.

The phrase was … but every elected Republican ought to be telling voters that as a step toward bringing the country together.

And it suddenly became obvious, at least for GOPers who were both elected in the recent election and continue to perpetuate the big lie.

I suggest that at every public forum at which they appear, a flashmob suddenly appears, and they begin this, ah, chanting dialog with the elected official:

FLASH MOB: You stole your election! You stole your election!

OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: You stole your election! You stole your election!

OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: PROVE IT, THEN! PROVE IT, THEN!

OFFICIAL: I don’t have to! You have no proof!

FM: JUST LIKE YOU DON’T ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU HYPOCRITICAL, LEG HUMPING, PANTS WETTER! WE DON’T NEED ANY!

OFFICIAL: What?

FM: ELECTION STEALER! ELECTION STEALER! WE DEMAND A RECOUNT OF YOUR ELECTION! AND THEN ANOTHER ONE! AND THEN ANOTHER ONE! AND THEN WE DON’T CARE, YOU STOLE THE ELECTION REGARDLESS!

OFFICIAL: THIS IS CRAZY!

FM: EXACTLY, YOU DUMBSHIT! STOP BEING A DUMBSHIT AND WE’LL STOP DOING THIS!

Because, quite frankly, it sounds exhausting. And it might need some tuning. But it should drive the point home: If one election is illegitimate despite absolutely no proof, then they’re all illegitimate for both sides.

Spread the word, folks. This might work.

A reader writes concerning the Loon balloons:

Maybe they should use hydrogen instead of helium. They’re unmanned, after all.

I suppose it depends which element is more likely to leak from the Loon balloons as biased by the costs of refilling using each element.

Source: Airships.net

Although there is the option of painting the balloons in rocket fuel, as was done by the Germans to the Hindenberg, and when a balloon is to be retired, just hitting it with a flare. In fact, an enterprising outfit might sell the opportunities to blow up such balloons, generating a minor stream of income. “You, too, can pretend to be the finger of the Internet God, destroying a malfunctioning unit just like your own body does with its cells.”

Ahem. That may be a little over the top.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks he’s proven himself to the far-right contingent in the Republican Party:

The Senate tabled an effort by Sen. Rand Paul Tuesday to force a vote on the constitutionality of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, but the vote offered an indicator for how Republican senators — who overwhelmingly voted for Paul’s measure — feel about the trial.

Paul’s motion was killed on a 55-45 vote, with five Republicans joining all Democrats, meaning 45 Republicans voted for Paul’s effort. Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania crossed party lines to vote with Democrats. [CNN/Politics]

But I’d like to suggest to Corporate America that we now have forty five more candidates for deprivation of corporate funds and support in their reelection campaigns.

And I think Corporate America, which faces an existential crisis if Trump is not forcefully rejected politically, had better take this seriously. The Republicans have only themselves to blame for their crisis in the extreme position of their party. Refusing to deal with it not only damages themselves, but endangers democracy itself – and all those corporate entities which it supports.

Go get ’em, kids!

But let’s extend the theme, eh? I think Corporate America should make a promise, to America as well as itself, not to support far right candidates of any sort, and at any level. They need to show judgment and maturity in their support choices.

Or consumers, in their turn, may have to make those judgments on them.

Returning to this long dormant thread, and reminding readers of my long time opposition to private prisons, I’m immensely comforted that President Biden is taking swift action on this issue:

Executive order to end reliance on private prisons

In an effort to terminate the federal government’s use of privately owned detention facilities, the Attorney General has been directed not to renew Department of Justice contracts with private prisons. [NBC News]

This isn’t a step towards socialism or taking a shot at a business which was founded by a Republican. This is a step towards removing the influence of business on the process of justice.

How does this matter? Ask yourself this: should a business be allowed to attempt to increase its profit by lobbying government to increase the penalties for infractions of the law? Even to create new laws which, by their infractions, will increase its profits?

There is little reason to have confidence that justice, and therefore society, will be served.

The above link lists most, or all, of the Executive Actions taken by President Biden so far.

A reader writes concerning tuition-related debt:

Student debt comes from a couple of sources. One is the plethora of students who go to college for degrees that do not have enough fiscal payback to compensate for the cost of the degree. Another is the inability to delay gratification by failing to spread out the time to degree by adding in work time to earn the cost of said education. But the main one is the federal student loan program itself. When colleges know that students will get loans that guarantee the colleges will get their money, they have no real incentive to be competitive in their student costs. They know they’ll still get students, and that they’ll get their money from the government no matter how badly the student crashes and burns, or how little they make with their “gender studies” degree after graduation. Thus they crank costs for undergrads to pay for grad students, research programs, and other programs that are more related to how they’re viewed from an academic status perspective, rather than how well and efficiently they educate their undergrad populations. IMHO. YMMV.

Regarding the negative impact of scholarships and easily obtainable loans on tuition, I agree and have made that argument in years prior, although probably not on UMB.

I see it as a simple model of financial inflation. Much like the Wiemar Republic’s printing money to satisfy Versailles Treaty requirements and domestic items to buy, the money supply, in this case funneled into the higher ed “financial system” via scholarships and loans, increases at a rate greater than the increase in available positions in higher education, so the suppliers of those positions increase the prices because, well, they can.

This hurts those who cannot win scholarships nor wish to get loans, although they are forced to get them, because generally they haven’t the capacity to increase their incomes at the same rate, and, as students, they rarely have any excess capacity as it is. As my reader notes, there is no squeeze on the sellers; in fact, it’s a seller’s market, and functions like a seller’s market in real estate, when there are many out there looking to buy, but not so many interested in selling. Bidding wars erupt. Well, not in higher ed – they just push tuition higher.

Scholarship money can be considered free money; loans are discounted, as they are paid back over time.

It’s be interesting – fascinating – to ban such scholarships and loans for a decade, just to see what happens to tuition in the absence of all that free and discounted money. My guess is that, after a couple of years, tuitions would drop. There’d be an awful lot of empty slots that would need to be filled – or campuses would be closing, and no educational administrator wants to have that on their c.v., eh? Suddenly, they’d have to compete to put butts in those seats.

Never, ever hire or do business with these people.

Located deep in Canada’s Yukon, the remote community of Beaver Creek is home to only about 100 people, most of them members of the White River First Nation.

So when an unfamiliar couple who claimed to work at a local motel showed up at a mobile clinic to receive coronavirus vaccines, it didn’t take long for locals to become suspicious. Authorities soon found that the couple were actually wealthy Vancouver residents who had chartered a private plane to the isolated outpost so that they could get shots intended to protect vulnerable Indigenous elders. …

Canadian media outlets have identified the couple as casino executive Rodney Baker, 55, and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, a 32-year-old actress whose recent credits include the 2020 films “Fatman” and “Chick Fight.” Each faces fines totaling the equivalent of about $900 for violating quarantine guidelines. Neither could immediately be reached for comment late Monday, and it was not clear whether they have attorneys. [WaPo]

He lost his $10 million/year job. I wonder if the White River First Nation can impose fines.

This NewScientist (12 December 2020) article more or less says it with its title:

Google’s AI can keep Loon balloons flying for over 300 days in a row

Huge stratospheric balloons that act as floating cell towers in remote areas can stay in the air for hundreds of days thanks to an artificially intelligent pilot created by Google and Loon.

Which means Internet coverage.

But does it mean that Elon Musk’s Starlink project can be abandoned? It’ll depend on the cost, bandwidth, latency, coverage, and dependability of Google’s Loon balloons.

The reason I don’t like Starlink is that it pollutes lower Earth orbit with thousands of satellites. These interfere with astronomical projects, and when they burn out, they have to be replaced at a fairly high cost. And I’m assuming that they’ll burn up rather quickly once they become inactive; if they don’t, then they enter the category of space junk, which is a far more important category than most folks realize. Getting and keeping satellites in orbit is already something of a challenge; adding more space junk makes things even more difficult.

Meanwhile, Loon balloons are presumably salvageable. However, they do use helium – a resource that is becoming more and more valuable. That may weigh against them, and I’m not aware of a more economical replacement.

It’s worth noting that right winger Erick Erickson, morally conflicted by his fellows’ recent political activities, aka the January 6 Insurrection, has found it necessary to take to the immoral equivalency argument:

Roe v. Wade is nothing more than a modern retelling of Dred Scot. The abortion movement will scream and complain at the comparison, but not only do they know it is true, but abortion, like slavery, is predatory in black communities across America as rich white people fund the killing of black children.

We should not forget nor should we deny that the arguments of slavery and abortion are only a few words removed from each other. The moral case for abortion is the moral case for slavery.

Remember that.

Yep, abortion is equated to slavery.

I skimmed his arguments, but I wasn’t all that interested and they seemed strained. The fascination, for me, lies in the fact that he felt he had to present this moral condemnation of the left at all. That, no matter what foul political leanings and calculations and corruption and irrationality and, yes, murders his fellow travelers have committed, he can drag the left down to the current level of moral depravity of much of the right through this strained argument.

And, especially, this line is telling: The abortion movement will scream and complain at the comparison, but not only do they know it is true … and so he accuses the pro-choice left of conscious racism, a charge lodged most credibly against the right in view of the many racist symbols observed at the Insurrection, not to mention various other hints from President Trump himself. He cannot deny the charge against the right, but if he can make the charge against the left stick…

And the last sentence, Remember that, serves two purposes. First, that this is a weapon to use in arguments between left and right, as a fine way to outrage the left; and, second, that this is a weapon to use in arguments within the right. That is, those who are thinking that the right has become too shabby, too corrupt to honorably associate with can be faced with accusations that the other side is equally racist and commits abortion/murders. So why leave? It’s an argument of nihilism.

It’s a fascinating exercise in immoral equivalency, isn’t it? Erickson discovers that corruption is rampant, even epidemic, on his side, and, while he creditably rages against it in other posts, he still seeks to paint the left with yet fouler paint, all in order to keep a befouled and hopelessly corrupt right ascendant.

If you buy his anti-abortion arguments, maybe it works. Keep ghastly anti-Americanism and allegiance to irrationality in place, and watch the whole country collapse in ruins, eventually. All while denials echo in our ears that it’s going on. Trumpism and gaslighting are fast becoming synonyms.

If you don’t buy his anti-abortion arguments, or you refuse the separate evil of being a single-issue voter, then there’s a good chance you go independent, or even begin to explore the ideological arguments of the centrist left with a newly open mind.

And Erickson, because he’s trapped in his assertion that abortion isn’t just bad policy or even reprehensible, but a mortal sin, is left to beseech his fellows not to be corrupt, while providing them with an overwhelming excuse to be corrupt, to destroy the American state, to let the forces of chaos and evil destroy another victim, all in the name of anti-abortion and irrationality.

That’s a tough position. It’s the sort of thing that might make you rethink your assumptions.

Kevin Drum goes back to 2016 to discuss a Michael Anton essay that warned against Hillary Clinton’s election to the Presidency:

… oh hell, let’s just give you a taste:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances. [Anton]

Anton’s essay had a huge impact when it was written, and in a way it describes the id of the Trumpist movement. In a nutshell, Anton argued that the nation was declining and close to collapse, which meant that voting for Donald Trump was our only choice. Like the passengers on Flight 93, who could charge the cockpit and probably die or do nothing and definitely die, conservatives needed to vote for Donald Trump whether they liked it or not. Sure, he might be a disaster. But Hillary Clinton would definitely be a disaster.

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, reminded me of “The Flight 93 Election” a few days ago, and it produced two thoughts when I reread it. The first is something I’ve mentioned before: the reason conservatives fight so hard is that they really, truly believe that liberals are bringing about the collapse of the country. The second is that they’re completely wrong. Consider the “litany of ills,” that Anton enumerates at the beginning of his essay. I’m reproducing them here word-for-word, adding only numbers to make them easier to reference: …

It’s a good rebuttal to the fear-mongering of the Anton essay, complete with charts, although honestly I think the far-right fringers are simply afraid of having their entire broken philosophy extinguished.

But I think Drum missed it on this one:

9. And, at the higher levels, saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. …

9. Student debt
No argument here. Student debt is indeed out of control.

But Drum fails to address the question of the why of higher tuition debt. It’s not a matter that the left forces the price of education up so much as the right’s philosophy that the student should pay more of the costs of education, and in so doing forgetting that society as a whole benefits from every advanced degree earned, and by not paying for them, an untoward burden is thrust upon the student.

I’ve discussed this before, and reader feedback made clear that certain costs associated with the higher education systems were also responsible for the sky-high tuitions. That cannot be easily disregarded.

But in the end, the philosophy that society gets no benefit from advanced degrees is a fallacious, and therefore bankrupt, philosophy. While I’m not in favor of canceling all tuition debt or making tuition free for all – a little skin in the game is generally a good idea – I think Drum’s chart proves the point that, by not subsidizing education, a generation of Americans are being saddled with ridiculous levels of debt, meaning they’re ruining their lives in order to provide useful, even critical services to society.

And that’s neither right, nor good for the economic health of society.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the difficulties various former Trump White House employees are facing in finding new jobs commensurate with their expectations. Evidently, former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has decided to go for a job where there’s really very little evaluation of past efforts:

Wikipedia

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, announced Monday that she is running for governor of Arkansas.

“With the radical left now in charge of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense. In fact, your governor must be on the front line,” Sanders said in a nearly eight-minute video posted on Twitter. “So today, I announce my candidacy for governor of Arkansas.” [CNN/Politics]

The daughter of former Arkansas governor, pastor, and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR), I’d say she has a leg up on her primary challengers, whoever they may be, and then a quick run to the governor’s mansion in this deeply conservative state.

It’ll be interesting to see how her opponents deploy her Trumpian – and admitted at least once – lies against her, and how she responds. If her opponents are unable to make the case that lying is simply part of the Trumpist way, or that constant lying is undesirable in a governor, she’ll win.

Because she won’t win on personality. She certainly didn’t show any charisma during her time as Press Secretary.

But I’d put my money on her. Her family has a history of political success, so she’s seen how it’s done. I’m not saying it’s not a sordid history – Mike Huckabee apparently left some controversy in his trail – but she knows the requirements, she’s high profile, and she’s picked the right audience.

Because voters don’t have an HR to thoroughly vet candidates, unlike a commercial employer. Or, rather, they do, in the free press, but they don’t use them much.

Professor Richardson nails the essence of what makes the American democracy work:

Democracy depends on a nonpartisan group of functionaries who are loyal not to a single strongman but to the state itself. Loyalty to the country, rather than to a single leader, means those bureaucrats follow the law and have an interest in protecting the government. It is the weight of that loyalty that managed to stop Trump from becoming a dictator—he was thwarted by what he called the “Deep State,” people who were loyal not to him but to America and our laws. That loyalty was bipartisan. For all that Trump railed that anyone who stood up to him was a Democrat, in fact many—Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for example—are Republicans.

Authoritarian figures expect loyalty to themselves alone, rather than to a nonpartisan government. To get that loyalty, they turn to underlings who are loyal because they are not qualified or talented enough to rise to power in a nonpartisan system. They are loyal to their boss because they could not make it in a true meritocracy, and at some level they know that (even if they insist they are disliked for their politics).

It’s a microcosm of my Sectors of Society meditations. If you replace one goal with another, the methods will change in order to optimize the attainment of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on excellence in whatever field of democratic government you’re in – national defense, pollution regulation, science research, law enforcement & justice are just a few examples – then you will either develop those skills or you’ll move on to some other career. In a very real sense, it’s the old Evolution In Action gig. And the organization will improve, not only because you’ve improved, but because the public perception of the goal matches the interior specification of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on brown-nosing Dear Leader, then you’ll develop those skills relevant to brown-nosing. The better you brown-nose, the better your career – and excellence in whatever part of government you’re in is purely an accident. You’ll prosper in proportion to your brown-nosing.

And screw everyone who depends on the government to get things right.

We’ve seen this phenomenon in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, even the United States during those periods in which political commissars, rather than competent experts, lead non-political portions of government. Look at Trump and most of his commissars. Or Bush II and his FEMA director Michael Brown, whose devotion to President Bush may have served him well, but New Orleans ill.

Richardson’s essay is important for its accuracy and brevity.

Nebraska preacher Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries is a far-right preacher who apparently predicted that Trump would win the recent Presidential Election. Faced with a distinct loss of face – and, in the fake preaching gig, that’s tantamount to ruin – he’s elected to go on offense, rather than apologize. Right Wing Watch has a partial transcript of his most recent protestation that he’ll be proven right. Watch for the part where he tries to be two things at once:

“I feel like we’re putting so much emphasis on an inauguration date, that the election has still some things that must be looked into, that will be looked into,” Kunneman said. “And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed it. In other words, I believe God is saying we need to wait and stand and take a position like David. Is there not a cause? And here’s what I would say, ‘Come back and talk to me in four years.’ You say, ‘That’s ridiculous. Four years? You said President Trump would be reelected.’ He was, but come back and talk to me in four years. In other words, they thought Noah was a fool. Noah prophesied something that had never been done in the history of the Earth. He said it would rain and the scoffers, the whole world was against him. You talk about a guy who the whole world was against, it was Noah. They scoffed at him, they rejected him, they mocked him. But in the end, they had prophetic blindness until God moved, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Catch it? He equates himself to Noah in the last part … a guy who the whole world was against … blithely ignoring the fact that he just said … And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed [predicting the election result would be for Trump].

I wonder how many in his flock picked up on that little detail upon which so much depends. Kunneman is terrified that the fatted calf is about to be jerked away from him.

But this is typical of the sleight-of-hand practiced by con men and grifters. A quiet bending of logic, a rush of emotions, and soon the believer’s money is in your pocket.

For their flocks, it’s too bad that all those prophecies went bad, but I think we all know you’ll stick to the flock. After all, that’s the source of comfort, help, community, and, rather more crassly, social standing and power. The hell with such unpleasant realities as truth, fact, and straight-shooting. You have a position to maintain.

A Senator who prompts me to ask all those Wisconsin voters next door to Minnesota, WTF WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU VOTED THIS LOSER IN?

Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden admin’s national security team. They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) January 21, 2021

The trick for the Democrats is to not permit him to specify the question. The real question might be Law or Chaos, Senator Johnson? Which do you and your businessman backers prefer?

Depending on the childish whims of President Trump, or the predictability of the law?

If we’re going to be a nation of laws, a long standing tradition which is part of what has made us great, then the impeachment trial must proceed, and the Senators must stand up to the forces of terror and vote, each and every one, for conviction.

And we’ll know, by those who don’t vote for conviction, those Senators who depend on suckling at Trump’s teat, rather than their own skills and genius, for their prestige and position. We’ll know them for the unworthy toadies that they are.

And we’ll know who to eject at the next – lawful – opportunity.

Ineluctable:

1. incapable of being evaded; inescapable:
   an ineluctable destiny. [Dictionary.com]

I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t know ineluctable, although I’ve seen it for years. Noted in “Another bank cuts ties with Trump as the ex-president’s unraveling continues,” Aldous J Pennyfarthing, The Daily Kos:

While I won’t be entirely happy until Donald Trump is exiled to the isle of Elba or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (my top choice, naturally), his ineluctable slide into social and business pariah status is heartening.

The situation involving an Ethiopian dam on the Nile does not appear to have improved, according to an AL Monitor report:

Antony Blinken, US President Joe Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state, warned this week in his confirmation hearing that talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam could “boil over.”

In response to a question by Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Coons, D-Del., about how the United States can better support the “fragile transition in Sudan” and hold countries in the region accountable for human rights, Blinken noted “concerning actions, including atrocities” by Ethiopian forces against Tigreans and refugees and promised a “fully engaged” American foreign policy in the region. …

The stakes in the Nile dam talks couldn’t be higher for Egypt, and became more complicated, and intertwined, because of the Ethiopian civil war and its impact on Sudan. While the Nile talks have been until now been mostly a high stakes Egypt-Ethiopia diplomatic dispute, with Sudan in a supporting role (for Egypt), the Sudan-Ethiopia fault line now risks military escalation.

There’s not a lot more to say than what’s come before on this thread, is there? A military strike on Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam could light quite a fire if other military and diplomatic powers, such as the United States, aren’t ready to quench it immediately. Still …

Egypt has a population in the range of 100 million, Ethiopia’s in the same neighborhood, and Sudan is at 41 million. It’s not a peaceful part of Africa, so a war could be likely and quite deadly. But if there are enough outside parties pressing for harmony, perhaps the controversy can be settled. Peace be on them.

From Fr. Z’s Blog:

QUAERITUR:

What are the best ways for the laity to remain in a state of grace should the Holy Mass and the sacraments eventually be outlawed by the upcoming Biden/Harris administration?

The simple answer, which isn’t simple at all, is “Don’t commit any mortal sins.”

Also, disciplining yourself over time and working to eliminate your principle faults would be key.

Notice he didn’t tell his interlocutor that Biden is a devout Catholic, so please don’t ask nonsense questions.

Nope, instead this comes up:

I want to take the proposition seriously: outlawing of church services by the upcoming Harris administration. Yes… I think that can happen. Seeing what we are seeing after 6 January (the day freedom died?) it looks like it only a matter of time.

Yes, indeed. Both of them are far gone in right wing victimhood, and I don’t know what to tell them except If it doesn’t happen, would you consider returning to the American mainstream?