Category Archives: Uncategorized

Our rose bush, always doubtful, has bloomed again.

I must admit that I laughed, and then frowned, when I heard that Facebook is planning to offer, operate, and support a cryptocurrency named Libra. I laughed because it seems like Facebook is a couple of years behind the times. Then I frowned, because we’re talking wealth transfer and we’re talking Facebook, which, given Facebook’s record so far, makes me fairly uncomfortable. And then I thought about recent reports on the energy costs, and therefore climatic impact, of current cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, and began to wonder.

The Verge has some information on the latter point:

Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency, is expected to have a smaller environmental footprint compared to some of its more notorious blockchain brethren, including bitcoin, according to experts. Its energy demands are projected to be more like those of existing data centers — which, while still demanding, aren’t quite as energy-hungry as mining bitcoins.

The currency hasn’t launched yet, so it’s hard to know how those claims will stack up against reality. But its design — more centralized than most cryptocurrencies — means that Libra will likely draw less energy. Unlike its more decentralized peers, only a few trusted members of the Libra Association, the centralized hub for the currency, can create Libra.

“This is an order of magnitude more efficient than bitcoin will ever be,” says Ulrich Gallersdörfer, a researcher at Technical University of Munich focused on blockchain research. Gallersdörfer was the co-author on a recent paper in Joulefinding that bitcoin operations emit more climate-warming gas than the country of Jordan. …

… Libra is designed so that an algorithm issues units of the cryptocurrency in proportion to the size of a company’s initial deposit into the system. That’s still a lot to keep track of, but it’s nowhere near as complicated as a mining operation. Instead, it’s more like… normal data centers. Now, data centers draw power, too. In fact, data centers accounted for 2 percent of the total US energy usage in 2014, a 2016 study published by the DOE found. And they’re also responsible for about as many carbon dioxide emissions as the airline industry. But despite those drawbacks, these specially designed warehouses of servers are the rocks on which tech giants like Facebook continue to build and expand their digital empire.

I’m not particularly reassured just because they won’t be emitting as much as bitcoin does. I’m also not convinced that this extra consumption of energy, and its impact on the climate, is in service of some social good; it strikes me more as just another attempt to Make More Money.

Nicholas Weaver on Lawfare is also uneasy. Well, more than uneasy:

[Libra] is not live yet, giving governments the opportunity to kill this project before it actually gets off the ground and gives rise to cybercriminals that couldn’t capitalize on existing cryptocurrencies. In particular, the IRS and FinCEN should take action now. …

What currently limits how criminals can use cryptocurrencies is the cost of currency exchange and the inherent volatility of the currency’s value. Reduce or eliminate these constraints, and there’s likely to be an inundation of new ransomware, extortion and online drug trade. Libra intends to reduce (but doesn’t eliminate) volatility, and the only way Facebook can get widespread adoption is through making easy onramps and offramps. A Libra “success” would represent a huge policy failure. It is better to kill this now than let it even get a chance to succeed.

Much like Al Capone, this may founder on the rocks of the tax agents:

A true cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Libra is considered property by the Internal Revenue Service. That means a gain of $1 due to volatility between when the cryptocurrency is acquired and when it is transferred to someone else is a $1 taxable event. And since any integration into Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp is under the control of Facebook, Facebook should probably file income tax documents and keep track of the otherwise difficult cost-basis math on behalf of Facebook’s customers, like other investment brokerages do. The IRS needs to remind both Facebook and the public of these implications and requirements. Of course this would make Libra completely useless in the U.S. by increasing the cost of using it beyond any utility.

A similar problem exists for all validator nodes. Even non-U.S. companies need to respect U.S. KYC/AML restrictions if transactions end up involving U.S. persons. The founders of Liberty Reserve learned this lesson when they pleaded guilty to money laundering and received 20-year sentences. But how can firms do KYC/AML on pseudonymous transactions?

I’ve already decided not to participate, given Facebook’s spotty record. But I may not have to implement it. This project may go nowhere once the dust settles.

Our ninebark bush turned red this year.

Long time readers will remember my preoccupation with North Carolina, particularly in regards to its educational community. A reader points at the latest on that troubled relationship via The Progressive Pulse:

On May 1, thousands of educators and public education advocates flooded the streets of Raleigh to demand additional resources for North Carolina’s public schools. Organizers from the North Carolina Association of Educators outlined five policy priorities:

1. Provide enough school librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, and other health professionals to meet national standards.
2. Provide $15 minimum wage for all school personnel, 5% raise for all public school personnel, and a 5% cost of living adjustment for retirees.
3. Expand Medicaid to improve the health of our students and families.
4. Reinstate state retiree health benefits eliminated by the General Assembly in 2017.
5. Restore advanced degree compensation stripped by the General Assembly in 2013.

And did the Legislature begin working on passing bills to satisfy those demands? Not so much. Looks to me like the educational community is maneuvering to strike.

Along with the rest of the world, I had a chuckle at the petition directed at Netflix by an organization named Christian Return to Order, concerning the show Good Omens, signed by 20,000+ people demanding the show be taken off of Netflix. As Netflix doesn’t produce nor carry Good Omens, it’s a bit of a no-op; it’s an offering from Amazon Prime.

And we’ve actually seen it. Good Omens is, first and foremost, about the friendship between the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley (aka Crawley, aka the Snake in the Garden), and how that relationship compels both to seek to stop, or at least circumvent, the final war.

I’m not sure what these petition-signers find objectionable. Perhaps it’s simply the modern notion that war, destruction, death, and that whole thing is not an event to be awaited with bated breath, but rather avoided through the intelligent and careful application of diplomacy and, dare I say it, good faith.

But that probably leads to the big, underlying objection: the portrayal of the angels. Aziraphale is certainly a bit foggy and naive, but angels superior to him in the hierarchy appear to have been stripped of moral stricture. They hunger for war, glory, and all the supposed good things that go with battle and conquest. The question of how creatures not considered to be moral agents has been addressed before, such as in Constantine (2005), in which an angel complains that humanity is the only creatures worthy of some sort of glory, all while committing treachery of his or her own – a very moral choice indeed. But I’m not sure how angels, some of which followed Satan into Hell and continue to indulge in morally unhealthy choices millennia later can be considered to be outside of the moral arena.

So, in that respect, we’re once again following the thematic path I mentioned in my review of Ghostbusters (1984): the exploration of the ongoing obsolescence of the concept of divinity for mankind. Why do believers become outraged when their gods are mocked? If the divine lead an independent existence, then, hey, THEY’RE GODS. They can deal with a bit of mockery. But that inner doubt of the frantic believer knows that the mockery threatens to extinguish something taken definitionally on faith, something that cannot be proven – and therefore might just not actually exist.

Good Omens, by suggesting there’s a fly in the ointment of divinity, is that mockery, and so the faithful, yet doubtful, are called to reject it. From the article, I glean that the faithful worry about immorality being portrayed:

“This series presents devils and Satanists as normal and even good, where they merely have a different way of being, and mocks God’s wisdom,” the petition reads.

And yet, having watched all the episodes quite carefully, it’s difficult to reconcile this criticism with the themes of the series. Without a doubt, the demon Crowley is dragged from a position of evil, if you will, to a system of thought which implicitly acknowledges the wrongs he (it?) committed yesterday through his efforts to avert a war. His story arc is from the archetype of evil to another sinner, trying to do good in a world of tears. The theme of redemption is a popular theme, popular because it acknowledges the stresses of everyday life, whether it be today or thousands of years ago.

If Aziraphale, the angel, had met Crowley half way, morally speaking, in their effort to avert a divine war, if he’d even agreed to maliciously step on an ant, our petitioners might have something, but Aziraphale does not, in the arena of morality, truly change. Not in the least. However, he does rebel – against the plans and directives of the angels above him in the hierarchy. The petitioners may consider this rebellion to be dreadfully immoral, but the immorality of superiors has come to be understood to not be a defense for immorality of the underlings. We are all expected to behave as moral agents, with no option to hand that responsibility to others. If this is their basis for concern, then I should direct them back to their Bibles, because their faith in hierarchy is flawed.

Good Omens is otherwise good fun, with entertaining special effects, although I must admit I found the two leads to be a little repetitive. If you have some hours and want something that’s a little reminiscent of a toned down Monty Python, this might be your cup of tea.

Not exactly the sort of thing I expected to run across in WaPo:

Mobile technology has transformed the way we live — how we read, work, communicate, shop and date.

But we already know this.

What we have not yet grasped is the way the tiny machines in front of us are remolding our skeletons, possibly altering not just the behaviors we exhibit but the bodies we inhabit.

New research in biomechanics suggests that young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls — bone spurs caused by the forward tilt of the head, which shifts weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments. The weight transfer that causes the buildup can be compared to the way the skin thickens into a callus as a response to pressure or abrasion.

I realize that the academic journal in which this is reported, Scientific Reports, is part of the Nature group and so is respectable, but I still squired a little when I read the read the lead author is a chiropractor working on a biomechanics PhD.

Still, you can’t help but wonder if it’s the beginning of the revenge of the dinosaurs.

Your child’s future.
(Source: Wikipedia)

… and that’s where it’ll stay since I lack the chops to do anything about it. The subject? Let’s start with last night’s Trump campaign rally, as reported by Steve Benen:

At his re-election campaign kickoff event this week, Donald Trump made a curious boast to supporters about his record as president: “We stared down the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors and special interests, who made a living bleeding our country dry. That’s what we’ve done.”

We need a song that lists each corporate lobbyist who’s joined the Trump Administration and sought to gut his or her agency. We could start with Scott Pruitt, but there are so many potential honorees that I suspect this song could go on for a long time.

My Arts Editor suggests the tune should be I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General from The Pirates of Penzance. Maybe we could call it It’s Such A Clean And Modern Swamp Now.

It does beg the question of how many corporate lobbyists were in the Obama Administration, doesn’t it?

I’ve mentioned Art Laffer a number of times over the years. He’s the namesake, if not the inventor, of the Laffer Curve, which illustrates the theory that if a state lowers taxes, economic prosperity will follow and government revenues will rise enough that there won’t be a shortfall in the state budget.

This has been tried several times and failed, most recently in Kansas. The economic phenomenon described by the Laffer Curve may occur, but only in highly confined circumstances.

But does this stop the GOP from paying obeisance at his altar? Ho-dowdy, no it doesn’t:

Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman, calls Art Laffer “the greatest Fake Economist to ever come down the pike.”

Laffer helped popularize the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves through faster economic growth.

It almost never works out in practice. But Laffer and his namesake curve remain darlings of Republican politicians.

On Wednesday, Laffer will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — from President Trump. [NPR]

It appears the Republicans remain impervious to the thought that they might be wrong, doesn’t it? They’ve taken a failed economist and a resentment of paying taxes to Big Government and turned it into an award that – unless he’s done something marvelous which has escaped my attention – has been manifestly unearned.

Rather, Laffer provided intellectual cover for a policy which satisfied the emotional predilections of the members of the GOP. Mix in the religious fervor which has taken over the party, the refusal to admit error, the certainty that the liberals and leftists are inherently evil, and this action should be unsurprising. By attempting to cement the reputation of their favorite economist into a position in the heavens, they also hope to legitimate their economic theories and thus leverage themselves into an extension of power.

Will it work? Depends on the audience. I don’t happen to know any economists, but it’s my guess that most are interested in what works, not in the dictates of ideology.

But the general citizenry? It might. Surveys of what citizens think happened during the Obama years vs what really happened can make for dismaying reading. People see what they want to see; it’s so hard to see beyond the end of one’s nose, your’s truly included.

Rather than rewarding someone for years of success, this is all about rewarding the Republican Party for keeping power for themselves. Laffer just gets something to chuckle over.

Axios is reporting on the guest list for the imminent Israeli-Palestinian peace plan to be presented by Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner:

The White House has decided not to invite the Israeli Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon or other Israeli government officials to the Bahrain conference in Manama on June 25, where it plans to launch the economic part of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, U.S. officials told me.

The big picture: The decision follows a Palestinian boycott of the conference, which has put pressure on other Arab and Muslim nations not to attend. A senior U.S. official told me: “The goal of the workshop in Bahrain is to present our economic vision for the Palestinian people. As such we want to focus on the economic aspects and not the political ones.” The Bahrain conference will now take place without Israeli or Palestinian officials.

It feels like colonialism, doesn’t it? The parties concerned aren’t there, just a proposal. And for economics, too. Now, I won’t argue that economics is a strong influence on most everyone, but the formal problem here has to do with a political fight over ownership of the land. That’s economic at its roots, but political and religious in its presentation – and I fear that without some sort of political and religious settlement, an economic plan is little more than dry oatmeal.

I’m not expecting much out of this. I expect Trump isn’t, either, but he’ll try to push it as a big accomplishment, because he’s desperate to pump up a re-election campaign which seems to be lifeless.

Hey! Let me out of this taxi before I die of starvation!

The Phantom of 42nd Street (1945) is a pleasant, empty-minded whodunit which has the charming differentiator of a chief crime solver being a drama critic for the newspaper, and the victims are all connected to the theater. His name is Tony Woolrich, and it all is centering on the family named Moore, near-royalty of the theater of New York City. When the business minded elder brother dies, he’s found hung with a witty quote from a play on him. The younger brother, elderly and on his last legs, is thought to be the next target, but a night watchman dies next, killed by someone in a pirate costume, again leaving a witty note.

Tony is catching flack, first from his editor, who chews him out for not getting the story on the first murder, and then by the police for meddling, and then by his taxi driver – he leads a life of criticism. Hey! But soon he gets into the swing of things, finding this whole crime solving gig to be amenable to his thought processes.

But this story is about thrills, not deduction. The audience never really has a chance to solve the murders for themselves as too much information is withheld. But the acting is good and even fun in places, so if you can find a good print of this flick and an hour of down-time, it may be worth your time.

I found this guy charming. He and his chums were hiding in the ornamental grass.

Yep, she’s trying to fall out of her dress, and he’s busy smoking a pipe he doesn’t know how to use.

Woman In The Shadows (1934; aka Woman In The Dark) is a pleasant and engaging what-the-hell story which never quite lives up to its promise. Former inmate John Bradley, imprisoned for manslaughter for killing a man in a brawl, moves to a family lake cabin in order to avoid trouble and how to learn to smoke a pipe, a futile endeavour on his part. Trouble finds him, though, first in the person of the sheriff’s daughter, Nell, who thinks she loves him, and then a singer named Louise who stumbles through his front door one night. In hot pursuit are a couple of ne’er-do-wells, Tony & Kraus, who say they want to take her back to her home she shares with Tony.

She’s having none of it, but Tony knows the sheriff hates John, so he clues the sheriff in that his daughter is visiting John on the sly. Soon enough we have multiple escapes, and Kraus is down with a dent in his skull courtesy John, although he leaves John’s place under his own power.

John and Louise make it to the big city, but the cops are looking for him and he’s soon hosting a cop’s bullet in his shoulder and has to visit a doctor, who gives the game away. Meanwhile, Louise is shipped back to Tony, where it turns out Kraus is knocking at death’s door – and if he makes that transition, John will be sent up the river for a long time. All this time, John’s antics with his pipe, such as putting the lit instrument in his pocket, serve to keep the audience amused.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the final plot twist, the audience probably knows a little bit too much to be surprised by most of the story. Of course, this can be made into a game, guessing what comes next. But it also tends to feel a little contrived, and despite some good acting, the ending is a little hollow.

Still, if you have a little downtime and want a short taste of a Dashiell Hammett-inspired story, this might be a way to satisfy the curiosity.

In terms of career choices, I found this bit by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur fascinating and almost singular:

A few years ago, I had gone to a slum, Pathanwadi, in the suburbs of Mumbai — accompanied by my guide, Bipin ‘Silver’ — the place where films go to die. Bipin Silver has earned his name from his choice of livelihood: extracting silver from black-and-white films. In a darkened room piled high with 16 mm and 35 mm film cans, I watched a thin old man systematically strip these films bare of silver, leaving ghostly, translucent white strips of nothing scattered on the floor. Bipin says he strips 1,000 kgs of film in one go; he has been doing this for the last 40 years. [The Telegraph of India]

The rape of India’s cultural heritage? Or merely a recovery operation of a precious metal? Assuming the films were acquired legally by Bipin, it’s a mixture of both, honestly speaking. Much like the thousands and thousands of oil lamps residing in archaeological collections, I fear there’s a little bit of over-reverence for the past, an inevitable and to-be-desired quality for those who delve into cultural history. Not that these concerns aren’t important:

In 2014, I received a phone call from Gulzarsaheb. He had been awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke award and the government wanted to screen a retrospective of his films at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. But it couldn’t find a print of his acclaimed film, Maachis. This was a film less than 20 years old; yet it seemed to have vanished. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the tragic story of the colossal loss of India’s film heritage. [The Telegraph]

Certainly, the loss of professional films that win awards is startling and to be avoided. But thousands of home movies? I still puzzle over all the pictures my parents took and left behind when they passed away. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the consumer culture in which they were embedded, I think.

Conurbation:

a city area containing a large number of people, formed by various towns growing and joining together:
the conurbations of Tokyo and Osaka
[Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in the NewScientist Feedback column (1 June 2019):

Cases of measles continue to soar in the US, following a record dip in the number of vaccinated children that has left millions unprotected against the potentially deadly disease. If Stickland’s opinions are at all representative of his constituents, subscribers to the post-Enlightenment order may wish to steer clear of this part of the Dallas-Fort Worth conurbation. Ignorant paranoia looks to be contagious, and as the Houston Chronicle put it in a recent cartoon, there’s no vaccine for that.

As a practicing software engineer, I work on using the fruits of research labs, albeit sometimes it’s a long stretch from that lab to me, chronologically speaking. But because I don’t actually work in a research lab, I find descriptions of how things go in those labs & institutions to be interesting – even fascinating. Consider this description, originating from Duke University, in the facet of professional ethics of researchers:

Significant discussion focused on system-level factors such as faculty tenure and promotion criteria, the pressure to obtain grants and publish, and the climate of hyper competition in academic research, which participants cited as potential contributing factors for DRPs [detrimental research practices] and misconduct. Participants also expressed frustration at the unrealistic expectation that researchers can maintain an unwavering commitment to ethical coda when the pressures of academic research and job retention may demand moral compromises. For example, one research staff member commented in the context of a discussion on the ethics of research, “Integrity is good and fine, but it doesn’t pay the bills.”

I hope that was sarcasm, but they don’t denote it as such. Integrity and ethics should not be considered hindrances to accomplishing goals, but rather aids in accomplishing those goals with superior confidence in their validity. The researcher’s remark, taken as a serious remark, suggests that the ideal goal of research is being tainted by the pressure to publish.

Naturally, administrators feel a pinch as well: they need a way to measure the performance of the researchers / professors they manage, to the extent that management isn’t a laughing matter; that is what they are trying to avoid.

It seems to me that just counting publications isn’t enough; the quality of such pieces, as measured by significance as judged by the field, as well as negatively by corrections and retractions, must also take place. I wonder if a formalized process embodying those principles is already a major part of most research centres. This Duke University report suggests they’re working towards it but may not be there yet.

They look very proper.

Due to illness, posting on this blog may be curtailed.

Cryptobenthic:

1. Of fish: both benthic (living on or near the seafloor) and cryptic (hiding in crevices, or camouflaged). [Wiktionary]

Noted in “The tiniest fish are the most important for healthy coral reefs,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (1 June 2019):

… Simon Brandl has been studying “cryptobenthic” reef fish that are less than 50 millimetres long as adults – basically, the ones you don’t see when snorkelling or diving on a reef. When he looked at surveys of plankton near reefs around the world, he was surprised to discover that 70 per cent of the fish larvae were of these cryptobenthic species.

Related to the Lyme Disease thread, and tempting me to entitle this post My Deadly Disease Has A Tail-Wagging Proxy, I ran across a recent study comparing incidence of the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, one of the sources of Lyme Disease, as found in dogs against actual reports of Lyme Disease in the United States. Here’s the two maps, respectively, taken from “Quantifying the relationship between human Lyme disease and Borreliaburgdorferiexposure in domestic dogs,” Yan Lui, Geospatial Health 2019:

Given that dogs but not humans are screened for Lyme Disease on a yearly basis, this is an interesting way of determining when Lyme Disease, or the ticks that carry it, are moving into a new area. And, if you’re a little nervous about needles, get yourself a dog and make monthly visits to the vet with your walking pin cushion.

There’s been predictable and justified outrage over President Trump’s remarks concerning foreign interference in American elections, which were:

The president told Stephanopoulos that “life doesn’t work that way” when asked why his son didn’t go to the FBI. Trump also said he would want to hear if another country had information on another candidate and called it “oppo research.”

“It’s not an interference, they have information,” Trump said. “I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI.”

Stephanopoulos then pointed out that FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency should know about contacts from foreign governments.

“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump said. [NBC News]

There’s been references to previous attempts at interference as a critique of Trump’s stance, but that’s not an explicit critique of the issue, so let’s be clear. The use of foreign-supplied information leaves those candidates who accept it vulnerable to later exploitation by the suppliers. Why? Because it’s generally considered poor form to allow such interference in our elections. When a candidate accepts it, the foreign entity can later reveal the candidate’s acceptance, which becomes a lever on the candidate’s behavior – especially if the candidate is wins the election.

But why is it wrong? Let’s not explore the myriad reasons why foreign interference in our elections could be deleterious to our nation’s (and citizenry’s) future, because it’s not relevant to my argument. No, let’s go with the reason being that the American citizenry thinks it’s wrong.

With that in mind, Trump’s pronouncements, which could be interpreted as simply him showing his toughness to his base, assume the quality of an admission of guilt, and an attempt to normalize the behavior, thus getting him off the hook. This is how it’s always done, how it works, diverting the attention of those paying attention from the critical question of Should this be permitted to Oh, well, if it’s always …

Keep this in mind. He’s trying to walk a tightrope, and a push at a critical moment might reveal information about the last campaign which will indicate that he’s utterly mendacious.

The newer generation of peonies has disdained its support system:

Perhaps in the future it’ll be a little more temperate.

If you’re a fan of a quick, tightly knit plot involving secret agents, you may want to look up an old series that has favorably impressed us called Danger Man (aka Secret Agent). Made starting in 1960, each episode (at least in the first season) is a half hour long, B&W, and follows the adventures of John Drake, American secret agent, as he foils plots against the Western world.

This is not a pain-free series. Drake loses friends to temptation and to death, he has to make hard choices, and explores some of the backwaters of morality, all in half hour chunks. Episodes are not connected, so it’s easy to watch them at convenience.

On this cold & dreary day, have some more purple irises to raise your spirits.

Source: Gallup

A reader remarks on Speaker Pelosi’s apparent preference to jail President Trump:

I think she’s just trying to defuse the push for impeachment. Which makes her an impediment. She ought to get out of the way, or be forced out.

I think this is a dicey question. We have a bunch of variables, some of which we think we know how they’ll work, and some we have only a little historical precedent, of a long time ago, to work with.

1. GOP Senators. While there’s a constant grumble of discontent with certain parts of the Trump Administration, they generally do not buck President Trump, although I’ll grant there has been a few exceptions, the most noteworthy being the vote to deny funding for the Saudis with regard to their war in Yemen. But, as the link I provided reports, they were not sufficiently together on the subject to override the Presidential veto. It’s quite likely that they will never vote for conviction on impeachment charges, if only because most of them agree with South Carolina Senator Graham’s sentiment that their primary motivation in occupying their seats is to … get re-elected. Sadly, no one has put themselves forward in the mold of Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), who had the courage to ask publicly of his own Republican President, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
2. American public. It’s been speculated that Pelosi wants more public support before initiating impeachment proceedings, but it’s a tricky thing, isn’t it? Former Democratic Rep Steve Israel of New York notes in The Atlantic, “… Even Republicans recall how the failed impeachment of President Bill Clinton backfired: In 1998, Democrats gained seats in Congress, a rare occurrence for a president’s party in a midterm election.” Contrariwise, in the comparable case, the Nixon impeachment, the impeachment and trial never actually occurred, as Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. But the investigations had begun and, as the chart at the top of this post indicates, as details of Nixon’s actions came to light, his approval ratings began dropping, ending in the low 20s.
   But today’s American public is not that of the Nixon years, when virtually everyone voted for Nixon in the face of voting for him or the radical McGovern; the public, once it had its face rubbed in the evidence, was far more fluid, ready to change its mind when the evidence was presented for public viewing. Today, amidst the thousands of “news” sources, people tend to find the ones that make them happy, rather than those that make them uncomfortable, and if they’re inclined to Trump, then the evidence of his alleged misdeeds may never reach them.

Given Rep Israel’s observations concerning the backlash that hit the Republicans in the election following the failed Clinton impeachment, Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to begin impeachment proceedings without strong evidence derived from current investigations, and a groundswell of support from the general American public may be the wiser course of action – even if it may seem a trifle craven in the face of the evidence so far gathered, but not yet widely dispersed to the public.