Category Archives: Uncategorized

A reader writes concerning my Arts Editor’s indoor succulent garden:

Must be using those LED strips with alternating sections of red and blue lights? We had those going on our porch – made the deck look like it was outside a strip club …..

I tried to take a picture, as there are two different light sources in use:

Not really useful – evidently CCD doesn’t like those shades of color. Two of the lights are actually red/blue, while the other is a white light that, if memory serves, is supposed to mimic the Sun.

A reader remarks on the post concerning failing currents in the Atlantic Ocean:

Wow. All the bad things climatologist said could happen are all coming to pass ten times faster than originally imagined. Humanity is so incredibly stupid.

I suppose it depends on what is meant by ‘stupid.’ Humanity never evolved to properly evaluate what has been happening world-wide, has it? Our sensory radius is only a few miles, and none of it is specialized for the kind of pollution that leads to climate change.

I find it difficult to organize my thoughts on the question, perhaps because ‘stupid’ can mean many things in this context. How about ‘ignorant’? Are we ignorant? I think our scientists are learning as fast as they can, but the fact that we are not a rationally coordinated species, or society, can render their efforts moot.

And even when coordinated, when the coordinating authority is irrational (think: Pope), it just makes things worse.

The problem may be that a species with our capabilities is doomed to wreck its ecological niche, if only simply through numbers. The creditable impulse to help and heal may be our downfall.

Kaiju battles are all fun and games until someone get shish-kebabbed. See if you can identify the turtle on the left. He’s regretting his choice at this moment.

Gamera vs Viras (1968) centers around kaiju Gamera’s central slogan: Gamera, friend to all children!, but in its darker aspect. This odd movie actually has at least some of the elements of a good story, but with bad acting, harvesting of 15-20 minutes of footage from previous entries in this series, and awful special effects, it’s hard to take seriously. In a nutshell, two boys, one a Japanese Boy Scout, and the other an American Boy Scout (Far East Council), hijack, as a prank, a small (too small?) research submarine for a joyride in Tokyo harbor. Soon, they find Gamera mooching around the bottom, and engage him (is it a him, or a her? I’m not sure it’s ever mentioned) in a playful race.

But then a ship from planet Viras appears. Gamera had foiled an attack on Earth by a Viras ship earlier; this is revenge. Gamera is immobilized, along with the boys, but the boys escape. Gamera’s memories are scanned and soon his fondness for human children is identified as a weakness. The boys are captured and used to force Gamera to attack Tokyo. Because the boys are captive, the UN Security Council agrees to surrender.

First Gamera, then the UN Security Council. Is there something about young boys that makes them all-important? Or is Gamera just a wimp?

But these are not passive little boys. They’re busy wreaking their own brand of trouble on the ship of Viras, messing with crewmen, power connections, and communing with a fellow prisoner, nicknamed ‘Space Monster’. Eventually, they find a way off the ship, and Gamera makes the ship his prey.

Story over? Nope.

That’s Mr. Space Amoeba to you, bub.

The sad-eyed ‘Space Monster’ turns out to be the Captain of the Viras. In the shattered wreckage of the ship, he, or maybe ‘it’, absorbs the crew survivors (“but Captain!”) and becomes a towering kaiju, oddly reminiscent of the kaiju in Space Amoeba (1970), if somewhat more monochromatic. It and Gamera then engage in an epic battle, complete with a shish-kebabbing and a cheering section.

There are positive story elements present: apparent end of the good guy turtle, plucky little guys who get themselves out of sticky situations, and … and … how about oddly reserved parents who suggest the boys should be put to bed without supper after all this fun? Oh, wait. Sometimes the eyes of the invaders are kind of fun.

But yeah. The aforementioned flaws of acting, special effects, and using footage from other movies, as well as ludicrous science and a laboriously creaky plot, overwhelm the good points, rendering Gamera vs Viras a definite No go! in my book.

A new Journal springs up on Substack:

Welcome to the Journal of Free Black Thought, a publication dedicated to foregrounding the widely diverse black perspectives that are rarely given room, and hence rarely encountered, in mainstream idea spaces. The Journal will publish essays that address black history, black intellectual history, and the history of black literature and the arts. It will publish reviews of contemporary literature and arts. And it will publish essays with heterodox takes on pressing concerns of the moment. It may even publish the occasional poem or piece of short fiction.

If I had more free time I might subscribe; as it is, I don’t know much about it. Substack tends to look for authentic, unique voices, though.

I recall seeing Legally Blonde (2001) when it first came out, or shortly thereafter. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t think it was anything special. Not so with David Lat:

So is Legally Blonde “more relevant than ever,” as the Times contends? Does the movie stand the test of time?

My own verdict: yes. Legally Blonde is one of my favorite films, law-related or otherwise, and I owe it a debt of gratitude. Just as some people can say they went to law school because of Legally Blonde, I can say that the movie influenced my own move from practicing law to writing about it. My first blog—Underneath Their Robes, as pink as Elle’s resume, in which I pretended to be an attractive blonde woman obsessed with law and fashion—definitely drew inspiration from Legally Blonde.

And even Zach somewhat agrees, conceding that Legally Blonde is solid. When I asked him where LB ranks in the law-film pantheon, he responded “Better than MCV, although not on the level of The Devil’s Advocate—but what is?”

A reader of Lat’s Original Jurisdiction adds:

Legally Blonde featured prominently at the National Advocacy Center for federal prosecutors during the two-week trial advocacy course I attended as a brand-new AUSA.

I hope Jurassic Park (1993) hasn’t had similar influence on paleontologists.

My Arts Editor loves succulents, those juicy, furry plants that you can sometimes eat. Here’s her collection, first in natural light, mostly.

And some with the grow light on.

“[C]omputational theology.”

I ran across this in the article “Does Prayer Work?” by Dariusz Jemielniak, Free Inquiry (August/September 2021). This sums it up:

We measured the covariance of the mean length of life, controlled for nationality. We discovered that bishops live longer than priests. However, due to a marginal effect size, this result should be treated with caution. Additionally, there are several good reasons priests live shorter lives than bishops that are not related to the number of prayers received. First, priests have much lower dispositional incomes (salaries and perks), and the income-mortality gradient is higher at low-income levels. Second, they often come from a lower social class and have lower social capital accumulated, which is known to translate to lower longevity. Third, bishops are somewhat preselected for longer life in such a comparison, because to become a bishop one has to have been a priest for many years (the minimum age to become a bishop is thirty-five, but the average is much higher). Some priests simply die before they can even be seriously considered for the role.

In our study, recently published in the top-tier academic Journal of Religion and Health, we found that the studied bishops did not live longer than male academics. Additionally, no difference was found between the mean length of life of bishops from the largest and smallest dioceses. If the number of intercessory prayers affected longevity, it should manifest there. It appears that the effect of rote intercessory prayers, even in massive numbers, is not observable.

They also observed no meaningful differences between bishops of large and small dioceses, which would generate larger and smaller numbers of prayers.

Honestly, their use of the phrase computational theology sounds like a joke to me:

We hope that our study will pave the way for a new academic field of computational theology, and we welcome other similar analyses as well as further research.

They’re not generating theology, which is how I’d take that phrase. Characterization of the phenomenon under study might yield phrases such as Measurement of Attempts To Manipulate The Divine., or more compactly, Divine Manipulation Metricization.

To see why I actually take seriously the topic of using the right words, see here and here.

Decadal:

of or pertaining to a decade [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “Can we fix climate models to better predict record-shattering weather?” by Adam Vaughan, NewScientist (31 July 2021, paywall):

However, the higher resolution required for some models generally needs more computing power – and resolution isn’t the only issue for projecting extremes: another significant one is timescales. Much climate modelling works on centennial timescales, but some scientists have now turned to decadal predictions, which could roughly be described as weather forecasts spun out to predict the next few years. These have already been shown to predict Atlantic hurricanes.

“There’s definitely a move towards these decadal predictions. They are not for predicting what climate change will do, but what climate change is doing now,” says Ted Shepherd at the University of Reading, UK.

Closely related to my concerns about unintentional misuse of words is, of course, the intentional misuse of words. Dana Milbank of WaPo notes historian and General Ty Seidule’s (US Army – ret.) views on the subject of deliberate misuse and the glorification of one of the most infamous examples from American history:

[Seidule] told me [Milbank] of the disgust he felt when he saw a photo of an insurrectionist in the Capitol on Jan. 6 carrying the Confederate battle flag — “the Flag of Treason,” he calls it — past a portrait of Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator nearly caned to death by Preston Brooks, a proslavery congressman from South Carolina. Seidule wanted to suit up in his old uniform and fight the Capitol terrorists. “The people who did that need to be in orange jumpsuits and shackles,” he said.

In his book, Seidule writes of the importance of words in defeating the Lost Cause lies. It wasn’t “Union” against “Confederate,” he argues. It was the “U.S. Army fighting … against a rebel force that would not accept the results of a democratic election and chose armed rebellion.” Confederate generals didn’t fight with “honor”; they abrogated “an oath sworn to God to defend the United States” and “killed more U.S. Army soldiers than any other enemy, ever.” It wasn’t “the War Between the States,” as Lost Cause mythology would have it; the Civil War was, properly, “The War of the Rebellion.” They weren’t “plantations” as glorified by Margaret Mitchell, but “enslaved labor farms.” Writes Seidule: “Accurate language can help us destroy the lies of the Lost Cause.”

So, too, can accurate language destroy the lies now being floated to justify Jan. 6.

As it happens, I’ve always been a little wary of sentimentalization, of romanticization, but I think only now do I fully realize that this is how to pull a cover over the dark features of whatever event is being romanticized. This romanticization, this lying, about the Civil War has been extremely destructive to the United States ever since 1865. Its foul brood has brought about unjustified resentments that has led to terrible crimes against black communities.

And that damage should be taken as a salutary lesson by everyone today. The WaPo article is entirely about Republican attempts to redefine the January 6th insurrection. As these fourth- and fifth-raters continue to cling to power, the work of the select panel is supremely important, for it must diagnose what went wrong for these rebellious American citizens who reacted like five-year olds to the failure of the former President to be re-elected. The most basic feature of democratic systems, the peaceful and productive transfer of power, came under attack.

Is this the result of poor civics education? The work of national adversaries determined to undermine the governmental system of the arsenal of democracy? Resentment over swift societal change (gay marriage, transgender rights)? These are just some of the potential answers to the questions the select panel must answer.

And, meanwhile, we must pay more respect to the power of language. From misusing ‘deserves’ to mischaracterizing the most miserable war the United States has ever experienced, the lack of respect for its power may be one of the most underestimated mistakes Americans have made over the centuries.

Black Mountain Side (2014) reminds me that not all archaeology expeditions are echos of Indiana Jones‘ spectacular digs, full of divinities and snakes and evil people.

Sometimes digs are full of evil divinities, villainous deer, and delusional people.

If you look closely, you’ll see snow!

And snow!

In this spritely tale, an archaeological specialist in Amazonian languages is summoned to a camp in the far north of the Alaska wilderness. Choppered in over the deep snow fields, along with groceries and other supplies, he’s been called on to help decipher a mysterious artifact, discovered buried in the ground and in situ, as they say. As he investigates,  he meets the poker playing men who run the camp: director, electronics specialist, archaeologists, medical doctor. All good guys.

The next day, the locals, i.e., Inuit, who have been providing the bulk of the labor, abruptly vamoose, heading out over deep snow fields with little in the way of supplies, towards the nearest village that’s miles away.

Something’s wrong.

This is followed by illness, madness, mutations, amputations, and an unfortunate use of guns to resolve some delusional conflicts. As we near the end of this enchanting tale, we finally get that rupture in our finely spun cocoon of rationality, a visit from an entity angry and powerful, but an entity that, too, cannot prove that it even exists. This irrationality, confronting our imported scientists, completes a picture that included cephalopods and a long walk by that scientist.

With a final complication. But let me remind you: cephalopods.

Confusing review? I assure you, I’ve reread the review and tried to clarify, but, like reality, irrational chaos lurks around the edges of this story, the idea of powerful, jealous entities, with alien motivations and probably no sense of humor.

You’ve been warned.

Erick Erickson has continued to bail out his leaky dinghy of ideology through claims of moral equivalence to the Democrats in a post of a few days ago. I had not responded to it because one of his points disturbed me and I was not aware of the context, so I held myself back – not to mention not having a lot of free time. Last night’s storm, however, means I won’t be gardening today, and I did finally get the necessary context as well.

His post reads like some of the right-wing emails I’ve dissected in the past – here’s an old favorite – and, technically, it did show up in my email, but it’s really a blog post. After some righteous incendiary indignation, he writes:

On June 29, 2021, five members of the United States Supreme Court said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not have the authority to issue a moratorium on evictions. Only Justice Kavanaugh decided that since the program was set to expire at the end of July, he’d let it finish out because of the legal principle of equity (different from critical theory’s equity).

So while five members of the Court let the moratorium continue, five members of the Court also declared the CDC had no power to do such a moratorium in the future without specific congressional authorization.

SCOTUS does not get to have it both ways; Kavanaugh probably should have ruled the other way, rather than giving in to expediency. But he didn’t, which makes Erickson’s upcoming indignity … specious.

Congress sat on its hands and did nothing until July 30, 2021, when progressive members began some performance art to demand Congress pass a moratorium. On August 1, 2021, Nancy Pelosi blamed the CDC for not extending the moratorium and never mentioned the Supreme Court’s decision.

Performance art and sat on its hands are lazy denigratives used by those who are desperate to portray inaction as somehow indicative of incompetency – or worse. A judicious observer doesn’t walk down that path; instead, they try to find a fair & balanced^[1] reading of the motivations for a given behavior.

In this case, we’re talking about the pandemic. I think it’s fair to assume that the assumption since the SCOTUS decision was that the Administration could implement the ban; and, even if not, getting the ban through the Senate might prove to be a battle better fought elsewhere.

And why are we discussing this at all? Oh, yeah: the unvaccinated, who are mostly, but not all (see: RFK, Jr.), conservatives, are keeping the pandemic going, which in turn impacts the economy as the delta variant emerges, rendering the vaccines less effective against mutation aka variant concerns, and thus making the vulnerable less likely to return to work. I should not be surprised if key leaders claimed they didn’t anticipate the need for a furthering of a ban that complicates Federal response and hurts the economic recovery, at least for those who depend on rental income.

But, on August 3rd, Joe Biden decided to extend the moratorium through executive power even while admitting it was unconstitutional. He wants to put the blame on the Supreme Court and take blame away from the Democrats.

But the rule of law is clear. One can both feel sorry for those who will be evicted and also concurrently recognize the CDC really does not have the power to issue a moratorium on evictions without congressional legislation.

This is the item that concerned me. Is this what really happened? Turns out there’s more context that turns Erickson’s point into dust:

After White House legal advisers found he could not extend a national eviction moratorium, President Biden told Chief of Staff Ron Klain to seek the advice of Harvard law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe about whether an alternative legal basis could be devised for protecting struggling renters across the country, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The phone call between Klain and Tribe — held Sunday amid a national outcry over the expiry of the moratorium — set in motion a rapid reversal of the administration’s legal position that it could not extend the eviction ban. Tribe suggested to Klain and White House Counsel Dana Remus that the administration could impose a new and different moratorium, rather than try to extend the original ban in potential defiance of a warning from Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the person said. [WaPo]

I’m no lawyer, but I think Kavanaugh’s opinion does not apply. And so Erickson’s point implodes. But he lumbers onward, stating his thesis:

The left, however, does not care about the rule of law. They only used the phrase when Trump was President. Therein lies the problem.

The opposition is hypocritical! And off the rail he goes, understandably desperate to blame the left for the transgressions of the right:

For all the talk about the right disrespecting the rule of law and embracing authoritarianism, the right is only behaving as the left has long behaved. In fact, there is consistently more respect on the right for the rule of law than the left has had — including among the judicial class.

The bit about the judicial class is interesting, as even Trump-appointed (or -aligned) judges rejected, for the most part, the former President’s hysterical claims concerning the election. But are lawyers are part of the judicial class? If so, the actions of L. Lyn Wood, Sydney Powell, Rudy Guiliani, and a host of former and current Trump lawyers, and various members and officials of the Federalist Society certainly are counterexamples.

But, taken overall, that paragraph is another example of Erickson wanting to have it both ways – Oh, yeah, we do disrespect the rule of law, except when we don’t! For the forward, it’s really just a null argument designed to stir up anger and stop the reasoning process.

For Joe Biden to do something everyone knows is unconstitutional and for him to even go so far as to admit it and for the left to cheer really does give away the game. It was always about power, never actually about the rule of law.

And now you understand why so many on the right have been moving away from the rule of law and towards some level of authoritarianism. It didn’t happen in a vacuum but in response to the left’s behavior. It was the reaction to the left’s action.

Sorry, but no. From this independent vantage point, both sides push legal envelopes all the time – Bush did it, Obama did it, Trump did it, and so much legislation pushes envelopes as well. Here, Biden is clearly relying on legal advice from an eminent Constitutional scholar who opines that he can do what he did. This is clearly a refutation of Erickson’s point.

And I find it hard – no, impossible – to find some sort of lefty insurrection during my lifetime. There’d disappointment, grumbling, protests, self-righteous whining, but no insurrections.

Erickson’s just propagandizing here. It’s all reminiscent of the right wing emails I used to see so much of. And it’s an example of a growing trend in Republican circles: Blame the lefties for our sins! Here’s Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Minority whip, working this line of attack that is so reminiscent of the Trumpian habit of projecting his sins on his opponents. The various claims in the video have been debunked, of course.

¹ Yes, that is a bit of humor at the expense of Erickson and Fox News.

The consequences of the McGirt decision, which places the responsibility for much legal proceedings against Indians in Oklahoma under tribal authority, is evidently becoming a bit concerning for Oklahomans:

A year after losing the legal fight over the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation, the state of Oklahoma urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to overrule the McGirt decision and return criminal jurisdiction over Native Americans in eastern Oklahoma to state prosecutors and judges.

“Simply put, the fundamental sovereignty of an American State is at stake,” Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor told the high court in a brief filed Friday. [The Oklahoman]

Which is an interesting observation for a state-wide phenomenon, actually. This raises a red flag for me:

“The Supreme Court clearly did not intend for the decision to be read more broadly than the McGirt facts, but the Biden administration has distorted that ruling,” O’Connor said.

Which may or may not be true – but in a highly conservative state, issuing that sort of remark suggests this may be a political attack, rather than an honest legal observation. And the tribes may be thinking the same thing:

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., said O’Connor and Gov. Kevin Stitt were trying to undermine cooperation among tribes, the state and federal prosecutors in the wake of the McGirt decision.

“With today’s filing in Bosse v. Oklahoma, they have made clear this was never about protecting victims or stopping crime, but simply advancing an anti-Indian political agenda,” Hoskin said. “The governor has never attempted to cooperate with the tribes to protect all Oklahomans. It is perfectly clear that it has always been his intent to destroy Oklahoma’s reservations and the sovereignty of Oklahoma tribes, no matter what the cost might be.”

Ascertaining exactly what’s going on may require twenty years and the services of a disinterested historian, to be honest, because there’s a lot of emotion on both sides of the issue. I remain convinced this was a decision of immense importance, and it was decided properly. But will it be reversed? Time will tell.

This is a new one on me in the climate change arena:

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems. …

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world. [WaPo]

I hope they have it wrong. It’s a tough question to answer properly.

But we may all end up buying parkas if those currents do stop.

Charlie Warzel @ Galaxy Brain discussing how to communicate with the unvaccinated:

(I also want to note that I, too, get uncomfortable reading long profiles, complete with professional portraits of proud vaccine refusers. It feels like another attempt to show empathy toward a group of people who, sometimes gleefully, show a lack of disregard for others.)

A lack of disregard for others – if only!

From a suit filed in the Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas, in response to legislation passed by the Arkansas Legislature and signed by Governor Hutchinson banning the use of mask mandates in the face of the Covid Delta Variant’s rapid spread:

3. Given that Arkansas public schools will begin classes in approximately two weeks, Plaintiffs cannot afford to wait any longer to see if the executive and legislative branches of government will fulfill their duty to protect the people of Arkansas and the health and welfare of children who attend public schools. Knowing that many more children will get infected with COVID and that more will likely die if the ban on mask mandates is not lifted, Plaintiffs respectfully turn to the Arkansas judiciary for protection from an irrational act of legislative madness that threatens K-12 public school children with irreparable harm.

Bold mine. This is one way to reprimand elected officials in the absence of a convenient election to kick their crazed bums out of positions of responsibility.

I hope the newspapers of Arkansas take that quote and plaster it all over their front pages, because this bit of legislation, popular in certain states, is nutso, and as Governor Hutchinson (R-AR) noted [somewhere], such top-down directives go against Republican governmental tenets of local governance stays local.

Yes, yes, I know: a tenet of immense flexibility when a local governmental unit doesn’t toe the Republican line.

Meanwhile, a special session may be called by the Governor to amend the legislation. It’d be lovely to have the time to research the most obstreperous legislators for shared attributes: religious zealots, conspiracy nuts, what?

Rain!

Nature tried it a few weeks ago and here’s some more pics.

Employers have been bitching about the lack of workers lately, especially in the hospitality industry, and while I suspect a lot of it is simply workers sensibly saying I want something more meaningful and interesting, I have to wonder if part of the problem of the missing workers is … that they’re dead.

Governor and potential 2024 Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis (R-FL) may be harvesting the bitter fruit of tragedy. The tragedy is the jump in Covid cases that may be traceable to his policies, and here’s the harvest:

DeSantis is now underwater with 49% of voters; only 44% approve of his job performance.

The latest surge of COVID-19 might be catching up with Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A new poll from St. Pete Polls finds the Governor’s approval rating has sagged considerably, with more Floridians now saying they do not approve of the job DeSantis is doing than those who say they approve.

The poll, which was conducted Monday and Tuesday among 3,952 likely Florida voters through an automated phone polling system, also found DeSantis falling behind one Democratic rival for the 2022 gubernatorial election, trailing Democratic U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist. DeSantis has a slight lead on Democratic Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried in the poll.

The poll also shows Floridians are not in agreement with DeSantis when it comes to his opposition to mask mandates for school children. [Scott Powers, Florida Politics]

But here’s the funny thing: Will Republicans care?

After all, it’s all fake news, as DeSantis would have his base believe:

Despite a record number of COVID-19 patients at hospitals across the state and dire warnings from the Florida Hospital Association, Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed capacity concerns as news media “hysteria” and insisted “our hospitals are open for business.” His comments came Tuesday as people hospitalized with the coronavirus in Florida rose to an all-time high of 11,515, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [The Orlando Sentinel, via MaddowBlog]

But this Mayo Clinic set of maps suggests differently. They suggest Florida is leading the nation in Covid infections; this can be taken as a proxy for irresponsibility.

DeSantis may be running for reelection next year as well, and the polling data suggests Floridians are not entirely happy with a leadership team that prioritizes ignorant freedom over health and safety.

But does this apparent failure to perform really matter? If DeSantis wins the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 2024, I shall be unsurprised, because competency and experience is hardly a priority with the Republican base, at least not in the past. It’s all single issue ideology and, at least in some parts of country, the sanctification of the candidate by Trump, which is how DeSantis managed to get elected in 2018.

Will unforced errors such as these not change their minds? There’s some evidence that unnecessary deaths are bringing home to Republican voters the importance of competency and a link to reality, but I think this is only a small infringement on Republican territory.

Most Republicans inclined to respect reality are ex-Republicans now.

If DeSantis can’t make his lies stick, his future will depend on how devoted Republican voters are to single issue ideology, which I find a bit terrifying.

Remember Jake Ellzey (R-TX) defeating Susan Wright (R-TX) in a special election for the House of Representatives last week? Wright had the Trump endorsement, and Ellzey won easily. Now consider the primary for a special election last night in Ohio:

In the 15th Congressional District, a safely Republican seat around Columbus, energy industry lobbyist Mike Carey prevailed over a crowded field, boosted by former president Donald Trump’s endorsement. …

Trump’s endorsement of Carey, a personal friend of the former president’s adviser Corey Lewandowski, did not clear the field. Stivers endorsed and put campaign resources behind state Rep. Jeff LaRe, who emphasized his experience as a police officer, and Ohio Right to Life backed state Sen. Bob Peterson, who argued that his rivals aren’t as trustworthy on abortion. [WaPo]

This suggests the obvious: the search for bellwethers, when it comes to American politics, is a bit foolish. Politics is local, even for national figures such as Sanders, Biden, and Trump.

But these special elections and primaries do permit the plotting of maps. So far, we know the Texas District 6 appears to be waning in its support of the former President, while the Ohio 15th district appears to still be strong for him.

There was also a Democratic primary, in the same article:

Shontel Brown, a Democratic county councilor, dealt a devastating blow to the party’s liberal wing Tuesday night, prevailing over Nina Turner, a former co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, in the Ohio primary for a safe Democratic seat.

Perhaps devastating in the Ohio 11th District. Nationwide?

Show me more results.

Mark Sumner provides the latest chart on American energy generation:

He explains that the fall of the high pollution fuel King Coal has been absolutely epic. To my mind, it’s unfortunate that much of coal’s replacement energy has been natural gas, which also emits CO₂, but it’s at least a start. I’d have preferred to have seen nuclear take up the slack while renewables continue to improve.

Vangelis is still around, inspired by the Juno probe.

  take on the music here.

Steve Benen remarks on the problems of funding for future pandemic crises being cut from the various bills by the Senate, ending with:

The politics are admittedly tricky: it’s tough to lobby in support of funding for a future crisis that doesn’t yet exist, especially given the pressures to address pressing problems that many are addressing right now. But the future will thank the present if lawmakers do the right thing.

Uh, no.

If you’re a naive idealist about these things – a category I probably fall into – then you and I just have to point at defense spending in response. That is the quintessential funding for future crises, whether it’s prevention or addressing same.

If you’re more of the jaded, cynical type that believes defense spending is simply a matter of lobbying and corruption, then first defense spending must still be justified.

I think I’ll stick with being a naive idealist.

Contumelious:

: insolently abusive and humiliating [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “BLASPHEMY, LASCIVIOUS ACTS: STATE PUSHES TO REPEAL OLD LAWS,” 1420 WBSM [New Bedford]:

[Rep. Jay Livingstone’s] legislation would also lift a section of state law punishing anyone who “blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world.”

I wonder if this guy understands the situation:

Amid recent surging coronavirus cases in Florida, a top Republican National Committee official in the state has spread anti-vaccine rhetoric and misinformation, comparing the Biden administration’s vaccine efforts to Nazi-era “brown shirts,” and twice calling the vaccines “the mark of the beast,” comparable to a “false god.”

A review by CNN’s KFile found that Peter Feaman, a lawyer and RNC committeeman from Florida made the comments on his blog the “The Backhoe Chronicles,” which he publishes regularly in a private group on MeWe. The social media platform bills itself as the “anti-Facebook” app.

“The Biden brown shirts are beginning to show up at private homes questioning vaccine papers,” Feaman wrote on July 20, incorrectly implying government officials would be showing up at people’s homes to question their vaccination status, comparing them to the Nazi Party paramilitary wing.

…

In May, Feaman called Covid-19 vaccines a “mark of the beast” — a reference to a symbol from the biblical Book of Revelations showing allegiance to Satan — and called Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “diabolical” for encouraging vaccines. “Diabolical Michigan Governor Whiter wants her citizens to get the Mark of the Beast to participate in society,” Feaman wrote. [CNN/Politics]

This guy Feaman is preaching a behavior that will lead to sickness and death to those who hear and obey.

Other Republican doctrines have the potential to heavily arm these same people, as well as their potentially very angry relatives.

He could end up dead for his irrational preaching.

And that’s what it is. If we’re to trust our fellow citizens, who are scientists and study this sort of thing all their adult lives, it appears to be safe and effective to be vaccinated, at least so far. Feaman preaches distrust and disrespect.

If you’re a believer, remember this: the Divine, whatever it is, brought into being reality. Scientists study that reality, and are in that regard far more holy than mere pastors and prophets and lawyers like this guy – because they have implemented and try to improve verification procedures for those studies.

This guy just wants to retain his position of power and prestige, and he sees science as a threat because it has a claim on Truth that rivals and exceeds his.

I fear he may be endangering himself with his thirst for this power.