Category Archives: Uncategorized

Legatee:

one to whom a legacy is bequeathed or a devise is given [Merriam-Webster]

Devise?

Noted in “Rudy Giuliani was once compared to Churchill. Now he acts like a shady Watergate goon.” Karen Tumulty, WaPo:

But getting to the truth was never really the point for Segretti’s legatee Rudy Giuliani. He seems to have made a bet that getting this stuff into the water would be enough. Maybe an attack on Biden’s family could even trigger a Muskie-like reaction from the candidate, even though the polls indicate Biden is currently on track to beat an incumbent president, possibly by a big margin. The question now is whether Americans are any smarter at spotting what election interference looks like than they were in 2016.

Frankly, yes, I think a substantial portion of the electorate has wised up. Donald Segretti, mentioned above, was Nixon’s dirty tricks operative.

Gary Sargent on The Plum Line notes the Republican strategy for a Biden Administration involves inducing an extended recession by under-funding an economic rescue package now:

Indeed, as Eric Levitz points out, if Republicans can scuttle a robust package now, that would hand Biden a “deepening recession.” If Republicans hold the Senate and can block big stimulus measures at that point, Levitz continues, “Biden’s presidency would be over before it starts.”

And so, when McConnell chortled with glee at this week’s debate in Kentucky about the failure to pass more aid at a desperate national moment, it telegraphed what’s coming. And we’ve already lived through what happened when Republicans, led by McConnell, tried to cripple the recovery from a previous economic calamity that a Democratic president inherited from a Republican one.

But, if the Democrats in Kentucky are bold, they can take this information and e-mail it to all Kentucky residents. It’ll say,

“McConnell is working to undermine President Trump by not meeting President Trump’s demands for an appropriately sized economic rescue package. Do you approve of McConnell betraying President Trump?”

It’s worth a shot, as challenger Amy McGrath is not thumping McConnell, and in fact in many polls she’s behind.

This is one of the swirls that comes from embracing an outsider as President. He’s a narcissist that will embrace anything that’ll further his ambitions, and damn the Party.

But McConnell is an extremist as well, putting citizens at risk simply for Party advantage. I hope citizens of Kentucky get the message and give him the boot.

Professor Bobby Chesney on Lawfare reports on USCYBERCOM’s tactics with regards to TrickBot, a botnet (network of infected computers) able to deliver targeted functionality, if I understand Chesney’s description properly. I’m interested in the tactics USCYBERCOM’s utilizing:

A week before U.S. officials disclosed to the Washington Post that it had intervened against TrickBot, Brian Krebs had reported that something was afoot, drawing on the work of cyber threat intelligence firm Intel 471.

First, on Sept. 22 and again on Oct. 1, someone had managed to harness the TrickBot control infrastructure in order to issue a revised configuration file to infected machines, providing a new IP address for their C2 server. The idea was straightforward: Cut off the infected machines from the operators’ control by redirecting their C2 pathway to the address 127.0.0.1 (the “localhost” address, which in practical terms redirects software back to the local machine and, thus, functions as a dead end for communications purposes).

Second, Krebs reported that another intelligence firm (Hold Security, which tracks data that TrickBot harvests) had detected a massive increase in the volume of records yielded by TrickBot. The firm concluded that this was not the fruit of TrickBot’s own efforts but, rather, that someone had someone managed to inject a vast flood of apparently bogus records into TrickBot’s system, perhaps burying or obscuring the real records in the process. If nothing else, this move would have created a lot of resource-consuming headaches for TrickBot’s operators as they set about to fix the mess.

Chesney puts a positive spin on the tactics, but these are not the same as a cure, are they? Well, I’ve never worked in this particular field, but – in an anger reflex dating back to the 1980s and 1990s when I had to deal with the distant ancestors of cybercriminals in the BBS world – I’d rather find the geographical location of the criminals in question, and then send someone to translate cyber crime into real world consequences for them.

Given that’s almost certainly impossible, I’ll have to satisfy myself with the thought that TrickBot’s operators are exhausting themselves in keeping their criminal enterprise going. I hope more effective tactics are developed, and I get to hear about them.

Like just about everyone else who’s not in the Trump cult or not paying attention – there’s a disturbingly large number of the latter out there, I’m afraid – I’m hoping for a soul-crushing landslide loss for Trump.

Not that I hate Trump, but because that would be good for the United States and would burn down a Republican Party that has become a festering sore on the hide of the United States.

So, let’s assume that happens. If I could only have one lesson learned from this entire four year debacle by the electorate, what would it be?

It turns out that’s an easy question for me. It’s this:

Candidates for office who rely on magical thinking will be ignored and disdained by the American electorate.

I’ve talked about magical thinking before, and gave an informal definition here. After perusing definitions on the Web, I’m going to ignore them as too timid, and update my definition thusly:

Magical thinking consists of determining conclusions and positions based on religious or ideological assumptions, and then ignoring, misinterpreting, or otherwise abusing evidence that is not congruent with those conclusions and positions. This will also include fabrication of false evidence, claims of conspiracies without evidence, proclamations of divine interventions without diving fingerprints, and various other forms of dishonesty and delusion.

In other words, reality comes first. A promising candidate is someone who can earnestly promise that the positions they hold are based on current information, reasonable assumptions of human nature as well as mother nature, and is contingent on further information being presented.

That’s my hope for the learning process of the electorate. What’s your hope?

This actually made me laugh.

“Suburban women: Will you please like me?” he asked. “Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

– President Trump at a campaign rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

From Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

I’m beginning to wonder if that’s emblematic of Attorney General William Barr. Do readers remember William Barr’s appearance on the scene? He wrote a memo condemning the Mueller investigation; he gave a speech at Notre Dame, condemning contemporary culture. He was nominated and confirmed as Trump’s second full AG, succeeding the deeply unlucky and former Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)^[1]; the temporary AG who occupied the role between Sessions and Barr was so unmemorable and, well, Trumpian, that I’m not even going to look up his name.

Barr then stuck his fingers so flagrantly into the Stone and Flynn affairs that veteran prosecutors quit, and former DOJ employees signed unprecedented petitions asking that he resign.

Twice.

There was the humiliation of the Berman affair, in which Barr thought he could induce the SDNY Attorney to resign.

And, lately, there’s been the investigation of the Obama Administration, which is yielding … nothing, as Steve Benen on Maddowblog notes:

Donald Trump spent months trying to convince the public that there was a genuine controversy surrounding Obama-era “unmaskings,” at one point describing it as a “massive” scandal. The president’s political allies played along: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has been an aggressive proponent of the story, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) went so far as to suggest earlier this year that the matter is “bigger than Watergate.”

The rhetoric never really made any sense, and the latest reporting from the Washington Post indicates that the manufactured scandal has effectively evaporated into nothing.

The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.

For those who might need a refresher, Barr’s office announced on Fox News in May that the attorney general had appointed John Bash, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Texas, to examine “unmasking” practices, specifically within the previous administration.

And …

Now that John Bash’s probe has apparently exonerated the Democratic administration, Trump might be tempted to turn his attention to Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham’s investigation into the Russia scandal probe, but that’s not working out well for the president, either. Multiple reports this week have said there will be no pre-election action in the Durham probe, and Trump himself conceded at a campaign event on Monday that these efforts will have to wait until after Election Day.

So here’s the thing. While I generally don’t take The Daily Kos contributors too seriously, I have to admit that I was fascinated by this Andy Schmookler entry that suggests AG William Barr may be … slinking off into the night. Abandoning ship.

And, you know, ever since AG Barr declared he was self-quarantining, I can’t say I’ve heard anything from him at all.

Now, he could be ill, or preparing some replacement October Surprise – hurry, hurry, AG, I need a laugh! – but let’s stipulate Schmookler’s idea. This is where it gets interesting, because it’s reasonable to them assume that Barr was taken in by Trump. Convinced by the propaganda that the Dems are evil and conniving – that is, propaganda from his own side – AG Barr has, on the one hand, come up empty time after time after time, while interfering in prosecutions to get Trump cronies spared from punishment, which all may prove Barr is just another magical thinker, gullible and, well, gulled^[2].

And quite possibly a highly toxic witness against Trump, if Trump is so foolish as to remain within the long hand of the law after his term is completed. If Barr is feeling, well, used.

I’m not sure I’d put any money on the above scenario being true, but it remains fascinating.

¹ Sessions is now panhandling in Athens, AL, having lost a primary run for his old Senatorial seat to Tommy Tuberville, whose main qualification for the Senate is that he was a college football coach. Oh, kidding, kidding – about only one of those items-of-disgrace.

² Yeah, that’s not a technical term. Or is it?

At least until next year.

Jennifer Rubin makes a prediction:

Future political scientists and campaign operatives may study this campaign for years to come as an example of how to turn a losing campaign into a party-killing, landslide defeat.

And their answer will be: Don’t be a barstool blowhard.

Barstool blowhards never need more information, never need more information, never change their minds, and are never wrong – in their own minds.

Spaghettification, when you get too close to a black hole. Especially when “you” are a “star.”

Erick Erickson’s latest email:

With yesterday’s start to the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, now is a good time to remind Republicans that there is no reason to be reasonable about the nomination.

Reasonableness, of course, is what the Republicans are actually doing. They’re going through the process even if the opposition does not like it. The reality is the Democrats would be doing the same if the roles were reversed.

Oh, that’s right – Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) rules only apply to Democrats.

I didn’t bother to read the rest of his blather. Maybe he even addressed the question. But his IV of hypocrisy, dripping into his arm, makes it unworthy of anyone’s time.

A couple of lovely pics, courtesy my Arts Editor:

Bacchanal:

[An example.]

Noted in “Conservative columnist on GOP senators: ‘It’s too late to scurry away from the sinking Trump ship’,” Aldous J Pennyfarthing, The Daily Kos:

Importantly, [Jennifer Rubin] pushed away from the Trumpian hog trough ages ago, whereas many conservatives-cum-cultists are now so sated and logy from their unholy bacchanal they should be easier to pick off than fat, flightless pigeons when the voters finally have their say.

WaPo has a report on the potentially dirty tricks going on out in California:

Reportedly, Republican Senators are mad at Trump’s hand-picked Fed chair Jerome Powell:

On the call, several GOP senators were sharply critical of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell[,] saying he had gone too far in demanding Congress approve sweeping economic relief[,] and that he went out of his lane in making his demands publicly known, according to two sources. [CNN/Politics]

First, I had to infer those commas, above; without them, the intent of the sentence is reversed, and that didn’t make a lot of sense.

That said, Chairman Powell should retort that, since there’s no one in that lane, he felt it was his duty to try to direct things.

A little humiliation for those damn idlers in the Senate.

While it’s difficult to predict exactly which debacles will result from the pathology of magical thinking that has spread throughout the legion of GOP Senators, it’s not particularly surprising that they’ve spurned their top line responsibilities in favor of installing a partisan justice. Just as their tax reform promises were never fulfilled, and their belief that the virus will disappear has proven false, they have a belief that their political souls will be saved if they can just get Judge Barrett confirmed to SCOTUS, that all will be well. Even in the face of polls that say that most Americans believe the winner of the upcoming election should nominate the next Justice.

Magical thinking. It’ll destroy the souls of the GOP Members of Congress. And it’ll destroy the lives of countless Americans, as well.

The lack of a believable definition for intelligence renders the question moot, of course, but I was fascinated by this suggestion that biological evolution has at least some elements of intelligence:

… natural selection incorporates new information from the environment to favour the best-adapted organisms. Richard Watson at the University of Southampton, UK, decided to look at the mechanisms involved to try to work out what is going on. In evolutionary terms, information about the past is carried in genes inherited by the offspring of fit individuals. But a relatively recent insight is that genes don’t code “for” particular traits. They are team players, and their activity is regulated by other genes to create a network of connections. Natural selection favours those connections that work best. This, Watson realised, is just like how a brain learns. Brains consist of networks of neurons whose structure is shaped by learning because the more a connection is used, the stronger it becomes. Sure enough, when Watson and his colleagues built a computer model that took account of the networked nature of genes, they found it could evolve to learn and remember solutions to problems with just a simulacrum of natural selection to reinforce the best attempts.

Brains don’t just learn specific solutions to particular problems: they also generalise to solve problems they have never encountered. They do this by recognising similarities between new challenges and past ones, and then combining the building blocks of previous solutions to come up with novel ones. This is called inductive learning. Can gene networks do induction too?

Watson and his colleagues argue that they can. The key, they say, is that energy is required to connect genes, because proteins must be produced to achieve this. So, for efficiency, evolution favours networks with fewer connections, which are loosely linked with other subnetworks. These building blocks can be recombined in different ways to generate novel solutions to the problems that challenge life. Thus, evolution’s simple processes form an inductive-learning machine that draws lessons from past successes to improve future performance. [“Evolution is evolving: 13 ways we must rethink the theory of nature,” various authors, NewScientist (26 September 2020, paywall)]

It’s a rather glorious cross-link that’s never occurred to me before. I’m not sure I’d call it intelligence in and of itself, since I don’t see any self-awareness, but it’s certainly a part of intelligence. I’ll be interested to see what the experts have to say about this, and what new terminology is developed to describe what appears to be a homologue to biological intelligence.

Yesterday we took what appears our last chance to see fall color, taking the Cooper out for a ride and taking pictures. But it turns out the best picture came right from our garden.

Followed by this:

And then a bit of whimsy.

A movie about the horrors of American Thanksgiving for turkeys might make sense. A movie featuring a time machine, intelligent turkeys, and an AI which tends to speak uncomfortable truths does not. Free Birds (2013) is, unfortunately, in the second category.

The Flynn case continued on 29 September or a trifle earlier, and Anna Salvatore and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare have provided a useful & mostly non-technical hearing of this argument as to whether Judge Sullivan should accept the government contention that the case against Flynn should never have been opened, or decline it and continue the sentencing phase. Among a lot of interesting interpretations, I think this recount of the behavior of Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, is indicative of yet another third-rate Trumpian personality. The Gleeson mentioned below is retired Judge Gleeson, asked by Judge Sullivan to advocate for continuing the sentencing phase of Flynn’s trial, since the government refuses to fulfill that responsibility. Barr is, of course, AG William Barr.

Now it’s Powell’s turn.

The attorney for Flynn claims that Barr did not respond to her letter, nor did he ever meet with her. Then, apropos of nothing, she states that she hasn’t spoken with the president either “other than an update into the status of the litigation.”

There is a collective gasp among the 500 people on the conference call. You can hear it over the mute function that has all but a few of them in listen-only mode.

“What?” asks Judge Sullivan, speaking for the masses.

Powell says she can’t discuss the issue, as she claims that any of her conversations with the president are protected by executive privilege. Sullivan reminds Powell that she doesn’t work for the government; there is no executive privilege for lawyers representing private parties or for anyone outside the government.

Powell, in response, admits that she recently spoke personally to Trump and requested that he not pardon her client.

It is a magical kind of a courtroom moment. Here Judge Gleeson has been trying to argue that there’s been political interference in the case, but he’s largely had to rely on the implausibility of the government’s stated reasons for its positions to justify the claim—along with dozens of presidential tweets. But here’s the lawyer for the defendant announcing that she has been briefing the president personally on the status of the litigation.

Not one, but two unforced errors. Salvatore and Witte’s general description of Powell is also noteworthy in the context of evaluating the personalities attracted to Trump’s orbit:

Sidney Powell, the lawyer for Flynn, plays the role of the table-banging Fox News pundit—furiously denouncing the witch hunt against her client that was hatched by Barack Obama and executed by his entire administration and, as she put it, continues to this day.

It’s never a good sign when someone says you belong in the company of table-banging Fox News pundits – famously known even within Fox News for their incompetence.

The Lincoln Project cleverly suggests that Republican candidates should put space between themselves and President Trump:

Spectacularly clever, not to mention creative. And right on the mark. Spread the word on this one!

From WaPo:

A group of lawyers is offering advice to military and National Guard members who worry they may be given unlawful orders if deployed during protests or disputes over next month’s elections.

The Orders Project was formed in response to the use of force against protesters this summer in Lafayette Square, two of the founders said in an interview Friday.

The protests, which followed the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, prompted confusion among law enforcement and National Guard leaders. Some officials said they had no warning that the U.S. Park Police, which commanded the operation, planned to move against protesters and that the crowd could have been moved out of the area without the use of force.

In a truly selfish society, we’d never see a group come together, recognize a potential and difficult danger in the upcoming election, and donate their time and substantial expertise to try to fix it. That recognition of the importance of a democracy and peaceful transfer of power is going to be one of the things I think about on days when America’s future seems dark: there are good-hearted people out there, willing to do what they can to help ensure we stay on the path of peace, which is one of the first steps that will permit the pursuit of justice for all of us.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT):

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

A great-sounding excuse for keeping Trump, and indeed the entire Republican Party, as corrupt and immoral as it is, in power. In fact, David Harsanyi buys enthusiastically into it.

But it doesn’t work. From Democracy, built on a backbone of justice unswayed by popular passions, attended to by minds and hands reverent to its rational sanctity, trusted by those enabled by it, flows liberty, peace, and prosperity. Not in spite of it, nor unswayed by it, but because of it. That’s what makes Lee’s magical formula fail, utterly and completely.

Harsanyi’s piece, which appears to be little more than an excuse for cheap shots at people he despises, doesn’t address this central tenet of the system concocted and refined by the Founding Fathers.

And if you’re wondering about my phrase reverent to its rational sanctity, that means magical thinkers need not apply. The one thing democracy requires is a substantial, majority substantially devoted to rationality. A cacophony of magical thinkers, each disdainful of the next, and ready to condemn them for their ignorance, will merely cause democracy to fail.

I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve noticed, over the years, that it seems like Canada puts out more than its fair share of documentaries, and they’re often quite good. But Canadian documentary industry worker Christina Clark, on The Line, says things are going downhill:

Somewhere along the way in my career, I became part of what we call in Quebec a “machine à saucisse” — a sausage factory — churning out content to fit predetermined narratives to please public broadcasters who don’t actually have to satisfy their audience to earn revenue. In the last few years, I’ve noticed a not-so-subtle shift in the documentary industry: we have begun to tell stories that serve ideological narratives, instead of telling stories that enlighten curious audiences.

Many of the stories now told through documentary skew the truth by reinforcing the viewpoint du jour. Interviews and scenes that break with the chosen narrative, that offer something other than a black-and-white approach to society and the complexities of humanity, happen off camera or end up on the editing room floor. This is all in an effort to promote diverse voices and the political opinions that allegedly support them. But when we lay claim to a singular viewpoint or dismiss a perspective because the creator’s or the subject’s skin tone or gender does not fit the narrative of inclusion, we are actually removing diversity from the storytelling equation. And what we’re left with are one-sided storylines that reinforce an echo chamber of virtue signalling.

Why?

Through these experiences, I slowly learned that the stories we fund for public broadcasting also cater to the biases of people living in Canada’s wealthiest cities. The divide between issues that matter to rural populations and those that matter to urbanites is growing, across Canada and the United States. By comparison, there is little room for Canadians to openly debate issues of public importance because there is no major platform here that has managed to avoid this callow, creatively stifling ideology. This is another consequence of having state-run and state-funded media that decides for us. Important, nuanced stories — stories that speak to all Canadians — remain untold.

It would not be hard to write a rant about how the free market system would not permit this sort of thing to happen, and that the documentaries would not lose their edge of excellence. It would have a lot of validity and help focus on the problems that critical theory causes for wokeness.

But I think there’s an important counterpoint that would be obscured in the wake of the hypothetical rant, and it’s this: Despite the old REASON Magazine slogan of Free Minds, Free Markets (which seems to have disappeared off their website, so it must have been retired; I may have it backwards, too – hah!), a free market does not necessarily lead to free and, implied, morality-optimized minds. Markets, after all, serve people, they do not lead people, they do not improve morality. Only if a mass moral defect leads to a profit deficit, can be recognized as so, and the suppliers are more worried about their own moral deficit and profit deficit than the potential anger of customers, can free markets lead people to moral improvement.

But, on the other hand, whether or not documentary makers should be out in front, trying to lead, is a bit of a question. Think of the old Horse to water chestnut – you can try to improve the horse, but sometimes it just can’t run faster. I think, in a way, I haven’t quite found a stable point in my reasoning on this subject that rebuffs both sides in the question. So the following may be regarded as tentative and subject to refinement or even retraction.

As time passes, the dictatorial focus on wokeness will generally deteriorate the quality of organizations who utilize it. I think – and it won’t be easy – the successful organizations will focus on race-blind excellence measures during the hiring and retention processes, with perhaps some minor tweaking if racial balances happen to occur through the potential statistical quirks.

Gerontocracy:

1. A state, society, or group governed by old people.

‘It’s no surprise that American media organizations are gerontocracies.’

1.1 [mass noun] Government based on rule by old people.

‘We have to admit that stubborn gerontocracy has been a major obstacle to reforming politics due to the aged politicians’ obstinacy and narrow-mindedness.’

[Oxford Dictionaries]

Noted in “Reality Ends The Reality Show,” Andrew Sullivan’s mail response section, The Weekly Dish:

It’s a mixed bag with both experience and inevitable slowing down – and I have no problem with older leaders in general. But America is in danger of becoming a gerontocracy at the very top. After chastising me for calling Hunter Biden’s corruption “sleaze”, a reader thinks his cocaine problem actually provided a good moment for his father: “To me, admitting one of your kids had a drug problem, worked hard to get past it, and that you’re super proud of him is something that can resonate with many Americans, especially those touched by the opioid crisis.” I agree. In fact, I think Trump’s dismissal of addiction hurt him badly.

Oh, yeah, as per usual, domestic terrorism is coming from the right side of the spectrum. Antifa and BLM? Those protests, because that’s what they are, become louder and raucous as a way to get the attention of those in power, to make them uncomfortable, to thrust the needs of justice in the face of those in power and, hopefully, get the proper reaction.

The hapless planners of terror in Michigan? It’s all me, me, me. Resentful children, heavily armed. They’ve been around since the 1990s and earlier; my earliest memories are of the Michigan Militia., and while Wikipedia says 1994, mine go back further. And don’t forget Timothy McVeigh.

Someone should ask Trump to put the Wolverine Watchmen on the list of known terrorist groups and see how he reacts.