Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The Portland, Oregon debacle, in which anonymous Federal officers are randomly arresting peaceful protesters, holding them for a few hours, and then releasing them – while sometimes putting black bags over their heads – is appallingly reminiscent of other incidents of barbarism in recent American history. I speak, of course, of the incidents of torture during the Iraq occupation, undertaken as Americans faced IEDs and other resistance, as well as pressure to find Saddam Hussein. Black hooded men, forced into pressure positions, or water-boarded, all while American politicians pettily argued whether particular interrogation techniques were torture, was a black blot on American honor. The references are unmistakable.

A scene from a John Lewis retrospective. I can only guess that is actually Lewis submitting to the policeman’s baton.

Fortunately, Americans, properly informed, are not snowflakes. We have many examples of meeting barbarity head-on, as the tragic passing of civil rights titan Rep John Lewis reminds us. The barbarity of the right-fringe currently in power, so long as it’s met as peacefully as possible, will discredit itself, its progenitors, and its agents so thoroughly that only in their own minds will they consider themselves justified or honorable. These folks are certainly full of spunk.

It’s not too soon to offer analyses of the pathological currents in society that has led to these contretemps.

First up is an old theme for this blog: the mistaken belief that amateurism is good in critical affairs. Amateurs are great in many things, even indispensable in such non-critical pursuits as astronomy, but I’d never want one to fix my car, eh? Similarly, letting amateurs at the controls of government will lead us towards the cliffs of doom – as we’re seeing now.

Second, recklessly attempting to import the processes of the private sector into the public sector, along with people whose vision is limited to private sector practices, leads to events which are ineffective and even corrupt in the public sector, but if they’re not in the private sector, well, those people don’t even get it. For them, if it worked over here, surely it will work over there. Multiple reports exist of elements of the Federal response to the pandemic being approached in just this manner – and we can see the results from here. It’s a fiasco.

Third, the ceaseless rattle of religion within the GOP. There was a reason the Johnson Amendment was made into law so many years ago. It traded tax-exempt status for the various churches which promised not to preach concerning politics, and it was important because houses of worship inject an element of absolutism into a political world, whose nature during successful times is marked by compromise – anathema to the blindly religious and their leaders. When one religion or another is in control, they employ unrebuttable, yet ludicrous, arguments to bolster their positions, no matter how nutty – and, for those who don’t submit, they threaten terrible, if imaginary, divine punishment – and sometimes physical punishments as well. As Barry Goldwater noted long ago,

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

The deadly combination of certainty of Divine intentions, no-nothingism and its concomitant disdain for experts and knowledge, and all the general arrogance that goes along with it has proven fatal to the Republican Party’s ambition to be a governing Party. They cannot compromise, as Goldwater noted, and when corruption grips the upper reaches, there is no process for eliminating the pus that is Trump and his Evangelical Advisory Board.

Who are the latter? It’s surprising difficult to find out the current list of members. I see former Rep Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was at least once on the board, and having watched her pronouncements on high, I would not want her to be in a position of advising the President. My Arts Editor, a former Baptist, remarked during research that they seemed to be mostly “prosperity megachurch” pastors, which makes sense: the celebration of money is a mark of corruption.

But here’s Paul Brandeis Raushenbush of Auburn Seminary, relaying the judgment of Dr. Robert Jones, in reaction to the Charlottesville riots earlier in the Trump Presidency:

One person who isn’t surprised is Dr. Robert Jones, CEO of  the polling and research firm PRRI and whose book The End of White Christian America is crucial reading for understanding the reaction of White Evangelicals to this President.  Jones told Voices:

“With regard to Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, the views he espoused this week are consistent with views he expressed in the campaign. So the evangelicals on his advisory committee knew this was the president they were agreeing to serve. And like most things in the Trump orbit, the committee is mostly setup to be a Trump fan club rather than a committee that broadly represents the major entities in the evangelical world.

Also note: Given white evangelicals’ own checkered past supporting segregation and remaining silent about white supremacy groups (something I covered in my book), there may in fact be widespread agreement with the remarks.  For example, we conducted some recent analysis of perceptions of the Confederate flag, and found that 72% of white evangelicals say that they see the Confederate flag more as a symbol of southern pride than as a symbol of racism.

It’s fairly damning. The mixing of politics and theology is, as ever, a potent and poisonous mixture.

If the organization that succeeds the Republican Party as representative of the conservative wing of the country wishes to do better than these last dregs of the GOP are doing, those are just some of the principles to keep in mind. Negative, even exclusionary, that’s how it’s reading to me: toxic proposals deserve to be tossed in the trash and never seen again, no matter how much prestige the proposer has.

And it’s up the press, unbiased media, to bring these bad practices to light.

Yes! Yes! Pull my hair in anger! It makes me feel … alive!

Tormented (1960) suffers from a sloppy story. Whether Tom Stewart, supreme jazz pianist and the star attraction at an island wedding, is psychologically unstable, or if his former girlfriend, Vi, really is a supernatural critter from Hell, he’s in a helluva pickle – but we really can’t tell which is which, because we know virtually nothing about him. We end up watching Vi fall from the dilapidated light tower at which she requested they meet, and then wonder at his self-judgment that that his refusal to render aid in a crisis leaves him blameless. Did she deserve to be saved? Is he just a moral coward? Or was he distracted by his upcoming wedding to another woman?

And, apparently, Vi is fairly irritable as well, not to mention mildly monomaniacal. She might be dead, or a talking plastic head on his table – take your pick – but she still wants the pleasure of being married to him.

There might be an interesting story in there somewhere. The hopeful other bride, Meg, has a little sister who does fairly well at stealing scenes and typifying moral dilemmas. But the story’s really a mess, the special effects made me giggle, and my Arts Editor was cringing at this jazz musician’s efforts.

My advice is a little light sauce to get started, and try substituting your own lines for the characters’ lines. It’ll make this movie a little easier on the stomach.

And check out the actors’ bodies! In our print, at least, they all looked malformed, as if the film had been oddly stretched at some point.

Or you could get on with your life, instead.

Try beating these people up in Portland and see what that does for your reputation, whether you’re President Trump or a truncheon swinging anonymous Customs and Border Protection officer:

More protesters have arrived. A line of women haves linked arms to block the street. I’m told they call themselves the “wall of moms.” They’re chanting “feds stay clear, the moms are here” pic.twitter.com/eyYpUuoSRV

— Emily Gillespie (@emilygillespie) July 19, 2020

Taken a few days ago, this one is showing its age.

Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

That’s a pillar of the American experiment, as I’ve argued many times. From the homeless to the President, none are exempt, none get special treatment just because of who they are or the position they occupy. SCOTUS agrees. And if it seems like we don’t always practice it, it remains our ideal.

And that’s an element of my argument why Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), up for reelection this November, really deserves to be upended and sent home. Here’s the hypocrisy flowing from her mouth:

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said Friday that the Senate should hold hearings on any Supreme Court nomination President Donald Trump might make this year, even if he loses November’s election.

“(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have,” Ernst, a Republican, said during a taping of the Iowa Press show on Iowa PBS. “And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that.” …

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, drew Democrats’ condemnation in 2016 when, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he blocked confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

That seat became vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016. Obama made his appointment shortly after, but Grassley led the effort to block Garland’s confirmation.

At the time, Grassley cited “the Biden Rule” — a guideline stemming from a speech given by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1992 — in holding up the process. Grassley said the decision to fill the vacancy should be made by whomever was elected president in November 2016 — nine months after the seat became vacant.

Ernst publicly agreed with Grassley’s decision. [Des Moines Register]

This “Biden rule” had never been taken seriously, I’d never heard of it, so I think Grassley was full of shit at the time, although, to his credit, he reiterated his support for that position recently (see above article).

Ernst did not follow suit. And her reasoning was such utter crap that she should be embarrassed to have uttered the words:

It’s very different than what we have seen in the past. We have seen … a president of a different party and a Senate of a different party in previous scenarios. But in this scenario, we have the same party that is the majority in the Senate and the same party that is in the White House.

Previous to this explanation, the most accurate description of the general Republican view that they can nominate, debate, and confirm a SCOTUS Justice when Trump is in office, but they’re somehow bound by a “Biden rule” when Obama was in office was just power-mad hypocrisy.

But it’s more than that, as Ernst makes clear. It’s the revelation that Republicans cannot be bound by the concept that all are equal before the law. That this rule, whether it’s a strong tradition or a bullshit tradition or simply a pack of lies concerning why Judge Merrick would not even be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, only applies to Democratic nominees and not Republican nominees, is a clear sneer at an American foundational stone, one of the most conservative elements of American society and the American legal system.

Ernst’s excuse is, in reality, simply putting that arrogant We’re more holier than thou, you jerks! attitude into concrete words.

This is why Ernst should be ejected from her powerful seat this November by outraged Iowa Republican voters who prefer to have true conservatives, by which I mean people of the caliber of the late Senator Lugar (R-IN), and not this Trump-loving denizen of the TrumpSwamp (current TrumpScore: 91%), in office. This is one reason her poll numbers have been far below where they should be in conservative Iowa. More importantly, this is why the entire Republican Party has been falling into national disrepute, and will need to be rebuilt on principles recalling the foundations of America someday.

Not the principles of a financial-quarter based failing business owner.

And perhaps it’s just the prism I stare through, but I am fascinated how the importation of the people and processes of the private sector into the public have been so steadily a disaster.

This is from my pre-blogging days, but I was becoming more politically conscious at the time, which was 2009. Steve Benen provides it:

In early 2009, congressional Republicans were eager to condemn the Democratic Recovery Act, which rescued the U.S. economy from the Great Recession. To that end, some on the right came up with a weird claim: the stimulus package included $1 billion to build a magnetic-levitation train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

There was no such provision, but Republicans became so invested in the falsehood that they started to believe it. A California-based journalist sat down with then-Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) in March 2009, and she pointed to the non-existent element of the Democratic plan as proof of its flaws. When the journalist reminded the congresswoman of reality, Bono Mack directed her staff to retrieve the bill. “It’s right there,” the GOP lawmaker said at the time. “Show him.”

A few minutes later, an aide emerged with a copy of the bill and quietly conceded, “It’s not in the bill.”

The congresswoman wasn’t intentionally trying to deceive anyone; she’d simply made the assumption that her party’s talking points were accurate and reliable. They were not.

Yes, there really is schadenfreude pie. So rich it rots your teeth out, roots first.

What a delicious story. Benen connects it to a similar incident that occurred over the weekend between the President and Chris Wallace of Fox News regarding Trump’s claims that Biden will defund the police if elected, which I saw. While I generally think we’d all be better off if Fox News sank into the swamp that it’s “opinion” aka propaganda shows have created, I think I’d jump into that fetid swamp to rescue Wallace. He’s had several incidents of not accepting bullshit from anyone, including the President. And he interviews fairly darn well on The Late Show.

From WaPo:

The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, the people said.

The administration’s posture has angered some GOP senators, the officials said, and some lawmakers are trying to push back and ensure that the money stays in the bill. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential deliberations, cautioned that the talks were fluid and the numbers were in flux.

So … they want to conceal the extent of the pandemic by failing to measure it via testing.

Don’t these guys get it? Or are they so tied up in short-term thinking that it never occurs to them that there are proxies for metrics, such, say, hospitals so full of critically ill patients that they’re falling out the windows? President Trump’s frantic assertions that the virus will just “disappear,” emblematic of magical thinking, certainly is part of this strategy.

I think they can’t think beyond the end of their noses. They’re blinded by their ideology of the virtues of small government and the evils of big government, a sentiment I still get from some conservative friends, and so they push blindly onward, trying to cripple anything that smacks of it.

Meanwhile, people die and the economy continues to deteriorate. There’s a reason the rest of the world pities us.

Ghost food hall:

Enter Ghostline, an establishment that will gather several chefs cooking in different styles to offer takeout, delivery and limited patio seating in the Glover Park neighborhood starting Sept. 1, without serving customers inside. This “ghost food hall” is among a few food establishments whose owners are betting on an unusual business model to carry them through a crisis shaking the foundations of the restaurant industry.

Ghost food halls combine “ghost kitchens” — which serve meals exclusively by delivery — and food halls, both of which have become popular in recent years, said Alex Susskind, associate dean for academic affairs at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. With the pandemic making indoor dining less safe than before, he said many people who were skeptical of takeout and delivery are suddenly using those services frequently and finding themselves hungry for new food options. [“The pandemic has hit restaurants hard, but experts say the ‘ghost food hall’ concept might save them,” Marisa Iati, WaPo]

On a block near our house.

It’s quite cheery.

SCOTUS declined to hear this appeal:

Al Johnson’s Swedish restaurant has been a popular attraction for anyone traveling to Door County for its grass-covered roof and its herd of grass trimmers.

But a lawsuit by a New York attorney against Al Johnson’s sought to cancel the “Goats on a roof of grass” trademark owned by the well-known restaurant in Sister Bay.

That years-long petition has been denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s decision not to hear the case has ended the debate.

The lawsuit has been trying to strip the restaurant of its trademark since 2011. Attorney Todd Bank claimed it was demeaning to goats. [WMTV]

Demeaning to goats? Or was there something more going on here? I’m not sure I want to know. There are some limits to human knowledge I’d rather not breach.

(h/t GD)

The consequences of McGirt v. Oklahoma, the 5-4 decision in which the Native Americans won jurisdiction over eastern Oklahoma, are just beginning to become clear:

Instead of dealing with business-friendly regulators from the state of Oklahoma, oil producers may soon have to contend with both tribes and the federal government, which often manages land for Native Americans.

“The reality is that there’s something potentially that could be very detrimental to the oil and gas industry,” said Dewey Bartlett, a former Tulsa mayor who runs Keener Oil & Gas Company, a five-person oil and gas production and exploration firm with most of its wells now in Indian country. …

In a teleconference organized by the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma trade group soon after the July 9 decision, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter (R) sought to reassure oil producers that their business wouldn’t be upended and the state would keep their interests in mind. …

On Thursday, Hunter and the five tribes came to an agreement for a legislative proposal to Congress that would give the Native American groups the right to collect taxes and grant them some authority over anything deemed to threaten the “welfare” of a tribe — a potential, though not certain, opening for environmental regulations.

The Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma said it needed to study the agreement more before commenting. [WaPo]

From MacroTrends.

It sounds like the Native American tribes are getting off on the right foot. It’s their luck that the oil industry is in turmoil, even with the termination of the Russian / Saudi Arabian oil price war, due to a great slackening in demand for their product.

This may seem contrary, but I say it because, even at this great distance and with no personal connections to the Native American community, I perceive that their priorities are not that of the general American business community. The latter are all about the dollar; Native Americans, from coast to coast, reiterate their concerns for the health of the land. And the oil industry can be tough on the land. I look forward to how this story turns out.

And it just occurred to me to wonder how this decision will affect the physical health of the tribes involved. That psychic damage has been done by their oppression by the European invaders is undeniable. Will this victory in court, with consequent changes in their physical fortunes, help with the health of the Native American communities involved? I hope so.

Let the oil industry suffer a bit. It almost tastes like … the start of justice.

Presidents should always be subjected to tough questions, so I was a little disappointed in Fox News‘ Chris Wallace’s response to a President Trump reaction to one of his questions:

“I will be right eventually,” Trump told the host. “You know I said, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ I’ll say it again.”

“Does that discredit you?” Wallace asked.

If you don’t read history professor Heather Cox Richardson, you probably should. She has been providing news summaries with useful context for a while now, and occasionally a tidbit like this creeps in:

On July 18, 1863, at dusk, the Black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry of the U.S. Army charged the walls of Fort Wagner, a fortification on Morris Island off Charleston Harbor that covered the southern entrance to the harbor and thus was key to enabling the U.S. government to take the city. The 600 soldiers of the 54th made up the first Black regiment for the Union, organized after the Emancipation Proclamation called for the enlistment of African American soldiers. The 54th’s leader was a Boston abolitionist from a leading family: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

Shaw and his men had shipped out of Boston at the end of May 1863 for Beaufort, South Carolina, where the Union had gained an early foothold in its war to prevent the Confederates from dismembering the country. The men of the 54th knew they were not like other soldiers; they were symbols of how well Black men would fight for their country. Were they men? Or had enslavement destroyed their ability to take on a man’s responsibilities?

The whole country was watching… and they knew it.

The rest is here. This sort of story is echoed in World War I all-black regiments, who fought at least as well as the all-white regiments, and were championed by one of America’s most decorated and respected military men, General Pershing, derisively nicknamed “Black Jack” by the white regiments for his support for the black regiments; the Tuskegee Airmen (332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group) in World War II; and several other groups in American history of which I’m not aware, I’m sure.

Thanks, Professor Richardson.

Transcriptomics:

That said, sometimes more than one gene that might be found in more than one type of bacteria can have the same function — that is, produce the same metabolite — in the gut. That means to really understand the effects of the gut microbiome, you don’t just need to identify bacteria; you need to know what they’re up to. For this reason, [USDA molecular biologist Mary] Kable’s lab group at the USDA in California is turning to a method called transcriptomics, which, instead of identifying bacteria, identifies the bacteria’s active genes. She’s using this information as part of her big-picture approach to studying how healthy people can stay healthy and prevent disease. The end goal: personalized nutrition plans. [“Stomachache? Your Gut Bacteria Might Be to Blame,” Anna Funk, Discover (July/August, 2020)]

Genes are modulated by the epigenome, but they never mention that in the article. I wonder how they measure and compensate for that effect.

Long time readers may remember the tensions over water between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia that I talked about four years ago. It popped back up on my radar just now as AL Monitor reports they may become dramatically worse:

Ethiopia reportedly started filling its controversial mega dam on the Nile River today though no agreement has been reached with Egypt and Sudan. The unilateral action is sure to exacerbate tensions between Ethiopia and the two countries, as both Egypt and Sudan have made their staunch opposition to the move clear. …

The latest round of negotiations between the three countries ended without an agreement yesterday.

“Although there were progresses no breakthrough deal is made,” Bekele tweeted yesterday.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River could easily become a chokehold on Egypt, since, as one might guess, the Blue Nile is a major contributor to Egypt’s only major source of fresh water, the Nile:

The confluence with the White Nile at Khartoum marks the beginning of the Nile.

Sudan reports immediate effects, although I have no idea if these numbers are trustworthy or politically motivated:

There were immediate effects of the reported filling on the Sudanese section of the Blue Nile, according to Sudan’s Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources. The ministry recorded that water levels in the river went down by 90 million cubic meters (more than 3 billion cubic feet) at a station today, according to a press release.

Ethiopia is trying to warn off Egypt from armed conflict:

An Ethiopian military leader said, ”Egyptians and the rest of the world know too well how we conduct war” before [a UN Security Council meeting on the issue].

Here’s the problem: Egypt’s the proverbial cornered rat. They have no alternative natural fresh water sources of which I am aware, they have a large and growing population, and their population density does not herald good omens for social harmony if water supplies become more limited:

Egypt is the most populous country in the entire Middle East and the second-most populous on the African continent (after Nigeria). About 95% of the country’s 100 million people (February 2020) live along the banks of the Nile and in the Nile Delta, which fans out north of Cairo; and along the Suez Canal. These regions are among the world’s most densely populated, containing an average of over 1,540 per km², as compared to 96 persons per km² for the country as a whole. [Wikipedia]

While a military tactical strike on the dam seems unlikely, it can’t be ruled out. Keep an eye out for violence brought on by the need for water.

While reading this article on the Fauci / Trump Administration debacle in WaPo, I ran across this:

Many FDA career scientists and doctors see the White House criticism of Fauci as an effort to bully him — to make it clear that no one should consider crossing the president in the months leading up to the election, according to people familiar with the scientists’ thinking.

“To see an NIH scientist and a doctor attacked like that, the feeling is, ‘Oh, my God, that could just as easily be me,’ ” said a former FDA official, who like some others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid without risking retribution.

Biden, the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, should issue a statement that runs along these lines:

“To all American bureaucrats who fear telling the truth to the Trump Administration or the American public could lead to career difficulties or job termination, stop worrying. If I am elected President, I will see to it that you will get your job back and have your career restored.”

We should never have to read a statement such as the one issued by the anonymous former FDA official. That is an absolute scandal.

Tonight, a collection with no theme. Except, they’re alive. I hope.

These are of the honeysuckle:

Here’s some lungwort and another lily.

And, in memoriam, our mint patch. Deb tore it all out today.

A reader writes concerning my alleged star-gazer lilies and says that they’re probably from a day lily. Yes, of course.

I was fascinated by this column by Elahe Izadi in WaPo concerning the problems newspapers can face when out of bound views are expressed in Letters of Comment:

There was an awful lot to unpack in the letter-to-the-editor that leapt from the pages of South Carolina’s Spartanburg Herald-Journal one day last month. Writer Winston McCuen touched upon “Marxist mobs,” statue-toppling, “cloistered professors,” and the political philosophy of Andrew Jackson’s vice president, John C. Calhoun.

But one of his arguments came through loud and clear. When it came to slavery, McCuen declared, Calhoun and the Confederacy were dead right.

“God rewards goodness and intelligence; and that slavery is how He justly punishes ignorance, sloth and depravity,” he wrote.

Izadi was concerned about how editors select which letters should be published, but I must admit I headed down the dead-end street of this dude McCuen’s argument.

Let’s stipulate he’s not just some troll, but is in earnest. I’ll tell you what got my attention.

• It wasn’t his right-wing views concerning Marxist mobs, cloistered professors, etc, which are little more than right-wing trigger words.
• It wasn’t the depraved suggestion that slavery is ever moral or in the public interest.
• It wasn’t the lunatic suggestion that God, in his infinite wisdom, would take people who are, in McCuen’s view, ignorant, slothful, and depraved, and assign them to one of the hardest working “roles” in any society. The insipid insanity of that “logic” hides behind its initial outrageousness.

No, those I had to come up with after my first reaction, and that first one is this: the societal tolerance for magical thinking of the sort that originates from religion is what enables this remark to be made, read, and published. McCuen uses his private channel to the divine, unobservable and unarguable^[1], to justify a view that is rightfully repugnant to society.

Notice how that magical thinking, still permitted by polite society, deforms the very societal reality in which we live. Much like a mass deforming the space-time continuum, the magical thinking exception to the rationality we generally employ lets retrograde dudes like McCuen impute attitudes to a divine being, for which we have no evidence and for which the religious explicitly declare they need no evidence thereof, that many others would still dispute. It all seems a bit insane.

And, to those that would claim the Bible exists as a pivot upon which such claims can be weighed, I need only reference the Fire-Eaters of the Civil War, who insistently used the Bible to justify the existence of slavery and the secession of the South from the Union. That many found that plausible suggests the Bible is not decisive when it comes to certain topics, while its divine origins remain doubtful.

This is why I insist on remaining agnostic. Even though I recognize that religion occasionally enables great leaps forward in terms of societal good, as I believe I mentioned here (you’ll have to really dig to find it, though), in general its “Get Out Of Jail Card” aspect makes it potentially a ruinous project when employed by the malicious with the help of the supine.

And there are echoes in this to the discussion about when currently out of bound views should be expressed, and how, in the realm of science, this will, eventually, self-correct. This reaction to McCuen paradoxically sustains the oppositional argument:

¹ I use the word unarguable, vs the more common inarguable. The latter suggests there is no effective riposte to the expressed argument or assertion, while the former suggests the argument is in a reserved category in which it cannot be inspected nor judged for reasons having nothing to do with intrinsic quality. In my view, these arguments are usually accorded respect not in accord with their worth.

The late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

A long and good life comes to an end. RIP, Rep Lewis, and may many aspire to your heights of living the good life.

From Global Disinformation Index:

I find the ‘D’ quite disconcerting, and that works for the sad little word ‘disinformation.’ Indeed, it really grates on my visuals.

I’d hate to work in an office dedicated to disinformation, such sad little people doing such sad useless work. Rationalization must reach vast heights in such offices. GDI, a new organization to me, tracks such work, and, hopefully, doesn’t do it itself.

And the Covid-19 disinformation? There’s nothing subtle about it. But, first, from WaPo:

Creator Elizabeth Lilly, a 56-year-old Santa Cruz-area resident, said she wanted to attract and benefit people “across the aisle,” though admins say they’re reevaluating whether “NO POLITICS” is possible when scientists are under political attack.

I’m still brooding on Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and his anxiety-free reelection campaign:

Tom Cotton (R) will be defending his seat against, well, no one in particular. See, a local Democratic pol had filed to run, and two hours after the deadline, he dropped out, claiming family illness – leaving the Democrats high and dry.

Dirty politics? Bad luck? Cotton, who proved himself to be a real dick during the Obama years, is a shoe-in.

So?

Here’s what – if you’re an Arkansas voter disenchanted with Senator Cotton, do a write-in vote.

OF JOSHUA MAHONY.

We all know Cotton will win. But the goal here isn’t winning, not anymore. The goal is provocation. Let everyone write-in Mahony. Let that write-in vote grow big enough that Cotton doesn’t win in an overwhelming landslide.

Maybe he only makes it over 50%.

And then put an ear to the ground and a finger in the air, and listen for grumbling from the Cotton campaign. Let someone get a drink or three into themselves.

And maybe someone will grumble about Mahony and bargains.

Even if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate, they’d probably have to expel Cotton for campaign rule violations.

So if you’re an Arkansas voter, VOTE MAHONY!

Way back in March I wrote to my Congressional legislatures concerning those Dreamers who work in healthcare with this letter:

Healthcare providers on the frontlines of our nation’s fight against COVID-19 rely significantly upon DACA recipients to perform essential work. Approximately 27,000 DACA recipients are healthcare workers—including nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, home health aides, technicians, and other staff—and nearly 200 are medical students, residents, and physicians. [1]

It seems to me that the next order of Congress should be addressing the problem of Dreamers. To depend on SCOTUS to make a decision which benefits the nation’s patient population at this time is to put this issue at the mercy of an organization constrained to act within the bounds of the Constitution and current law; they may choose to exempt these Dreamers from deportation, but such a decision may be decried by those of an anti-immigration bent.

I think it would be far better if Congress exercises its perogatives and crafted a positive response in the form of legislation exempting Dreamers in healthcare roles from deportation for the crisis period, and extend to them an expedited opportunity for citizenship if they have performed meritoriously. To do less is to imperil out patient population in an unnecessary way, as well as expose the Dreamers to the dangers of being returned to a country that is not a home, and possibly riven with COVID-19 itself.

Hewitt A White, Jr.

[1] Letter from The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization to the Clerk of the Court, SCOTUS – https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-589/139241/20200327101941772_2020 03 27 Letter to Court for 18-589.pdf; or buried in this The Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/27/coronavirus-latest-news

Only now I have heard from Senator Smith. In her reply she references the HEROES Act legislation, which appears to address all undocumented workers, which is unfortunate. In any case, Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has stated he will not consider it.

I should think serving during this dangerous time for medical front line workers should merit special consideration.