Category Archives: Uncategorized

The next step up from a motorcycle.

Like many science fiction films, Oblivion (2013) faces the opportunity and the burden to clearly explore some moral question, often with a faux-futuristic facet, with great clarity. Science fiction has this opportunity to a greater extent than some genres because it is not quite as burdened with the trivia of reality; it can draw out the question of interest with perhaps some greater clarity than in other genres.

Consider Blade Runner (1982), which takes on questions of artificial intelligence and how the manufacture of an artificial intelligence – for that is the essence of the rebellious replicants wreaking havoc in the city, even if they have a human ancestor – and deploying them in combat roles with a sharply and shortly defined lifetime ripples through those replicants’ consciousness of themselves as individuals and community – and affects their interactions with their creators.

Or Gattaca (1997) in its study of the ultimate in the ability to shape your offspring, and how that consciousness of this peculiar version of the Greek Fates impacts those who’ve been shaped – and the virtual refuse of humanity, those who came out of the oven without the shaping.

Unfortunately, Oblivion is more interested in the practical problems when faced with an opponent with such power that they, to borrow a phrase from Arthur C. Clarke, appear to be magical. The movie opens with Jack Harper, Tech-49, memory wiped for security reasons, heading out to work on a drone (think something about 20 feet long). The drones, heavily armed, protect great fusion generators powered by the Earth’s oceans, and we learn that Earth, after fighting and winning a war against the invading aliens, are moving to Titan as the Earth was ruined by the war. The energy from Earth’s oceans is transferred to Titan to power those colonies. These installations are under attack by the survivors of the invading force, the scavs. Jack and his partner, Vika, answer to their superiors on the Tet, an orbiting satellite whose crew coordinates the various tech crews responsible for maintaining the installations harvesting the energy.

But Jack is bothered by dreams. When an old spaceship re-enters Earth’s atmosphere in response to a scav-set beacon, he arrives to find the survivors of the crash are human – and are then exterminated by one of his drones. He saves one of the survivors from the drone and returns her to his base, where he and his partner, Vika, revive her. The survivor, Julia, is unwilling to talk until the flight recorder of her craft is recovered – and she’s a character from his dreams.

Jack, against orders, takes Julia to recover her flight recorder, but they are attacked and captured by the scavs.

Who are human.

The great conspiracy is then revealed. Jack is working for the invaders, and is, in fact, himself an artifact of the invaders. He can’t believe it, but is released by the scavs after they reveal a plan – they have a drone, armed with a nuclear weapon. Its target? The Tet satellite, which in reality is the invading aliens. The problem? Jack has the expertise to program the drone. Jack refuses and, in a great bluff move, the scavs release him. He and Julia return to Jack’s base, only to discover Vika has lost faith in Jack. The Tet satellite orders everyone killed, but the drone is destroyed after killing Vika.

Jack and Vika escape but are trailed by more drones (they’re a bit like locusts, but they only eat each other rarely), and when they’re shot down, Jack runs into … Jack. Jack Tech-52, that is. After some fisticuffs, Jack wins, and Jack and Julia end up at the scav hideout, where Jack programs the drone and the humans win.

Well, not really. The humans win, but there’s some fairly meaningless final plot twists that I find too tiresome to rehash.

So the problem here is Jack, for all the questions about his humanity, isn’t really facing any interesting moral questions. The question of where his loyalties lay, and should lay, are never really explored, and they’re not worth exploring. So this is really just another action movie with little bite to it.

Not to suggest it’s a waste of time. Tom Cruise continues to prove to be an adept actor who, while perhaps not quite as flexible as Hanks or Lewis, is certainly worthy of respect. The visuals were good on our TV, and probably magnificent on the big screen. We did occasionally have problems with the wide range of volume used, but our living room is hardly an ideal theater space.

But don’t go into this one expecting to get knocked on your ass by another Blade Runner or Gattaca. It’s fun, but not that wonderful. And if that dangerous word Why rears its ugly head, look out! The plot may come cascading down around your head. I suggest you just lean back in the barcalounger and enjoy the fun.

President Moon of South Korea faces the same problem as his predecessors – what to do with North Korea and its dangerous, ambitious Kim Jong-un. Joel Wit of 38 North believes the way forward is diplomacy, and in this open letter to President Moon gives a quick overview of the past and why he puts his money on talk, not muscle:

Source: Christian Science Monitor

In view of the deteriorating situation as well as this month’s upcoming joint US-ROK military exercises, which are only likely to result in greater tensions on the peninsula, it is absolutely essential that you and your government immediately engage in serious, detailed talks with President Trump and his top advisors to work out a joint strategy and division of labor so we can move forward together. Without such a strategy, we will have no choice but to acquiesce to a North Korea armed with a growing nuclear and missile arsenal and a Korean peninsula plagued by dangerous tensions for many years to come.

Which doesn’t sound half-bad until you remember the tyro American President and his bumbling incompetence in foreign relations. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if he had the balls to own his incompetence and kept out of the way as his chosen experts work the problem, but as well all know, he doesn’t realize just how awful he has been and, in all likelihood, will continue to be, so we can look forward to him shooting his mouth off at a critical moment, damaging the American and Korean position.

Nor has Secretary of State Rex Tillerson been an inspiration, either, but in the absence of alternatives, we have to hope he takes the problem seriously.

And maybe ignores his boss.

Saccade:

Jennifer Groh at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her team have been using microphones inserted into people’s ears to study how their eardrums change during saccades – the movement that occurs when we shift visual focus from one place to another. You won’t notice it, but our eyes go through several saccades a second to take in our surroundings. [“Your eardrums move in sync with your eyes but we don’t know why,” Aylin Woodward, NewScientist (29 July 2017)]

An interesting article, although I wondered if they had the horse before the cart.

NewScientist (29 July 2017) reports some numbers on how US government investment spurs economic activity:

Between 2007 and 2015, the US spent $14 billion on global health research, according to the Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC), a group of organisations that promote such efforts, including the Gates Foundation.

According to the GHTC analysis, for each of those dollars spent, 89 cents remained in the US, paying for US researchers and their work. This investment is calculated to have created 200,000 jobs and added $53 billion to US economic output.

“What really struck me was that every taxpayer’s dollar spent on basic research generates an additional $8.38 of industry investment over eight years,” says GHTC director Jamie Bay Nishi.

But president Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, published in May, revealed plans to cut federal funding for programmes described as providing “little return to the American people”. The health budget was titled “Putting America’s health first”. The GHTC estimates that the cuts associated with these plans add up to around $5 billion.

You figure if the Gates Foundation, run by businessman Bill Gates, is involved, then the numbers should have a bit more credibility in the eyes of the private sector. But it appears that our fine GOP-led government has only the shallowest understanding of economics – and they won’t talk to experts, is my guess. On the other hand, Trump’s budget is hardly a done deal, especially given this report from John Harwood on CNBC:

Increasingly, federal officials are deciding to simply ignore President Donald Trump.

As stunning as that sounds, fresh evidence arrives every day of the government treating the man elected to lead it as someone talking mostly to himself.

On Tuesday alone, the commandant of the Coast Guard announced he will “not break faith” with transgender service members despite Trump’s statement that they could no longer serve. Fellow Republicans in the Senate moved ahead with other business despite the president’s insistence that they return to repealing Obamacare. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “we certainly don’t blame the Chinese” for North Korea’s nuclear program after Trump claimed, “China could easily solve this problem.” And Vice President Mike Pence said the president and Congress speak in a “unified voice” on a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill Trump has signed, but not publicly embraced.

It’s good to see Congress asserting some independence, but there’s little evidence of necessary expertise residing there, either.

Our Mayhem has been caught checking out Deb’s roses for their nutrition.

Since the roses had only just been brought inside, she was not a happy camper.

Which all jumped into focus for me in this Steve Benen piece on Maddowblog:

The headline on the Post’s piece yesterday read, “7 times the Trump team denied something – and then confirmed it.” This morning, it was updated to read, “8 times the Trump team denied something – and then confirmed it.” This afternoon, as more examples came to the fore, it reads, “9 times the Trump team denied something – and then confirmed it.” There’s no reason to believe it won’t be updated again.

The point, of course, is that anytime the president and the White House deny something, there’s simply no reason to accept the claim at face value. Members of Trump World have earned a reputation for lying reflexively, and they’ve been caught too many times for anyone to consider them credible.

Considering the GOP atmosphere of team politics and how this enables the habit of successful lying, we’re once again getting a lesson in why team politics is a very bad policy. Here’s the problem: within the toxic structure of the GOP, where criticism of policy is not encouraged, it becomes a hothouse for the self-serving lie. After all, if no one is to critique, then why even research a critique? Members are encouraged to accept it and move on. And thus a habit is ingrained.

But when our fresh-faced candidates and their assistants get out in the real world, where bad old media demands, say, truthfulness, then they get in trouble. Because they’ve learned in the school of hard knocks that lies work, they propelled them to success.

Except it wasn’t the school of hard knocks. It was the school of feather-beds.

But at this point lying is ingrained, they can’t help using a lie when it’ll make them look better, let them advance what passes for an agenda. And then they get torn to shreds, humiliated, along with their party. And there’s only two ways to fix it. Get rid of team politics.

Or render the electoral system impotent to get rid of YOU.

So, gentle reader, if you’re a GOP member, perhaps you should begin the campaign against team politics. If not for the good of the United States, at least for the good of the Party.

In case you’re here in the Twin Cities and aren’t paying attention, the Minnesota Fringe Festival opened last night for a ten day run.

Why they need to do this during all the Art Fairs is a bit of a mystery.

For an example of shallow analysis, go no further than White House advisor Sebastian Gorka in TPM:

Gorka — a controversial member of the Trump administration, given his affiliations with right-wing nationalist groups tied to anti-Semitism and the targeting of Roma people, among other things — said China’s use of North Korea as a “buffer state” was not be worth the instability that the missile tests brought the region.

Hemmer returned to Gorka’s earlier comment: “With all due respect, can a Twitter feed change the mind of those leading China?”

“If you can win a U.S. election with it, I think it’s pretty powerful, Bill, don’t you?” Gorka replied.

If you’re going to be a serious advisor, you’d better be asking yourself why, or even if, Twitter was a powerful in the last Presidential election. The answer, of course, is that it reached a sizable number of American voters.

Voters who have very little leverage when it comes to China.

Especially a country which is not a democracy.

Gorka seems to think Trump found himself a bazooka – point and shoot and watch the target explode. But that’s not even a close characterization. He found one of those funny little screwdrivers that only works with specialty products. And we all hate those damn specialty screwdrivers.

Bu the point is that Gorka apparently hasn’t given the least thought to the power of Twitter, or more accurately, its limitations. China doesn’t feel any pressure through Twitter, and even a call for boycott via Twitter isn’t going to be especially problematic. Twitter is how Gorka’s boss persistently shoots himself and all his subordinates in their feet.

If Gorka thinks Twitter is going to move international politics, he’s even more inexperienced than I thought.

callipygian:

having shapely buttocks [Merriam-Webster]

Observed in this edition of 9 Chickweed Lane.

Ah! I gave the answer, not the question!

Once again, Vincent fails to burn down his castle, which is unfortunate as it would have made a fine symbol of the central theme of the mysteriously titled The Oblong Box (1969), based (I do not know the level of fidelity) on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name. A movie of staccato, jarring scene changes, we are introduced to Sir Julian Markham and his older brother, the discovered Sir Edward. Cursed by an African witch doctor while they were at their plantation, Edward now lives in the upper story of their English castle, exiled due to his injury, while Julian cares for him and also woos and becomes engaged.

Somehow, Edward communicates with the outside world and engages the services of another witch doctor and some helpers, who get a pill to him that will render him unto death. Upon finding him in this condition, Sir Julian, arranges for his burial. However, a viewing by the village elders is necessary, and, well, family honor will not permit Edward to be viewed in this condition.

Another body must found.

So a man is murdered and substituted for Sir Edward, but it is Sir Edward who is buried, for what is one to do with the body otherwise? the other body is dumped in the creek. Worse yet, the helpers of Sir Edward simply shrug and enjoy their payments, leaving him alive in the ground. At this juncture, Fate sticks its ugly fingers into the mess, as the local doctor is carrying on some research into the ways of the human body, and requires same to further his research. Sir Edward is dug up and conveyed to the doctor, who takes him under his roof, donating a red mask for Sir Edward’s dignity.

Sir Edward has dedicated his life to revenge, but such are his human needs that he mixes in with the ladies, leading to fatal consequences, along with his expected victims. Before long, the capstone to this tale is revealed, and Julian is forced to shoot Edward dead.

But Edward dies with one fell nip of Julian’s hand, leaving Julian to visualize the termination of his family line – thus, the allusion to the burning of his castle.

The movie has plenty of sympathetic characters, yet somehow we never actually form an attachment. Perhaps because of the general atmosphere of casual brutality and violence, perhaps because these characters are here for the story, and not really anything else – despite some handwaves claiming they are. On the other hand, the plot has a few lovely, logical twists, and information is withheld in a well thought out manner, keeping the viewer at least somewhat interested. At best, an uneven movie. Good for a snowy January afternoon, or, as in my case, a day of food poisoning.

Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man’s Own Story (1954) is the film biography, allegedly based on the man’s own autobiography, of Caryl Chessman, executed in 1960 for multiple kidnapping convictions, and presented as a cautionary tale. We follow his life as his mother is badly injured in a car accident, and he becomes a bad boy, ending up in reform school after joining a gang pulling minor mischief. From there he moves on to multiple stays in prison, interspersed with various crimes which escalate in violence. From what I’ve read, his father tried to commit suicide, twice – I don’t recall if that was in the movie.

But we also see his loyalty to the woman he loves, as well as loyalty to his fellows in crime, which brings a measure of humanity to a film which would otherwise be mostly the hollow bravado of a narcissistic street criminal, convinced of his own invincibility to the point of suicide. When he is caught and put on trial for the kidnapping charges which will be his eventual undoing, we see him choose to take on the job of defending himself, rather than leaving it to a public defender, and, in a fairly shallow scene, his realization that he cannot convince a jury, merely on his say-so, of his innocence of the charges.

As the movie was made before his execution, we’re not privy to the controversy he stirs up with his literary efforts, and how his execution became integral to the effort to abolish the death penalty in California. This is unfortunate, as it deprives us of a deeper exploration of the moral questions of incarceration and execution, with that peculiarly emotional storm which must accompany each side of the question, and is such an important part of the temporary solutions we have for that controversy.

All that said, this movie starts slowly; we nearly didn’t get beyond the first half hour (at least of this TV version), and for that I blame some fairly flat acting in combination with a story that was perhaps told a little too straightforwardly. It might have benefited from compression, or from a more sophisticated use of chronology. But then we get away from just acting, moving onward to action, and then prison, where Chessman develops a lot of swagger, not to mention a haircut reminiscent of the King. This brings the movie to life. But the action is just to get the adrenaline going; it’s his interactions with those with whom he’s cast his lot which are most interesting, as they define his character best – from valuing friends and colleagues in crime on the high end, to his base impulsivity towards those he despises.

But a few critical questions remain open. Why did he stay in California once he had a good stash? Did he want to get caught? Or was his resentment of authority such that he felt it necessary to taunt the police as if he was invulnerable? Perhaps these are answered in the autobiography, but the answers are not clear in the movie.

And I must admit I was a little jarred by the unlikely ending in which he takes full responsibility for his crimes. It’s not other people, or society, or anything else at fault, his character narrates. It’s himself who is at fault. And even if he truly came to this realization, does it matter? Did he really have a choice, given the cards dealt to him? There is a certain emotional satisfaction at his admission of fault, but does it really mean anything?

Hard to say.

This guy stole every scene he was in. Therefore, I shan’t mention him in the review.

Disturbing Behavior (1998) explores an extreme solution to the ups and downs of adolescence: brainwashing. Teenager Steve has moved to Cradle Bay from Chicago following the suicide of his older brother, only to find the high school is mostly controlled by the “Blue Ribbons,” a group of former miscreants, now reformed and full of that old time school spirit.

And the occasional violent outburst.

On the outside, trying not to look in, are Steve’s new friends, an underutilized character named U.V. (he’s albino), Gavin, and Rachel. Falling into the miscreant category, they’ve been watching their former friends slowly being swallowed by the Blue Ribbons, with bitter teenage angst and puzzlement.

But when Gavin is sucked in, Steve and Rachel must cross the bay to Bishop Flats to discover the hazy antecedents of the school psychologist, the man responsible for the Blue Ribbons, and from there the action kicks into high gear.

It’s difficult to extract thematic material from this movie, probably because the vein is already played out. Perhaps the idea that adolescence is something everyone must endure, as a learning experience, is the best I can do.

On a more ulterior level, and doubtless without conscious purpose, one might consider the message that adolescence is not necessarily a barrier which all teenagers can conquer, and that we will lose some to the challenges, hormonal and societal, presented by it. The question then becomes, how do we deal with those losses?

This movie won’t ever tell you, though.

A friend on Facebook summarizes a show plot:

We were watching an episode of “Vega$” last night where a man was framed for murder. They never explained how it was pulled off, but during the course of the show, the framee:
– Assaulted a jail guard
– Impersonated said jail guard
– Escaped jail
– Stole a truck
– Kidnapped a TV reporter
– Assaulted another person (who was involved with the frame)
…And during the final scene, he was the guest of honor at a show featuring his paintings at the Desert Inn. I guess if you were framed for the original crime, you’re excused from anything else?

But let’s back up. A couple of decades ago, the violence wouldn’t have been necessary because the bad guys would have left a thread (or three) loose, and the victim (or the show’s star) would have grasped that thread and unwoven the entire tapestry of evil.

Today, apparently^[1], it’s all about the action and violence because evil is too darn competent. Is this a reflection of the entire right wing ranting radio hosts?

Oh, where’s Peter Falk when you need him? Or 12 Angry Men?

¹My TV watching habits do not follow the latest hits. For example, Game of Thrones is just a name to me. Maybe most shows are more cerebral. Nyaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Writ of mandamus:

Latin for “we order,” a writ (more modernly called a “writ of mandate”) which orders a public agency or governmental body to perform an act required by law when it has neglected or refused to do so. [Law.com]

And nothing deeper than that.

Ryan McKay and Max Coltheart describe an attack on the predatory science journal phenomenon in BishopBlog:

 These days it is common for academics to receive invitations from unfamiliar sources to attend conferences, submit papers, or join editorial boards. We began an attack against this practice by not ignoring such invitations – by, instead, replying to them with messages selected from the output of the wonderful Random Surrealism Generator. It generates syntactically correct but surreal sentences such as “Is that a tarantula in your bicycle clip, or are you just gold-trimmed?” (a hint of Mae West there?). This sometimes had the desired effect of generating a bemused response from the inviter; but we decided more was needed.

So we used the surrealism generator to craft an absurdist critique of “impaired” publication practices (the title of the piece says as much, albeit obliquely). The first few sentences seem relevant to the paper’s title but the piece then deteriorates rapidly into a sequence of surreal sentences (we threw in some gratuitous French and Latin for good measure) so that no one who read the paper could possibly believe that it was serious (our piece also quotes itself liberally); and we submitted the paper to a number of journals. Specifically, we submitted the paper to every journal that contacted either of us in the period 21 June 2017 to 1 July 2017 inviting us to submit a paper. There were 10 such invitations. We accepted all of them, and submitted the paper, making minor changes to the title of the paper and the first couple of sentences to generate the impression that the paper was somehow relevant to the interests of the journal; but the bulk of the paper was always the same sequence of surreal sentences.

Here’s just one response.

The tenth journal, the International Journal of Brain Disorders and Therapy, sent us one reviewer comment. The reviewer had entered into the spirit of the hoax by providing a review which was itself surrealistic. We incorporated this reviewer’s comment about Scottish Lithium Flying saucers and resubmitted, and the paper was accepted. The journal then noticed irregularities in some (but surprisingly not all) of the references. We replaced these problematic references with citations of recent and classic hoaxes (e.g., Kline & Saunders’ 1959 piece on “psychochemical symbolism”; Lindsay & Boyle’s recent piece on the “Conceptual Penis”), along with a citation of Pennycook et al’s article “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit”. The paper was then published in the on-line journal.  Later this journal asked us for a testimonial about the review process, which we supplied: “The process of publishing this article was much smoother than we anticipated”.

Very, very dry.

On Above The Law, David Lat covers Judge Richard Posner’s acrid remarks concerning current SCOTUS justices (Breyer & Ginsburg are barely adequate), length of Federal judgeships (retire at 80), reason vs common sense, and other topics. David’s conclusion? An artist at work:

More fundamentally, the label “troll” diminishes the brilliance of what Judge Posner is doing.

My unified theory of Judge Posner: he has taken advantage of life tenure, as well as the reputation for brilliance that he painstakingly developed over the course of decades, to become one of the most remarkable performance artists in modern history.

After Posner passes away, we will find in his papers an artist’s manifesto, identifying when his performance began, the theoretical underpinnings of his work as an artist, and the specific “episodes” or “installations” through which he expressed his artistic vision — an argument for the indeterminacy of law and ultimately language. Works might include exchanges like the one just now with Judge Rakoff; written output, like the time he called Chief Justice Roberts “heartless” in a Slate column; and spoken-word performances, such as his brutal takedowns of hapless advocates in oral arguments.

Some might condemn Judge Posner for turning a judicial chambers into an artist’s studio, but I don’t have a problem with it. Keep in mind that he has still managed to do the work of a federal appellate judge in the course of making his art. For decades, he has cast votes, written opinions, and resolved cases, just like his Seventh Circuit colleagues.

It’s a funny post, even for a non-lawyer like myself. Even if I’m taken back by Posner’s preference for common-sense over reason. I find common-sense to be either non-existent or extremely naive in most folks, myself included.

Michael Elleman on 38 North examines a video of the recent North Korean ICBM test and concludes the North Koreans haven’t achieved their objective – yet:

At this point, the RV appears to be shedding small radiant objects and is trailed by an incandescent vapor. At an altitude of 3 to 4 km, the RV then dims and quickly disappears. This occurs before the RV passes behind the mountain range and is obscured from the camera’s view, indicating that it disintegrated about the time it experienced maximum stressing loads. Had the RV survived the rigors of re-entry, it would have continued to glow until disappearing behind the mountains.

In short, a reasonable conclusion based on the video evidence is that the Hwasong-14’s re-entry vehicle did not survive during its second test. If this assessment accurately reflects reality, North Korea’s engineers have yet to master re-entry technologies and more work remains before Kim Jong Un has an ICBM capable of striking the American mainland.

No luck finding the cited video of the re-entry.

Unfortunately, having gotten this far, we can probably assume North Korean engineers will figure out the rest of this puzzle as well. Here’s what appears to be the official release of video of the launch by North Korea.

Jack Goldsmith on Lawfare comments on how often President Trump’s subordinates are ignoring or working around him:

The fractured executive branch is partly a result of terrible executive organization but mainly the product of an incompetent, mendacious president interacting with appointed or inherited executive branch officials who possess integrity.  The President says and does things that his senior officials, when asked, cannot abide.  And so they tell the truth, often with an awkward wince, or they ignore the President.  And in response to this overt disrespect, President Trump does … nothing.

The president seems scary, and he is, but he also has no control over his administration.  There is lots of talk about Trump’s threat to the independence of the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence community, and the like.  But the truth is that these agencies are operating with an independence to presidential wishes like never before.  It’s a very strange state of affairs.

Which leaves the American public with everyone from Mattis on the high end to DeVos and Carson on the low end – all operating with little to no oversight.

For the anti-government types, this is the ideal experiment – do we really need a DoE, HUD, or EPA? Surely we can get along without those, like we did for the first 100 years, they’ll say.

The problem is that discovering we do need them in this way will likely involve enormous damage to the United States, from public health to the education level of our citizens to the welfare of vulnerable citizens, damage that will be slow to fix, will distract us from oncoming catastrophes such as climate change.

And the thing is, some of these should be taking place in the laboratories of the States, as the old saying goes. Some are of a natural national or international significance, such as climate change or foreign relations, but others might be possibly tried in the States.

Like the ideological economic disaster in Kansas. Kansas has been hurt, but the rest of the United States has been spared most of that pain. Now we need to learn from the Kansas mistake. That’s the second half of such experiments.

Or maybe it’s simply a peaceful garden scene.

I’ve been meditating on this story over the weekend:

House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday called for a new special counsel — to investigate Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Loretta Lynch.

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Republicans said they were writing to “request assistance in restoring public confidence in our nation’s justice system and its investigators, specifically the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

The lawmakers said they presumed investigation of potential Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election was covered by special counsel Robert Mueller, but that they “are not confident that other matters related to the 2016 election and aftermath are similarly under investigation” by the former FBI director. [CNBC]

While this doesn’t appear to be about Benghazi, it’s worth noting that Clinton has been investigated by many Congressional committees over the tragic loss of the American ambassador to Libya and other Americans to an assassination plot. None of them found a thing, and the last one, run by Trey Gowdy (R) and called the House Select Committee on Benghazi, not only found nothing, but in the climactic hearing with its chief target, had its own ass handed to it on a plate, by all reports.

Still, it’s a little difficult for someone such as myself, far from the center of the maelstrom, to know if there’s anything to these charges. My suspicion is there’s not. Which then opens the question:

Why?

What’s motivating this letter, if no evidence of malfeasance is otherwise forthcoming?

What has slowly impressed itself on my brain is that the GOP, for all its decisiveness at the election box, is a collection of power-mongers and third-raters, desperately insecure and getting worse as their supposedly unstoppable position in Congress and the White House has turned out to be a mirage.

But this they know – the truth does not matter. It’s all about perception and messaging.

So if the GOP is going to be tarred with incompetence and even corruption, there’s only one thing to do:

Tar the Democrats with the same brush.

Now, nevermind that Comey’s a Republican, because he was investigating the GOP’s public leader, if I may be so bold, for corruption, and therefore he can no longer be a Party member; such are the rules of Party membership.

But if you’re going to be dirtied, it’s best to make sure your sworn enemies are dirtied, too. It distracts from the charges tossed at you.

Because, based on what we’ve seen so far from the GOP members of this Congress, they have nothing else to offer.

[EDIT Fixed a typo 11/5/2017]

Demonym:

A noun used to denote the natives or inhabitants of a particular country, state, city, etc.

‘he struggled for the correct demonym for the people of Manchester’ [Oxford Dictionaries]

Just to bring this particular story to completion, The Kansas City Star reports that Governor Brownback is moving on from Kansas:

Gov. Sam Brownback will give up the governor’s mansion in Topeka to take a relatively obscure ambassadorship after seeing his power and popularity severely diminished in the last year.

The Kansas Legislature overrode Brownback’s veto to repeal his signature tax cuts a little more than a month before President Donald Trump selected him to serve as the next ambassador at-large for international religious freedom, a position based in Washington, D.C., where Brownback spent 16 years as a member of the U.S. House and Senate.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are sad to see him go.

House Minority Leader Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, said his first reaction to the announcement was “good riddance.”

“He’s left a lot of carnage and destruction, and he’s also put the incoming governor in a tough spot,” Ward said, noting that Kansas is awaiting a decision by the state’s Supreme Court on the fate of a new school finance formula.　 …

Rep. Joy Koesten, a Leawood Republican who was one of a slew of moderate Republicans swept into office in an anti-Brownback wave last year, said that lawmakers are going to be grappling for decades with the impact of Brownback’s policies.

“I don’t think we truly know what that is yet,” Koesten said. “I think we’ve seen the surface damage, but I don’t know that we’ve seen the depth of the damage. And I think it’s going to take us a decade or more to figure that out and to fix it. So if that’s a legacy, I’m not sure that it’s a positive one.”

Clay Barker, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said that while Brownback was controversial, he was a “very consequential governor.”

Quite consequential for the GOP, because his experiment put their economic ideology to the test – and the ideology failed the test.

Sarah Jones at The New Republic thinks he’s ill-suited for his new position as at-large ambassador for international religious freedom:

But this isn’t a meaningless appointment, either. The ambassador-at-large heads State’s Office of International Religious Freedom. Religious freedom is an integral plank in a broader human rights platform, and the position is also responsible for conducting outreach to various American religious groups.

Which means Brownback, an arch-Christian conservative, is exactly the wrong choice for the role. As governor, he signed a useless ban on Shariah law that singled out the state’s Muslim residents for no valid reason. He waged constant war on separation of church and state, especially in public schools, and consistently promoted religious events and programming in his official capacity as governor. His appointment sends a dangerous message, especially in light of a May speech delivered by Mike Pence that promised assembled religious leaders that the Trump administration considered global religious freedom a major priority.

I’m trying to see an atheist or an agnostic in the position, and I’m just not getting there. I suppose you need some religious person with a record of tolerance. Yeah, maybe Governor Brownback is moving out of his current crater just to dig another one?

Or perhaps we shouldn’t have such a position. From Sarah’s link to the US Dept of State:

The Office of International Religious Freedom has the mission of promoting religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy. The office is headed by the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. We monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, recommend and implement policies in respective regions or countries, and develop programs to promote religious freedom.

Leading to the always-delicate question of when “promoting” means “interfering,” and when “interfering” really means “rescuing from persecution.” Given how the current Administration has a certain, if confused, isolationist taste to it (or perhaps better yet would be xenophobic), I have to wonder how long the position will last before Bannon has it cut. And if I’d weep if it were cut. I’m a little conflicted…