Category Archives: Uncategorized

Oh, yeah! The IRS Scam Call Club!

Of course, the IRS isn’t going to call if you have problems. It’ll be mail or maybe through your tax advisor, if you use one. And then not using a toll-free number? That’s a big giveaway.

But I must say, there was a delightful retro quality to the call. It was neither live nor recorded, but a delightful computer-generated voice, artfully patched together to really pull you back thirty years when such technology was in its infancy. I’m not even sure, thinking about it, if it’s a scam or some compulsive performance art.

But there you go. It’s a PSA for you. If the IRS calls, it isn’t the IRS.

Florida conservatives had been hoping to alter the Florida Constitution to permit funding of religious schools through vouchers via a Constitutional Amendment. Turns out that idea, despite their tipping the initial scales in its favors, isn’t working out, reports the Tampa Bay Times:

Proposal 4 would have struck the Blaine Amendment from the state constitution — which prohibits public money from going to any religious institution, and thus any religiously affiliated private school.

After a short but robust debate on Wednesday, that proposal was “temporarily postponed.”

Donalds said they will not bring it up again.

She also withdrew proposal 45, which would have added language to the constitution saying “nothing herein may be construed to limit the Legislature from making provision for other educational services … that are in addition to the system of free public schools.” …

But any proposals that make it to the ballot in the general election must receive at least 60 percent support to make it into the constitution, and recent polling done by Clearview Research found that Proposal 4 fell far below that threshold. Clearview often does work for Democratic causes but this poll was not done for any particular client, according to president Steven Vancore.

Only 41 percent of respondents said they would vote “yes” on the proposal and 51 percent of respondents declared they would vote “no.” The research firm did not conduct polling on proposal 45.

The Florida Education Association opined that the polling was more likely the reason for the proposals’ removal from consideration by the CRC. A similar amendment was also on the ballot in 2012 and it was defeated.

Far-right ideas are not as popular as one might think if they only get their news from conservative media, although I think 41% is still unsettlingly high.

An angry ghost is at the center of Prison (1987), the ghost of a man executed for a murder he didn’t commit. But I’ll tell you what, this ghost is more than ready to commit murder most foul, now that he’s in the afterlife. Naturally, he’s tied to the prison where he died, the traditional approach to ghosts’ abodes, so that leaves just two classes of people, the imprisoned and the imprisoners.

You’d think he – do ghosts have gender? – would have sympathy for the prisoners, wouldn’t you? After all, they were mostly not responsible for his death, in fact it’s something like twenty years later so, given turnover and the fact this prison has been abandoned for while, he wouldn’t have a grudge against anyone, yes? But, no, the prisoners make for convenient victims. I must say, at this juncture, that a scene in which a prisoner versed in some sort of black magic summons the dark spirits and that sort of rot was actually quite impressive.

Too bad it ended with a ray of light boring a hole through his chest.

This is what happens when you don’t carry your wire cutters while doing your rounds.

A few other prisoners buy the farm in various odd ways, to use the old saying, but in all honesty, the guards are the real victims here. They get shot, thrown off upper story walk-throughs, choked to death with barbed wire, and, in the latter case, a final ignominy of being thrust through the ceiling, wrapped like a present, into the Warden’s office.

The Warden, unsurprisingly, was instrumental in the unjust death of the ghost’s former corporeal body – is there a single word for that uncouth phrase? – all those years ago. Now he’s suffering an emotional breakdown as the prison is slowly coming apart around him.

And don’t forget the lady who seems to represent the board of directors. I think. In any case, her home computer, not located near the prison, manages to explode, for reasons unclear.

Yeah. This is bad.

But let’s skip the traditional grousing about the story, even though it’s fairly awful, because I think what really has my back hairs up here is rather the obverse of what I observed in Ghostbusters (1984). To summarize the review of Ghostbusters, I appreciated the elevation of humanity to something beyond the level of the Divine, as ghosts are caught and confined, and then a savage God is humiliated and destroyed: Man is no longer supine, butt in the air, ready for debasement.

But Prison is a bit of pro-religion propaganda. Not only do ghosts exist, but they exact awful, savage revenge. Dark powers can be summoned, but not controlled. Man is a victim, a plaything, to be savaged and flung aside, and the hell with improving, fighting back, becoming something better. Cower in corners and hope the men of the cloth – prominently absent here – can cover your ass for you when the dark powers rage.

An awful story, unsympathetic characters, dull dialog, and a regressive theme. Put this in the Don’t Bother category. Unless you’re a Viggo Mortensen completist, and even then I wasn’t sure which of characters he might be.

Cenotaph:

1. a sepulchral monument erected in memory of a deceased person whose body is buried elsewhere. [Dictionary.com]

Mentioned in conversation with my Arts Editor last night. It’s also used somewhere in the Nine Princes In Amber series, by Roger Zelazny, but I misremember exactly which book.

Leon Sigal of 38 North worries that Bolton’s grasp of the history of North Korean negotiations is flawed. Here’s his take on North Korean aims:

Throughout the Cold War, Kim Il Sung had played China off against the Soviet Union to maintain his freedom of maneuver. In 1988, anticipating the Soviet Union’s collapse, he reached out to improve relations with the United States, South Korea and Japan fundamentally in order to avoid overdependence on China. That has been the Kims’ aim ever since.

From Pyongyang’s vantage point, that aim was the basis of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which committed Washington to “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations,” or, in plain English, to end enmity. That was also the essence of the September 2005 Six Party Joint Statement which bound Washington and Pyongyang to “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together, and take steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral policies” as well as to “negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

For Washington, the point of these agreements was the suspension of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. For nearly a decade, the Agreed Framework shuttered the North’s production of fissile material and stopped the test-launches of medium and longer-range missiles and did so again from 2007 to 2009. Both agreements collapsed, however, when Washington did little to implement its commitment to improve relations and Pyongyang reneged on denuclearization.

So-called experts ignore that history at their peril.

In one respect, the aims of the Kim family is something Americans should deeply understand: a desire not to be dominated. Korean history with the Chinese and the Japanese has been unpleasant, sometimes in the extreme, and it’s easy to understand why the Kims have taken North Korea on a highly independent path.

I think we can assume the recently reported trip to China was a carefully planned bit of diplomacy, perhaps an attempt to manipulate the West as much as it was to communicate with the Chinese. Perhaps Kim wanted to assert some prestige, as North Korean is near enough to claiming to be a nuclear power.

Given the reported horrific behavior of the rulers towards the ruled in North Korea, it’s a bit of a question as to whether Americans will ever accept the Kims as the legitimate rulers of North Korea, and the Korean War is also quite a lump in the throat – although the Chinese also participated in that bitter conflict on North Korea’s side, and we seem to have gotten past that. I might add that China’s Mao Zedong’s Culture Revolution resulted in suffering and death for millions of Chinese, and the Communists are still in charge there today.

But Mao was eventually, if unofficially, repudiated; after his death, his wife was put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death for crimes during the Cultural Revolution, although the sentence was never carried out.

It might help, during negotiations with Korea, to remember the desire of the Kims to be independent of the various powers of the world.

And then we call it a Sarcastic Fringehead:

Source: Pixdaus

And they have a special talent, as NewScientist (10 March 2018) tells us:

SARCASTIC FRINGEHEADS have more of a temper than your average fish, but it isn’t a sharp tongue that their rivals face: it is their gaping, fluorescent mouth.

When threatened by another male, the fish opens its mouth about as wide as its head, displaying an outer and inner row of teeth. This effort is intended to show other fringeheads that “I’m bigger than you and you shouldn’t come into my area”, says Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Which just accentuates the coolness.

Pardoned but guilty of a felony former sheriff Joe Arpaio proclaims his priority if he is elected to the Senate next fall:

Republican Senate candidate and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio suggested that he would revive the debunked claim that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent if he’s elected to the Senate.

At a conservative convention last week, Arpaio recalled introducing President Donald Trump at a campaign rally where the former sheriff mentioned illegal immigration and the “birther” theory — that Obama was not born in the US and therefore was ineligible to be president. [CNN]

We could write this guy off as an ex-con in the beginnings of dementia. Or an ex-con trying to run a classic con on us. Much like Trump with Mrs. Clinton, this is a Republican who wants to resurrect an old enemy to run against because, frankly, the Republicans have very little to show for their victories in the last election – unless rank incompetence is an accomplishment.

But I think there’s a bit more danger to think about, and it’s this: he’s continuing to chip away at the respectability of the institutions which hold us together. If a non-partisan institute such as a hospital issues a representation showing that someone was, indeed, born in that hospital, we should not be sitting around doubting the veracity of that document without some kind of proof.

If Sheriff Joe has this proof, then fucking well get it out there so we can examine it, otherwise shut your yap on that subject. That is how we do business in this nation, not this dishonorable waving of a hand in the air, I’ll show you the evidence later after you elect me.

The alternative?

Mr. Arpaio, is it true you were born in Mexico to Latin parents? But, sir, we have proof positive that what you claim is your birth certificate has been faked and your real parents are former drug lords who had syphilis. We have pictures of the birth right here, along with the Mexican birth certificate. Why didn’t you tell voters this during your many runs for Sheriff, sir?

Is that the kind of nation Arpaio and the birthers want to engender?

Did Trump’s lawyer raise prospect of parsons for Flynn, Manafort?

Well, that’s a new perk at the White House.

I’m sure it’s already been fixed.

Slate reports that the GOP wants to make very sure they won’t be embarrassed in Arizona’s 8th district:

Panicked by recent results and fearing another national embarrassment, Republicans are spending big in hopes of holding on to a district Donald Trump won in a landslide. Sound familiar? It should. After high-profile losses in Alabama and Pennsylvania, Republicans are now desperate to win next month’s special election in Arizona.

According to Politico, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC are spending a combined $270,000 in Arizona in support of Debbie Lesko, the former state senator running to fill the House seat that opened up when GOP Rep. Trent Franks resigned from Congress in disgrace late last year. That’s on top of the roughly $280,000 the Republican National Committee has already reported spending on field operations on Lesko’s behalf. Add it all up, and that’s more than a half-million dollars in a district that would be well under the radar in any normal year.

Here’s the thing: at some point, advertising no longer matters. No matter how much you din the voters with your message, if their real world experience disagrees with your message, it’s just money down the toilet.

The GOP should never have lost PA-18. They have a massive voter registration advantage in AZ-8. They shouldn’t lose.

And if they do? They really don’t want to face that conundrum – but do they realize that money is not the solution to every problem?

I haven’t seen the Democrats investing in AZ-8 just yet. Maybe they should do a $10,000 ad buy, just to see how much of a twitch they get out of the Republicans.

Sodality:

In social anthropology, a sodality is a non-kin group organized for a specific purpose (economic, cultural, or other), and frequently spanning villages or towns.

Sodalities are often based on common age or gender, with all-male sodalities more common than all-female. One aspect of a sodality is that of a group “representing a certain level of achievement in the society, much like the stages of an undergraduate’s progress through college [university]”.

In the anthropological literature, the Mafia in Sicily has been described as a sodality. Other examples include Maasai war camps, and Crow and Cheyenne military associations, groups that were not much unlike today’s Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion. [Wikipedia]

Noted in”The Mystery Of Hohokam Ballcourts,” Alexandra Witze, American Archaeology (Spring 2018, currently print only):

Researchers have also grappled with questions concerning the locations and timing of these ballcourts. Though there is evidence of trade and other interaction between the peoples of Mesoamerica and the greater Southwest, Mesoamerican-style ballcourts appear only in Arizona and the state of Sonora in northern Mexico. [Desert Archaeology Inc. archaeologist Henry] Wallace thinks that the various Southwestern peoples “picked and chose” the Mesoamerican offerings that most appealed to them. “People and leaders will adopt what works for them and benefits society,” he said, and for the Hohokam ballcourts were useful for creating “social institutions and sodalities.”

The behavior of brown bears in Sweden has been changing in response to changes in rules concerning the hunting. Basically, you can’t take a mother with cubs. The result?

“Generally, the cubs have followed their mother for a year and a half,” says Professor Jon Swenson from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). “Only rarely have we observed them to follow her for two and a half years.”

This has now changed. Today, more cubs stay with their mothers an additional year, as opposed to 15 to 20 years ago. “Man is now an evolutionary force in the lives of the bears,” Swenson says. …

As long as a female has cubs, she is safe. This hunting pressure has resulted in a change in the proportion of females that keep their cubs for 1.5 years in relation to those that keep them for 2.5 years. In the period from 2005 to 2015, the number of females keeping their cubs for an additional year has increased from 7% to 36%. The individuals themselves do not alter their strategies. They portray either one behavior or the other, and this trait seems fixed.

“This basically means that we are shooting more of those females that only keep their cubs for a year.” [Phys.org]

Since the individuals are not altering their behavior, it suggests a genetic change, although it could still be a learned behavior, passed to following generations.

I suppose a genetic study would be necessary to verify it. It’s fascinating to think the genetics could change this fast.

An update on this interesting investigation into the NRA and a link to Russia, from NPR – a United States Senator has taken an interest:

In the context of ongoing investigations, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the NRA earlier this month asking, “Can you categorically state that your organizations have never, wittingly or unwittingly, received any contributions from individuals or entities acting as conduits for foreign entities or interests?”

The NRA said it does receive foreign money but not for election purposes.

“While we do receive some contributions from foreign individuals and entities, those contributions are made directly to the NRA for lawful purposes,” NRA’s General Counsel John C. Frazer wrote to Wyden in a letter obtained by NPR. “Our review of our records has found no foreign donations in connection with a United States election, either directly or through a conduit.”

In 2015 to 2016, Frazer continued, the NRA received money from companies based in the U.S. that may be owned or managed by foreign nationals. “However, none of those entities or individuals is connected with Russia, and none of their contributions were made in connection with U.S. elections,” Frazer added.

But, as TPM reports, the NRA‘s explanation has a hole or two:

The gun group insists it has never received foreign money in connection with an election. But campaign finance experts say that, since money is fungible, that assurance doesn’t mean much.

Though it’s a long way from being confirmed and may never be, the NRA’s new admissions offer perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that foreign money could have allowed the group to conduct political activities boosting Trump.

The strange, even bizarre behaviors of the NRA leadership continues to leave me uneasy. I know suggesting some subset of them are Russian moles is waaaaaay out on the extremes – but what few facts we have so far does fit the theory. Just from Occam’s Razor, I do assume that they’re merely home-grown American extremists who haven’t figured out that “the government” is really “our government.”

But I’ll keep the other theory in mind.

HuffPo has more information on the gerrymandering case involving the Democrats in Maryland:

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge from Republican voters in the 6th District who say state officials violated the U.S. Constitution in redefining the district’s borders. The plaintiffs argue that by drawing the boundaries based in part on political data, Democrats essentially punished voters for their past support of GOP candidates, violating their First Amendment rights. …

The Maryland case is different from the Wisconsin one in a few key ways. While the Wisconsin lawsuit challenges an entire map, the Maryland suit seeks to redraw just one district (though obviously that would affect other districts). The Maryland case is being brought by Republicans, who were the main beneficiaries of congressional gerrymandering after the 2010 Census. And the Maryland plaintiffs are advancing the novel legal idea that partisan gerrymandering amounts to an unconstitutional retaliation based on voters’ past choices.

A district is unconstitutional, they contend, when officials take voters’ past support for candidates into account and draw a map in such a way that dilutes their votes with no justification other than partisan gain. Richard Pildes, an election law expert and professor at New York University, wrote in a blog post that the plaintiffs were suggesting a way to evaluate partisan gerrymandering claims that is similar to the way the Supreme Court already looks at claims of race-based gerrymandering ― an area of law the court is active in.

An interesting legal assertion, although since people are changing domiciles from time to time, the idea that they’re being punished for past voting patterns seems a trifle dubious to me.

Stewart Baker on Lawfare recounts a Bolton achievement when it came to secret shipments of arms by North Korea, and how to legally deal with them:

But contrary to his trigger-happy anti-diplomatic reputation, Bolton quickly set about building a nonproliferation framework that avoided the foreign policy establishment’s earlier mistakes. The Proliferation Security Initiative didn’t rely on endless multilateral set piece negotiation leading to a treaty. Instead, Bolton identified a group of like-minded European countries, and in 2003, this coalition of the willing signed on to a coordinated campaign to interdict shipments of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Without a treaty, each country agreed to do what it felt was authorized under international law,—a pledge that Bolton cleverly expanded by making international law himself, negotiating bilateral ship-boarding agreements with the main countries supplying flags of convenience to merchant vessels.

Many states adopted domestic laws prohibiting trafficking in WMD, and the U.N. Security Council eventually adopted a resolution calling on all members to do so. By avoiding an international treaty negotiating scrum and a multinational centralized bureaucracy, PSI left the United States with the flexibility and initiative to seize on opportunities to expand PSI’s reach as they arose. (Much to China’s frustration, I’m pleased to add; it has spent fifteen years watching PSI tighten the screws on North Korea and railing ineffectually from the sidelines about PSI’s lack of formal treaty authority.)

Having started with like-minded countries, the PSI gradually expanded to include less enthusiastic members who nonetheless could not reasonably oppose interdiction of WMD. Several U.N. Security Council regulations requiring nonproliferation action were hung on the framework of the PSI principles, A hundred countries now belong, and Bolton’s initiative was largely embraced by the Obama administration—mainly because it works. When I was at the Department of Homeland Security, after Bolton had left the administration, we often had reason to rely on PSI’s authorities to investigate suspicious shipments bound for the United States. Thanks to its flexibility, the nonproliferation framework was easily adapted into a homeland defense measure.

Which is somewhat reassuring – he may have a subtle side. Let’s hope so.

This car should have gotten a credit. I think it had more screen time than the daughter.

Panic In The Year Zero! (1962, aka End Of The World) is a remarkably steady and believable look at what might happen if a limited nuclear war had taken place in the 1950s. It features the Baldwin family, driving from Los Angeles into the mountains on a family vacation trip. Midway up the mountains, a series of flashes of light catch their attention, and soon father Harry has guessed the truth, even if the telephone operators are merely saying the lines are down: Los Angeles has been hit in a nuclear attack.

He immediately switches into survival mode, buying and taking supplies at gunpoint, and driving further up into the mountains, looking for a cave his son has mentioned in the past. His goal? Family survival. His obstacles?

Everyone else.

Along with the usual friction one might expect, a gang of no-good young men, taking advantage of the situation, becomes their biggest external obstacle. They know no decency, have no respect except for raw power, and soon enough, after his daughter is assaulted by them, he and his son are forced to hunt those they can find and kill them.

But there are internal obstacles as well. His wife cannot quite believe that mankind will descend into savagery, and his daughter disconnects from what’s happening, as might be expected from a self-centered teenager. But when Harry kills the men who assaulted his daughter, with neither remorse nor pity, and then nearly leaves one of their victims behind, he awakens to the fact that he’s becoming the man he warned his son not to become: killing without thought, living without pity nor generosity.

So, in a sense, when his son is desperately wounded by the last survivor of the gang, it’s his lifeline, a reminder that there’s more to life than vengeance and survival. Word has arrived that civilization is beginning to return in a town not too far away, and the climax is the desperate drive towards civilization and hospitals.

And finding the US Army sitting in the way.

Some of the special effects are substandard, but fortunately they left the nuclear attack as simply flashes in the sky and a couple of mushroom clouds. The close investigation is of the psychology of all the survivors, the authorities dead or distracted by the catastrophes in Los Angeles and other cities, and I think it’s well done.

I can’t say you’ll enjoy this movie if  you run across it – there’s not a lick of humor in it – but it’s a sobering reminder of another era in American history, when we lived under the shadow of the Cold War, and how that affected much of the population’s psychology.

The worst part of this movie may be its title.

Remember Mike Hughes, the guy who was building a rocket as part of a plan to prove the Earth is flat? He finally got his first rocket in the series of rockets – just a test, not the final rocket – to fire and get him off the ground:

 Mike Hughes, a California man who is most known for his belief that the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee, finally blasted off into the sky in a steam-powered rocket he had built himself.

The 61-year-old limo driver and daredevil-turned-rocket-maker soared about 1,875 feet above the Mojave Desert on Saturday afternoon, the Associated Press reported. Hughes’s white-and-green rocket, bearing the words “FLAT EARTH,” propelled vertically about 3 p.m. Pacific time and reached a speed of about 350 mph, Waldo Stakes, who has been helping Hughes, told the AP. Hughes deployed two parachutes while landing, the second one just moments before he plopped down not far from his launching point. [WaPo]

He was mildly injured, but says he’ll be continuing. While I don’t agree with his scientific views, I admire this 61-year old’s gumption. I honestly hope he achieves his goal of getting a rocket up 52 miles – and discovers the Earth really is a sphere. He can bring the news back as independent confirmation, in the great tradition of science.

Rana Strauss of Treehugger went to Morocco and came home with some great pics:

I had to grab that one because camels always look like bad-tempered gossips. More at Treehugger.

A reader remarks on solar lensing:

It looks to me (from brief Google search) that the Oort Cloud starts about 1,000 AU out from the Sun and extends to about 100,000 AU. It also appears that Voyager 1 is only just beyond 100 AU, slightly beyond the Termination Shock and the Heliopause.

So, this gravitational lensing point is way out there. It may take quite a while to get a telescope put in place there, but it definitely sounds worth doing. It’ll also take a couple hours to get radio signals from such a telescope back to earth (1 AU is about 9 light minutes, is it not?).

Lastly, at that distance, I suspect our Sun looks like a speck, maybe just a bright star.

Ah, I see the linked linked article mentions 550 AU as the distance involved.

And another reader issues a correction of the first:

A couple hours? Neptune is 4 light-hours away from Earth and it’s a hell of a lot closer to us than the Oort cloud. This page puts the Oort cloud at about a YEAR away from us at light speed:

http://casswww.ucsd.edu/archive/public/tutorial/Intro.html

Nice to have someone else do the work for me.

Aaaaand today the market goes swooping upwards in my off and on coverage of the market. The Dow Jones was up 2.84%, while the other two were up about as much or even more.

So what’s going on? CNN/Money attributes it to talks aimed at averting tariffs with the largest country in the world:

Stocks soared on Monday after news that American and Chinese officials are holding behind-the-scenes talks aimed at averting a trade disaster.

Only days ago, President Trump’s crackdown on China’s trade tactics and fears of retaliation sent the market to its worst week in two years.

I’m sure that covers a substantial portion of the rally, but I think there’s a bit more to the motivations behind that rally. What might that be?

President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats the US identified as intelligence agents and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, the most forceful action Trump has taken against Russia to date. Of those being expelled, 48 of the alleged intelligence agents work at the Russian embassy in Washington and 12 are posted at the United Nations in New York, senior administration officials said. [CNN]

See, this is actually a reasonable reaction to the outrage of poisoning a former Russian spy on British soil. What’s more, it’s part of a coordinated action with many of our alllies. For once, President Trump, or his advisors, are showing some sense in the foreign policy arena. The market, which craves predictability and sensibility from the government, got the latter, if not the former, today, and appears to have celebrated. Trump moved against a palpably hostile and aggressive Russia. That has to reassure the more politically conservative investors.

Another part of this rally may be the algorithmic trading platforms operating once again in unusual, even unknown territory, and trading up as the internal rules of the algorithm interact with a real world doing, well, odd things. I wonder if the markets have a way to measure that activity and how it impacts the movements of the market – and if those measurements are worth shit. The fact that I can’t imagine how to do that sort of measurement doesn’t mean it isn’t done.

In WaPo, David Weigel discusses the next special election, for Arizona’s 8th district, considered to be at least as ruby-red as PA-18. But this time around, the candidate for the Republicans is Debbie Lesko, a former State Senator who appears to be enthusiastic and committed, unlike the PA-18 Republican candidate. The surprise?

The Republican National Committee has put $281,250 into the special election to replace former congressman Trent Franks, the first financial commitment by either national party in a district that has voted reliably Republican since being drawn in 2011.

The RNC declined to comment on the investment, but Arizona’s 8th District was not necessarily seen as a potential Democratic pickup. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won just 37 percent of the vote in the district — worse than her showing in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, which Democrat Conor Lamb  just won in a squeaker.

The Cook Political Report rates the Arizona 8th as “safe” for Republicans, and Democrats seemed to write off the district after scandal-plagued former state senator Steve Montenegro lost last month’s Republican primary to former state senator Debbie Lesko. The election to replace Franks, who resigned after it was revealed that he had urged an employee to bear his child as surrogate mother, is on April 24.

There’s no mention of any polls showing a close race, although Weigel does mention that Lesko’s opponent, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, has an effective first attack ad out, so perhaps the RNC is simply feeling a little jumpy. There’s certainly no history to make them jumpy, though – since redistricting in 2011, Representative Franks, who resigned in the wake of a scandal, easily won the two elections for the Republicans. It’s not worth even graphing, since the Democrats failed to run anyone in 2012.

As with PA-18, it’s not the victory which will matter so much as the change in winning margin for the Republican. It was so large in PA-18 that the Democrat won by the skin of his teeth. Once again, it seems unlikely that the Democrat will win, deep in Republican country – but who knows? An inspired campaign, disaster on the other side, unforeseen events can easily tip these campaigns one way or the other.

And what if Trump comes to campaign, and Lesko loses in a shocker? Just a minor dream on my part, but that would be another small step on the rebuilding of the conservative movement into something other than a body of extremists.

One day, President Trump thinks Russia’s President Putin can do no wrong. The next?

President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats the US identified as intelligence agents and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, the most forceful action Trump has taken against Russia to date. Of those being expelled, 48 of the alleged intelligence agents work at the Russian embassy in Washington and 12 are posted at the United Nations in New York, senior administration officials said. [CNN]

Yep, his changing affections make me dizzy. While it’s good to see some positive action from President Trump for a change, and especially as part of a coordinated action with a number of other countries, it’s hard not to see this as a distraction from the Stormy Daniels controversy, which is coming to a peak in the wake of last night’s broadcast of an interview with Daniels by Anderson Cooper.. I do notice that CNN is splitting its web-site welcome page between the two news items, presumably conscious of the possibility that this may simply be a distraction, although I remain skeptical about the importance of this sexual infidelity / campaign contribution infraction.

And the Russian reaction so far?

The Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov called the US decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats a “very bad step” and that the US “will understand what kind of grave mistake they did and I hope that maybe in the future our relations will be restored” in a video tweeted by embassy’s official twitter page on Monday.

“I consider this actions counterproductive. I said that the United States did very bad step, undercutting a little what we still have in Russian-American relations. These decisions are going against to the telephone conversation between our two presidents,” Antonov said.

The ambassador added: “it’s up to United States to decide what kind of relations they want to have with the Russian federation.” [CNN]

Vague and ambiguous. Is this a threat from Russia to the United States, or from Putin to Trump? The latter might be interpreted as “stop fucking around or I’ll release that compromising information I’ve been using to jerk you around.”

The next couple of days could be very interesting.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised concerning the Wisconsin legislature’s reaction to the judge’s order that special elections be held for those two open spots. From Stephen Wolf on The Daily Kos:

On Thursday, a state court judge in Wisconsin ordered Republican Gov. Scott Walker to promptly call special elections for two legislative seats that he’d let lie vacant since December, which would’ve deprived those voters of representation for nearly a year. But those special elections still might not take place: Even though the judge in question, Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds, was a Walker appointee, Republicans in the legislature reacted to her decision with terrifying anti-democratic furor the following day, with state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald saying he’ll advance legislation to overturn Reynolds’s ruling.

Fitzgerald did not stop there. He demanded that the chief justice of the state Supreme Court discipline Reynolds for “politicizing” her ruling and called Reynolds’s judicial district, which is anchored by the state capital of Madison, a “laughingstock.” In a final Orwellian twist, Fitzgerald declared, “Nobody’s trying to slow down or halt anything related to an election,” which is exactly what he’s trying to do.

There are no rules that apply to a Republican Party that believes itself the blessed of God, especially one that dominates the legislature and holds the Governor’s office in Wisconsin.

It’s disappointing. I suppose next we’ll see Judge Reynolds asked to leave the Party, perhaps even RINOed out, and it’ll be too bad because she appears to be one who has a higher allegiance than only to the Party.

And these are the types of actions that bid fair to cause the Democrats to be equally careless of the law when they take power, I fear. I know the North Carolina GOP used the actions of the North Carolina Democrats from 20 or 30 years ago as an excuse for their wretched clutching of power, and I will not be surprised if, in a decade, the Democrats, faced with a challenge from the opposition, whether that be GOP or whatever replaces the GOP when it implodes, decide their lust for power justifies any action.

Rather than justice being the key.

It’s a member of one of the staples of the story-telling business: the Grow Up in a Hurry tale. That’s the central core of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), the tale of five young people trapped in a deadly video game. It’s predictable, doctrinaire, heavily sprinkled with humor both expected and unexpected, and loaded with stereotyped characters.

And not bad at all.

When I say it’s predictable, I mean it’s predictable for those of us beyond a certain age, who have experienced enough stories to understand where the main current of story-telling generally goes. But I’m not the intended audience of this movie. That audience was in the theater with me, though – kids, ages 5 and up, I’d say from a random sampling of the horde (it was a full house at the Riverview, and a late start). They haven’t seen what I’ve seen – for them, this straight-line adventure is an eye-opener, a virtual class in surviving in the unknown, and what it requires.

The stereotypes, perhaps a little tiresome for the older set, serve as hooks into which the little ones can get a grip, a hitch up the ladder of knowing who these characters might be, of getting their theory of mind rolling. Who are they and what will they do next? For the youngsters, a long setup is not practical, as their attention might wander; the stereotype is an approach to interest the kids and begin the process of predicting the next action to come.

Doctrinaire? Sure. There’s very little questioning of the general aspects of American life. There’s the geek, his semi-friend the athlete, the hot, self-absorbed chick, the metal-head (not so well developed), and the shy lass, and they do not challenge how life is lived in the United States. That gives the young audience a little more traction.

But then there’s the leap into the video game, and four of them land in the skins of folks who are, well, not like themselves. The skinny video game geek, for example, has shoulders two yards wide (played by former professional wrestler Duane Johnson). The hot chick? Think Jack Black. This is the challenge for the kids: to understand how seeing the world from a different vantage point may give you more information about the world, and how others see you based on appearance – and change how you see it, as we see the kids start adapting to their new skins – and the abilities that they bring them, helpfully displayed by a holographic screen listing their strengths and weaknesses.

From here on in, it’s all about the goal set for them by the game, and how they get there, each learning about themselves as the game progresses, blurring their stereotypes into real people. Eventually, they run into the fifth player, another teenager who’s been here longer than he realizes. They learn to work together, to trust each other – even to sacrifice for each other. And if their plans sometime work out a little to conveniently, well, that’s OK – you don’t want too much challenge for the kids. Unfortunately, some of the personal changes came far too easily, and they constitute a flaw in the movie.

In the end, through persistence, cleverness, and teamwork, their goal is achieved – and, as in its predecessor, the cry of Jumanji! releases them from these deadly confines.

And if I was a little unhappy with the conclusion, when the Jumanji drums begin to beat at their school, to the confusion of all, that’s OK. This Jumanji game should certainly be able to survive a beating with a bowling ball, right?

But the keys to this success story are its links to today’s social customs and technology. They render it relevant to the target audience, who then can start learning those age-old lessons, but in the modern context. Just as it’s ever been.

If you have kids of the right age – and there’s some penis humor that might make some parents uncomfortable – I think they’ll enjoy this movie, and learn from it.

On Out There, Corey S. Powell describes one of those cosmological phenomenon that makes my jaw drop:

One of the most intriguing destinations out toward the Oort Cloud is not an object but a conceptual location, the “solar gravity lens” point. Bear with me for a second, because this one is weird but truly wondrous.

The gravitational field of the Sun subtly warps the space around it, following the rules of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. At a great distance from the Sun, the warped light rays come together, just like the focal point of a magnifying lens. If you are standing at that point and you look back at the Sun, you see a greatly magnified version of whatever is on the other side–again, just like a magnifying lens.

A new study funded by NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) demonstrates the astonishing sights available to a space telescope placed at the solar gravity lens point. So far, astronomers have observed only a handful of planets directly, and these are seen merely as unresolved dots; most are detected only indirectly. But using the Sun’s magnifying power, a properly sited space telescope could scan the surface of an Earthlike planet 100 light years away at a resolution of about 1 kilometer!

Wow! Here’s a diagram from the academic report from which Powell is working:

Figure 8. Imaging of an exo-Earth with solar gravitational lens. The exo-Earth occupies (1km×1km) area at the image plane. Using a 1m telescope as a single pixel .detector provides a 1000 × 1000 pixel image

Notice the telescope will be staring at, or near, the Sun. Fascinating stuff!