Unsightly Mental Blemishes

This bit from NewScientist (12 December 2020) caught my attention:

We already know that when we use a tool such as a hammer, our brain’s body map expands to encompass it: the tool temporarily becomes part of an “extended self”. Something similar is true if you are a habitual driver. The vehicle becomes part of you – or perhaps you become part of the vehicle.

With digital devices now constantly in our hands, the extended self could become permanent. “Our identity partly depends on memories,” says philosopher Richard Heersmink at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Increasingly, we are outsourcing our memories to our smartphones – not just through notifications of what we should do, but through messages and images that recreate what we have done. The result? “A larger part of our narrative self is smeared out over our environment,” says Heersmink. You may extend further than you think.

Except that’s not really true, is it? Take the very example first given: driving cars. Supposedly, within a few years none of us will be driving cars; we’ll instead be chauffeured about by dedicated computing systems, perhaps even AIs – mislabeled or, frighteningly^[1], not. Will our extended self still include the car?

I doubt it. It’s the action of driving that engenders the car’s inclusion into your sense of self, because that’s part of being effective at driving. If it’s not needed, if you just hit the big GREEN start button and speak an address, there’s little reason to include the car into your extended self.

And if you then have to drive the car in an emergency?

I wonder about the unintended consequences of changes to our extended self concept. Are they all positive, or will there be some negatives? For some folks, even books are negatives rather than positives, because, in their minds, our memories have become inferior to those of our ancestors, who could recite, say, The Odyssey from memory. So, to some extent, positive and negative consequences will be a matter of opinion.

¹ Imagine having an entity that has self-agency controlling your vehicle. And it sours on you, or its existence, or …

Today the market indices dropped by more than 2% across the board. Here’s the DJIA for the last year:

I’m not alarmed by this. Market goes up, market goes down. Long term investors shrug and go about their business.

But that fact that Gamestop and AMC, the cinema company, have climbed precipitously recently did catch my attention. How much?

Gamestop (GME) is up nearly 10 fold in the last week.

Same for AMC (AMC).

So what’s going on?

GameStop, hedge funds’ most-hated stock, was targeted by an army of retail investors who marshaled forces against short sellers in online chat rooms. In the Reddit forum “wallstreetbets” with more than 2 million subscribers, rookie investors encouraged each other to pile into GameStop’s shares and call options, creating massive short squeezes in the stock. [CNBC]

And so we see the power of the Internet as a group of individual investors, a coordinated army, have successfully moved to boost the price of a stock in the face of short selling, resulting in a short squeeze^[1]. The shorts, in this case, are hedge funds, immensely large amounts of money that attempt to make lucrative, yet safe, investments through novel strategies not available to smaller investors. And sometimes fail.

This is the first time that I’ve seen retail investors take aim at the hedge fund industry, which, in my limited experience, are generally regarded with some suspicion by the individual investor as being entities which manipulate the market for their own profit, and other investors bedamned. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, and as a long-term investor I generally feel I can ignore the question, unlike day traders or short-term (not short position!) or even short position traders, all of whom are far too sensitive – in my opinion – to the eddies in the river of capital.

But the emergence of a coordinated army of individual investors declaring war – and quite successfully, as their target, Melvin Capital, was apparently badly hurt when GME shares took off – on a hedge fund is something new, and thus needs to be considered carefully. Why?

There’s an underlying assumption to the market, and that everyone’s in it for the same reason: to make money. That’s not entirely true, of course, because there’s investors who are investing to promote the social good, and there are some very few who hope to accumulate enough shares to take over a company. But, by and large, the statement is accurate enough.

But what about now? What if this coordinated army is mobilized towards some other end, not having to do with finance? That’s what’s stirring in my mind. How are such maneuvers to be recognized? If the general assumption is suddenly falsified, am I in trouble? is this army regulatable, and should they be?

Or is it really a significant phenomenon?

I can’t help but notice the similarity between this army and a traditional old pump ‘n dumper, a disreputable denizen of the penny stocks who selects one, goes about pumping out good, but false, news about it after investing in it at a low price, and when the pump results in an inflated value, dumps their shares for an ill-gained profit.

For the investors that invested at the top, they lose nearly everything, but so does almost everyone else, especially if they made the mistake of being patient. And how is this different for those who pumped up GME?

There are three classes of investor here: the coordinated army, the investors who don’t know any better and jumped on the rocket – and the targeted hedge fund who owes a hellacious amount of the targeted company’s stock. While the second class of investor will be contributing some of their wealth to the coordinated army, and so will members of the army itself in a case of cannibalism, consisting of those who got in late, the intended, and real victim, will be a hedge fund which eventually ends up buying the shares it owes at vastly inflated prices.

In a sense, this is a Robin Hood scenario in that a vast treasury was just raided by means that are not exactly ethical, but probably not quite illegal. Yet. If you don’t like hedge funds, this sounds like a good thing.

But I do worry that it could be turned against me, or people in some category to which I belong, and could thus negatively impact me some day.

Look, the market is ideally a way for people to lay bets on the future value of public companies. If this coordinated army screws with that purpose, then it’ll make it harder for honest investors to honestly make those bets.

But if the hedge funds do have an unfair advantage, then is this the way to even the board? I doubt it, and I say that as someone who was furious when Long Term Capital Management, an early, huge hedge fund, received a government bailout after making a series of bad investments. That should have never have happened, they should have just failed, and those who felt the pain would have been object lessons for everyone else.

But one must be partially divorced from emotions when evaluating situations like this. Sure, it might be nice to see a manipulative – if they are – hedge fund go down in flames. But is this coordinated army a general menace?

So when I look at that 2% loss in the market indices, I don’t believe that’s a sign of what’s to come in the shadow of the coordinated army of investors. In my experience, the market goes up, the market goes down – but rarely more than it’s gone up.

But I am going to keep this coordinated army incident in the back of my mind. Just in case.

¹ A short position occurs when an investor borrows some set number of shares of a stock from one or more investors, sells them on the market, and then buys them back for return to those who own them. The investor profits when the price drops from his sell point, and loses money when the price is higher and they are forced to buy back. A short squeeze occurs when the price of a stock is forced higher because a large number of shorts are in the market and on the wrong side of trades. They have to scramble to buy and return the shares at a loss – and if demand is high, the price skyrockets. A short’s profit potential is always limited, and loss potential is unlimited.

This Deseret News article on Senator Romney’s (R-UT) rational position on the recent Presidential election caught my eye:

Former President Donald Trump will never admit that he lost a fair election, but every elected Republican ought to be telling voters that as a step toward bringing the country together, Sen. Mitt Romney said Tuesday.

In addition to social media perpetuating the “big lie” that Trump is somehow still president and President Joe Biden stole the election, GOP officials, too, are contributing to that notion, the Utah Republican said.

“You have many of the Trump supporters in elected office, senators, congresspeople, governors, continuing to say the same thing, that the election was stolen,” Romney said.

The phrase was … but every elected Republican ought to be telling voters that as a step toward bringing the country together.

And it suddenly became obvious, at least for GOPers who were both elected in the recent election and continue to perpetuate the big lie.

I suggest that at every public forum at which they appear, a flashmob suddenly appears, and they begin this, ah, chanting dialog with the elected official:

FLASH MOB: You stole your election! You stole your election!

OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: You stole your election! You stole your election!

OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: PROVE IT, THEN! PROVE IT, THEN!

OFFICIAL: I don’t have to! You have no proof!

FM: JUST LIKE YOU DON’T ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU HYPOCRITICAL, LEG HUMPING, PANTS WETTER! WE DON’T NEED ANY!

OFFICIAL: What?

FM: ELECTION STEALER! ELECTION STEALER! WE DEMAND A RECOUNT OF YOUR ELECTION! AND THEN ANOTHER ONE! AND THEN ANOTHER ONE! AND THEN WE DON’T CARE, YOU STOLE THE ELECTION REGARDLESS!

OFFICIAL: THIS IS CRAZY!

FM: EXACTLY, YOU DUMBSHIT! STOP BEING A DUMBSHIT AND WE’LL STOP DOING THIS!

Because, quite frankly, it sounds exhausting. And it might need some tuning. But it should drive the point home: If one election is illegitimate despite absolutely no proof, then they’re all illegitimate for both sides.

Spread the word, folks. This might work.

A reader writes concerning the Loon balloons:

Maybe they should use hydrogen instead of helium. They’re unmanned, after all.

I suppose it depends which element is more likely to leak from the Loon balloons as biased by the costs of refilling using each element.

Source: Airships.net

Although there is the option of painting the balloons in rocket fuel, as was done by the Germans to the Hindenberg, and when a balloon is to be retired, just hitting it with a flare. In fact, an enterprising outfit might sell the opportunities to blow up such balloons, generating a minor stream of income. “You, too, can pretend to be the finger of the Internet God, destroying a malfunctioning unit just like your own body does with its cells.”

Ahem. That may be a little over the top.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks he’s proven himself to the far-right contingent in the Republican Party:

The Senate tabled an effort by Sen. Rand Paul Tuesday to force a vote on the constitutionality of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, but the vote offered an indicator for how Republican senators — who overwhelmingly voted for Paul’s measure — feel about the trial.

Paul’s motion was killed on a 55-45 vote, with five Republicans joining all Democrats, meaning 45 Republicans voted for Paul’s effort. Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania crossed party lines to vote with Democrats. [CNN/Politics]

But I’d like to suggest to Corporate America that we now have forty five more candidates for deprivation of corporate funds and support in their reelection campaigns.

And I think Corporate America, which faces an existential crisis if Trump is not forcefully rejected politically, had better take this seriously. The Republicans have only themselves to blame for their crisis in the extreme position of their party. Refusing to deal with it not only damages themselves, but endangers democracy itself – and all those corporate entities which it supports.

Go get ’em, kids!

But let’s extend the theme, eh? I think Corporate America should make a promise, to America as well as itself, not to support far right candidates of any sort, and at any level. They need to show judgment and maturity in their support choices.

Or consumers, in their turn, may have to make those judgments on them.

Returning to this long dormant thread, and reminding readers of my long time opposition to private prisons, I’m immensely comforted that President Biden is taking swift action on this issue:

Executive order to end reliance on private prisons

In an effort to terminate the federal government’s use of privately owned detention facilities, the Attorney General has been directed not to renew Department of Justice contracts with private prisons. [NBC News]

This isn’t a step towards socialism or taking a shot at a business which was founded by a Republican. This is a step towards removing the influence of business on the process of justice.

How does this matter? Ask yourself this: should a business be allowed to attempt to increase its profit by lobbying government to increase the penalties for infractions of the law? Even to create new laws which, by their infractions, will increase its profits?

There is little reason to have confidence that justice, and therefore society, will be served.

The above link lists most, or all, of the Executive Actions taken by President Biden so far.

A reader writes concerning tuition-related debt:

Student debt comes from a couple of sources. One is the plethora of students who go to college for degrees that do not have enough fiscal payback to compensate for the cost of the degree. Another is the inability to delay gratification by failing to spread out the time to degree by adding in work time to earn the cost of said education. But the main one is the federal student loan program itself. When colleges know that students will get loans that guarantee the colleges will get their money, they have no real incentive to be competitive in their student costs. They know they’ll still get students, and that they’ll get their money from the government no matter how badly the student crashes and burns, or how little they make with their “gender studies” degree after graduation. Thus they crank costs for undergrads to pay for grad students, research programs, and other programs that are more related to how they’re viewed from an academic status perspective, rather than how well and efficiently they educate their undergrad populations. IMHO. YMMV.

Regarding the negative impact of scholarships and easily obtainable loans on tuition, I agree and have made that argument in years prior, although probably not on UMB.

I see it as a simple model of financial inflation. Much like the Wiemar Republic’s printing money to satisfy Versailles Treaty requirements and domestic items to buy, the money supply, in this case funneled into the higher ed “financial system” via scholarships and loans, increases at a rate greater than the increase in available positions in higher education, so the suppliers of those positions increase the prices because, well, they can.

This hurts those who cannot win scholarships nor wish to get loans, although they are forced to get them, because generally they haven’t the capacity to increase their incomes at the same rate, and, as students, they rarely have any excess capacity as it is. As my reader notes, there is no squeeze on the sellers; in fact, it’s a seller’s market, and functions like a seller’s market in real estate, when there are many out there looking to buy, but not so many interested in selling. Bidding wars erupt. Well, not in higher ed – they just push tuition higher.

Scholarship money can be considered free money; loans are discounted, as they are paid back over time.

It’s be interesting – fascinating – to ban such scholarships and loans for a decade, just to see what happens to tuition in the absence of all that free and discounted money. My guess is that, after a couple of years, tuitions would drop. There’d be an awful lot of empty slots that would need to be filled – or campuses would be closing, and no educational administrator wants to have that on their c.v., eh? Suddenly, they’d have to compete to put butts in those seats.

Never, ever hire or do business with these people.

Located deep in Canada’s Yukon, the remote community of Beaver Creek is home to only about 100 people, most of them members of the White River First Nation.

So when an unfamiliar couple who claimed to work at a local motel showed up at a mobile clinic to receive coronavirus vaccines, it didn’t take long for locals to become suspicious. Authorities soon found that the couple were actually wealthy Vancouver residents who had chartered a private plane to the isolated outpost so that they could get shots intended to protect vulnerable Indigenous elders. …

Canadian media outlets have identified the couple as casino executive Rodney Baker, 55, and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, a 32-year-old actress whose recent credits include the 2020 films “Fatman” and “Chick Fight.” Each faces fines totaling the equivalent of about $900 for violating quarantine guidelines. Neither could immediately be reached for comment late Monday, and it was not clear whether they have attorneys. [WaPo]

He lost his $10 million/year job. I wonder if the White River First Nation can impose fines.

This NewScientist (12 December 2020) article more or less says it with its title:

Google’s AI can keep Loon balloons flying for over 300 days in a row

Huge stratospheric balloons that act as floating cell towers in remote areas can stay in the air for hundreds of days thanks to an artificially intelligent pilot created by Google and Loon.

Which means Internet coverage.

But does it mean that Elon Musk’s Starlink project can be abandoned? It’ll depend on the cost, bandwidth, latency, coverage, and dependability of Google’s Loon balloons.

The reason I don’t like Starlink is that it pollutes lower Earth orbit with thousands of satellites. These interfere with astronomical projects, and when they burn out, they have to be replaced at a fairly high cost. And I’m assuming that they’ll burn up rather quickly once they become inactive; if they don’t, then they enter the category of space junk, which is a far more important category than most folks realize. Getting and keeping satellites in orbit is already something of a challenge; adding more space junk makes things even more difficult.

Meanwhile, Loon balloons are presumably salvageable. However, they do use helium – a resource that is becoming more and more valuable. That may weigh against them, and I’m not aware of a more economical replacement.

It’s worth noting that right winger Erick Erickson, morally conflicted by his fellows’ recent political activities, aka the January 6 Insurrection, has found it necessary to take to the immoral equivalency argument:

Roe v. Wade is nothing more than a modern retelling of Dred Scot. The abortion movement will scream and complain at the comparison, but not only do they know it is true, but abortion, like slavery, is predatory in black communities across America as rich white people fund the killing of black children.

We should not forget nor should we deny that the arguments of slavery and abortion are only a few words removed from each other. The moral case for abortion is the moral case for slavery.

Remember that.

Yep, abortion is equated to slavery.

I skimmed his arguments, but I wasn’t all that interested and they seemed strained. The fascination, for me, lies in the fact that he felt he had to present this moral condemnation of the left at all. That, no matter what foul political leanings and calculations and corruption and irrationality and, yes, murders his fellow travelers have committed, he can drag the left down to the current level of moral depravity of much of the right through this strained argument.

And, especially, this line is telling: The abortion movement will scream and complain at the comparison, but not only do they know it is true … and so he accuses the pro-choice left of conscious racism, a charge lodged most credibly against the right in view of the many racist symbols observed at the Insurrection, not to mention various other hints from President Trump himself. He cannot deny the charge against the right, but if he can make the charge against the left stick…

And the last sentence, Remember that, serves two purposes. First, that this is a weapon to use in arguments between left and right, as a fine way to outrage the left; and, second, that this is a weapon to use in arguments within the right. That is, those who are thinking that the right has become too shabby, too corrupt to honorably associate with can be faced with accusations that the other side is equally racist and commits abortion/murders. So why leave? It’s an argument of nihilism.

It’s a fascinating exercise in immoral equivalency, isn’t it? Erickson discovers that corruption is rampant, even epidemic, on his side, and, while he creditably rages against it in other posts, he still seeks to paint the left with yet fouler paint, all in order to keep a befouled and hopelessly corrupt right ascendant.

If you buy his anti-abortion arguments, maybe it works. Keep ghastly anti-Americanism and allegiance to irrationality in place, and watch the whole country collapse in ruins, eventually. All while denials echo in our ears that it’s going on. Trumpism and gaslighting are fast becoming synonyms.

If you don’t buy his anti-abortion arguments, or you refuse the separate evil of being a single-issue voter, then there’s a good chance you go independent, or even begin to explore the ideological arguments of the centrist left with a newly open mind.

And Erickson, because he’s trapped in his assertion that abortion isn’t just bad policy or even reprehensible, but a mortal sin, is left to beseech his fellows not to be corrupt, while providing them with an overwhelming excuse to be corrupt, to destroy the American state, to let the forces of chaos and evil destroy another victim, all in the name of anti-abortion and irrationality.

That’s a tough position. It’s the sort of thing that might make you rethink your assumptions.

Kevin Drum goes back to 2016 to discuss a Michael Anton essay that warned against Hillary Clinton’s election to the Presidency:

… oh hell, let’s just give you a taste:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances. [Anton]

Anton’s essay had a huge impact when it was written, and in a way it describes the id of the Trumpist movement. In a nutshell, Anton argued that the nation was declining and close to collapse, which meant that voting for Donald Trump was our only choice. Like the passengers on Flight 93, who could charge the cockpit and probably die or do nothing and definitely die, conservatives needed to vote for Donald Trump whether they liked it or not. Sure, he might be a disaster. But Hillary Clinton would definitely be a disaster.

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, reminded me of “The Flight 93 Election” a few days ago, and it produced two thoughts when I reread it. The first is something I’ve mentioned before: the reason conservatives fight so hard is that they really, truly believe that liberals are bringing about the collapse of the country. The second is that they’re completely wrong. Consider the “litany of ills,” that Anton enumerates at the beginning of his essay. I’m reproducing them here word-for-word, adding only numbers to make them easier to reference: …

It’s a good rebuttal to the fear-mongering of the Anton essay, complete with charts, although honestly I think the far-right fringers are simply afraid of having their entire broken philosophy extinguished.

But I think Drum missed it on this one:

9. And, at the higher levels, saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. …

9. Student debt
No argument here. Student debt is indeed out of control.

But Drum fails to address the question of the why of higher tuition debt. It’s not a matter that the left forces the price of education up so much as the right’s philosophy that the student should pay more of the costs of education, and in so doing forgetting that society as a whole benefits from every advanced degree earned, and by not paying for them, an untoward burden is thrust upon the student.

I’ve discussed this before, and reader feedback made clear that certain costs associated with the higher education systems were also responsible for the sky-high tuitions. That cannot be easily disregarded.

But in the end, the philosophy that society gets no benefit from advanced degrees is a fallacious, and therefore bankrupt, philosophy. While I’m not in favor of canceling all tuition debt or making tuition free for all – a little skin in the game is generally a good idea – I think Drum’s chart proves the point that, by not subsidizing education, a generation of Americans are being saddled with ridiculous levels of debt, meaning they’re ruining their lives in order to provide useful, even critical services to society.

And that’s neither right, nor good for the economic health of society.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the difficulties various former Trump White House employees are facing in finding new jobs commensurate with their expectations. Evidently, former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has decided to go for a job where there’s really very little evaluation of past efforts:

Wikipedia

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, announced Monday that she is running for governor of Arkansas.

“With the radical left now in charge of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense. In fact, your governor must be on the front line,” Sanders said in a nearly eight-minute video posted on Twitter. “So today, I announce my candidacy for governor of Arkansas.” [CNN/Politics]

The daughter of former Arkansas governor, pastor, and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR), I’d say she has a leg up on her primary challengers, whoever they may be, and then a quick run to the governor’s mansion in this deeply conservative state.

It’ll be interesting to see how her opponents deploy her Trumpian – and admitted at least once – lies against her, and how she responds. If her opponents are unable to make the case that lying is simply part of the Trumpist way, or that constant lying is undesirable in a governor, she’ll win.

Because she won’t win on personality. She certainly didn’t show any charisma during her time as Press Secretary.

But I’d put my money on her. Her family has a history of political success, so she’s seen how it’s done. I’m not saying it’s not a sordid history – Mike Huckabee apparently left some controversy in his trail – but she knows the requirements, she’s high profile, and she’s picked the right audience.

Because voters don’t have an HR to thoroughly vet candidates, unlike a commercial employer. Or, rather, they do, in the free press, but they don’t use them much.

Professor Richardson nails the essence of what makes the American democracy work:

Democracy depends on a nonpartisan group of functionaries who are loyal not to a single strongman but to the state itself. Loyalty to the country, rather than to a single leader, means those bureaucrats follow the law and have an interest in protecting the government. It is the weight of that loyalty that managed to stop Trump from becoming a dictator—he was thwarted by what he called the “Deep State,” people who were loyal not to him but to America and our laws. That loyalty was bipartisan. For all that Trump railed that anyone who stood up to him was a Democrat, in fact many—Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for example—are Republicans.

Authoritarian figures expect loyalty to themselves alone, rather than to a nonpartisan government. To get that loyalty, they turn to underlings who are loyal because they are not qualified or talented enough to rise to power in a nonpartisan system. They are loyal to their boss because they could not make it in a true meritocracy, and at some level they know that (even if they insist they are disliked for their politics).

It’s a microcosm of my Sectors of Society meditations. If you replace one goal with another, the methods will change in order to optimize the attainment of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on excellence in whatever field of democratic government you’re in – national defense, pollution regulation, science research, law enforcement & justice are just a few examples – then you will either develop those skills or you’ll move on to some other career. In a very real sense, it’s the old Evolution In Action gig. And the organization will improve, not only because you’ve improved, but because the public perception of the goal matches the interior specification of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on brown-nosing Dear Leader, then you’ll develop those skills relevant to brown-nosing. The better you brown-nose, the better your career – and excellence in whatever part of government you’re in is purely an accident. You’ll prosper in proportion to your brown-nosing.

And screw everyone who depends on the government to get things right.

We’ve seen this phenomenon in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, even the United States during those periods in which political commissars, rather than competent experts, lead non-political portions of government. Look at Trump and most of his commissars. Or Bush II and his FEMA director Michael Brown, whose devotion to President Bush may have served him well, but New Orleans ill.

Richardson’s essay is important for its accuracy and brevity.

Nebraska preacher Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries is a far-right preacher who apparently predicted that Trump would win the recent Presidential Election. Faced with a distinct loss of face – and, in the fake preaching gig, that’s tantamount to ruin – he’s elected to go on offense, rather than apologize. Right Wing Watch has a partial transcript of his most recent protestation that he’ll be proven right. Watch for the part where he tries to be two things at once:

“I feel like we’re putting so much emphasis on an inauguration date, that the election has still some things that must be looked into, that will be looked into,” Kunneman said. “And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed it. In other words, I believe God is saying we need to wait and stand and take a position like David. Is there not a cause? And here’s what I would say, ‘Come back and talk to me in four years.’ You say, ‘That’s ridiculous. Four years? You said President Trump would be reelected.’ He was, but come back and talk to me in four years. In other words, they thought Noah was a fool. Noah prophesied something that had never been done in the history of the Earth. He said it would rain and the scoffers, the whole world was against him. You talk about a guy who the whole world was against, it was Noah. They scoffed at him, they rejected him, they mocked him. But in the end, they had prophetic blindness until God moved, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Catch it? He equates himself to Noah in the last part … a guy who the whole world was against … blithely ignoring the fact that he just said … And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed [predicting the election result would be for Trump].

I wonder how many in his flock picked up on that little detail upon which so much depends. Kunneman is terrified that the fatted calf is about to be jerked away from him.

But this is typical of the sleight-of-hand practiced by con men and grifters. A quiet bending of logic, a rush of emotions, and soon the believer’s money is in your pocket.

For their flocks, it’s too bad that all those prophecies went bad, but I think we all know you’ll stick to the flock. After all, that’s the source of comfort, help, community, and, rather more crassly, social standing and power. The hell with such unpleasant realities as truth, fact, and straight-shooting. You have a position to maintain.

A Senator who prompts me to ask all those Wisconsin voters next door to Minnesota, WTF WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU VOTED THIS LOSER IN?

Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden admin’s national security team. They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) January 21, 2021

The trick for the Democrats is to not permit him to specify the question. The real question might be Law or Chaos, Senator Johnson? Which do you and your businessman backers prefer?

Depending on the childish whims of President Trump, or the predictability of the law?

If we’re going to be a nation of laws, a long standing tradition which is part of what has made us great, then the impeachment trial must proceed, and the Senators must stand up to the forces of terror and vote, each and every one, for conviction.

And we’ll know, by those who don’t vote for conviction, those Senators who depend on suckling at Trump’s teat, rather than their own skills and genius, for their prestige and position. We’ll know them for the unworthy toadies that they are.

And we’ll know who to eject at the next – lawful – opportunity.

Ineluctable:

1. incapable of being evaded; inescapable:
   an ineluctable destiny. [Dictionary.com]

I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t know ineluctable, although I’ve seen it for years. Noted in “Another bank cuts ties with Trump as the ex-president’s unraveling continues,” Aldous J Pennyfarthing, The Daily Kos:

While I won’t be entirely happy until Donald Trump is exiled to the isle of Elba or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (my top choice, naturally), his ineluctable slide into social and business pariah status is heartening.

The situation involving an Ethiopian dam on the Nile does not appear to have improved, according to an AL Monitor report:

Antony Blinken, US President Joe Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state, warned this week in his confirmation hearing that talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam could “boil over.”

In response to a question by Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Coons, D-Del., about how the United States can better support the “fragile transition in Sudan” and hold countries in the region accountable for human rights, Blinken noted “concerning actions, including atrocities” by Ethiopian forces against Tigreans and refugees and promised a “fully engaged” American foreign policy in the region. …

The stakes in the Nile dam talks couldn’t be higher for Egypt, and became more complicated, and intertwined, because of the Ethiopian civil war and its impact on Sudan. While the Nile talks have been until now been mostly a high stakes Egypt-Ethiopia diplomatic dispute, with Sudan in a supporting role (for Egypt), the Sudan-Ethiopia fault line now risks military escalation.

There’s not a lot more to say than what’s come before on this thread, is there? A military strike on Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam could light quite a fire if other military and diplomatic powers, such as the United States, aren’t ready to quench it immediately. Still …

Egypt has a population in the range of 100 million, Ethiopia’s in the same neighborhood, and Sudan is at 41 million. It’s not a peaceful part of Africa, so a war could be likely and quite deadly. But if there are enough outside parties pressing for harmony, perhaps the controversy can be settled. Peace be on them.

From Fr. Z’s Blog:

QUAERITUR:

What are the best ways for the laity to remain in a state of grace should the Holy Mass and the sacraments eventually be outlawed by the upcoming Biden/Harris administration?

The simple answer, which isn’t simple at all, is “Don’t commit any mortal sins.”

Also, disciplining yourself over time and working to eliminate your principle faults would be key.

Notice he didn’t tell his interlocutor that Biden is a devout Catholic, so please don’t ask nonsense questions.

Nope, instead this comes up:

I want to take the proposition seriously: outlawing of church services by the upcoming Harris administration. Yes… I think that can happen. Seeing what we are seeing after 6 January (the day freedom died?) it looks like it only a matter of time.

Yes, indeed. Both of them are far gone in right wing victimhood, and I don’t know what to tell them except If it doesn’t happen, would you consider returning to the American mainstream?

My oh my:

TIME's new cover: Day one https://t.co/VazxGDJzZf pic.twitter.com/R6jVrzXXZc

— TIME (@TIME) January 21, 2021

Apparently, Fox News threw a tiz fit.

Steve Benen has a piece on Republican obstructionism from Day 1 and the filibuster:

… there’s no real question as to whether Republicans will “go into full obstruction mode”; they already have. Literally on Joe Biden’s first full day in the White House, GOP senators said they would, en masse, reject his economic relief package and his immigration reform proposal, and there’s no reason to believe the party will adopt a more constructive posture in the coming months. …

… there are core truths that are inescapable:

The Senate does not and cannot function as an effective legislative body under its current rules.

Without a functioning Senate, federal policymaking has turned sclerotic in recent decades, and the problem will persist indefinitely without reforms.

In another post, he blames it on Senator McConnell (R-KY):

The circumstances are frustrating for those eager to see effective governing, but they shouldn’t surprise anyone. GOP leaders wrote a playbook the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, and they’re obviously running the same plays again.

As we recently discussed, observers need only look at Mitch McConnell’s actions in early 2009 to get a sense of how the Kentucky Republican approaches his governing responsibilities when Democrats control the levers of federal power.

As I noted in my book, after President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Republicans were under some pressure to be responsible and constructive, with many pleading with GOP officials to resist the urge to slap away the Democratic president’s outstretched hand. McConnell executed a different kind of plan, refusing to even consider bipartisan governing, even when Obama agreed with his opponents.

As the Kentuckian saw it, the public believes bipartisan bills are popular, so he rejected every element of the Democratic White House’s agenda so voters would not see Obama succeeding. “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell told The Atlantic in 2011, referring to legislation backed by the White House.

Here’s the executive version: The Democrats are playing the governance game – they try to implement good governance wherever possible, correct or mistaken, to confront the national problems that come upon us. In the end, they hope to be judged on how well they governed.

The Republicans play the Win power game – whatever it takes, they will keep the ideas of the Democrats from being passed into law, even if they agree with them. If it has Democrats’ fingerprints on it, it is anathema and must be stopped^[1].

No matter what the cost is to the Nation.

We’ve since seen that Senator McConnell, and the balance of the Republican Party, really has no idea what to do with that power. The incompetence of the AHCA and the 2017 Tax Reform bills were so awful they were laughable.

But make no mistake, the incompatability of these strategies, the inferiority in terms of the good of the nation of the Republican strategy, is, definitionally, damaging to the nation. It matters not to the Republicans, who have long contended that conservative ideas are superior; this contention has proven hollow in their refusal to endorse any idea with Democratic endorsement, even when they brought it up, when they don’t control the Senate, as well as the vast incompetence they’ve shown in executing their own business.

And when it comes to economic aid to small business that President Biden endorses and the House passes and sends to the Senate? They’ll refuse to vote for that, too. Even though all disinterested economists endorse it. Even though our local bars and restaurants are going under. They’ll refuse to pass it, using filibusters if necessary.

Remember this from above?

Without a functioning Senate, federal policymaking has turned sclerotic in recent decades, and the problem will persist indefinitely without reforms.

And that frantic urge to power, that step towards Turchin’s internecine war of the elites, is what existentially threatens this nation. It’s one thing to work against a piece of legislature based on ideological principle; it’s quite another, and morally illicit, to work against a piece of legislature based on your pathological need for power. McConnell, and his ideological predecessor Newt “Quitter” Gingrich, may call it the long game, but I call it abdication of responsibility.

The electorate should be judging based on quality of governance, rather than making one side look bad while substantially damaging the nation.

¹ This extends even to the naming of members of SCOTUS; see Judge Merrick Garland’s treatment.

George Will of WaPo:

Piety:

In spiritual terminology, piety is a virtue which may include religious devotion, spirituality, or a mixture of both. A common element in most conceptions of piety is humility. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “What Message Did Biden’s Religious Inauguration Speech Send to Atheists?, Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist:

I’ll be honest: It didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the [Biden Inauguration] ceremony. It’s the way Biden talks. He’s Catholic. He’s been using that kind of language for decades. I’m used to it. But his unwillingness to even namecheck Secular Americans — indeed, a growing part of his own base — wasn’t lost on people. The Freedom From Religion Foundation said that “Pieties do not make them better leaders.”

That simple quote is incomplete and unfair to Mehta and Biden. Here’s more:

There is some reason for hope. When Biden signed an executive order yesterday night to rescind the Muslim Ban, it included that more inclusive language:

Nevertheless, the previous administration enacted a number of Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States — first from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from largely African countries. Those actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.

Much better.

On pro-Trump National Review, the yakking about the horrors of the Biden Administration is under way. Here’s Yuval Levin:

The Biden team has set as its goal getting 100 million Americans vaccinated in its first 100 days. That of course requires a pace of a million people getting vaccinated each day on average. And what pace were they left by the Trump administration?

There are various ways to track the pace, but they’re all relying on the same underlying state and federal data and so fall into the same general range every day. So let’s look at the Bloomberg vaccine tracker, which is probably the best organized of them. It shows that yesterday, the last day of the Trump administration, more than 1.5 million Americans were vaccinated. The numbers go up and down some each day, but the 7-day average for the last week of the Trump administration was 912,000 people vaccinated per day.

No. No No No. That’s not what the Bloomberg vaccine tracker shows.

Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 17.2 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 912,497 doses per day were administered.

A shot is not a vaccination! A vaccination requires two doses. The Bloomberg piece he cites is explicit:

The U.S. is managing state allocations of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine,  as well as Moderna’s shot and has said it will make more shots available in order to increase vaccinations. Both vaccines require two doses taken several weeks apart. At least 2.30 million people have completed the two-dose vaccination regimen.

Bold mine. 2.3 million fully vaccinated does not equate to a million people vaccinated a day. It’s been about a month since we started, so if we were on pace, it’d be 30 million fully vaccinated. But Bloomberg notes the 912,497 daily average figure for shots is the rolling week average.

And the subject is really even more convoluted than it sounds. As much as the Biden Admin is complaining about a lack of planning by Trump, it’s worth understanding that it’s relatively easy to vaccinate in big cities, where a long trip may be a few miles on city streets.

It’s a whole ‘nuther ball of wax out in the rural areas, where getting to a clinic may take quite a trip – a trip not appropriate for elderly patients. But Levin can’t be bothered to explore this aspect.

It’s really inexcusable for Levin to pretend that a shot equates a vaccination. Which shot completes a vaccination and which initiates a vaccination may be difficult to quantify for statistical purposes, but suffice it to say that at this point in the cycle, as shown by Bloomberg’s data, most are initiators.

So Levin’s attack on the Biden Administration is mostly dishonest – or, like Trump, incompetent.

The Gwinnett County Republican Party desperately wants changes to Georgia’s election laws:

One of the Gwinnett County Republican Party’s two representatives on the bipartisan county elections board told fellow members of the GOP that she favors major elections changes at the local and state levels, including a move away from no excuse absentee voting for many Georgians.

Alice O’Lenick, who is the Gwinnett Board of Registrations and Elections chairwoman for 2021 and 2022, encouraged members of her party to write letters and make phone calls to state legislators to encourage them to make changes to state elections laws. …

“I was on a Zoom call the other day and I said, ‘I’m like a dog with a bone. I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws,’ “ O’Lenick said. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.” [Gwinnett Daily Post]

That last line brings Republican strategy into crystal clear focus, doesn’t it?

At the meeting where this is proposed, I would smile sweetly and ask which laws are suppressing Republican voters, and offer to loosen those up so more Republican voters can show up.

Any response along the lines of suppressing Democratic or Independent voters would be ignored, after suggesting that such a motivation might qualify for law enforcement investigation. Suggestions that ineligible voters are voting should be referred to the Court system, with special reference to Section 11, or whatever section is pertinent for Georgia state Courts, which refers to the barring of lawyers who bring frivolous suits to court.

The point of election laws is to permit voting by eligible citizens first, and restrict ineligible voters second.