Category Archives: Uncategorized

Suspended Texas AG Ken Paxton (R-TX), currently on trial on impeachment charges of various sorts in the Texas Senate, earns the latest Earl “don’t confuse me with the facts!” Landgrebe nomination:

But as Paxton has aggressively pursued such [high-profile, anti-Biden and anti-Democratic] lawsuits, he has repeatedly declined to do a critical but less glamorous part of his job: represent state agencies in court.

Despite his role as Texas’ lead attorney, Paxton has denied representation to state agencies at least 75 times in the past two years, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. The denials forced some of those agencies to assume additional, unanticipated costs as they scrambled to secure legal assistance.

“Every time he backs out of one of these cases – and an agency, a university has to get outside counsel, if they get the funding approved – that’s costing the taxpayers a lot of extra money, because that’s one of the principal reasons the AG’s office exists, is to provide these basic legal services, basic legal defense,” said Chris Toth, former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Over the years, some of Paxton’s representation denials have become public. Among those is his longtime refusal to defend the state Ethics Commission against lawsuits filed by the now-disbanded Empower Texans, a political action committee, and the PAC’s then-head Michael Quinn Sullivan. Empower Texans contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign and loaned him $1 million, according to campaign finance reports. Another has been his choice not to represent the State Commission on Judicial Conduct after it issued a public warning to a justice of the peace who refused to perform same-sex marriages despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized the unions. [The Texas Tribune]

At first glance, this may seem dubious evidence for a nomination, but give me a chance to validate it. First, as a reminder, the Earl Landgrebe nomination is for those individuals who have displayed absurd levels of allegiance to former President Trump.

Putting aside the fact that Paxton was lead AG in the notorious pro-Trump lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania, which asserted that Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes were invalid because its voting methods were – allegedly – invalid, I assert that the activities for which Paxton is being tried, which include manipulating the State to the benefit of real estate investor Nate Paul, arranging for the woman he was cheating on his wife with to get a job with Nate Paul, are quite consistent with, and thus constitute praise and affirmation for, the numerous repugnant and anti-American activities of the former President.

So both in word and in deed, in multiple senses, Paxton has indicated admiration and allegiance to the former President, perhaps to a degree greater than his competitors, and thus deserves his nomination.

If the charges at the above link are proven true, I’d then have to say that Paxton has charged into his career choice – public official grifter – with abandon, and is certainly a bullshitter of the second water – not yet at the level of Trump, who appears to be unique in his ability to combine bullshitting with public appeal, but to a very respectable level. For those who wonder about the difference between a liar and a bullshitter, the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer has an article on the subject here.

Last week, while I was on vacation, Erick Erickson posted with regard to Senator Tuberville (R-AL) and his hold on military promotions that is best interpreted as Erickson simply falling apart. It starts with the title:

Senator Tuberville’s Strong Stand

The good Senator, unfortunately for Erickson, has betrayed very little understanding of history or the role of the Senate. For example, he believes his dad went to Europe in WW II to fight the “socialists.” He has a number of other such blunders to his credit. The end result is that he appears to be little more than a clown. It doesn’t help that he lives in Florida but represents Alabama, which certainly sounds illegal.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) refuses to give his consent for the United States Senate to advance hundreds of military promotions. His objection stems from the Biden Administration changing military policy to pay for abortion related travel. Prior to the end of Roe v. Wade, the government would not cover those costs. Now, President Biden is using the military to advance an aggressive abortion agenda. Senator Tuberville is having none of it.

And that would be because … there was no need to travel to leave a jurisdiction forbidding abortion, because jurisdictions could not make such laws. I don’t doubt there was some travel to reach a doctor competent in the life-saving procedure, but I have no idea what those numbers might be – and that would be little more than sleight-of-hand if Erickson were to cite them.

In response, much of the mainstream media, the Democrats, military leadership, and even some Republicans and conservative pundits are savaging Senator Tuberville. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, on CNN, said, “For someone who’s born in a communist country, I would have never imagined that actually one of our own senators would actually be aiding and abetting communist and other autocratic regimes around the world. This is having a real negative impact and will continue to have a real negative impact on our combat readiness. And that’s what the American people truly need to understand.” Even some military leaders have been outspoken, not fully appreciating the concept of civilian control of the military.

This is what it must seem like to try to swallow Erickson’s piece, at least by thinking people.

And the fact that a number of Republican Senators find Senator Tuberville’s actions embarrassing is an important detail. Erickson’s trying to portray this as some terrible Democratic plot, but he’s swimming against a strong current here: Republicans who recognize that Tuberville is attacking both the military and the traditions of an American Senate that has other important matters to pursue.

And that brings up a detail omitted, insofar as I can tell, by Erickson: the act of bringing up each officer for debate of their promotion will delay Senate business by several days for each officer. There’s a good reason the whole bunch are usually promoted as a group: because it’s more efficient.

And that leads to another question: is it wise for the Senate to even try to debate the merits of an officer’s promotion? What do they know of the individual merits of each officer?

Doesn’t this risk politicizing the military?

But all this Erickson omits. Instead, this is his opportunity to, once again, smear the main stream media in order to keep his flock of conservatives together:

… the American press corps’ unwillingness to accurately report the story. Every major press outlet has take the Democrats’ party line and advanced it. They have not acknowledged the promotions could happen with votes. They seem to insist unanimous consent is the only way forward.

And … no. Just a lie. Every time I run across this story, whether it be WaPo or MSNBC’s Steve Benen, it’s made clear that individual votes could take place.

But better yet is the first part of the above paragraph:

But abortion politics reigns supreme for the Democrats. They cannot get Senator Tuberville to yield and the Democrats are not interested in advancing military nominations more than the abortion agenda. More alarming than the Democrats’ abortion politics is the American press corps’ unwillingness to accurately report the story.

When bulging eyes warp your perspective.

I actually hooted with laughter. Abortion politics reigns supreme for the Democrats? Dude, haven’t you been paying attention? The Republicans have been fixated on abortion for literally decades! Have you no shame? You’re one of many who smeared Democrats with the epithet baby-killers!

And that fixation eventually lead to Dobbs, which then lead to Republicans placing various serious restrictions on a life saving procedure, imperiling women’s lives, all put in place by fourth and fifth rate politicians who are entirely so full of themselves that they’ll explode from an overpressure of arrogance someday. The Democrats’ fixation is a result of the foolishness of Republicans who don’t understand that Americans do not take kindly to their lives being put in danger by a pack of yahoos.

I’m simply amazed that Erickson wrote that.

There you go. It’s strictly a rallying piece because of Erickson’s fixation on abortion. It’s his bad luck that one of the worst Senators is involved. It forces him into a land of ludicrous irony that must have turned him purple.

Hetmanate:

the authority, rule, or domain of a hetman. [Dictionary.com]

The last time I ran across hetman was in a Jack Vance novel titled The Killing Machine. I’ve never bothered to look it up before.

the title assumed by the chief of Ukrainian Cossacks of the Dnieper River region, with headquarters at Zaporozhe.

Noted in “Ukraine’s Lost Capital,” Daniel Weiss, Archaeology (September / October 2023):

In 1569, Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included Ukraine, united to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Chafing at this new entity’s efforts to control them, many Ukrainians took refuge on the frontiers to the south and east known as the Wild Fields. There, they were able to pursue a life of independence and adventure and came to be called Cossacks, derived from a Turkic term meaning “free men.” The Cossacks established successful farms, which they had to defend against persistent threats from the Ottoman Turks and their allies the Crimean Tatars to the south. Over time, the Cossacks became the political elite of Ukraine and, along with members of the Orthodox clergy, started to demand the right to rule themselves. After a series of failed uprisings, in 1648 the Cossacks achieved their goal. Led by their hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, they threw off the yoke of Polish rule, attaining a measure of independence and establishing a state known as a hetmanate.

With the impeachment trial of suspended Texas AG Ken Paxton (R-TX) under way in the Texas Senate, Professor Richardson summarizes the sad contretemps of the Texas GOP:

The Republican Party in Texas is split over [suspended Texas Attorney General due to impeachment Ken] Paxton much as the country is split over former president Donald Trump. Some say that Paxton’s extraordinary behavior warrants impeachment and trial and that, after all, a majority of Republicans in the Texas House were so concerned they impeached him.

But others insist that he is, as he claims, a victim of political persecution. They maintain that a flawed man can do God’s will, and they support Paxton no matter what his failings out of support for his political crusades on their behalf. J. David Goodman reported yesterday in the New York Times that right-wing donors have embarked on an expensive, high-pressure campaign to convince Republicans in the Texas Senate to vote against conviction, threatening to primary anyone who votes against Paxton.

And all I can see is a bunch of businessmen saying, Awwwwww, he was so easy to buy off!

It appears that some of the GOP base think this is a good thing. A dash of corruption to make the chili hot, so to speak. Logic would suggest that if Paxton’s corruptly using his office for this, it’s a good chance he’s corrupt in other areas.

Why is it necessary that a flawed man do the will of God, anyways? The whole damn thing is silly.

For those of us who started in social media 40-some years ago, this WaPo article is fascinating:

And there goes one now!

Fish storm:

Meteorologists sometimes use the term “fish storm” to refer to a storm that generally poses no risk to land. But these storms may still pose a threat to fishing boats or shipping routes, and the National Weather Service continues to issue reports on such weather systems in its High Seas Forecasts.

Occasionally, “fish storms” may also produce possible dangerous currents along the coasts. In 2021, for instance, Tropical Storm Odette actually moved away from the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region but meteorologists (including those at Nexstar’s WSAV) warned of possible rip currents nonetheless. [WFLA]

Ryan Hall uses “fish storm” in this video, I believe, but I have not pinpointed the position.

This Labor Day sees a bug.

Those seem to have come out well.

Finally, Nick feels the Cockroach of Doom in his underpants. Why he let his wife adopt such a creature has puzzled film historians for generations. It also produced a film of film historians searching for a Cockroach of Doom to add to their collections, and the terrible Fate they each met – and often dated – but that’s another story for another time.

And I’m not going to tell it.

The Thin Man (1934) is a member of the private detective genre, a category in which success often depends on the strength of characterization. Think of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade: at least half of the charm of the stories of which they are a part is the detectives themselves, their toughness, their reaction to temptations, their outlook on life.

The attraction of The Thin Man and its sequels is, in part, the chemistry of the characters. This is true not only of Nick and Nora Charles, the former a retired private detective, the latter Nick’s rich wife and the reason he’s retired, but also of Nick and Nora’s relationship with Nick’s nabs. The affection the nabs have for Nick and Nora is both unexpected and brings a bit of charm and comic relief to the story.

And the story? A former client of Nick’s, successful inventor and curmudgeon Clyde Wynant, has disappeared. His daughter, beau in her wake, can’t find him to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, and attempts to enlist Nick to find Clyde. But Nick is retired, more interested in wife and dog, Asta, than his former client, and refuses. Several times.

But Nora is intrigued. She’s never seen her husband in action, and pushes him to investigate. Nick reluctantly does so, trading barbed pleasantries with … Asta. But the dog is more than a conversational foil, as we discover when he finds a body.

But it’s not Wynant’s, even if it’s buried in his basement. Was Wynant a killer of the worst sort, as he’s a genius? In a classic big windup, all the suspects at the dinner table, waited upon by Nick’s nabs, Nick announces the name of the victim and of the killer … by letting the killer name themselves.

Add in a jealous ex-wife and a nerdy, self-important son, and don’t forget the ex-wife’s paramour, and there are suspects simply pouring out of the windows of the hotel. Which one will Nick and Nora pick while trading puns, cocktails, and kid toys with each other?

Tune in and find out. If you like old-fashioned murder mystery movies in which characters aren’t too deeply explored, and silly head-splitting crap doesn’t occur, The Thin Man may be for you.

In beautiful condition, too, and many more, besides.

This one, from NewScientist, is a bit distressing, as it implies so much:

Crocodiles can sense how distressed human babies are from their cries

The tagline is of no help in quieting one’s nerves:

Predatory reptiles move quickly and aggressively towards the sound of babies crying and can tell if they are in genuine distress and so potentially vulnerable

The implication that primate babies have been a frequent snack is a bit frightening, especially if you are one who believes we’ve badly damaged nature in our efforts to achieve and maintain safety.

This AL-Monitor report on microbial resistance to drugs developing in Iraq is unsettling:

[Microbial resistance] has reached alarming highs around the world in recent years as simple infections become harder and harder to treat. Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections killed 1.27 million people in 2019, according to a study by The Lancet medical journal — more than HIV-AIDS or malaria. Experts say antimicrobial resistance (which refers not only to resistant bacteria but also to viruses, fungi and parasites) could kill up to 10 million people a year by 2050.

Iraq already stands out as one of the places hardest hit by this developing crisis, particularly the city of Mosul where worrisome rates of antibiotic resistance were recorded by international medical nongovernmental organizations that intervened there in the wake of the war against the Islamic State (IS). In 2019, a staggering 40% of patients admitted to a post-operative care facility run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Mosul carried multidrug-resistant infections, according to MSF.

Five years later, this silent health crisis is still sweeping unchecked through the city’s private and public hospitals. “There’s a real danger,” Ahmad told Al-Monitor. “But when you look at the official response, it doesn’t feel like we are in a crisis. Iraq is behind on tackling this issue.” …

[Prescribing antibiotics for any disease is] a habit that remains deeply rooted in the [Iraqi] health care system, several doctors and medical nurses in Mosul acknowledged. “Here, most doctors prescribe antibiotics for any simple disease. They don’t follow a scientific protocol or a gradual approach with syrups and pills; they don’t send samples to the lab to see which antibiotics are needed. Many prescribe injectable antibiotics right away,” Omar Mudhafar, the head of an awareness-raising unit at the Mosul General Hospital, told Al-Monitor.

Are the monsters coming to get us?

So, in the metaphorical forest we can see that mishandling powerful drugs has similar consequences to mishandling powerful weapons.

But out of the forest, I was struck by the parallels between this and the American political situation. Just as American political groups have come to resist compromise, so does humanity refuse, quite understandably, to give up friends and family to the attack of microbes, such as those which causes smallpox, TB, and many other illnesses that we have learned to mitigate, cure, and even expunge.

The cost may be ever greater plagues.

I realize this parallel is all a bit horrific, but I think it’s worthwhile for those of a political bent to meditate on their enmity to compromise, and to consider how important their arrogance – because that’s the poison at the root of the tree of comity – is to their ego, and to perhaps consider tamping that down a bit.

Governor DeSantis (R-GA) has been working hard to be the GOP Presidential nominee and de facto leader of the GOP, but I’m liking the chances of Governor Kemp (R-GA), who has chosen not to go head-to-head with the former President this time around, at least not yet. I’m guessing Kemp will run in 2028, once he’s finished disposing of the former President by letting him dangle from a yard-arm.

During a remarkable press conference, Gov. Brian Kemp quashed the idea of a special legislative session pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies to oust Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she charged them with a vast conspiracy to reverse his 2020 defeat.

And the governor on Thursday also dismissed talk of backing efforts to reprimand Willis, either through legislative hearings that seek to slash state funding to her office or a newly empowered panel that can sanction wayward prosecutors or remove them from office.

The second-term Republican said he hasn’t “seen any evidence” that Willis has violated her oath of office, even though he voiced concerns about whether she was motivated by politics to pursue the 41-count indictment.

“The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia as long as I’m governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps and harms politically,” Kemp said. “Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. But I can assure you that I have not.” [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

While his refusal to come to Trump’s aid is putatively motivated by legal considerations, Trump’s disgust with Kemp and his refusal to find, illegal as it would be, just 11,000 more votes for Trump back in November of 2020 is well-known, and no doubt Kemp did not like the idea that he should risk his legal neck for Trump’s gain.

This move is, I think, an attempt to appeal to independents by showcasing Kemp’s respect for the law, while telling the MAGA base that supports Trump that he has no choice in the matter. Governor DeSantis (R-FL), Trump’s biggest rival, has not yet really done much to gain the support of independents, instead choosing to attempt to fracture the Trump MAGA base, with little perceptible progress.

I think Kemp’s approach is more plausible that DeSantis’. In fact, while Kemp has thrown a lot of doubt on the idea of running for the 2024 nomination, from what I’ve read he hasn’t shut that door completely. If Trump plunges in the polls due to criminal conviction, or revelations concerning his alleged riches, we may see Kemp take the big step.

Of course, Kemp does have weaknesses. Both Georgia Senators are Democrats, and no doubt Kemp will be saddled with the blame of not coming up with better candidates, although GOP protocol would have hardly permitted promoting relative unknowns over the two sitting Republican Senators, Loeffler and Perdue. And the loss of Atlanta to Democratic forces will also be a point of contention.

But these are not terminal conditions for Kemp. Keep an eye on him. His ethics are unlikely to be so stiff as to hinder a run. After all, he did not recuse himself from his Secretary of State position during his first run for the governor of Georgia against Stacey Abrams, which he indisputably should have.

Is he smarter than the other GOP governors? This is where the power lies for the GOP Presidential runs, not in the Senate and certainly not in the House.

Time will tell.

Defenestraphobia:

[General] Surovikin’s defenses may also have an issue in that they are Surovikin’s defenses. No one else may have a strong incentive to prove the ousted general’s preparations are effective, or to be somehow seen as the protégé of a guy currently suffering from severe defenestraphobia (and yes, that’s the real name for a fear of windows). [“Ukraine Update: As the ‘ Surovikin Line’ starts to crumble, the general who made it is still missing,” Mark Sumner, Daily Kos]

Well, maybe it’s real. It’s only showing up on specialized web sites.

Last year’s cleome appears to have successfully reseeded.

The local cosmos isn’t helping.

SUPERMOON WILL WORSEN IDALIA’S STORM SURGE: This week’s supermoon is making matters worse for Florida’s Gulf Coast by enhancing tides, which is expected to worsen Hurricane Idalia’s storm surge. “Surge and tide work together to produce the ultimate flooding that might occur in a hurricane,” Jamie Rhome of the National Hurricane Center told CNN. The effect, called a “perigean spring tide,” will be near its maximum for all of 2023 just as the hurricane makes landfall. [Spaceweather.com]

Like Ryan Hall says, it’s time – or past time – to evacuate if you live near Tampa Bay.

Vivek Ramaswamy is a GOP Presidential nomination hopeful and … not a politician. He’s wealthy entrepreneur with degrees in biology and law. His disregard for the law is, therefore, shocking in this answer to a question put to him on Meet the Press:

“What I would have said is: This is a moment for a true national consensus where there’s two elements of what’s required for a functioning democracy in America,” he said. “One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism.”

Ramaswamy said if he had been in Pence’s position, he would have pushed “reforms” through Congress before he certified the election.

“Here’s what I would have said: ‘We need single-day voting on Election Day, we need paper ballots, and we need government- issued ID matching the voter file.’ And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. I would have driven it through the Senate,” he said.

“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the president — President Trump — then to sign that into law. And on January 7th, declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election,” he said. “I think that was a missed opportunity.”

But it does feel like something that a fixer, rather than a politician, would say, especially one unfamiliar with the political landscape. I’ve done similar things in a technical landscape, plunging in and having to be rebuffed because my fixes would have blown way things up, and I wasn’t informed enough to see that. His answers assumes the VP has legal powers that are not actually available, both in the Senate and while counting the electoral vote; and it assumes illegalities occurred during the election that have not been proven in a court of law, despite vigorous pursuit by Trump lawyers.

Indeed, developments in the investigation of the former President suggests the opposite.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Ramaswamy seems to be one of those who rush in without much thought. He doesn’t think about the Senate leaders who’d protest his meddling, the specification of the VP’s roles, and, most importanly, the why of how things are.

It’s great to be all fast and loose as an entrepreneur. Politics in a democracy are a different matter. And Ramaswamy doesn’t seem to quite understand that.

Liz:

My most successful bit of invented language is an acronym: the LIZ, which stands for low information zone. It’s a word I specifically invented to help convey a concept to the UFO community.

Let me first give you a dictionary definition:

LIZ or “low information zone” refers to the distance or set of circumstances at which UFOs are recorded when the resulting eyewitness account, image, or video contains insufficient information to identify them, even as non-human craft.

… I’d recognized the truth behind the old joke about UFOs and cameras, which goes something like “Look, a UFO, let me get my worst quality camera.”

The joke illustrates a sad reality in UFOlogy: UFO photos, like Bigfoot photos, are invariably blurry. This blurriness has remained remarkably invariant over the decades, despite the vast increase in the quality of casual cameras and the even larger increase in the number of cameras that people carry around with them regularly. [“Inventing Skeptical Language,” Mick West, Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 2023, paywall)]

Think of this as a PSA.

When all you have is crap evidence, all you got is a crap phenomenon. Not dispositively so, but generally the way to bet.

This is from the WaPo newsletter The Week In Ideas, and is a summary of a particular opinion piece:

Doomed humanity could certainly use the skills — and the resilience to cope with life and death — that kids learn in [4-H] clubs.

Please, please, please, learn the meaning of doom. It’s a terminator, in word and in deed, implying imminence, for we all will meet death, or so the common wisdom goes, but those who are doomed cannot be helped, and, soon, will not be able to use it.

Damn, that one is always escaping the corral!

One might say that the title The Thief Of Baghdad (1940) covers a multitude of tales, but that’s a question for another, errr, tale. In this story, the King of Baghdad, unconscious of the scheming of his grand vizier, Jaffar, and exploring his city undercover, befriends a thief, Abu. When the Princess arrives unannounced, Jaffar’s scheming comes to fruition, and he deposes and blinds the King, now known as Ahmad, and turns Abu into a dog. This permits him to pursue the Princess, who has attracted his lust.

But Ahmad and Abu, despite deportation and an existential storm, are not out of the game just yet. Abu recovers his human form, and Ahmad his sight, but are separated. Abu discovers the well-traveled genie of the bottle, and tricks him into granting wishes. Soon, he finds himself stealing the Jewel of an all-seeing god, which lets him find Ahmad. And from here, things get really fantastic, and just a touch silly. Insert deus ex machina warning here.

But there’s a lot to recommend this movie. The special effects are surprisingly good, the story, while not as tight as it could be, is still interesting, and the acting is more than adequate.

If you’re in the mood for an old, good movie, The Thief of Baghdad is not a bad place to start. I won’t recommend it for all, but if it’s what you’re looking for, you’ll enjoy it.

Andrew Parasiliti of AL-Monitor (paywall in the future?) sees President Biden as making slow but steady progress in repairing the damage caused by former President Trump’s blundering about:

The Biden administration’s approach to Iran reflects a hard-headed realism necessary for the managed-not-solved nature of the Iranian challenge.

And it may be working.

Five Americans unjustly detained in Iran are expected to be released within weeks. There are reports that Iran is keeping its uranium enrichment below 60%, a red line for weaponization, and Iran has so far refrained from providing ballistic missiles to Russia. An understanding, if not an “agreement,” seems to be taking shape, in which Iran would adhere to constraints on its nuclear program under IAEA supervision, while setting new mechanisms for de-escalation. The United States did not oppose a China-brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Iranian-Saudi relations are “on the right track” during a visit to Riyadh this week where he met his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

This is all fragile and uncertain, and some may claim that it is cold comfort given Iran’s record. But let’s remember that President Joe Biden inherited a crisis with Iran in January 2021. His predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, upending a hard-earned international consensus about Iran’s nuclear program. In return for sanctions relief, Iran had kept its uranium enrichment program in check, under tight international constraints. After May 2018, Iran blew by JCPOA restrictions on enrichment, threatening a nuclear breakout, and the window for a potential bomb shrank from years to months.

The JCPOA may not be recoverable, but the Iranian government, minus a few hard liners, is well aware that going head to head with even Israel, much less the United States, over the nuclear weapons issue is a tasteless bit of madness, and therefore they, too, have a reason to cooperate, quietly as it may be, with the United States.

As ever, for us tyros at Middle East politics, the magnitude of the screaming of hard liners in both countries is a measure for the actual importance and potential of any agreements. Every time Senator Cotton (R-AL) shrieks about appeasing Iran, or ransoming hostages, you more or less can be sure that Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are making substantial progress in reducing the damage of the Trump Administration.

Which is sort of like The non-existent can affect us all. But even out on … Neptune?

A new paper in the research journal Icarus offers dramatic proof that solar activity can affect planetary weather. The big surprise: The planet is Neptune, 2.5 billion miles from the sun. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a period of 28 years show bright clouds forming in sync with the 11-year solar cycle: [omitted]

The connection between Neptune and solar activity is surprising to planetary scientists because Neptune is our solar system’s farthest major planet. It receives only 0.1% of the sunlight we get on Earth. Yet Neptune’s cloudy weather seems to be driven by solar activity, and not the planet’s four seasons, which each last approximately 40 years. [Spaceweather.com]

Just imagine a supernova in the local neighborhood – we’d get a dose of radiation and a couple of hurricanes just as an insult.

Steve Benen puts one of the recently evolved attributes of the GOP on display:

But if the Florida Republican has grappled with this aspect of the issue, he has hidden his concerns well. DeSantis has a vision that entails deploying troops into Mexico, executing drug smugglers, and possibly even using drone strikes on Mexican soil.

In case this isn’t obvious, Mexico is a U.S. ally, a U.S. neighbor and our biggest trading partner.

It would also apparently become a military target in a prospective DeSantis administration.

As bizarre as this might sound, the governor’s over-the-top rhetoric has become surprisingly normal in contemporary GOP politics. In March, for example, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the Trump administration made “a mistake” by not launching military strikes in Mexico. A month later, Politico published a report that said: “A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away.”

Well, yes. When a party discards respect for competency and mastery of nuance in favor of extremism, this should be no surprise. Comer, Gaetz, Greene, and so many have others have learned well the lessons taught to them by the GOP base, that base preferring easy-to-understand extremism, or to put it another way, positions that are “pure” and untainted by compromise.

Their intellectual laziness runs them into a ditch every thirty feet they drive, and their arrogance leads them to deny that they’re in the ditch. And so we’re left with simpleton proposals like DeSantis, and I’m left wonder if his alma mater, Yale Law School, should really be shut down for letting this guy besmirch their legacy.