Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Sally Jenkins on WaPo:

The “Little Boy” cloud.

Kevin Drum revisits an old post of his regarding research into why World War II ended, and usually I wouldn’t comment on an old post, even a revisited old post, but it concerns World War II, which is a pivot point in human history, and there’s one statement from journalist Gareth Cook, referencing historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa new (at the time) work, that Kevin treats that I think could stand a little more analysis. Here’s Drum:

This is fascinating stuff. At the same time, I think that Cook takes a step too far when he suggests that Hasegawa’s research, if true, should fundamentally change our view of atomic weapons. “If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit,” he writes, “then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems.” But that hardly follows. America in 1945 had an air force capable of leveling cities with conventional weaponry. We still do—though barely—but no other country in the world comes close. With an atomic bomb and a delivery vehicle, North Korea can threaten to destroy Seoul. Without it, they can’t. And larger atomic states, like the US, India, Pakistan, and Russia, have the capacity to do more than just level a city or two. They can level entire countries.

It is fascinating, even though my understanding of World War II is out of date and informal. The implications of a Japanese High Command, faced with overwhelming force and superior, by then, technologies, that still was split on surrender even after losing two entire cities speaks to a certain brand of religious fanaticism of fascinating pathology.

But it’s the statement, “If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit,” [Hasegawa] writes, “then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems.” This presumes humanity and its culture as a constant across time and space, and, to my eye, in neither dimension is humanity and culture constant. I see constant evolution and changes in values; indeed, such is necessary due to changes in environment and competition. Those cultures that do not change and adapt die.

So attempting to determine the strength of a nuclear deterrent for all of mankind is a fool’s quest, it’s a tilt against the windmill. The strength of a deterrent is societally determined. For example, what is the value of a human life? In the West, we presume it to be fairly high, but that’s not a universally accepted value. In badly overpopulated cities, the price of a life can be very low.

Another objection lies in the differing contexts. Japan was already at war, a war that had gone on for four years. Deterrent, though, implies a state other than a so-called ‘hot war’: the iconic Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc, which never devolved into all out war, may not have transitioned to a real war because both sides had nuclear weapons, or such is the popular wisdom of the time.

So while my end conclusion may match Drum’s, it’s not at all for the same reasons. He relies on equivalent technologies and their effect on the enemy, while I prefer a more fundamental approach.

If you’re not familiar with qualified immunity, let United States District Court Judge Carlton Reeves set you straight:

No, Clarence Jamison was a Black man driving a Mercedes convertible.

As he made his way home to South Carolina from a vacation in Arizona, Jamison was pulled over and subjected to one hundred and ten minutes of an armed police officer badgering him, pressuring him, lying to him, and then searching his car top-to-bottom for drugs.

Nothing was found. Jamison isn’t a drug courier. He’s a welder.

Unsatisfied, the officer then brought out a canine to sniff the car. The dog found nothing. So nearly two hours after it started, the officer left Jamison by the side of the road to put his car back together.

Thankfully, Jamison left the stop with his life. Too many others have not.

The Constitution says everyone is entitled to equal protection of the law – even at the hands of law enforcement. Over the decades, however, judges have invented a legal doctrine to protect law enforcement officers from having to face any consequences for wrongdoing. The doctrine is called “qualified immunity.” In real life it operates like absolute immunity.

In a recent qualified immunity case, the Fourth Circuit wrote:

Although we recognize that our police officers are often asked to make split-second decisions, we expect them to do so with respect for the dignity and worth of black lives.

This Court agrees. Tragically, thousands have died at the hands of law enforcement over the years, and the death toll continues to rise. Countless more have suffered from other forms of abuse and misconduct by police. Qualified immunity has served as a shield for these officers, protecting them from accountability.

This Court is required to apply the law as stated by the Supreme Court. Under that law, the officer who transformed a
short traffic stop into an almost two-hour, life-altering ordeal is entitled to qualified immunity. The officer’s motion seeking as much is therefore granted.

But let us not be fooled by legal jargon. Immunity is not exoneration. And the harm in this case to one man sheds light on the harm done to the nation by this manufactured doctrine.

As the Fourth Circuit concluded, “This has to stop.”

There’s a lot of opinion out on the Web regarding this opinion, much of it far more learned than I. But I think Reeves has served the public by repeating a message that desperately needs to be heard: everyone should be held responsible for their actions, from the worst criminal to the law enforcement responsible for catching that worst criminal. Qualified immunity may have been viewed as a way to protect law enforcement from frivolous lawsuits, but it has encouraged those worst elements of law enforcement to engage in activities which are not conducive to a prosperous, stable society, because they know they cannot be officially punished for them.

They can be admonished, as Reeves does with McClendon, above, but that’s hardly the same thing as spending time in the pokey.

Qualified immunity is a bad idea, and it must be banned.

Former Republican Jennifer Rubin has a lovely rant, no doubt borne out of frustration at Republican incompetence:

Let me suggest that Senate Republicans, angst-ridden over the failure to conclude a deal, should have taken action when Trump put his reelection above national security concerns; when he refused to hold Russia accountable for bounties on our troops; when he aired false, quack theories and contradicted expert advice; when he insisted on reopening states while the virus still raged; and when he held a rally endangering thousands of Americans. They could have removed him — rebuked him even or, at the very least, declared they would not vote for him in November — for any number of corrupt and malicious actions. Instead, they bet their careers and mortgaged their conscience to their political party.

Republicans are worried now? Hey, it is what it is.

This is what happens when you have a party wedded to the concepts of extreme loyalty and the status quo, backed up by the intense certainty that God brings you.

I’d say May God help them, except he’s already given them so many chances to get rid of Trump.

Ron Charles writes about the latest bit of legal silliness to come out of the country’s elite in WaPo:

Readers may remember my note on how The Epoch Times managed to get itself banned from Facebook. It appears that being banned is not taken seriously by the Trump cultists at The Epoch Times:

Facebook removed hundreds of accounts on Thursday from a foreign troll farm posing as African-Americans in support of Donald Trump and QAnon supporters. It also removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times that pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories about coronavirus and protests in the U.S.

Facebook took down the accounts as part of its enforcement against coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is the use of fake accounts to inflate the reach of content or products on social media. [NBC News]

I try not to be naive, but I am disappointed in The Epoch Times at this moment. No doubt, this’ll pass, and they’ll recede back to the junk heap where I metaphorically throw all of the Trump-boosting media sites that cannot be troubled with considering the damage Trump has done and can still do to the nation.

But let’s not mince words: The Epoch Times has committed blatant fraud. It may not be financial, but it remains deliberate misrepresentation for purposes of manipulating the naive. In my mind, that destroys any value The Epoch Times may have as a news source, and I encourage my readers to avoid The Epoch Times. It would appear that my first impression,

I also surveyed [The Epoch Times] site very briefly; it was painfully pro-Trump. I read a couple of columns, which were written in what has become the traditional and magisterial conservative style, Don’t bother me with the facts, I’m handing down wisdom from on high. I had no patience for that.

is sadly very accurate. Here’s a letter I should probably send them.

To: The Epoch Times,

Guys, endorsing a chronic liar is a mug’s game. Look at what you’ve been enticed into doing.

Why are you mugs?

H. White

Mostly because I can’t remember their names. Petunias?

I didn’t realize these had come out so well. The first one is perhaps the worst of the lot; I like the luminescence of the last one quite a bit. But there’s a lot to be said for numbers 2 & 3 as well.

The New York AG filed a lawsuit today to, well, destroy the National Rifle Association:

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Thursday against the National Rifle Association and four individuals, including powerful leader Wayne LaPierre, seeking to dissolve the gun rights advocacy group and accusing top executives of “years of illegal self-dealings” that funded a “lavish lifestyle.”

James said the not-for-profit organization undercut its charitable mission by engaging in illegal financial conduct, including diverting millions of dollars “for personal use by senior leadership, awarding contracts to the financial gain of close associates and family, and appearing to dole out lucrative no-show contracts to former employees in order to buy their silence and continued loyalty.”

“The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is why, today, we seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law,” she said. [NBC News]

It sure sounds superficial, doesn’t it? Especially if you’re a member who doesn’t pay attention to organization politics and rumors. But there’s a wee bit behind it:

… which was filed in state court in Manhattan following an 18-month investigation and seeks fines and remuneration.

An eighteen month investigation is no small thing. It suggests substantial issues have been discovered, as well as attention to detail. This is where a member should be squirming. And because it’s a State issue, there will be no Trump pardon, who commented

I think the NRA should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life.

Which sounds asinine, at best, to me. Or more accurately, like a man completely unsure of how to respond to unexpected bad news. I wonder how long before he begins disclaiming ever knowing about the organization.

But just an 18 month investigation isn’t a good enough clue. What about former NRA President Oliver North? Remember when he quit the top position, alleging financial irregularities? You’d think a far-right extremist such as North would have fit right in at the NRA.

And then there’s the FBI investigation concerning Russian ties.

From extremists world-wide, it’s rare to find a virtuous example – some are just crooks, and some are self-justifying crooks. The NRA has been surging toward the right-wing fringe for decades under the stewardship of CEO Wayne LaPierre, and frankly I’m completely unsurprised at this lawsuit. Not because I know of anything in particular, but simply from the reports and the behaviors. It practically screamed circumstantial corruption, and I’m only surprised it took this long for someone with investigative capabilities to file a lawsuit.

And with the NRA under financial stress due to Covid-19, they may have a hard time defending themselves.

There is a certain point in writing about the Trump Administration where you just automatically wonder what’s corrupt with whichever topic you’re writingon . It appears the Kodak Pharmaceuticals deal, as much as I’d like to think it’s a wise move to take advantage of a company’s expertise in chemistry and chemical engineering, may not be on the up and up, and Heather Cox Richardson has a useful summary of the latest disappointing developments:

This may be a very sad ending for a hallowed corporate name. Someone should check to see if Eastman’s tomb is vibrating from the rotations he’s executing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating potential insider trading over the late July launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals, a new branch of the old camera and film company intended to begin the process of bringing the production of drugs back to the United States.

Under the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration provided a $765 million loan to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals. The deal shot Kodak stock upward by more than 2,757%. But there was suspicious activity around this deal. The day before Trump’s announcement of it, the Eastman Kodak Company gave its CEO, Jim Continenza, 1.75 million stock options. Indeed, since May, when talks with the administration about manufacturing the ingredients for pharmaceuticals began, Kodak handed out 240,000 stock options to board members.

Kodak says the timing of the options was a coincidence: the board’s compensation committee meeting happened to fall on the day before the announcement. When asked by a reporter about what had happened at Kodak, Trump says he “wasn’t involved in the deal.” This afternoon, the co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement Steve Peikin announced he is stepping down. He did not give a reason.

I feel a little like I’m just a spectator at a power politics festival. The goal is for each contestant to put as many dollars as possible into their personal bank accounts, without regard to morality, ethics, or good governance, corporate or political. People responsible for the aforementioned disregardments, not having a role in this contest, can be seen leaving the field of combat, and will be later available for interviews at the kiddy ice cream stand around back.

PS Don’t let your kids have any ice cream. Unless you don’t like them. It’s full of … oh, Corporate is telling me not to say.

While honestly, truly, I want this deal to be legit, I think the Trump quote is a strong sign that it’s not:

… Trump says he “wasn’t involved in the deal.”

Yet, Trump announced it with great pride just a couple of days ago. Trump has never seen a successful deal that he hasn’t tried to horn in on; contrariwise, he disclaims knowing anything about a deal when it’s in the process of being revealed as corrupt.

The omens are poor.

It’s the day of Tennessee’s primary, and CNN/Politics thinks it’s too close to call:

Last year, President Donald Trump publicly endorsed Bill Hagerty, his former ambassador to Japan, to be the next Senator from Tennessee before he even announced his campaign. That should’ve been enough in a conservative state where Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the President.

But the GOP’s primary election on Thursday to replace retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander has turned into a bitter, competitive contest between Hagerty and a conservative challenger, Dr. Manny Sethi, over who can be Tennessee’s Trump.

Hagerty and Sethi have campaigned as Trump loyalists, even though they’ve both found things in each other’s backgrounds to try to suggest otherwise. Hagerty founded a private equity firm and served as the state’s economic commissioner under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam. Sethi, who talks about being the son of first-generation immigrants from India, is an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who founded the non-profit organization Healthy Tennessee.

Trump himself has intervened in the primary, reminding voters of his endorsement in a tweet last week and agreeing to a tele-town hall with Hagerty on the eve of the primary. In announcing the event, Hagerty called Trump “America’s greatest President.”

I find it fascinating that Trump’s endorsement is not carrying a dispositive weight. Remember back when Governor DeSantis (R-FL) was Rep DeSantis, who had just filed to run for governor – and no one gave him a chance? But, regardless of any other competencies he may or may not have, DeSantis understood how the political winds were blowing in 2017, and he understood President Trump. He’s infamous for having arranged to appear on Fox News multiple times, winning Trump’s endorsement, and going on to win the primary and then the Governorship of Florida.

Today? The Trump-endorsed candidate is not a shoe-in.

Also a factor: both of the top GOP candidates – there are actually fifteen listed – have welded themselves to President Trump, and have spent resources in trying to discredit their opponent in this area. This is partly a result of the fact that neither has an elective victory under their belt. Hagerty has been an economic advisor to some Republican officials over the years, and served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan, while Sethi, an orthopedic surgeon, has as his sole political experience a book on health policy he co-authored with Senator William Frist. Neither one has legislative accomplishments that they can campaign on, nothing at all. It’s basically a war of empty, empty words, emblematic, ironically enough, of Trump himself.

And neither is an inspirational choice for one of the most powerful legislative posts in the nation.

In this sort of contest, it’s not hard to envision supporters of these two, in the absence of political accomplishments of the candidates, simply becoming entrenched and embittered. This is not a healthy way to conduct a contest, after all, and the decision to support one or the other based on irrelevant factors such as non-political experience, personal charm, and the like, and then seeing them blasted by the other side, will damage those supporters, as I noted previously when I first covered Tennessee’s Senate contest.

I think there’ll be two factors at play here: turnout for the primaries, both Republican and Democratic, and whether or not the Republican race is close. If it is, and turnout is low, I’ll have to give the Democrat, whoever that turns out to be, a better chance at winning than the professionals have so far (“Solid Republican” from Inside Elections), because there’s a good chance that embittered partisans of the losing Republican candidate will stay home, and overall low turnout will suggest Tennessee voters have soured on President Trump.

And if turnout is high for the Republican primary, then we can assume this seat will stay Republican.

Jennifer Rubin on investigative interviews and what has gone wrong:

TV news personalities are hired in part because they are congenial, likable and watchable. They put guests and the audience at ease. They do not allow pregnant pauses. They bail out interviewees who are at a loss for words. This is the wrong skill set for interrogating a president, especially one who is a serial liar. In nearly four years, TV news outlets have not figured this out; some simply threw in the towel and declined to switch to more effective interviewers because their star anchors draw TV viewers.

The TV networks would do better to hire people — lawyers, specifically — who are attack dogs, who do not care about being liked and who do not care if they get “access.” House Intelligence Committee counsel Daniel S. Goldman and Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney and now MSNBC interviewer, know how to prepare a line of questions. (Disclosure: I’m an MSNBC contributor.) They know how to listen to the answer and follow up. They shrug off bluster and body language meant to intimidate them. If the job of the media is to hold those in power accountable and to reveal the truth (not maintain phony balance), this is the kind of person you want grilling administration figures. [WaPo]

This is a lament and critique that’s been told many times since the days of Nixon; indeed, more than once in the 50 years since the Nixon Watergate Scandal I’ve seen accusations made that the XXX White House, regardless of who’s name takes the place of XXX, made a concerted effort to charm and bribe the reporters covering them. They are recognized as a threat, especially by those Administrations who do not play to have clean hands when they walk out on the last day.

But another problem is embedded in Rubin’s remarks: TV news personalities are hired in part because they are congenial, likable and watchable … and that garners more viewers. More viewers is more advertiser revenue.

But revenue is not a measure of excellence. I don’t care how much the media owners bluster and shake their fingers about paying for the service, it simply isn’t.

Pulitzer Prizes are the proper measure a news service. It’s unfortunate – very unfortunate – that the prizes a new service can win aren’t more prominently displayed and discussed. Hell, we watch WCCO News for local coverage, and they don’t talk about all the prizes they’ve won – they just say they’re The most watched channel in the Twin Cities.

And that statement is really irrelevant, if you think about it. All it means is Frank and Amelia are awfully darn charming. But has this service won prizes for news coverage? Are you advertising it? No – or at least I can’t tell without digging. So, while I do like the reporters and anchors, I must admit that I don’t know if they’re mediocre or good. About all I can say is that they seem more professional than their broadcast competitors, who I sample on an infrequent basis.

And it’s a sad thing.

The knots that religious legislators tie themselves into when faced with an atheist amuses me for reasons obscure, so I found The Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta’s coverage of State Senator Juan Mendez’s (D-AZ) attempts to give invocations in Arizona invigorating:

Besides being a progressive legislator, Mendez is known to atheists for his history of delivering invocations in the legislature… or at least trying to. In 2013 he delivered one in the State House, but the following day, a Christian colleague delivered a second religious invocation to make up for his godless one. When he tried to give another invocation in 2016, the GOP majority leader blocked him from doing so on the grounds that all invocations had to be made to a “higher power.” Days later, when Mendez gave his invocation anyway, a minister was on standby to deliver a “real” one.

Earlier this year, Mendez was slated to give an invocation on “Secular Day” at the Capitol. But just before he spoke, the (Republican) Senate President said someone else would be doing the honors. She later said it was a mistake, but the other senator had an invocation ready to go…

Perhaps I’m just a spiritual pervert, but the story makes me smile. Some people know how to deal politely with people of other religions, but someone without religion?

Oh, dear. How can we have a good argument about the unseeable if they refuse to see the … uh …

Damon Linker on The Week considers it an insoluble problem:

So yes, it would be very good for the Republican Party of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Louie Gohmert, Devin Nunes, and all the rest of them to be leveled to the ground so a wholly new party — a more reasonable, responsible, principled, and honorable party — can be built in its place.

There’s just one difficulty with the plan: It does nothing to address the root of the problem, which no one — not the minimalist Trump haters, and not the fiercest maximalists out to pummel the party’s establishment — has a clue how to solve.

That is the problem of the Republican voter.

Every one of those politicians — from Trump on down to Gohmert and Nunes and beyond — was elected by these voters. In the midst of a pandemic that has killed 160,000 in under six months and that the president shows no sign of understanding how to combat, his approval rating among Republicans remains at 91 percent. Thanks to this unshakable support, his overall approval has barely dipped below 40 percent through the nightmare of recent months and is currently creeping back up toward his norm of the past year (around 42 percent). …

Could anything change these voters — turning them, not into liberals o r progressives obviously, but into thoughtful citizens capable of engaging with reality, thinking about actual problems, and rewarding public servants who make a good-faith effort to respond to them? The honest truth is that I don’t have the slightest clue how to make it happen. Which also means that I have no idea how the United States might work its way back to having two civically responsible parties instead of just one.

Option 1 – wait until most of the current Republican base is dead, which will happen over the next 50 years. Demographically speaking, the base, including the evangelicals, is shrinking, and I think this will continue. While it’s typical for older generations to complainv about the immorality of the younger generations, it’s my belief that the younger generations observe the immorality of the older generations, and look to do better. My impression (hauling out my old person voice) of the younger generations, both from direct interactions and what I read, is that they have been discouraged from conservatism as characterized by the Republicans, and especially organized religion, by the results of same: support for Trump.

Option 2 – reality reaches up and slaps the Republican base upside the head. One of the features of our current universe is that it’s causal – each action has an opposite and equal reaction. This applies, metaphorically, to the belief systems that we harbor, if only in how those belief systems influence our physical actions. By this I mean, you may believe that angels dance on the heads of pins, but if this doesn’t influence your actions and positions, no biggie.

But if it causes you to fallaciously believe vaccines cause autism, and therefore you won’t permit vaccination of yourself and your kids, well, now you’ve put yourself and your kids at increased risk of extinction, haven’t you?

So if you are a farmer that believed Trump when he claimed that trade wars are easy to win, and now you’re an impoverished farmer on the brink of giving it all up because China and the rest of the world refused to rollover for President Trump, that’s reality slapping you upside the head and telling you to pay attention. Your belief system is seriously flawed.

Some people learn. Some people don’t. Why? For many, that’s the problem of religion – it gives people a reason to persist in flawed beliefs, because God Told Them. The difficulty, sadly, is that sometimes that “flawed belief” is actually a socially admirable belief such as Treat Everyone With Love that happens to be in a socially unwelcoming context, such as Either You’re With Us Or Against Us In Hating Those XYZers.

But we’ve seen children put in cages, the President call violent white supremacists “fine people”, and quite a few other outrages which have left reasonable Americans (read: independents as well as Democrats) discouraged and angry, but have had little effect on most of the Republican base – although, notably, the conservative share of American’s political affections has shrunk drastically over the last few months. While much of this is probably independents changing their inclinations in the face of obvious Trumpian incompetency, at least some of this will be Republican defections by Americans who’ve decided the tunnel to hell that the Republican Party is taking is intolerable to their belief systems. Indeed, some of them are previously Republican legislators who are now Democratic legislators, such as Bollier of Kansas – who is now running for the open Kansas Senate seat.

But such defections may be few enough in number not to matter.

Option 3 – God reaches down from the heavens and tells them to stop screwing around. While this seems unlikely, it might happen.

Option 4 – an existential threat arises. This may change things, as when it’s cooperate or die, people usually cooperate, and we do have a history of cooperating in the face of existential dangers.

I lean towards Option 1, but hope Option 2 occurs as well. The Gallup poll may indicate the beginnings of the Great slap upside the head phenomenon, but it’s too early to be sure.

How to weaponize your victimhood:

The chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program investing billions of dollars into discovering a coronavirus vaccine, says media scrutiny of his stock ownership may delay a vaccine or make its discovery less likely because it is distracting him from his work.

Moncef Slaoui made the remarks on the official Health and Human Services podcast, released Friday, while being interviewed by Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary of public affairs. The interview quickly descended into a lengthy rant about the media.

“The American people need to understand that the media often times are lying to them because they don’t want a vaccine, in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Caputo said at one point. [BuzzFeedNews]

In other words, the guy who isn’t doing the lab work, who’s merely providing guidance as chief adviser, is so restive under examination that he will threaten to delay the successful conveyance of an effective vaccine to the public if the press continues to fulfill its duty of investigating possible illegalities.

Dude, too many press inquiries? Pass them on to your staff of assistants and QUIT THE WHINING. It makes you look second-rate, and Caputo becomes your effing handler. Sheesh.

First of all, for those who are going to scream that all those folks who are going to use the probable cause of yesterday’s tragic Beirut blast to push for regulation are politicizing the deaths of those Lebanese who died, please FOAD^[1]. Your heartless clinging to your political-religious tenets is sickening.

The BBC, in an “explainer” on ammonium nitrate, suggests that it may be to blame for the Beirut blast:

Nearly 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – taken from a ship off the coast of Beirut six years ago and then stored in a warehouse – has been blamed for the explosion that ripped through the port area of the Lebanese capital on Tuesday.

I have no idea if Beirut or Lebanon had regulations regarding the storage of dangerous materials, and it doesn’t matter for my purposes.

This is a graphic example of the advantages of a regulatory state. One of the campaign claims Trump will be making will be how he’s removed the regulations that have been “hampering” American free enterprise, if he hasn’t already made the claim.

Beirut is the back side of that drive to remove regulations. An ideal regulation protects something the governing entity, be it city, state, or national, considers valuable: clean air & water, health and lives of residents, that sort of thing. When conservatives complain about regulation, there are going to be two motivations.

The first is bad regulations: contradictory or ineffective regulations. Fair enough. Those need to be revised or weeded out.

The second is regulations that impact profitability. That’s the bubbling witches’ cauldron in the Republican Party’s heart, and this is why treating regulations as anti-American is wrong, because as most Americans will agree, placing lives at risk for corporate profit is not acceptable. Beirut just demonstrated what happens when regulation either doesn’t exist, or is not effectively enforced.

And anti-regulation is one of those tenets of the Republican Party that I fear is treated as a religious precept. If you have Republican Party friends, you often hear mutterings about how regulation is strangling business. It’s a lesson that is reinforced by party leaders.

It’s the ring through their noses.

So next time you are tempted to mutter about regulation, think about the Beirut blast, instead. Perhaps the regulation subject to muttering really is uncalled for. It really could be. But rather than mutter, think about how to build a formal process that evaluates regulations for appropriateness, rather than just dark muttering.

Contribute to the communal effort, rather than whine.

¹ FOAD, an acronym for the old Fuck Off And Die. Reserved for use on particularly short-sighted partisans.

The work of Imo Imeh:

The above can be found on this page regarding an art show entitled BRONX:AFRICA. A New England Public Media show on Emeh is here.

(h/t KH)

On National Review Fred Bauer sort of reviews Democracy for Realists (Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels), wherein the authors try to suggest what has worked before, politically speaking, should work again. Bauer’s summary caught my eye:

Achen and Bartels point to some evidence that partisan rationalizations and misperceptions can be found even more frequently among citizens who are politically engaged than among those who are not. A similar point might also apply to negative polarization. Many of the most prominent theories for why the 2016 election was illegitimate have been formulated and promoted by entrenched political actors. The current culture war is — like many other culture wars — an elite-driven phenomenon. Partly as a struggle within elite ranks, those with significant cultural and political perches have often given fuel to inherent factional tensions.

Which reminds me of Turchin’s observation that the wars characterizing the disintegrative phase of empires’ secular cycles are the preserve of the elite, and are often bloody, cruel businesses as the members of the bloated elite fight to stay in the top few percent of society by imposing their view of reality on society. The described descents into barbarity are both dismaying and salutary.

Stable democratic governance depends on patience, compromise, and the acceptance of loss. If members of a losing faction nevertheless remain invested in the institutions of a given democratic order, they will accept momentary losses as a way of shoring up those institutions over a longer term — and creating the possibility of victory in the future. Meanwhile, to secure democratic stability, a winning coalition must also accept the possibility of loss in the future. This in part means resisting the temptation to transform existing civil institutions into a mere apparatus of a partisan machine and abiding by certain constraints on power (such as longstanding protections for minority parties). Those norms are, of course, in tension with the politics of apocalypse and emergency that has become so fashionable.

I find it fascinating that Bauer manages to write this paragraph without once noting in his article that Biden, early in the campaign, tried to come across as a classic compromiser – and was excoriated for his sins, such as they were. I suspect Bauer would prefer to not highlight the more rigid, yet decadent nature of what passes for conservatism these days. (I should note that Klobuchar also worked to highlight her bi-partisan efforts; I’m not sure about the other candidates.)

If social identity plays an important role in elections, it might also have a bearing on the stability of the democratic process. Securing some of the virtues of democracy might involve citizens seeing themselves not only as members of a given faction but also as participants in a common democratic order.

Identity politics, the bugaboo of Andrew Sullivan (that’s a fascinating piece by Sullivan, and should be read by those with the patience to do so – I know I didn’t fully understand it, but felt wiser for the moments spent), may turn out to be the reversion of the rational reasoning mode of thought that became dominant, or at least popular, during the Renaissance, and has served us well since, to the tribal approach to life. Much like the many parties to war before and after the Renaissance, the adherence to an invariant, sometimes irrelevant characteristic, and the sacrifice of personal dissension for the sense of belonging to that group, seems to lead to indissoluble confrontations.

But a facet of the discussion that went unmentioned in Bauer’s review, and perhaps in the book, is hubris, or its flip-side: the willingness to admit that we don’t know. I know I’ve mentioned this a time or two before, but it strikes me that it’s important to realize that sometimes we don’t know, and compromise is a way forward between competing views which, properly designed, will allow analysis of the result without having put our entire leg into the possibly shark-infested wading pool. For example, the failure of the 2017 tax reform bill to achieve its goals – at least in the judgment of third party analysts – suggest the Republicans have far too much certainty about the Laffer Curve, or, to change the wording, that taxes are always too high. A rational group would look at that failure, and the same failure in Kansas, and reform their view.

Will the GOP? I don’t think so – or only after a few key members are ejected, retire, or die off.

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare reacts to a leaked report that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) has assigned intelligence analysts to him – both the clownish and sober parts:

Bizarrely, the reports describe me as a “source,” as though I am publishing my Twitter feed to provide information to DHS I&A. But no, @benjaminwittes was not meeting with anyone from DHS in a garage. Nor was my Twitter feed specifically providing information to DHS I&A; rather, I was taking information from it and making that information public. Both reports describe me as “a social media user” and “a new source whose information has not been validated.” My name is not redacted or withheld in the report although at one point, that of the then-head of DHS I&A is masked; instead of including his name, Bryan Murphy, it quotes my tweet as saying “And to (Identified Acting Undersecretary): I have read, and I acknowledge receipt.”

The reports are cleared for dissemination to “All Field Ops” and say they are “releasable to the governments of Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.” So the document is at least cleared for release to state and local law enforcement and to foreign governments; to what extent it has been actively disseminated I do not know. There are certainly more efficient ways to read my tweets in New Zealand.

The rest of the document is quite literally just the tweet, which is both described and included in a screenshot, along with an image of the document it reported and an image of my Twitter header. …

And if all that sounds really dumb, well, that’s because it is.

Given the amateur hour character of the Trump Administration, this is unsurprising. It appears someone was told to be authoritarian and played the buffoon card, instead. Maybe their playing cards did not include the authoritarian card. But Wittes doesn’t just laugh at it:

And yet again, it’s worth asking: if this is okay, what else is fair game for dissemination to intelligence partners?

I personally love that government officials are sending around my tweets. They should all do it more. But for this intelligence report to get filed, dumb as it is, a lot of things have to go wrong. People have to either believe that my tweets on DHS’s internal documents are meaningfully connected to some homeland security mission. They have to believe that they are doing something other than monitoring purely First Amendment protected activity—or, worse, they have to not care that they’re doing exactly that. And they have to believe that their partner agencies and governments have a legitimate interest, one reasonably connected to some lawful mission, in seeing such material—which they plainly do not.

If all this could go wrong with my two tweets, where else are similar abuses taking place less stupidly and more menacingly—and how much more harmful have the abuses been in those other situations?

The fact that Wittes was notified via a leak indicates there’s self-knowledge in DHS that this is, in fact, an abuse. That’s good.

But it also indicates parts of the government have become infected with personnel – Americans – that think rules apply to others, not to them. This, ironically, is the conservative nightmare when liberals are in power; are they willing to vociferously object when it happens when Trump is in power?

Recent reports of the Census Bureau ending its count early have been circulating, and Steve Benen is worried:

I can appreciate why Census concerns may seem obscure and unimportant, but developments like these have the potential to be enormously consequential. Not only does Census data help drive federal funding decisions, these same results are used to determine how states divvy up congressional power on Capitol Hill.

The more the Trump administration curtails counting of immigrants and communities of color, the more the deck will be stacked against them.

It’s that last sentence in the first paragraph that caught my eye. Yes, Census undercounts are a problem, since the white community may appear to be a larger percentage of the population than in reality, but these same results are used to determine how states divvy up congressional power on Capitol Hill. So here’s the thing:

Many of these immigrants live in current Republican strongholds.

What if this undercount deprives Texas, or Alabama, or Florida of a Representative – or even two?

And then the conservative political movement is potentially further hindered, depending on how district lines are redrawn.

Trump & Minions really need to start thinking more than half a move ahead. Quarterly thinking simply does not work well in a government setting. Hell, it doesn’t even work well in a private sector setting, only many CEOs don’t seem to understand that.

Conservative pundit Erick Erickson keeps sending those emails, trying to solicit business for his subscription service where, presumably, he rants and raves about theology and the American political system. His latest is his attempt to discredit the Republican NeverTrumpers who’ve emerged as nothing more than mercenary creatures who, finding themselves shut out of the Trump orbit, have flung themselves against him.

This is a little hard to credit in the case of The Lincoln Project’s George Conway, as his wife, Kellyanne Conway, is a Trump senior advisor, his Wikipedia page suggests he was considered for several senior positions in the Administration, and he’s widely considered to have impeccable Republican credentials.

But let’s stipulate to it, just because it’s useful to let him have his broad generalization. Here’s what caught my eye:

I really don’t care if someone wants to vote against Trump or run vanity ads in the DC market solely designed to troll him. But there are two parties in America, one of which is okay with killing kids and one that generally is opposed. None of us should be surprised that the ones who privately mocked the pro-lifers from within the party will now be so public in their disdain.

And what Erickson cannot do – because it would vitiate his position on the Hill of Moral Superiority – is take the next step and begin the crucial analysis: the party that is generally opposed to killing kids (hah – so wrong on so many levels, but I gotta stay focused) happens to support the most corrupt President in modern history, and does so with great enthusiasm.

Great enthusiasm. Supported by 80-some percent of Republicans. Sometimes even into the 90s.

Even if I let him have a hypothetical position that Trump is helping save ‘kids’, there are many other Republicans, presumably far less corrupt – presumably – that he could support. We could return to that all-hype incredibly deep Republican bench (to paraphrase a few credulous pundits) from 2015, with names like Rubio, Kasich, Cruz, Carson, and more than ten others – all, it turned out, such lightweights that only helium equaled their lack of gravitas, but, still, the Republican Party could kick Trump out and turn to one of them, instead.

Or even failed Indiana governor and current VP Mike Pence.

But, no. It’s not Erickson’s designated party of “baby-killers” who has embraced corruption, naked and barely denying it, invoking racist tropes and flaunting incompetence as if it were a virtue.

It’s his supposed party of pro-lifers with their arms and legs locked around Trump.

I’ll skip making accusations of hypocrisy, partly because I doubt Erickson will ever read this, and partly because there’s a deeper point to be made.

In logic and mathematics, there are various formal methodologies for what are called “proofs” – indisputable reasoning that makes a point. Many of us learned the basics of proofs in mathematics in our high schools, and I think most of us hated it. I rather enjoyed them, myself.

Among these approaches is reductio ad absurdum,

… the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.

It’s not hard to recognize that Erickson and the Republican Party have reached an absurd position. Erickson, as one example, has contorted himself into a self-characterizationcaricature as an objective observer, even as he has propounded the view that anyone who condemns Trump suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), a vaguely defined term implying its victims hate Trump for irrational, illogical reasons.

Distrusting him for 20,000 lies should, according to Erickson, be filed under TDS. And that’s just a for instance.

Similarly, other Trump supporters embrace other absurd positions concerning Trump: the black community’s best friend, saved the economy from ruin, rebuilt the military, etc etc. And I’m so tired of hearing I just feel that Trump … someday I’ll just have a good shout at one. Hopefully, the Trump supporter will be on TV and I won’t get in trouble for it.

Since Erickson rests his support of Trump on the issue of abortion, it suggests that the key philosophical error of Erickson and the Republican Party is on the abortion issue, at least in its current configuration. I am going to start calling it the fatal litmus test of American democracy. That is, if you are a pro-choice candidate, then your competency, your positions on other issues, your integrity, all that matters to me, the Joe-regular vote, doesn’t matter to the anti-abortion voter. They tick off the “for abortion” box in their mind, swing over to the other column, and vote for the opponent.

Whoever and whatever that opponent may be.

Grossly incompetent, conspiracy theorist, crackpot, religious nut, chronic liar, freakin’ serial killer. All they have to do is embrace anti-abortion, have the gift of gab, and not piss too many people off.

The position leads to absurdity, and it suggests the avid anti-abortionist may not be on the side of the right. but on the side that leads to injustice and failure.

I suggest, in America, a secular democracy, that the use of the abortion issue as a litmus test is absurd and harmful. If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. And using it as your litmus test is the essence of tomfoolery. There’s more to selecting our governing people than whether or not they support abortion rights.

And it’s being proven, in a rigorously logical way, right now.

Sacralize:

Imbue with or treat as having a sacred character or quality.
‘rural images that sacralize country life’ [Lexico/Oxford]

Noted in “Krugman Nails the GOP Hide to the Wall,” Dan K, The Daily Kos:

If we win this election, that will be the start of repudiating sacralized selfishness. No wonder Trump and the GOP are trying so hard to steal it.

A few more pics of the portulaca we planted earlier this spring.

Trump continues to sow confusion when it comes to the fate of TikTok:

After days of whiplash over the future of TikTok, President Donald Trump said he would allow an American company to acquire the short-form video app — with a catch.

Trump on Monday set September 15 as the deadline for TikTok to find a US buyer, failing which he said he will shut down the app in the country. In an unusual declaration, Trump also said any deal would have to include a “substantial amount of money” coming to the US Treasury.

“Right now they don’t have any rights unless we give it to them. So if we’re going to give them the rights, then … it has to come into this country,” Trump said. “It’s a great asset, but it’s not a great asset in the United States unless they have approval in the United States.” [CNN/Business]

Now he sounds like a fucking mob boss as well as someone whose fixation on money – immediate money – will easily be manipulated into decisions damaging to the United States.

Of course, he may simply be trying to maneuver the parties involved into doing what he wants them to do – give his popularity in the United States a boost, to wit. It doesn’t seem likely that this is even legal:

The President’s requirement that some of the money from the deal go to the US Treasury doesn’t have a basis in antitrust law, according to Gene Kimmelman, a former chief counsel for the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and currently a senior adviser to the policy group Public Knowledge.

“This is quite unusual, this is out of the norm,” Kimmelman said. “It’s actually quite hard to understand what the president is actually talking about here. … It’s not unheard of for transactions to have broader geopolitical implications between countries, but it’s quite remarkable to think about some kind of money being on the table in connection with a transaction.”

I’m surprised Trump didn’t suggest that a large donation to the Trump Foundation would help smooth the deal.

Oh, yeah, that’s right – the Trump Foundation has been shut down for admitted (by Trump family members) violations of charity law.

Getting back to the topic at hand, which is Trump’s state of mind – maybe I didn’t stray too far – my best guess is that the President is trying to keep this particular controversy, manufactured as it may be, in front of the public, blotting out the glaring sun that is the Administration’s incompetency at managing the Covid-19 crisis.

Look for more sound & fury, and a lack of light, over the next few days.

Steve Benen is worried about November 3rd mail-in voting:

Much of the country is also dealing with a shortage of poll workers, especially among seniors who are acutely at risk for the coronavirus. What’s more, because so many voters are unfamiliar with the vote-by-mail process, there’s a very real threat of widespread errors, leading to ballots that go uncounted.

It seems to me this is an opportunity for the non-partisan organizations to step in and help. Gather up all these seniors that are hesitant concerning mail-in ballots into a convenient room, add an expert, and have said expert lead them through the process, step by step. It doesn’t matter if the seniors are for Trump or Biden, just help them through verbal instruction.

When everyone’s done and has their sealed envelope ready for the mailman, go to the nearest mail slot or blue box[1] and each voter puts it in. The expert doesn’t see who voted how, the voters, being properly socially distanced, hopefully didn’t try to copy answers, and all’s well.

A chance to perform a civic duty, it is.