Category Archives: Uncategorized

An opinion that sparks this sort of response seems likely to be a target of lawyers and satirists:

On Sept. 16, the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion in NetChoice v. Paxton, upholding the controversial Texas law that limits the ability of large social media platforms to moderate content and also imposes disclosure and appeal requirements on them. The Fifth Circuit had previously stayed a district court injunction against the law, but the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to vacate the stay. The opinion opens up a stark circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit, which had ruled that a Florida law that also imposed content moderation restrictions on platforms violated the First Amendment. Unless the platforms get another stay pending rehearing en banc by the Fifth Circuit or review by the Supreme Court, the Texas law will go into effect, with potentially massive consequences for how the major social media companies moderate their platforms.

The initial reaction to the decision among policy experts and legal scholars has been, to put it mildly, harsh. It’s been called “legally bonkers,” a “troll to get SCOTUS to grant cert,” an “angrily incoherent First Amendment decision,” and “the single dumbest court ruling I’ve seen in a long, long time.” As someone who has argued for the constitutionality (and indeed desirability) of some government regulation of platform content moderation, I was hoping that the first judicial decision upholding such regulation would be a thoughtful and measured approach to what is indisputably a hard, even wicked, problem.

Unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit’s decision, written by Judge Andrew Oldham, is decidedly not that. Although not without its good points, it is largely a crude hack-and-slash job that misstates the facts and the law and ignores the proper role of an intermediate court, all in a sneering tone that pretends that those who disagree with it are either stupid or evil. It’s an extreme example of First Amendment absolutism: the insistence that the First Amendment has either nothing to do with content moderation or that it provides maximum constitutional protections to such practices. The opinion deserves to be swiftly overruled, either by the full Fifth Circuit or by the Supreme Court. [“The Fifth Circuit’s Social Media Decision: A Dangerous Example of First Amendment Absolutism,” Professor Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Lawfare]

Did the judge’s hair fall out upon reading the responses? Stay tuned.

It’s good to see some good news from time to time, isn’t it?

Five patients with hard-to-treat lupus entered remission after scientists tweaked their immune cells using a technique normally used to treat cancer. After the one-time therapy, all five patients with the autoimmune disease stopped their standard treatments and haven’t had a relapse.

This treatment, known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, needs to be tested in larger groups of lupus patients before it can be approved for widespread use. But if the results hold up in larger trials, the therapy could someday offer relief to people with moderate to severe lupus.

“For them, this is really a breakthrough,” said Dr. Georg Schett, director of rheumatology and immunology at Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Schett is the senior author of a new report describing the small trial, which was published Thursday (Sept. 15) in the journal Nature Medicine(opens in new tab).

“It’s a single shot of CAR T cells and patients stop all treatments,” Schett told Live Science. “We were really surprised [at] how good this effect is.”  [Live Science]

That’s fascinating, especially as I have gout, another autoimmune system disorder, at least according to my former rheumatologist, who told me she had determined that it’s genetic, but what if it isn’t? Would a similar treatment work for all us gout-sufferers? Actually, I’m fortunate in tolerating allopurinol just fine, and haven’t had an attack, or whatever it is it’s called, in a decade or more. But if a simple shot eliminated the need for allopurinol, I’d take it.

I see Wikipedia doesn’t mention the auto-immune part. Perhaps I confabulate.

I saw this yesterday as I bleared about getting the neighbor’s paper and thought it was neat.

That’s not an optical illusion, that’s a hole in the middle. Too bad the sun didn’t illuminate it.

Did I say something about snow? I hope not. Here’s some real news. I hope you like it.

• On Blake Masters’ candidacy in Arizona, Erick Erickson has this to say:
  

  I don’t need to write a ton here. I just want to direct you to this piece in the Wall Street Journal. Blake Masters is losing Arizona, and it should be winnable.

  But the reality is that Peter Thiel and Donald Trump went to bat for Masters in a crowded primary, poured millions in to get him the nomination, and they’ve abandoned him since. Thiel, only under pressure from Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell, is allegedly going to commit more money.

  I personally think Erickson’s optimism concerning Arizona is unwarranted, as illustrated in this post. But the title of his post is important: Grifting to Loss.

  The power structure that has evolved atop the Republican Party since the ascension of Trump appears to be focused on eliciting donations, not on winning elections. This is a bit odd for me to write, since the Gingrich Doctrine calls for winning in any way possible, not through the usual democratic means of persuasion and competency. But then, Trump is not a Gingrich disciple; he’s a grifter.

  And it’s important to remember that grifters are rarely, if ever, long-term project builders and servants to the public good. It’s all about getting while the getting is good. The transformation of the Republican Party from a responsible governance institution into a Win by any means! institution has led, inevitably, to what Erickson condemns.

• New Hampshire Senate candidate and passionate election denier Don Bolduc (R) has suddenly erased the second clause from his description, above. While I have plenty of respect for people willing to change their minds when presented with evidence contradicting positions, the alacrity of this mind change is unpersuasive. And will his primary voters reject this bait and switch? Or will they see it as an attempt to attract independent voters and accept it as a necessary election strategem? In the first post-primary New Hampshire poll, incumbent Senator Hassan (D) leads Bolduc by 11 points, according to Emerson College Polling, 51% – 40%. For a Senator in imminent danger of ignominy, according to many pundits, she appears to be in good shape. But there’s still more than a month to go.
• Emerson College Polling/The Hill gives Rep Tim Ryan (D) a 44% – 40% lead for the open Ohio Senate seat, with a margin of error of 3 points. Ohio polls have been bouncing around, and only the last one in earlier November counts.
• The latest East Carolina Poll gives North Carolina Senate candidate Rep Ted Budd (R) a 3 point lead over Democratic nominee and former State Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, 49% – 46%. The margin of error is estimated at 3.6 points. While Beasley has made progress since the last poll by this institution, that’s still a hill to climb.
• In Alaska the fourth qualifier for the Senate general election seat, Buzz Kelley, has “unofficially withdrew,” leaving Senator Murkowski (R), Kelly Tshibaka (R), and Patricia Chesbro (D) in the RCV (ranked choice voting) contest. In the nonpartisan primary, Kelley only drew 2.1% of the votes, which makes his withdrawal of minor significance. Chesbro, the Democrat, only drew 6.8%, so it appears this will be a battle between the moderate Murkowski and Tshibaka, herself somewhat of a moderate, according to her summation by On The Issues to the reader’s right. But she’s been endorsed by the former President.
• In Washington Public Policy Polling, rated A-, has pulled the hearts out of the mouths of Democratic voters by giving incumbent Senator Murray (D) a 9 point lead, 48% – 39%, over challenger Tiffany Smiley (R). For the absent-minded, Trafalgar gave Murray a lead of 2.9 points, aka a “statistical dead heat”. Whether that poll was an outlier, or if the passing of time reflects Washington voters learning more of Smiley and deciding to stick to who they know, is not clear.
• 

  On The Issues summation of Senator John Boozman (R-AR).

  In Arkansas, Talk Business & Politics (TB&P), unknown to FiveThirtyEight, conducted a poll of voters and says incumbent Senator Boozman (R) leads challenger Natalie James (D), 43.5% – 30.5%. While the double digit lead is not surprising, there is some surprise, on my part, at the actual numbers: the incumbent’s failure to surmount the 50% marker suggests that quite a few Arkansas voters are troubled by the incumbent. They may be working their way through the intellectual and emotional challenges of voting for a Democrat who is not against abortion. Boozman cannot credibly claim to be a moderate, now can he? I still don’t think James can upset Boozman – but she may give him a scare. TB&P provides an extended, useful analysis that notes James has failed, so far, to attract the black vote, and women voters are far more undecided than male voters. She has a very tall mountain to surmount, but at least she only has to climb the undecided mountain. The Boozman voter mountain would be far more difficult.

• A Trafalgar poll shows incumbent Senator Kelly with a one point lead over challenger Blake Masters (R) in Arizona, which I think is shocking. Masters is an extremist and inexperienced and has no business in this race. However, the associated article from The Hill notes … GOP polling firm Trafalgar Group … Pollsters will often put their thumbs on the scale, legitimately, to correct for past variances between poll estimates and actual results. More ambitious pollsters will go further to please their ideological allies, and it’s possible that a few will engage in rank lying in order to gin up enthusiasm on their side. Trafalgar is rated A- by FiveThirtyEight, so, unless there’s been an ownership change at the pollster, I doubt they’d actually be lying. But it’s possible they’ve over-corrected for a candidate that appears, at least to me, to be absolutely unacceptable. Note, however, Emerson has actually reported similar results.
• Maryland’s first poll since the Senate primary, from unknown Goucher College, gives incumbent Senator Chris Van Hollen (D) a 56% – 33% over challenger Chris Chaffee (R). Chaffee’s facing the task of persuading Van Hollen voters to change their minds and vote for Chaffee, instead. To think he can do that is nigh the definition of optimism. Van Hollen appears secure, absent a devastating black swan.

Previous, outdated news has been hoarded here. Watch out for mantraps.

Commemorative cryptocurrencies is the puzzling phrase that covers for Just Another Ripoff, so far as I can see. Long-time readers should be unsurprised at my attitude, as I’ve yet to see any real unique utility to them. For example, the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II has resulted in this sort of thing:

When failing to comb one’s hair has a serious impact on gravitas, and that’s what this dude is all about.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) is a retread of the story of one of the most popular antagonists in the original Star Trek TV series: Khan Noonien Singh of the Botany Bay, a space ship containing genetically enhanced humans, cryogenically imprisoned. In the original, the Botany Bay is encountered by the Enterprise, but in this new version, some other ship encountered the Botany Bay, unfroze Khan, and he escaped and disappeared.

And then reappears as a Star Fleet officer, bent on revenge, and, baby, he’s a damn good avenging angel. It doesn’t matter who the target is, human, klingon, vulcan, whathaveyou, they get mowed down by Khan with no mercy.

Even as Kirk is getting the squeeze from a Star Fleet admiral who’s convinced the only way to beat the klingons is by breaking the rules.

The overwhelming capacity of weapons to alter the basis of morality systems is a theme too little visited by most any commercial dramatic production, probably because questions about the fundamental processes of how societies interact are dicey to depict and liable to attract the kind of criticism that might result in a degradation of profits. And given how much money has to be poured into productions of this category, that’s not an attractive option for a Hollywood producer.

But productions that don’t recognize and treat these questions run the risk of seeming hollow.

And so it is with this Star Trek alternate approach. How does the potential for destruction in these weapons modify our approach to societal interactions? We’re spending a lot of time watching Kirk and Spock trying to off, and then not off, Khan, but we’re distracted by Khan’s blood, in the end, and don’t get to explore these questions.

The movie itself is OK, but has that feel of a movie made to make money and not explore any final frontiers. And I’ve never bought Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, anyways.

Purblind:

1. having greatly reduced vision
2. lacking in insight or discernment
   “”a purblind oligarchy that flatly refused to see that history was condemning it to the dustbin”- Jasper Griffin” [Vocabulary.com]

Noted in “New revelations show Biden was right: Trump does threaten democracy,” Max Boot, WaPo:

If you’re not sure which way the election will break come November, here’s a couple of graphs to consider. I don’t know why Gallup doesn’t do this as a graphical time series, but I’ve done it for you; go to the link for table format or to retrieve all the data they have available, as I limited the data to last December to August.

It's apparent that the Republicans have suffered a collapse of support not seen by the Democrats, and the jump in Independents tells us where those former Republicans went. But are those folks who now consider themselves Independents still voting Republican?

No, it seems the presence of numerous extremists among Republican candidates, not to mention the fourth-raters who've flooded the primaries, have alienated some more of the Republican moderates, as well as persuading previously Republican-leaning independents to be willing to vote Democratic, at least for this cycle.

I continue to believe the Democrats, with some careful messaging and hard work, can pick up, net, anywhere from two to eight Senate seats. The House, where gerrymandering is a usable tool, may not see much of a Democratic uptick, or may even seen Democratic losses. Ironically, while Democrats would lose political power in Congress, Republicans would lose something far more important in this scenario: the lesson that they are under the control of fourth-raters who literally have no strategy for governance; they seem to believe that a seat won is the goal, not implementing wise governing policies. Names such as Jordan, Gaetz, Greene, Gosar, Gohmert, Boebert, Cawthorn, and so many others should not be considered to be leading lights, but instead leading contenders for the metaphorical trebuchet.

Gerrymandering protects the incompetent, the extremist, the politician in it for the power of the position.

But, to get back to the point of these graphs, it appears the rightward surge of the Republican Party is fueling an opposite reaction of moderate conservatives considering voting Democratic. That Red Wave is threatening to turn Blue.

Just another entry in a long dynasty. Like dinosaurs, but less graceful.

• An update on Senator Graham’s (R-SC) proposed legislation for a 15 week abortion ban: The Democrats are jumping all over it, and the Republicans are expressing dismay. Whether this translates to energizing voters for the pro-choice or the pro-life position remains to be seen, but clearly the Democrats believe this is an opportunity.
• There are two new polls for Pennsylvania. A CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker gives Lt Governor Fetterman (D) a 52% – 48% lead over challenger Dr. Oz Mehmet (R), with a margin of error of 3.8%. YouGov has a B+ rating from FiveThirtyEight. A Monmouth University poll gives Fetterman a 49% – 39% lead, with a 4.0% margin of error, a result more in line with polls other than Trafalgar. Monmouth is an A rated pollster by FiveThirtyEight.
• A- rated Emerson College Polling is calling the Nevada race a dead heat.
• Far-right pundit and radio host Erick Erickson has returned to insisting that “it’s the economy, stupid,” a position he had momentarily stepped away from a week ago. It may mean the lead conservatives reprimanded him, or maybe he just had second thoughts. The reason I bring this up is that in the previous Senate update, I had mentioned that the termination of Putin’s War would accrue to Biden’s account, and Democratic candidates would benefit from it politically. But, since Erickson brings it up, much of the current economic uproar, from inflation to supply line issues to simple food shortages, can be attributed to Putin’s invasion, and his deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s food production capacity and even Ukrainian produce. The termination of the war, while too late to have a material impact on the world economy, would at least provide Biden credible evidence for suggesting the economy will settle down soon enough, stripping conservatives of more ammunition. But that would require the Ukrainians to really hurry to force Putin out of power and Russia out of the war with an acceptable settlement for Ukraine. So Democrats shouldn’t bet on this, but they can hope for it.
• Emerson College Polling gives Connecticut’s incumbent Senator Blumenthal (D) a 13 point lead over challenger Leora Levy (R), 49% – 36%, with a margin of error of 3 points. This is three points less than Emerson’s poll of several months ago. Blumenthal needs to run a careful, honest campaign, and let former President Trump’s endorsement of Levy weigh her down. Emerson is rated A-.
• Oklahoma’s Sooner Poll, which FiveThirtyEight rates as C+, has finally come out with polls on both Oklahoma Senate races. In our regularly scheduled event of Madison Horn v. incumbent Senator James Lankford (R), the latter leads 52% – 35%. In our special election event of Kendra Horn (D) v. Markwayne Mullin (R) for the seat left open by retiring Senator Inhofe (R), Mullin leads 52% – 40%. The margin of error is nearly 5 points, and it still doesn’t matter, Oklahoma remains deeply conservative – except the governor’s race is very competitive.  Apparently Governor Stitt’s (R) vow to be the most extreme anti-abortionist in the land is not playing well to the crowd.
• A Marquette Law School poll shows Wisconsin incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) leading challenger Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) 49% – 48%. The margin of error is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 points. Johnson acts demented and confused, and so do, apparently, his supporters. Marquette is “A/B” rated.
• The report that the Biden Administration has helped avert a potentially crippling railroad workers strike cannot be anything but positive for Democratic office-seekers.
• Georgia polls continue to conflict as A- rated Quinnipiac University Poll says that incumbent Senator Pastor Warnock (D) leads challenger and former NFL star Herschel Walker (R) 52% – 46%.

The previous flight of outdated information is here.

This put a smile on my face.

In Papua New Guinea, where [Queen Elizabeth II] was known as “Mama Belong Big Family” and “Missis Kwin,” Prime Minister James Marape’s heartfelt eulogy hinted at difficult times ahead. [WaPo]

I’m not laughing, it’s just such a claim of ownership, by the New Guineans of the late Queen. Which, I know, some would say is backwards. But that’s how it comes out.

In the abortion issue there’s a painful asymmetry that anti-abortionists have to be careful to skirt, and even throw a skirt over. It’s this.

If pro-choice laws are advanced, no one is forced to do anything personally. Your religion prohibits abortion? Then don’t have one.

If pro-life laws are advanced, then the burden of bearing a pregnancy and what eventually becomes a child is on the pregnant women, with no options for termination. In some cases, even existential disaster is not considered good enough.

And this is another crack in the wall of anti-abortion reasoning, in fact a crack so important that it must be papered over, like Erick Erickson does here:

I understand the argument of leaving this to the states, but Democrats have already said if they get back the Senate with a few more seats, they will scrap the filibuster to impose abortion on demand. The GOP needs a response.

Bold mine. It looks like an awkward word choice made in the heat of the moment, but consider this: any other word choice renders Erickson’s argument too transparent. Another word choice runs the danger of clarifying, rather than confusing, the above asymmetry. The argument that abortion on demand is imposed is specious; the proper verb is permit.

His word choice here makes it sound like the discussion is about involuntary abortion, which is not the case in the least.

The fact that a close examination of this point causes this particular argument to collapse into incoherence suggests his entire side is incoherent. That is, applying the epithet baby-killers, as he has done in the past, to women who simply want to survive their pregnancy is a painfully mistaken, if not deliberately dishonest choice.

And that’s why it pays to closely examine the wording of arguments.

The last post covered evolution in all its gory glory. This one?

• MediaIte has an article on an apparently fake poll, showing candidate Mehmet Oz (R) closing in on candidate John Fetterman (D) in the Pennsylvania Senate race for an open seat, taking in far-right site Breitbart. Just about every poll has shown Fetterman with a substantial lead, so what the hell? The lesson here is Beware confirmation bias. You want to see Oz leading, that poll shows up, cue the drooling. But it’s a bad look. Outliers should always be viewed with suspicion. And I do not take Breitbart and a few other far-right sites seriously.
• Candidate for Nevada’s Senate seat Adam Laxalt (R) appears to have run into a money problem:
  

  In audio obtained by The Daily Beast from a July luncheon with the Southern Hills Republican Women, Laxalt, amid the sounds of clinking cutlery, said, “The Democrats have unlimited money, they have unlimited money. You think we have it bad here? Masto has, she just did $10 million she has to spend, we have $2 million. She’s on TV now because she has money and we don’t.” [The Daily Beast]

  Note the date being sometime in July, so this may be out of date. And it’s not just Nevada, according to the ever-helpful Laxalt:

  “In Georgia, it’s $20 million to $3 million. In Ohio, it’s $12 million to $1 million,” Laxalt told the attendees, who paid between $36 and $41 to hear candidates speak at Dragon Ridge Country Club in Henderson, Nevada, according to an Eventbrite for the event.

  Money doesn’t buy votes, but it does buy access to the minds of voters who will watch political ads, so a lack of money may result in voters not going to the polls, as they’ll not feel like they know Laxalt – and in today’s world of millions of people, it’s very true, as attending events where candidates show up can be difficult. Money also functions as an ad hoc measure of support from voters, prior to the vote, depending on the number of small dollar donations from distinct donors. One of the far-right extremist billionaires could give Laxalt $10 million and thus solve his money problem – but that would just be money, not hundreds of thousands of voters who approve of Laxalt, only one or two. If what he claims is true, this may indicate one, or both, of two conclusions is also true: potential conservative small donors don’t care for the Senate candidates, or potential small donors are bled out, probably from the grifters infesting the right-wing power structure, beginning with Trump and going right down the pyramid, and thus cannot financially support Laxalt, et al.

• Trafalgar’s polls suggests Peter Welch (D) has a 7.7 point lead over Gerald Malloy (R) in the race for Vermont’s open Senate seat, currently held by the retiring Senator Patrick Leahy (D), which is considerably less than I expected. For comparison, incumbent Leahy won in 2016 by slightly less than 30 points, and by more than 30 points in 2010. The relatively slim lead is par for the course for Trafalgar this year, however. We’ll discover in November if Trafalgar’s A- rating is still good.
• A Suffolk University poll of Ohio voters for the open Senate seat finds Rep Tim Ryan (D) leading lawyer J. D. Vance (R) 46.6% to 45.6%. No margin of error apparent. Suffolk is a B+ rated pollster.
• Michael Franken’s campaign in Iowa is reporting a campaign-commissioned poll by “B-” rated Change Research gives incumbent Senator Grassley (R) a 48% – 44% lead over Franken, with a margin of error of 3.0 points. B- plus campaign-commissioned makes me dubious concerning this poll. But if we accept it, then it’s worth noting that the last known Iowa poll, by the Des Moines Register, estimated Grassley’s lead at eight points in mid-July, suggesting Franken is tightening the gap. With only eight weeks left, though, is it too much? Or will Grassley’s discouraging antics of the Trump years be his downfall?
• Senator Graham (R-SC), who is not up for reelection in this cycle, will be introducing some legislation that will go nowhere during this Congress soon.
  

  Instead, some antiabortion advocates are hopeful that Republican lawmakers will rally around a 15-week ban that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) is expected to introduce this fall, a proposal that has long been denounced by many in the antiabortion movement because it would allow the vast majority of abortions to continue. Spokespeople for Graham didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. [WaPo]

  Steve Benen is convinced Republicans are committing sepuku, but I wonder if this is how the Republicans, lacking votes in the current Congress to pass an abortion ban, and seeing incompetent screwups at the State level in attempts to ban abortion, are signaling to Republican voters that, yes, Republican candidates for office are truly dedicated to passing a ban, and hoping this will energize them for the November election.

  Of course, this could also energize Democrats and independents who consider themselves pro-choice. But I am not convinced this is the madness that seems apparent to Benen.

• For those Democratic candidates of all stripes hoping to ride a Biden wave, there’s good news from Investor’s Business Daily:
  

  President Joe Biden’s approval rating bounced higher over the past month, helped by lower gas prices and a series of legislative wins, a new IBD/TIPP Poll finds. Younger Americans, in particular, rallied around Biden following approval of the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act and his decision to forgive up to $20,000 in college loans.

  Biden’s approval rating jumped 6.6 points to 49, the highest since April. The IBD/TIPP presidential job approval measure indicates that 49% of adults who stated an opinion approve of Biden’s job performance and 51% disapprove, in a measure that excludes those who were unsure or declined to state an opinion.

  If this trend continues, Democrats on the bubble may win their races. Messaging, as always, remains key: abortion rights, January 6th insurrection, election denialism, and that their opponents are, for the most part, incompetent extremists with a variety of bizarre beliefs, against the supposed Republican advantage of a poor economy and Biden’s incompetency. Neither Republican subject has the benefit of being profoundly true; rather, Biden’s made a few mistakes, as do all Presidents, but even the critics are hard-pressed to make the Afghanistan withdrawal into a disaster of Biden’s making, but rather Trump’s, who signed the binding paperwork, and in any case the tragic loss of thirteen servicepeople was not the worst possible outcome. A lot of these critics, such as Max Boot, try hard enough to make  it into a disaster that it makes their eyes bulge, but their arguments are unconvincing. And recession? Not with an unemployment rate of less than 4%.

• 

  Tucker Carlson

  Speaking of Biden, the Daily Kos analysts of Putin’s War are beginning to claim that Russia’s chances of winning are rapidly approaching zero. If Putin’s War terminates prior to November, or if Russia loses control of Crimea to Ukraine before November, that accrues to Biden’s account as a piece of masterful diplomacy and military supply; meanwhile, it’s quite possible that many conservatives who watch and/or read Fox’s Tucker Carlson and other such pro-Russian American conservative commentators may realize that they’ve been played for suckers, and decide to sit out the election simply out of rage, thus giving Democrats another edge in voting. Carlson, et al, will of course continue to be paid. How many multimillion dollar homes does Carlson own these days? Last I heard it was three or four. All on the backs of credulous conservatives.

• The final Senate primary has been completed, and it appears that in New Hampshire incumbent Senator Hassan (D), who won her primary with 93.4% of the vote, will be facing Don Bolduc (R), a retired Army brigadier general who won his primary with 38.1% of the Republican vote. Incidentally, and perhaps reflecting the lack of enthusiasm for the incumbent, there were more votes for Bolduc than for Hassan, although in a hypothetical jungle primary he would not have won outright. The GOP establishment is reported to be dismayed, as Bolduc is an election denier and is ready to at least muse at repealing the 17th Constitutional Amendment, and abolishing the FBI. The last poll showed a tight race. But Bolduc’s relatively low take of the primary vote may reflect a bitter intraparty fight that won’t heal in the little time left before the general election.

The previous Senate update is here, cowering in terror of my wretched word-play.

Russia’s a great example, eh?

Russian businessman Ivan Pechorin, the top manager for the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, has been found dead in Vladivostok, the latest in a string of mysterious deaths among Russian executives.

“On September 12, 2022, it became known about the tragic death of our colleague, Ivan Pechorin, Managing Director for the Aviation Industry of the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic,” reads a statement from the company published Monday.

“Ivan’s death is an irreparable loss for friends and colleagues, a great loss for the corporation. We offer our sincere condolences to family and friends,” it said. [CNN/Business]

Just how many?

Pechorin is at least the ninth prominent Russian businessmen to have reportedly died by suicide or in unexplained accidents since late January, with six of them associated with Russia’s two largest energy companies.

Four of those six were linked to the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom or one of its subsidiaries, while the other two were associated with Lukoil, Russia’s largest privately owned oil and gas company.

Earlier this year, the company took the unusual public stance of speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine, calling for sympathy for the victims, and for the end of the conflict.

Not only a lure and a set of nasty teeth, but a really disturbing abdomen. Yeah, sounds like Russia.

Autocracies use lures like anglerfish. Strong, charismatic men, fast decisions, never makes mistakes admit to error, often friends with the oh so endangered local religious cult.

But, in the absence of Law, they get the sort of crap mentioned above.

Conservative readers who harbor happy thoughts about Tucker Carlson, beware. You may not be wishing for it, but pursuing the dream of autocracy leads to nightmares, no matter how much the cult leader, whether the title is Pastor, Pope, or Metropolitan, says you’re fulfilling God’s wishes.

Let God come and explain it to you personally.

The separation of sane conservatives from far-right extremists continues in Michigan:

More than 150 Michigan Republicans banded together to launch a group supporting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection bid, her campaign announced Monday.

The group includes business leaders, former state lawmakers, an ex-congressman, and top staff from the Republican administrations of Gov. John Engler and Rick Snyder. Jeff Timmer, the former head of the Michigan Republican Party, also signed on.

“We, as Michiganders, know what a great place this state is to live, work, and recreate. We also know we have a bright future,” Bill Parfet, chairman and CEO of Northwood Group, said in a statement. “To reach that future, we all need to work together to revamp education, infrastructure, effective government, job creation, safer communities, vital core cities, and preserving the state’s incredible national resources. We all want the same outcomes.”

The formation of the group comes as the Michigan Republican Party struggles to unify ahead of the November election. With far-right candidates for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, the party has alienated moderate Republicans as it continues to echo former President Donald Trump’s election lies and push an anti-abortion agenda. [Detroit Metro Times]

Lacking power within the Michigan Republican Party, the sane conservatives are instead endorsing Governor Whitmer (D) in her reelection run because, well, if she wins then the conservatives can claim part of the credit, and by putting their names and actions out there, they alert other moderates who remain Republicans that it’s time to get the hell out of the Party.

No doubt the current owners of the Republican Party will demonize these former members are traitors to Party and Country. Anyone who sympathizes with the so-called traitors will be booted out themselves – or put on probation.

The only question is whether there are far-far-right extremists who have not yet joined the Republicans in sufficient numbers to replace the moderates and semi-moderates who are leaving or being thrown out.

Or if this will be another step in the imminent irrelevance and dissolution of the Republican Party.

I thought this was fascinating. In mice!

In case you were wondering about Judge Cannon’s ruling to bring in a special master, Lawfare provides analysis of the action, crowned with this:

Judge Cannon has been taking a bit of a beating all week for her decision. The criticism, some of it vituperative, has contained a lot of falsehoods and a considerable dollop of conspiracy theorizing, and it has often ascribed partisan motive for the ruling.

All of which might under normal circumstances tempt our contrarian hearts to try to defend the opinion.

But Cannon’s opinion actually defies defense. It is an epic mess, one that manages to do violence to a remarkable number of distinct areas of law in an admirable economy of only 24 pages.

Sounds like she’s the Trump Special – fourth-rate and, preferably, never served to real customers.

The Russia invasion of Ukraine that occurred this Spring, aka Putin’s War, poses the usual problem for someone who’s not an intellectual Superman, i.e., me, of how to evaluate and punditize on the phenomenon in question, whether it be war or climate change, and doesn’t want to be caught in Ryan’s Fallacy^[1]. How to go about it?

I have no military background, nor experience with Ukraine armed forces. Russia’s armed forces during World War II were very rough, employing the inmates of insane asylums as shock troops, but at least somewhat effective against fuel-starved German forces. But it was not clear if Russian military science had advanced since 1945 – and if it mattered.

But I can observe those who would put themselves forward as analysts and analyze them.

The first group are the experts consulting, or even writing, for the mainstream media. They, more or less, predicted Ukraine eventually falling to the onslaught. That hasn’t happened yet. In fact, Ukraine appears to be turning the Russians back.

As it happens, I also monitor former military folks at Daily Kos, and they’ve cautiously done better, giving Ukraine a chance at survival. There are several diarists covering Putin’s War on Daily Kos, and I don’t try to keep track of who writes what.

What I do gather, though, is that the Russian Army suffers from corruption leading to a lack of critical maintenance and production of advanced weapons, a lack of crucial esprit de corps, an inferior command structure compared to Western armies, from which Ukraine has borrowed judiciously, and a command staff lacking in grounding in basic military science. On the plus side, some of their lightweight tactics, such as the use of drones for both recon and munitions delivery at least exists, although I get the impression that Ukraine Army forces do it better.

All that said is, at least spiritually, much what historians write about the Tsar’s forces in their last war, that being World War I: an enormous Army crippled by corruption, eventually leading to the downfall and death of the Tsar and his family.

Back when it became initially apparent that Russia was in trouble, I mused, unpublished, on the possibility that China would invade Russia. They share a long border which is often in dispute, and Russia was displaying weakness. The main restraint is, of course, Russian nuclear weapons, although I have to wonder if they’re truly functional. Experts, meanwhile, were wondering if China might try to force reintegration with Taiwan, i.e., invade, which it has claimed to decades. Taiwan, for those readers not familiar with recent Chinese history, is the largish island where the defeated Nationalist forces of post World War II China retreated to after being defeated by the Chinese Communists, and they haven’t ventured forth since. China is quite sensitive to the thought of Taiwan becoming formally independent.

Taiwan, meanwhile, has built a raucous parliamentary democracy as well as an ace card and put the latter in its back pocket: critical industries such as semi-conductor plants manufacturing the most advanced mass produced computer chips on the planet are located in Taiwan.

All this comes together to suggest something: all the autocratic leaders of the world may be, unexpectedly, reluctant to exercise their aggressive tendencies. Russia has become the object lesson, not in its abilities, but in its disabilities. Corruption is, in my view, endemic to autocracies. Autocracies, regardless of variety, are built on the foundation of breaking the law. It’s definitional, isn’t it? First, in their founding, such as in Spain, and then in the repression of those who object to their dominance, it’s all about ignoring a devotion to justice in favor of acquiring and retaining absolute power. The corruption follows naturally, as the leaders must be satisfied, so whether you fill your artillery shells with sand, as in Tsarist times, or skim off maintenance money and thus neglect critical maintenance while reporting it’s been performed today, the chances that the status of a given military is adequate to the task of a war is … questionable.

Add to that the superiority of Western weapons systems, whether they’re Javelins, Stingers, or HIMARS, and China’s Xi Jinping has to be frowning at the thought of aggression. Xi is, after all, an autocrat, and he has to be wondering about his own military forces. Russia’s tough autocrat, Putin, has shockingly failed, looking exceedingly weak as he’s done so, and if Xi is smart – and you don’t get to be undisputed leader of China without being smart – he’s gotta wonder.

Add to that, you have to wonder if he really wants to go up against the American military? American President Biden has demonstrated an undisputed ability to build alliances and deliver weapons systems rarely seen in the world before. Is China really ready to go up against that?

Xi might not survive that. Not because the United States might find him and kill him, but because Xi’s own subordinates might eliminate him.

Just as Putin is probably facing right now.

Ukraine has used Western assistance to survive, and has, in the process, changed the world. Just not quite how I thought. It doesn’t look like China’s going anywhere.

¹ Ryan’s Fallacy, which I’ve not mentioned before, is the encouragement to the ignorant that their opinions are just as, if not more, valid than that of experts, as former Speaker Ryan (R-WI) said in a speech to Republican voters. A blot on his honor and a shame to his family, this encouragement doubtlessly led to a great deal of grief during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. However, he was merely continuing an old tradition, as scientist and famed writer Isaac Asimov observed decades earlier:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

I think I have to applaud these folks:

Several elected officials in Russia have been summoned by police after they called for the impeachment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a rare display of dissent in the country, local deputies from the Smolninskoye municipality in the St. Petersburg area appealed to the Russian Duma to impeach the President, for what they called crimes of high treason.

The author of the appeal, Dmitry Palyuga, posted it on Twitter, alleging Putin was responsible for “(1) the decimation of young able-bodied Russian men who would serve the workforce better than the military; (2) Russia’s economic downturn and brain drain; (3) NATO’s expansion eastward, including adding Finland and Sweden to “double” its border with Russia; (4) the opposite effect of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.”

Palyuga and fellow Deputy Nikita Yuferev later posted on Twitter a summons issued to them by the St. Petersburg police for their “discrediting of the ruling establishment”. [CNN]

Looking to peace rather than offensive war seems like a winner move for those who worry about morality.

And Putin, who appears to be facing imminent disaster as the Kremlin discovers the corruption endemic to Russian government for something near a millennia has also leaked into the military, really isn’t going to find this move funny.

But the world needs him out of power.

Here’s my telescope. It shows me visions of the future by staring at old images of stars.

• Susquehanna Polling and Research (SPR) suggests incumbent Marco Rubio (R) is leading challenger Rep Val Demings (D) by three points, 47% – 44%, for the Florida Senate seat. SPR is a B+ rated pollster, according to FiveThirtyEight, so this may be accurate. Margin of error is 4.3%, so this is exceedingly close. And the poll was taken prior to the most recent Trump news. Will the negative Trump news affect the race as we run towards November?
• Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) appears to be a flip-flopper – or has received orders from on high, as he’s no longer supporting the same-sex marriage bill intended to safeguard gay marriage that he earlier said he would support.
• Approval of President Biden will be a drag, or an uplift, in the Senate races. How’s he doing? The chart from Civiqs via Joan McCarter, there on the right, indicates Biden is becoming less and less of a drag. And with almost two months left, he still has time to improve further.
• Senate Candidate and State Rep. Krystie Matthews (D) in South Carolina has apparently been caught on a recording device disparaging her constituents. The South Carolina Democratic Party is calling for her to leave the race. While, granted, her odds were poor against incumbent Senator Tim Scott (R), who appears to be quite circumspect and is reportedly very popular in South Carolina, pissing on your constituents is the mark of an amateur lacking a vision of good politics. Matthews disputes the reports, claiming context has been stripped – one of my pet peeves, for new readers – so it’s hard to say if, in the end, what she said is all she said, or if there are mitigating circumstances. If the latter, circumspection is a skill she needs to learn.
• Pennsylvania continues to host the most broken Senate race this year as CNBC uncovers the fact that candidate Oz Mehmet (R) … owns stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a supplier of the drug hydroxychloroquine, and McKesson, a distributor of the anti-malaria medicine. As Mehmet touted hydroxychloroquine’s use for treatment of Covid-19 without evidence of efficacy, this casts grave doubts on his qualifications for public service. No doubt free market advocates would dispute the assertion that it’s inappropriate to tout treatments for which there is no evidence of efficacy under the outdated slogan, Let the markets decide!, but the fact of the matter is that even when employed outside of the public sector, aspirants to positions of public service are expected to exhibit moral behavior consonant with the positions they seek.
• Emerson College is confirming Trafalgar’s polling in Arizona, reporting Senator Kelly’s (D) lead over challenger Blake Masters (R) is 47% – 45%. Arizona’s long been conservative, but Masters is no John McCain (R), the esteemed late and long-time Senator from Arizona.
• Sometimes relying on Internet search engines isn’t good enough: back on July 19th, Chris Chaffee won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland. Color me third-rate, eh? Chaffee won with a mere 21.3% of the Republican votes, suggesting a weak candidate. Senator Van Hollen won his primary with 78.7%, which is not overwhelming, but still miles better than Chaffee. Incidentally, Van Hollen reported suffering a stroke back in May. No polls are in evidence, so I consider Van Hollen the presumptive favorite until notified otherwise.
• This Tuesday features the last of the primaries for this cycle, including the New Hampshire primaries for selecting the Senate candidates.

Older observations in expected appalling taste are here.

Cognizable:

Cognizable means capable of being known or considered. It means capable of being judicially tried or examined before a designated tribunal. A cognizable claim or controversy is one that meets the basic criteria of viability for being tried or adjudicated before a particular tribunal. The term means that the claim or controversy is within the power or jurisdiction of a particular court to adjudicate. That which is cognizable to a judge is within the scope of his or her jurisdiction. [USLegal.com]

Noted in “UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA WEST PALM BEACH DIVISION CASE NO. 22-CV-81294-CANNON“:

As an initial matter, Plaintiff has not shown that he had standing to seek relief, or that this Court properly exercised its equitable jurisdiction, with regard to the classified records. The classified records are government property over which the Executive Branch has control and in which Plaintiff has no cognizable property interest. See Exec. Order 13526, § 1.1(2) (Dec. 29, 2009) (classified information must be “owned by, produced by or for, or [be] under the control of the United States Government”); Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 527 (1988). Accordingly, even if (as the Court stated) Plaintiff has made “a colorable showing of a right to possess at least some of the seized property” sufficient to establish his standing to request that a special master review records that might potentially belong to him, D.E. 64 at 13, he categorically cannot make that showing with respect to documents marked as classified.

Adieu, tireless duty-filler. A much-ignored embodied lesson, I think, that many could have benefited from.

The spectacle of Judge Cannon acceding to former President Trump’s request for a special master with what has been labeled, on both the right and the left, as ludicrous legal reasoning has been a bit horrifying, but I didn’t notice this part here, of course, until Professor Richardson brought it to my attention:

If the Democrats were to pick up 16 seats in November, then on January 3rd, Congress’ next Inauguration Day, Judge Cannon could become former Judge Cannon, bounced out on her ear. And don’t get worked up over how unlikely it is that sixteen Republicans will lose.

Because, more importantly than whether this occurs, this has the potential to be the unstoppable nail in the coffin for the Republicans for this election, and possibly the end of the MAGA cult’s influence in American life.

Why? Because of this:

Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. [WaPo]

This is a national security issue. This disclosure of finding a top secret document concerning the nuclear capabilities of another nation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation has transformed this into a Rosenbergs-type situation. If you’re not familiar, the Rosenbergs gave American nuclear secrets, among other military secrets, to the Soviet Union, and were executed for their troubles.

Purely a metaphor.

If critical military and national defense secrets were transferred to other nations by Trump, then every politician considered his ally will be tainted. Some of those in Jovian, or greater, orbits may be able to disassociate themselves, but close orbit, i.e. Venusian or closer, allies such as Senators Johnson, Rubio, Scott, Paul, and those who did not vote to convict Trump in either of his trials, will be at risk of the ruination of their political career. In the House the usual names apply, even those who are no longer members: Jordan, Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Gohmert, Gosar, Cawthorn are just some of the names that come to mind.

I think, with proper Democratic messaging, even “safe” Republican seats in both the Senate and the House are now at risk. Every Republican defending the former President at this late stage, such as Rubio’s “Oh, it’s just a storage issue” defense, may be facing the demise of their political career. We may see a few commit suicide. Not political suicide, but existential suicide.

That’s the enormity of Judge Cannon’s decisions.

So the actions of Judge Cannon so far are a disaster for the MAGA Republicans. Senator McConnell (R-KY), the leading non-MAGA Republican, may be morbidly chuckling as his rival Trump appears to be self-immolating, but he’s now looking at a permanent position as Minority Leader, and make no mistake: the actions of “Moscow” Mitch McConnell have lead to these contretemps.

I don’t seriously believe Judge Cannon will be impeached. However, she may reverse herself in the near future, depending on the magnitude of her loyalty to Trump vs her love of prestige and position, even as damaged as it is, and will be through her association with Trump.

Will he be overwhelmed by piccolos or flutes?

Dead Again (1991) is fundamentally a story about revenge, the revenge of a young boy on his stepmother, the stepmother on her husband, the young boy on the stepmother again, and, I suppose, an artist on her critics.

Maybe.

I found my credulity strained by the hypnotic regression sequences in which we discover the artist, Amanda Sharp, was once piano virtuoso Roman Strauss, executed shortly after World War II for the murder of his wife, who, in turn, may be in the, ah, spiritual past of investigator Mike Church.

Put that way, it’s clear why I didn’t find it all that tolerable.

Which is too bad, because the acting is nice, and Church happens to be running around in a late 1950s/60s Corvette, which I always appreciate. But it’s not enough to get me around the inherent silliness of the plot, which involves hypnotic regression, an antiques dealer, the artist-as-mysterious amnesiac, the investigator scraping for bucks, and etc. The reality was that I kept trying to find a way to explain it without resorting to silly hypnotic regression and risible past lives explanations, and just couldn’t get there.

So I’d say see it if you’re a Kenneth Branagh or Emma Thompson or Wayne Knight completist. You say you don’t recognize Wayne Knight?

Think dinosaurs. Which would have been fun in Dead Again.

In case you were wondering if any of the January 6th insurrectionists would be barred from governmental elective office, Roger Parloff has the story of the first one:

A judge today removed a county official from office under Section 3 of the 14^th amendment, the hoary post-Civil War provision that bars certain people from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection” against the United States.

Judge Francis Mathew, of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, ousted Otero County (N.M.) Commissioner Couy Griffin, due to his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. According to lawyers who brought the case, it represents the first time a court has disqualified an official under Section 3 since 1869. (Congress refused to seat a U.S. Congressman, Victor Berger, under the Section in 1919.) [Lawfare]

While this part is unsurprising, it’s still interesting:

Importantly, Griffin proceeded pro se [he represented himself] at trial. (He was represented for a period during the pretrial phase.) As a consequence, he did not raise all of the legal arguments that a legal team might have. I have written about those very significant potential hurdles here.

It’s been observed, since the Web era began, that ignorant people often think they’re smart, the smartest folks in the room. I think it’s clear that’s what happened here. I wonder how many more of them will represent themselves before they get it figured out. I know at least several have done so in their criminal trials – and lost.