Unsightly Mental Blemishes

In the Los Angeles Times Erwin Chemerinsky of UC Berkeley School of Law and Burt Neuborne of New York University School of Law suggest a particularly inflammatory way to be rid of the Senate filibuster rule:

There is a clear next step in changing the Senate filibuster: Vice President Kamala Harris, as presiding officer of the Senate, can — and should — declare the current Senate filibuster rule unconstitutional. This would open the door for discussions on a new rule that would respect the minority without giving it an unconstitutional veto.

This is certainly true:

Wyoming with 580,000 inhabitants, elects the same number of senators as California, with its 40 million residents. A person in Wyoming thus has 65 times more voting power in the Senate than a person living in California. The current 60-vote filibuster rule makes this imbalance even worse.

Under the 60-vote rule, 41 senators representing about a third of the population can outweigh 59 senators representing two-thirds. This situation surely violates the principle of equal representation in voting — for example, the “one person, one vote” rule that the Supreme Court long ago applied to state legislative and congressional districts.

Although precision would have led me to change voting power to representation.

But the point remains: While one of the original intentions of the Senate was to give small states equal representation with large states, as Chemerinsky and Neuborne note, the 17th Amendment changed the selection of Senators from state legislators to the people, and that means that no longer are the States acting as entities, but the People are voting individually. The more populous a State, the less impact any particular vote has.

And with the filibuster in place, that diminution of representation simply becomes less and less democratic.

But having Harris simply declare it unconstitutional? Chemerinsky and Neuborne seem to think that this would happen:

The full Senate could seek to overrule Harris by majority vote. In that case, the senators would no longer be debating the filibuster as mere political policy, but about a profound constitutional question. Sen. Joe Manchin, and a Republican senator or two, might well care about ensuring that no state is deprived of “equal suffrage” under the Constitution.

But I wonder. Taking the filibuster away by executive fiat, even if similar things have happened in the past, could be used as a propaganda club by the Republican outrage machine to great effect, even among independents. The Republicans might even choose not to contest it, contenting themselves with weeping and wailing.

Knowing that in two years, they might, at least in their dreams, have control of the Senate – and know they’ll have incurred no political penalty for killing the filibuster.

Remember Sidney Powell, former Trump lawyer and the one who would release the Kraken upon Trump’s adversaries?

Now she’s being sued and her defense team’s strategy is … She was just kidding!

Sidney Powell argued Monday that she couldn’t be sued for defamation for repeatedly promoting false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged because “no reasonable person would” believe that her comments “were truly statements of fact.”

In the months after the election, the Texas-based attorney became one of the most public faces of a campaign to discredit President Joe Biden’s win. Vowing to “release the Kraken,” she pushed the lie that the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. In numerous TV and public appearances, as well as in court, Powell spread conspiracy theories that two voting equipment companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, were part of a Democrat-backed scheme to “steal” the election by rigging voting systems to flip votes for Trump to Biden, count ballots more than once, and fabricate votes for Biden.

Now facing billion-dollar lawsuits from both companies and having lost all of her court cases challenging the election, Powell is on the defensive. On Monday, her legal team filed a motion to dismiss Dominion’s $1.3 billion-lawsuit, or at least to move it from the federal district court in Washington, DC, to Texas. They argued that the election fraud narrative that Powell had spent months touting as grounds to undo the presidential election was “hyperbole” and political speech entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

Even if Powell’s statements were presentations of fact that could be proven as true or false, her lawyers wrote, “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.” [BuzzFeed News]

While everyone and their brother is laughing over this ludicrous defense, it’s worth noting this classic bit of farce is of a piece with Trump himself.

After all, she did pronounce her outré claims at official Trump Campaign press conferences, and she was taken seriously by a certain segment of the American electorate.

And now they’ve been, in essence, called fools.

This is more than reminiscent of the January 6th insurrectionists being written off as members of BLM or antifa, because people who’ve run out of usefulness are being shoveled under the bus, while Powell & Trump frantically cover their asses.

This isn’t just Trump, either. Falwell at Liberty University has been tossed aside. Republicans in states that voted Democratic in 2016 and 2018 were thrown away by Trump because they lived in the wrong State. If you’re a Republican who endorsed Biden, not only will Trump hate on you, so will the entire current Republican base.

This extreme private sector behavior is another reason that people who are running for elective seats, and have no training in the public sector, should be summarily ignored by voters. Applying a foreign moral system in the public sector is deeply unfair and unjust.

Powell is simply applying her moral system, acquired in the private sector from conservative sources, in the public sector. This general behavior should not be shocking.

With the advent and administration of three different vaccines for Covid-19, is our situation beginning to improve by leaps and bounds? Not really.

A party-ending curfew imposed after fights, gunfire, property destruction and dangerous stampedes broke out among huge crowds of people could extend through the end of Spring Break in Miami Beach.

Miami Beach commissioners voted unanimously Sunday to empower the city manager to extend the curfew in the South Beach entertainment district until at least April 12, effectively shutting down a spring break hot spot in one of the few states fully open during the pandemic. …

Very few people in the crowds were covering their faces with masks, as is required by a Miami Beach ordinance imposed in hopes of containing the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 33,000 people in Florida so far.

Look for a surge to start in the next couple of weeks. But, more importantly, the entire idea that the premature ending of the mask mandate in Florida should result in a riot speaks to the immaturity and foolishness of all those participating in that riot. [The Baltimore Sun]

And then, on the other end of the United States both figuratively and literally, is Idaho:

The Idaho Legislature voted Friday to shut down for several weeks due to an outbreak of Covid-19.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate made the move to recess until April 6 with significant unfinished business, including setting budgets and pushing through a huge income tax cut.

At least six of the 70 House members tested positive for the illness in the last week, and there are fears a highly contagious variant of Covid-19 is in the Statehouse.

“The House has had several positive tests, so it is probably prudent that the House take a step back for a couple weeks until things calm down and it’s not hot around here for Covid,” House Majority Leader Mike Moyle said before the votes.  [NBC News]

No, there was no mask mandate in the Idaho Statehouse. And …

“I think maybe when they come back, maybe it will be different,” [Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke] said. “But I have no regrets on the safety protocols here to this point.”

I sincerely hope he doesn’t have to regret the death of a member or two.

This all really speaks to the difficulties of getting rid of Covid-19 ahead of us. The public health advice has been clear and uncontestable. The longer we don’t get it under control, the greater the likelihood of a mutation developing which would permit it to evade the vaccine.

Or even make it far more deadly.

Meanwhile, here’s Kevin Drum’s latest set of Covid-19 charts for  your viewing pleasure:

Rush Limbaugh passed away a few weeks ago, and the radio legend has now been replaced.

By Erick Erickson, a name long-time readers of this blog will recognize.

Since Erickson’s announcement of his ascendance to Limbaugh’ seat at WSB in Atlanta, I had not seen a missive from him – unsurprising, since he’s also holding down another radio gig.

But this morning came a sadly confused and weasel worded mail, which is too bad because his second item, after a misguided attack on transgender person Elliot Page, is actually worth taking a peek at:

60 Minutes is going to cover people who “detransition,” that is they decide to revert back to their natural sex. Progressives are outraged that 60 Minutes would dare even touch the subject and the pre-spin is on that, for example, the only people who revert back are those who lack support.

The media illiteracy around trans folks is nothing short of dangerous.

I hope the folks at @60Minutes know there’s a human toll to their irresponsibility.

Each and every person affiliated with selecting THIS narrative for airtime should be held accountable. https://t.co/CtsGRH366u

— pfpicardi (@pfpicardi) March 20, 2021

“Each and every person affiliated with selecting THIS narrative for airtime should be held accountable,” says the CCO of Teen Vogue, whose publication just ditched its would-be new editor for tweets made years ago and repeatedly apologized for. The 60 Minutes report has not even aired yet.

The reaction cited is interesting, as I cannot imagine anyone who doesn’t make mistakes, even if they publicly deny it. So some folks thought they were transgender and weren’t – why is this a problem for the transgender community?

Or is it? Sadly, I have to wonder if this is isolated outrage or systemic outrage, because the conservatives have given me precious little reason to trust their devotion to accuracy and context. If this is isolated, then it’s people who, as a friend has repeatedly put it over the years on other topics, think their shit don’t stink.

If this is systemic, then that community is definitely immature. It might even be broken, although I doubt it.

But Erickson doesn’t go down the path of maturity or that sort of thing, because he’s taking up the Limbaugh club of bashing mainstream media. That is one of the paths to profitability, and Limbaugh was all about the money, as he admitted himself. So, instead, Erickson states:

A man killed multiple workers as Asian themed spas, which tend to serve as houses of prostitution, though I don’t know if these particular ones were engaged in that. He believed they were and, dealing with an addiction to pornography and sex, decided to gun them down then head to Florida to take out those associated with pornography.

The media, of course, jumped in the moment the news hit and, before his motives were revealed, immediately declared it a hate crime and white supremacy.

First, in the finest Limbaugh fashion, he trashes the spas as brothels without bothering to cite studies, while pretending not to by saying he doesn’t know about these. Then he claims the mainstream media made shit up.

Sadly for him, the first report I read on this tragic incident, which was from CNN, cited the alleged murderer’s purported motive of being a sex addict. Quite sensibly, give the heritage of most of the victims and that of the aggressor, they also mentioned the possibility of this being a hate crime.

Nor does Erickson explore the utter inadequacy of the perpetrator’s explanation (I’d be more open to a claim of his victims being lizard people, and then we could just put him away somewhere), nor the goofy police spokesman who embarrassed himself. No, Erickson is busy fulfilling the Limbaugh mandate. He even isn’t sensible enough to not take an alleged murderer’s word, instead going with this:

One thing white supremacists are actually pretty forthright about is their white supremacy. When ISIS takes credit for an attack, one can be pretty sure ISIS is involved. When white supremacists attack, they tend to be very open about their desires for a race war or racial purity.

First, the wave of the distracting hand – ISIS, which has nothing to do with this, but does stir up the emotions – and then When white supremacists attack, they tend to be very open about their desires for a race war or racial purity.

Oh, really? How can we know this? We take their word for it? And assume those murderers that don’t proclaim it are not … white supremacists?

Talk fast and the rubes won’t notice the holes in your logic, Erickson.

And thus we get to this:

The rest of us in society are forced to guard our words lest we call someone by their name and we aren’t allowed to speak plain truths about transgenderism. Social ills are not crime, vandalism, illegal aliens flooding the border, etc. The social ills are racism, transphobia, xenophobia, and whiteness. The woke mob will come for us and the woke mob has the Fortune 500 in its corner.

He may be right. There may be an autocratic woke mob out to rule the US. Or at least strongly influence it … just like Erickson.

Butt, in the end, if Erickson’s “woke mob” does exist, it will eventually collapse of its own contradictions. Just as has Erickson’s own conservative movement.

Yes, already. We might argue whether it’s completely collapsed or in the process, but that’s what we’re seeing. Erickson’s acknowledged it himself, in his condemnation of the January 6th Insurrectionists, his puzzlement over President Trump’s campaign tactics, his disgust at the production and consumption of lies by his fellow conservatives, etc. Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps him going is his anti-abortion position and his belief in a God who aligns so closely to his own positions.

But the woke mob will have similar problems. For example, the assertion that a transgender person, say, a man transitioning to a woman, is now a woman in all senses of the word, including athletics, which has engendered (hah!) quite a lot of controversy. I’ve seen that assertion by woke academics, although I didn’t keep those links around, darn it. Those assertions will, I think, founder on the rocks of reality, in particular rocks like Dr. Renee Richards, one of the earliest of the transgender folks:

Despite all this, Richards has expressed ambivalence about her legacy. She continues to take pride in being “the first one who stood up for the rights of transsexuals.” But she also mused, “Maybe in the last analysis, maybe not even I should have been allowed to play on the women’s tour. Maybe I should have knuckled under and said, ‘That’s one thing I can’t have as my newfound right in being a woman.’ I think transsexuals have every right to play, but maybe not at the professional level, because it’s not a level playing field.” She opposes the International Olympic Committee’s ruling in 2004 that transgender people can compete after they’ve had surgery and two years of hormonal therapy.

The science of distinguishing men from women in sports remains unsettled. And Richards has come to believe that her past as a man did provide her advantages over competitors. “Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I’d had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I’ve reconsidered my opinion.” She adds, “There is one thing that a transsexual woman unfortunately cannot expect to be allowed to do, and that is to play professional sports in her chosen field. She can get married, live as woman, do all of those other things, and no one should ever be allowed to take them away from her. But this limitation—that’s just life. I know because I lived it.” [Slate]

I expect the assertion that a transitioned person should be considered the equivalent in athletics of their chosen gender is going to wither and die; the howls of protest from the ideologues will be in inverse correlation to the strength of their critical connection to reality. If those screams become deafening, the whole movement might collapse.

And how that controversy should be resolved is not entirely clear to me. Two more competitive classifications? Get rid of gender-based classifications entirely? Think about how boxing and wrestling have weight classes.

But that’s off track. Erickson seems to be settling into Limbaugh’s shoes, keeping the conservatives stirred up and hating the mainstream media, reminding them that Change is bad! … even if it’s harmless and will help the majority of people engaging in it. Strip a bit of context here, a little white lie there, surely God won’t mind.

Right?

Legerdemain:

• skilful hiding of the truth in order to trick people:
  The survey suggests nearly half the electorate believes the president won through electoral legerdemain.
• skilful tricks done as part of a performance:
  There are traditional acts of legerdemain with bright scarves and floating balls [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “When LBJ and Hubert Humphrey Teamed Up to Break a Talking Filibuster,” James Traub, Politico Magazine:

The Capitol Hill reporter William White, a connoisseur of parliamentary legerdemain, once described the Senate as “the South’s unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg.” Southern Democrats mastered the fine arts of legislative warfare and brought them to perfection in the face of northern efforts to end the feudal condition of Black people.

Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, the man who revealed the corruption in the then-President’s call to the Ukrainian President, has the problem with the American free press precisely right:

Nevertheless, there are ways to dismantle the right-wing ecosystem of disinformation, an ecosystem that does not begin with insurrection but with more mundane lies. Like the many political elites driving insurrection to advance their political aims, the right-wing media is also motivated by a bottom-line calculation: viewers, market share and advertising dollars. Similar to the yellow journalism that flourished in the late 19th century, the right-wing media today is driven by the promise of profit. So why not hold the media accountable for the heinous insurrection where it hurts them most? By design, defamation law makes intentional, malicious lying an expensive habit, but this works only if people are willing to bring civil cases against the peddlers of disinformation.

When money is the goal and it can be obtained directly from viewers, the strategy is three-fold:

1. Convince the audience the mainstream media is selling false news;
2. Train the audience to accept news that plays to their preconceptions;
3. Feed them that news without regard to accuracy or context.

A long time ago, I told my fencing coach that I was a member of the Instant Gratification Generation, and, related to that, is the Crazy Lazy Generation, the Boomers, mostly, who don’t think they should be considering the possibility that they are wrong in their expectations. This refusal to accept that they can be wrong, as reinforced by certain religious leaders and, based on the Mueller Report, national adversaries who benefit from a divided and polarized American polity, leads to a group certain the news is out to lie to them.

But it can also lead to disaster for the media that chooses to go down that path, as Vindman points out:

Accountability of the media is required, lest they sow the seeds of future insurrection. It is clear that both the political enablers and the right-wing media are now trapped in a vicious cycle in which their followers demand that their enablers dole out more outrageous lies. As historian Timothy Snyder noted in “The American Abyss,” the accumulation of little lies has manifested the Big Lie, and the right-wing media continues to feed the beast they helped create.

Keeping all the lies straight can be a nightmare, and as the semi-reasonable folks realized they’ve been misled, it leaves the cranks and crackpots, who’d rather come up with fantasies insane rather than entertain the possibility of being wrong. Much like the endpoint of RINOing the Republicans, this evolutionary pressure produces a Republican Party more and more pure in its belief that the mainstream media simply lies to them.

And I fear retiring Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) is far too late in executing his duties to reverse the flow:

“We don’t need to try and explain away or come up with alternative versions. We all saw what happened,” Blunt told NBC’s “Meet the Press” of January 6, when a mob of former President Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election, clashed with law enforcement, ransacked congressional offices and threatened the lives of then-Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers.

Calling January 6 “a terrible day for America,” the Missouri Republican said, “I think it was absolutely unacceptable and we can’t let that kind of thing be repeated again in our country.” [CNN/Politics]

That time passed years ago.

“The monster knew some great jokes, I gotta say!” Howard said. “Too bad I broke her arm when I started laughing.”

The Unnamable (1988) is a bloody rendering of an H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name, which mostly doesn’t rise above its schlock origins. Two characters, the scholar Carter and the clownish Howard, are meant to elevate the movie above its mundane horror trappings, but the actors are not strong enough to get there – or do not get the chance with the director.

No matter: an ancient horror trapped in an old house, hormone-driven college students using it as a place to makeout, with Hell directly below – what could go wrong?

Plenty, at least to – no, not in, but to – this story. And, no, I did NOT enjoy yelling at the TV STOP WALKING BACKWARDS!

As my Arts Editor commented, this was a road-kill story. You want to look away, and yet you can’t. What could they possibly do next –

Superb lyrebirds are some of the most accomplished mimics in the animal kingdom. In particular, they can imitate the sounds of a mobbing flock, a heterogenuous collection of birds responding to a predator by flying at it. This occurs at least during courtship and copulation; perhaps it also occurs at other times.

Why?

[Anastasia Dalziell of Cornell University] thinks the males aimed to scare the females into staying and mating. While male birds are known for using songs to attract a mate, this suggests male lyrebirds can also use them to deceive. [“Male lyrebirds imitate a flock of birds to scare females into mating,” Priti Parikh, NewScientist (6 March 2021)]

Here is a video of the observations. Note that the sounds of wing beats are actually also generated by these birds.

Here is the paper in Current Biology. by Dalziell, Maisey, Magrath, and Welbergen.

And I must say, the invaders from space movie makers missed a bet when they didn’t feature male lyrebirds as the invading critters. Eeeek!

Co-optation:

Family reunion photoshoot, everyone!

Space aliens have landed and, using projection, look like humans – but their shadows are of giant cockroaches. Nice, budget saving touch, that.

They want peace, much like the Soviets wanted peace – strictly on their own terms.

But they have one big problem.

Godzilla.

“Mr. Gigan, is it true you have rockets up your ass?”

And thus is the plot of Godzilla vs Gigan (1972, aka Godzilla on Monster Island [American]), the story of how a bunch of cartoonish^[1] Japanese characters aid Godzilla as Godzilla and his^[2] trusty sidekick, Anguirus^[3], upon sensing the broadcasts of the space aliens, come to investigate. But waiting for them are the space monsters King Ghidorah, he of the snaky three heads and lightning breath, and the eponymous Gigan, a Cyclopean plastic critter with a buzzsaw sense of humor.

And then there’s the space aliens’ secret weapon, lurking in plain site.

Yay, there’s a plot! Since the space aliens’ planet has come to the end of its natural life cycle, the space aliens have a reason to desire Earth and aren’t incomprehensibly evil, just a trifle provincial and randomly vicious. That makes this plot better – slightly – than a lot of members of the genre.

But the space monsters, when traveling in space, were absolutely the pits. Not quite as bad as the monster in the badly sewn costume which is trapped in a cave in some other movie of which I refuse to remember the title. That was the worst – but our plastic space going models were their own kind of awful. In fact, there’s not much to like in the special effects department – the models are obviously models, and when stepped on by an inconsiderate monster, they crumble just like models would, with plastic inserts popping out in a most unrealistic fashion. The explosions and fires are well-done, true, but repetitive.

But the real highlight is Godzilla and Anguirus talking. Yes, talking.

Just like cartoon strips, with little conversation balloons.

That’s unique in my experience of the genre.

And it’s funny in that dreadful sort of way you’re imagining.

So it was nice to have a plot, but the whole thing is painfully ridiculous.

¹ There’s a pun here, but you’ll have to see the movie to understand it. Perhaps you should just let it pass.

² Does gender apply to Godzilla? Or does that link prove too frightening in connection to Godzilla?

³ Or, as my Arts Editor remarked, The pointy footstool!.

By Source, Fair use, Link

The case against Proud Boy Ethan Nordean includes this gem of a quote:

34. On November 27, 2020, NORDEAN posted on social media “We tried playing nice and by the rules, now you will deal with the monster you created. The spirit of 1776 has resurfaced and has created groups like the Proudboys and we will not be extinguished. We will grow like the flame that fuels us and spread like love that guides us. We are unstoppable, unrelenting and now … unforgiving. Good luck to all you traitors of this country we so deeply love … you’re going to need it.”

We tried playing … by the rules. That’s the tipping point, the point where this guy is admitting that he needs power above any loyalty to the United States and how it works. He didn’t win, and therefore he’ll go around rioting and killing people.

I’ll tell you, folks, this is the Revolution of the Five Year Olds.

Perhaps event hotter than here in the United States.

This is Israel’s Habima Square, and is a statue of a naked Benjamin Netanyahu, current Prime Minister. Mazal Mualem of AL-Monitor reports:

Six days before Israel’s March 23 elections, someone placed a statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square. The statue was of a naked, squatting prime minister hiding behind a wall.

This protest display bears a resemblance to the Gollum figure from the iconic “The Lord of the Rings” films and books. Gollum was a monstrous character, split into two different personages. But the Netanyahu figure also hints at another classic situation: “The Emperor has no clothes.”

Two points:

Right-wing media personality Shimon Riklin, also a strong supporter of Netanyahu, tweeted: “This is not art, it is trash! Trash meant to humiliate all of us. The statue still sits there. Of course, no one removed it. And that’s even a good thing. Because now, everyone will see and wake up to vote against those that hate him so much.”

And that is exactly the question: Do these displays ridiculing Netanyahu’s image manage to bring down his popularity? Or perhaps the opposite is true?

Indeed. Remember the humiliating statue of a naked President Trump? Yeah, I can barely remember it myself, and I’ll refrain from a reprint in view of my Art Editor’s aesthetic sensibility, but that faintness in my memory speaks to the relative ineffectuality of simply humiliating political foes. Its potential for bringing out Netanyahu’s supporters to the polls for the imminent election appears to be high. Perhaps it’ll rally the anti-Netanyahu vote. Or perhaps it won’t, if local mores leave citizens more offended that it exists than of the reminder of Netanyahu’s failures.

In that sense, this is the work of an amateur, especially for the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history. But there is also this problematic observation:

Halit Oliamperl, a producer and creator of cultural events who lives close to Habima Square, explained to the media, “This is kicking-and-screaming art. The resemblance of the statue to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings clearly symbolizes a ruler who has decayed. Also, over the years, there are arguments whether he is an evil creature or a creature to which bad things have happened. So when people present Netanyahu in the form of this Gollum, it really and truly symbolizes this decay.”

Or just a man who made self-interested choices, who could not resist temptation. There is no doubt he’s a man of immense ego, and that in itself should be a factor in choosing Members of the Knesset. And it’s worth noting that’s Netanyahu’s main selling point – his longevity – rather than any immense diplomatic achievements. I’d say late prime minister Menachem Begin will remain more admired by historians than Netanyahu.

The drama of adding drama to the Senate, either by eliminating the filibuster and forcing the Republicans to beg centrist Democrats to defect, or by returning the filibuster to something like its original form, as in taking the floor and talking their heads off, has not yet come to its climax. President Biden has joined Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) in calling for a return to the old filibuster ways, but some folks, such as John Bresnahan, who are intent on only seeing the task directly in front of them think, this is foolishness:

Thereby stopping Senate business. Chris Cillizza elaborates.

But a talking filibuster is just window dressing on the broader problem of the lack of bipartisanship in the Senate. It won’t solve the fundamental problem — and it could, actually, block up the chamber’s work even more. …

If the talking filibuster was reinstated, so too would be the rule that no other Senate business — judicial confirmations, Cabinet confirmations etc. — could be conducted while the chamber was being held by someone in the process of filibustering. Meaning that for as long as the filibuster could go, the Senate would be at a complete legislative stop. Nothing could or would get done.

Which then raises this question: How long could a filibuster go?

While the common perception of the filibuster is a lone senator holding the floor for as long as they (and their bladder) can hold out, it’s actually not in the Senate rules that only one senator can speak during a filibuster. According to a 2017 Congressional Research Service report on Rule 19, which governs filibusters:

“Rule XIX places no limit on the length of individual speeches or the number of Senators who may speak on a pending question. It does, however, tend to limit the possibility of extended debate by its provision that ‘no Senator shall speak more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day without leave of the Senate, which shall be determined without debate.’ This provision, commonly called the two-speech rule, limits each Senator to making two speeches per day, however long each speech may be, on each debatable question the Senate considers. A Senator who has made two speeches on a single question becomes ineligible to be recognized for another speech on the same question on the same day.”

I take this less seriously than I might, because I think the Democratic leadership has more on its mind that individual victories. The Republican leadership and base has, through its behavior before and during the Insurrection, and even since, shown that it is no longer qualified to govern a liberal democracy – and doesn’t want to. They even say it, given their violent reaction to House H.R. 1, a bill to make it easier for voters to, you know, vote. It’s noteworthy that it’s, once again, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) who thinks so little of the bill. The Democratic recognition of the depravity of the Republican Party means they are no longer treating this as a series of individual contests, but a war requiring strategy.

That strategy includes the filibuster reform, which forces the Republicans on to the national stage in an environment far different than that of 1972, when the silent filibuster was implemented. Fast delivery of news, 24 hour coverage of a filibuster, reporters asking Republicans why they support a particular filibuster…

The context has changed, and I don’t think Cillizza really is taking this into account.

The potential elimination or reformation of the filibuster has made oneAssssssssss Senator very upset, and seeing as that is Senator McConnell (R-KY), the GOP leader, that may be a very good thing indeed. While his speech has been ridiculed by both politicians and comedians, it’s worth looking at it again just to reinforce his terror at the thought of losing his biggest weapon:

“Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” he said. “Even the most basic aspects of our colleagues’ agenda, the most mundane tasks of the Biden presidency would actually be harder, not easier for Democrats in a post-nuclear Senate. … We will use every other rule to make tens of millions of Americans voices heard.”

“It would not open up an express line for the Biden presidency to speed into the history books,” he added. “The Senate would be more like 100-car pileup — nothing moving.” [WaPo]

As numerous observers have pointed out, And how is that different from the status quo?

Without the silent filibuster, he either has to put up or shut up. If the filibuster is returned to talking form, with its attendant risks that I detailed in my previous post, he has to take the risk of the talking filibuster. If it’s completely eliminated then he’s forced to try to persuade a Democrat to his cause, and that’s not easy. Horse trading may or may not be in his quiver, either, as McConnell’s stated goal is to not permit any Democratic victories.

Reform or elimination are both bad for McConnell, and he’s facing a Democratic Party that has no patience for Republican depravity. This isn’t just about getting legislation passed, it’s about destroying the heart of the Republican Party, and while that won’t be accomplished by changing filibuster rules, it can deal a lot of damage to the Republicans’ base.

Catherine Rampell thinks the Democrats are walking into a trap when it comes to paying for the upcoming infrastructure package:

Heads I win, tails you lose. That is Republicans’ ominous warning to Democrats working to design and (to their credit!) actually pay for an infrastructure bill.

“I think the Trojan horse will be called infrastructure, but inside the Trojan horse will be all the tax increases,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week. “They want to raise taxes across the board.”

For those struggling to decode these comments, here’s the trap McConnell is laying.

Any major upgrade of America’s roads, bridges, broadband network, water systems and other infrastructure will be expensive. That’s part of the reason “Infrastructure Week,” though much hyped in recent years, still hasn’t happened, despite the obvious need for more infrastructure investment and the popularity of such proposals. If Democrats try to undertake this expensive project without paying for it, Republicans will no doubt accuse them of running up the debt and thereby stoking out-of-control inflation. [WaPo]

But I don’t think Rampell, nor the Republicans, have yet reckoned with the mastery that President Biden is beginning to evidence in how he approaches managing the legislative process, and, to a large degree, it’s about the narrative presented to the public.

In this case, it’s not in the least difficult to present the poor circumstances of America’s infrastructure as a result of Republican folly. After all, since 2000 the Republicans have held one or both houses of Congress for most of that time, and yet have they even presented a piece of legislation posing as an infrastructure bill? No.

And that can be used against them in public messaging.

The I-35W Bridge collapse of 2007. I live nearby, so it’s real, not some lefty fake news.

Next, the case for public infrastructure can be easily made. We’ve seen bridges fall down, sewer systems fail, and in general, according to the civil engineers, we’re in a continual state of pasting bandages over gaping wounds. Any personal experience with bad infrastructure just makes it easier.

And this is a hindrance to the free market.

Much like President Clinton, the Democrats must, and I’m sure will, take over what the Republicans consider to be their own territory: commerce and its protection. Commerce, the free market, capitalism, call it what you will, and despite the natterings of the libertarians, cannot exist without the underpinning provided by the State, whether it be roads, sewage systems, licensing, defense, or regulation. By emphasizing the importance of the infrastructure to the private sector, they take away the Republicans’ finger-cramping grasp on private industry – a grasp that has been weakening in the last four years.

Finally, the Democrats would be wise to raise taxes, temporarily, on virtually everyone and all the corporations, and they should do so using the theme of You use it, so you should pay for it. This is the theme of personal responsibility, once a great favorite of Republicans – at least publicly – but by taking it into Democratic hands, Democrats remind the voters that the Republicans have not been great advocates of responsibility in decades, and they reassure the voters that it is something that they take seriously as they continue to clean up the mess left by the irresponsible Republicans.

Again. Don’t forget the Great Recession.

I think Rampell is one of the Biden doubters who still sees the Republicans as a great force, and not the disorganized, backbiting pack of money-grubbers and power-mongers that they’ve become. Operating as a team is near-impossible for such, and I expect the Democrats, under the leadership of Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi, will craft messages to an American public for whom the Republican disasters of the Great Recession, the Pandemic, the 2017 Tax Reform Bill, the Trump Administration, and the thoroughly revolting 2021 Insurrection and its aftermath, paradoxically enhanced as it has been by the activities of Senator Johnson (R-WI) and Representative Gohmert (R-TX) and their fellow travelers, remain fresh in their minds, and the Democratic messages will resonate to a degree shocking to the current third- and fourth- rate Republican leaders.

Look for more egg on Republicans’ faces.

In case you’re looking to expand your vocabulary in line with the expansion of genders happening these days, here’s the Dude at Dude Asks with a non-exhaustive list. One example:

95. Oneirogender: coined by anonymous, “being agender, but having recurring fantasies or daydreams of being a certain gender without the dysphoria or desire to actually be that gender day-to-day”.

But that’s not all! There’s a bunch of suffixes^[1] as well:

6. Aliqua– : not normally feeling attraction, but feeling it on occasion under specific circumstances

Well. I do recognize Asexual, specifically from a Spider Robinson novel. But that’s about it.

I think I’ll decline memorizing the list.

¹ I’ll pass up – regretfully – the opportunity to make a joke out of replacing suffixes with suffices.

Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX), through his actions rather than his words, puts his name into contention:

TRUMP HILL ALLIES TRY TO SCRUB MEMORY OF JAN. 6 — Call this what it is: totally bonkers and extremely dangerous. But our Mel Zanona this afternoon scooped that some Donald Trump allies are trying to scrub references to the insurrection in a resolution to give congressional gold medals to U.S. Capitol Police officers who put their lives on the line that day.

The House is supposed to be voting on the resolution, like, yesterday. And you would think it’d be noncontroversial. But per Mel, Rep. LOUIE GOHMERT (R-Texas) is circulating a competing resolution this morning that takes out a reference to what happened on Jan. 6.

It also appears to downplay the sacrifice of Officers Brian Sicknick and Jeffrey Smith, merely stating that they “passed in January 2021.” Sicknick died in the insurrection, and Smith died by suicide after he struggled with what happened that day.

It’s just the latest effort by some of Trump’s most hardcore backers to rewrite history. It comes after Huddle this morning scooped that some Republicans may vote against this resolution honoring USCP because the bill refers to the Capitol as “the temple of our American Democracy” and calls the Jan. 6 attackers as “a mob of insurrectionists.” [Politico Playbook PM]

Which would have opened the question

Why are we handing out these medals anyways?

Fortunately, Gohmert, being grossly incompetent in the fine art of politics, lacked enough allies to even make a splash out of it. Although it does lead me to wonder what Gohmert thinks he’s doing:

• Securing reelection? Are there that many Gohmert constituents who are convinced, beyond all reason, that the Presidential election was stolen, rather that lost by chronic Trumpian incompetence?
• Assuring his spot in Heaven since God, flouted by Biden and the American people, is pissed off?
• Dementia?
• Or just Landgrebian-magnitude loyalty?

Ah, that is a question to be enjoyed in front of a fireplace, along with some cheese and wine, now isn’t it?

More than a year ago the SDFLA blog (dedicated to the affairs of the Federal District of South Florida) had a piece on a juror who didn’t rely on their own judgment when it came time for deliberations – they asked the Divine and accepted its guidance.

The juror was dismissed, the defendant convicted, and one of the judges is unhappy:

Judge William Pryor dissents and says the conviction should be reversed:

Do each of you solemnly swear that you will well and truly try the case now before this court and render a true verdict, according to the law, evidence, and instructions of this court, so help you God?

Every juror who was empaneled in Corrine Brown’s criminal trial swore this oath. One of them was dismissed because he apparently meant it. By approving his dismissal, the majority erodes the “tough legal standard” governing the removal of deliberating jurors and imperils the sanctity of the right to trial by jury. United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d 1286, 1302 (11th Cir. 2001) (requiring that juror misconduct be proven “beyond reasonable doubt” before dismissing a deliberating juror). And it does so in an especially troubling manner: after admitting that “one reasonable construction” of the record supports the view that this juror rendered proper service, it holds that the district court’s adverse reaction to the way this juror talked about God nevertheless proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the juror engaged in misconduct. Majority Op. at 29–31 (emphasis added). …

… the suspect juror confirmed that, near the start of deliberations, he had said something to the effect of “the Holy Spirit told me that Corrine Brown was not guilty on all charges.”

There’s more, but it’s at some length and is a little involved, so I won’t quote it here.

But I don’t think Judge Pryor is at all convincing. It’s not so much the arguments he employs, which attempt to mitigate the statements of the juror, as it is his evasion of the philosophy behind using a jury.

Juries are an implicit acknowledgment that, at the best of times, reality can be a difficult thing to comprehend; in a possibly criminal situation, the judgments of some number of jurors, ideally unprejudiced as to the facts of the case, while informed as to the law thought to be applicable, are thought necessary to permit a reasonable chance at achieving justice, and escape the corruption of the highest and the passions of the mob.

This juror, who said they were relying on the “Holy Spirit,” has, in my opinion, betrayed their oath to apply best judgment as to the facts and the law of the case. Rather than use the public knowledge applicable to the case, also known as the facts as presented by the prosecution and, optionally, contested by the defense, to find a verdict, this juror has relied on private knowledge. This is the intuition of unknowable reliability possibly delivered by a supernatural entity, or more likely of a less exalted source, ranging from random neurons firing to concealed inclinations to, perhaps, another supernatural entity of less favorable mien ensorceling the person.

The difference between public and private knowledge is pivotal. In the face of a tangible world of uncertain origin and a supposed spiritual world which delivers nothing in the way of objective evidence, much less messages, the search of justice is enhanced by human jurors who, by the employ of their rational faculties, attempt to make sense and apply justice to situations of sometimes uncertain nature.

To disagree with the dismissal of a juror who has abandoned their rational faculties is to abandon the entire enterprise of rational inquiry.

The dismissal of our Divine-bound juror is justified.

Decimated:

1. : to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
   decimate a regiment
2. : to exact a tax of 10 percent from
   poor as a decimated Cavalier
   — John Dryden
3. a: to reduce drastically especially in number
   cholera decimated the population
   Kamieniecki’s return comes at a crucial time for a pitching staff that has been decimated by injuries.
   — Jason Diamos
   b: to cause great destruction or harm to
   firebombs decimated the city
   an industry decimated by recession [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Christian Tourist Attractions Are Struggling (Even Outside the Pandemic),” Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist:

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find an attraction that’s doing well (even outside the pandemic). Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum may be the most successful — mostly because of all the money that’s been poured into them — but as we’ve documented on this site, Ark Encounter’s publicly available attendance numbers aren’t terrific… and that’s before the pandemic decimated the place. My favorite line in the piece is the one where Answers in Genesis says the publicly reported attendance numbers on my website don’t tell the full story, but given the chance to prove me wrong, they “declined to provide actual attendance figures.”

My Arts Editor hates, I think, definition #3. It’s so less precise than 1 or 2. And I’ve been hearing various forms of decimate a lot lately, much in line with definition #3. It’s a bit grating.

I see the science journal Current Biology published a paper a few years ago on a subject that was treated years before by … the Minnesota Fringe Festival. First, the paper:

Mesozoic sauropods, like many modern herbivores, are likely to have hosted microbial methanogenic symbionts for the fermentative digestion of their plant food [1]. Today methane from livestock is a significant component of the global methane budget [2]. Sauropod methane emission would probably also have been considerable. Here, we use a simple quantitative approach to estimate the magnitude of such methane production and show that the production of the ‘greenhouse’ gas methane by sauropods could have been an important factor in warm Mesozoic climates. [“Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth? ” Wilkinson, Nisbet, and Ruxton, Current Biology, Vol 22 No 9]

In other words, dinosaur burps and farts may have brought about climate change back in the Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago).

And what about the Fringe? I recall, many years ago, attending a show called Fartosaurus Rex, involving a Tyrannosaurus Rex realizing the injustice of killing and eating herbivorous dinosaurs, pledging to go vegetarian, and the resultant gas raising local temperatures, thus destroying the dinosaurs of the time.

Yep. No kidding. The moral lesson was a trifle muddled. Maybe it had something to do with the consequences of meddling with natural law.

Someone even interviewed the lead character:

It was all a bit much. But my Arts Editor did like the talking butte.

Mariculture:

Mariculture is the farming of marine organisms for food and other products such as pharmaceuticals, food additives, jewelry (e.g., cultured pearls), nutraceuticals, and cosmetics, either in the natural marine environment, or in land- or sea-based enclosures, such as cages, ponds, or raceways. [ScienceDirect quoting Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences]

Noted in “Is there any type of fish you can actually eat sustainably?” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (13 February 2021, paywall):

Aquaculture is also considered in the Aichi targets, which say that by 2020 it should be “managed sustainably, ensuring conservation of biodiversity”. Unsurprisingly, the target wasn’t met. Although most artisanal freshwater aquaculture is sustainable, sea-based aquaculture – called mariculture – isn’t. According to the latest assessment of these targets, it is responsible for “large-scale loss and destruction of coastal wetlands (especially mangroves), and pollution of soil and water”.

This guy is mentally tallying the number of MedEvac helicopters he’ll be needing today.

If you’re a marathoner and haven’t heard of the Barkley Marathons, then shame on you and here’s the documentary for you: The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (2014). This fascinating look at people who think even preparation for a race should be difficult, these charmers torturing themselves for nothing more than bragging rights, and the chance to push one’s self right over the brink into the chasm of hell, held a peculiar fascination for us. My Arts Editor, having been previously married to a marathoner, was able to lend some useful knowledge as we watched, but this is primarily about the stories of the people who venture into briar patches and under a prison while looking for books from which to tear pages.

Sounds odd? Well, if you like odd, you’ll like this.

They can call it ‘cancel culture’ all they want, but to me this is consequences for bad behavior:

Freshman Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat, has begun turning to an unusual source when trying to decide whether he wants to work with a Republican he thinks makes a good point during committee hearings: Google.

The Massachusetts lawmaker says he knows his constituents want him to work across the aisle, but he’s drawing “a sharp red line” at working with Republicans who voted not to certify the Electoral College results as part of then-President Donald Trump’s failed bid to overturn his election defeat.

If a quick search produces evidence that one of his Republican colleagues refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden’s win, he said, “I kind of throw cold water on the whole thing,” adding that while he doesn’t like political litmus tests, “insurrection against the United States government qualifies.”

Auchincloss is not alone. [NBC News]

It’s absolutely the right thing to do. Their behavior, in the absence of judicially accepted evidence of mass wrong-doing, was beyond the pale. Shun them.

Hell, the next step should be to punish their districts as well. They were elected to represent their districts or States, which, by that act, they did so very poorly. If the constituents become unhappy, so much the better. Gohmert, Gosar, Jordan, Gaetz: no one will miss them. They’ve contributed little to nothing; they’re grandstanders and trouble-makers.

Dump them.

A reader writes regarding the ARP:

This was a horrifically bad bill. Amounts to approximately $24,000 for _every_ household in the US, and that money will need to be sucked (in every sense of that word) out of the US economy which is likely to cripple it for years.

My inclination is not to argue whether it’s expensive – it is – but whether or not it will accomplish its putative purposes, plural as there are several, and whether those purposes are beneficial to the USA. That is, one of my favorite drums, which is metrics. I say this because we’re not talking about allocation of funds in a private company scenario, but a public scenario in which the government is trying to fulfill its responsibilities.

If it does not, then indeed the price could turn out to be crippling, although there’s been a growing intellectual movement to consider public debt as an asset rather than a burden. I don’t know that I agree with that idea, but I also haven’t sat down and studied it. My doubts start with interest rates and inflation, though.

But if it works, if we hit full recovery mode, it may helpfully pay for itself.

I can’t help but point out that parsing the price across households is misleading, as corporations will also be paying taxes, substantially reducing the per-household number. But I do not intend to get dragged into a discussion about how taxes will parse out.

All that said, my reader is in good company, such as Andrew Sullivan last week:

The nearly $2 trillion now being printed and borrowed and delivered directly to Americans is not about “rescuing” the economy. Pent-up demand, a big transfer of resources to ordinary people under the CARES Act, and an end to lockdowns will do that anyway. This package is about artificially super-charging the economy in the short term, while maximizing its redistributive effect. It’s a demonstration of the Democrats’ historically strongest argument: vote for us and we’ll take care of you.

It “slashes” poverty the easy way: by giving everyone who earns less than $75,000 a check for $1400, and by creating a new, no-strings subsidy for every child, in a direct repudiation of the welfare reform of the Clinton era. The goal is to make the subsidy permanent (and it sure will be hard to repeal). The ARP bails out union pensions; it expands access to Obamacare significantly; it creates generous spending programs for Native Americans, and even offers reparations to Latino, Asian and black farmers. …

But wait, there’s more. The Biden administration sees this $2 trillion as a mere hors d’oeuvre for a possible $4 trillion more in infrastructure and green investment. A few trillion over the last year; and a few trillion in the ARP; even more trillions for infrastructure. After a while, we’re talking serious money.

Yes, we are talking serious money. But I do worry that Sullivan is glossing details that do matter. For example, “pent-up demand” only holds for those with a substantial income. Think of those who’ve lost their jobs during the pandemic, companies destroyed, paycheck-to-paycheck workers, gig economy: If pent-up demand is localized, income-wise speaking, then that much pent-up demand takes time to generate and satisfy.

I do not expect the economy to take off like a rocket, and the 8% predicted by Goldman Sachs isn’t a rocket.

Or his worries about infrastructure. First, that’s not $4 trillion in a year, but spread out over a number of years, simply because infrastructure takes time. Again. And the drums have been beating concerning infrastructure for at least a decade, if not more.

It’s not a bad investment, properly managed. Hell, even former President Trump at least mouthed the word Infrastructure from time to time, even if he had not the wit to do anything about it. Or maybe his was merely the sleight of hand.

If I had time to study the ARP thoroughly, I might have advocated for implementing permanent Universal Basic Income (UBI) rather than sending checks. Maybe I would have suggested this or that.

And then there’s the question of veiled purposes. In a bill this size, there must be. In twenty years, what will historians find to talk about in this category? I look forward to finding that out.

But in the meantime, we should lament the failure of the Republican Party. Wise leadership would have made them, at the very least, a credible counterweight to a Democratic Party that tends to scare people, even if some of that scaring is from smooth Republican marketing.

But one thing that I had not picked up on is pointed out by Sullivan:

But don’t worry. No new taxes will pay for it. Cakes will be eaten and had too. The government will either borrow these trillions, or just print them, and the Federal Reserve itself assures us that there will be no consequences to this, and that a bigger debt than any since the Second World War for the foreseeable future is no problem. Interest rates will not rise, they assure us. Inflation will, at worst, nudge above 2 percent. Just as Trump pumped a trillion into an established recovery, so Biden will up the ante and pump trillions and trillions more into an already surging economy.

I tired of the No new taxes! mantra back when we were fighting two wars at once and the Republicans refused to raise taxes to pay for it. In my view, the 2017 tax reform bill should, at the very least, be voided; no doubt taxes should be raised even further in order to pay for this.

Otherwise, as Sullivan clearly also worries, interest and inflation will go up. Perhaps those are the two most important metrics, after accomplishing putative purposes, that should be kept in mind. I’ll try to remember to do that.

In an item I didn’t get around to covering over the weekend due to the need to recover from the Covid-19 jab, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) takes a different tact in his quest for the title Clown of the Senate – frantic fantasies concerning the Insurrection of January 6th:

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., described the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as people who “truly respect law enforcement” and “loved this country” in a radio interview Friday and expressed worry if the mob had been Black Lives Matter protesters or Antifa members.

Johnson said he “never felt threatened” as thousands of rioters broke through barricades, forcing Congress to evacuate parts of the building and abruptly pause a ceremonial event affirming that President-elect Joe Biden won the November election. In one dramatic moment, police officers drew guns as rioters tried to break into the House chamber. The day left several dead, including a police officer, and more than 100 other officers injured. [NBC News]

While Johnson may have been honest in suggesting he was not alarmed at the sacking of the Capitol – more fool him – the suggestion that the mob was respectful in the face of video evidence of the murder of one officer and the desecration of the Capitol in the form of defecation simply renders Johnson’s comments ludicrous. Shitting in someone’s office cannot be twisted into the belief that the mob greatly loves their country.

Good luck, Senator, on your quest for the title.

Incidentally, the Senator will be up for reelection in 2022, and his intentions are not yet known. With five GOP Senators planning to retire in 2022, no doubt there’ll be pressure on him from the RNC and quite probably former President Trump to run for reelection.

Don’t do it, Senator! You don’t want to reach the depths of notoriety currently inhabited by the late Senator McCarthy (R-WI)!