Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Ten minutes of …

Professor Steven Mazie remarks on the beginning of the Barrett era:

Though her name appears nowhere in the 33 pages of opinions issued on Thanksgiving eve, Amy Coney Barrett looms large in her first consequential vote as a Supreme Court justice. Barrett played the decisive role in the court’s decision Wednesday to grant requests from Catholics and Orthodox Jews in New York City to block church and synagogue attendance limits in covid-19 hot spots.

During the pandemic’s first wave in the spring, the Supreme Court voted twice not to interfere when states such as California and Nevada restricted indoor gatherings, including church services. Those votes were 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining his four liberal colleagues.

But with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September — and Barrett’s ascension to the bench — the tide has turned. Roberts is now unable to stop a majority from overruling local officials as they try to combat the coronavirus’s spread. Limiting attendance to 10 or 25 worshipers in the most dangerous zones, the majority said in its unsigned opinion, is “far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus at the applicants’ services.” [WaPo]

Which leaves me hoping some institute of higher learning is going to sign on to the task of evaluating the cost, in human lives and suffering, of this decision. Not only directly, but in secondary and tertiary infections.

I hope they’re small or non-existent.

But if the hospitals begin overflowing with infections traceable to unrestrained religious services, then more deaths unrelated to Covid-19 can then be also blamed on this decision.

And if this is properly publicized, can the survivors sue the religious institutions in question?

And can the conservative justices bearing the blame be expected to retire in shame?

This has been going around today:

Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020

To which I can only say:

You first.

Of course, he’s just stirring the pot. Keep the base from thinking for itself, that’s the most dangerous thing that can happen to Trump. So say something that has a cracked facade of reasonability and hope most of them don’t start flying the coop.

Before, if you don’t mind the mixed metaphor, you have time to shear the flock.

Since when did This is different from that become This is different to that? I find it annoying.

Long time readers may – or may not – remember that I’ve mentioned, briefly, the possibility that humanity and the Universe is actually a computer simulation. Well, Discover published an article on this subject back in August, in which a couple of scientists tried to put together a Drake Equation^[1] equivalent to estimate the probability that we are, in fact, a simulation:

Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard [of the University of Montreal in Canada] begin with a fundamental estimate of the computing power available to create a simulation. They say, for example, that a kilogram of matter, fully exploited for computation, could perform 10^50 operations per second. …

So an interesting question is this: of all the sentient beings in existence, what fraction are likely to be simulations? To derive the answer, Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard start with the total number of real sentient beings NRe, multiply that by the fraction with access to the necessary computing power fCiv; multiply this by the fraction of that power that is devoted to simulating consciousness fDed (because these beings are likely to be using their computer for other purposes, too); and then multiply this by the number of brains they could simulate Rcal.

The problem I have is the initial estimate. If we are a simulation, why should the estimate of the power of a human brain have any relation to the fundamental physics of the base reality? Or are they being extremely precise with the word simulation, using it to mean an attempt to actually simulate their reality, rather than a singular creation of sentient beings (us), possibly unrelated to those running the computer program?

Even if this is true, there remains little reason to think there’s a reasonably close relation, as that would certainly be a “tuneable parameter,” permitting exploration of how its variations effects the simulation at large.

So I have some trouble taking this exploration seriously. Apparently, neither do they:

However, the overlords have a way to foil this. All they need to do is to rewire their simulation to make it look as if we are able to hide information, even though they are aware of it all the time. “If the simulators are particularly angry at our attempted escape, they could also send us to a simulated hell, in which case we would at least have the confirmation we were truly living inside a simulation and our paranoia was not unjustified…,” conclude Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

In that sense, we are the ultimate laboratory guinea pigs: forever trapped and forever fooled by the evil genius of our omnipotent masters.

Time for another game of Civilization VI.

¹ The Drake Equation attempts to estimate the probability that there is sentient life, besides ourselves, in the Milky Way galaxy.

This is our own fault. Never fire on an innocent taxi service.

Generally, we try to watch at least one movie on the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year on Christmas, we were spectacularly successful with Anna and the Apocalypse (2018), but this year we had no such luck with The Lost Missile (1958). An interplanetary powered object has entered Earth’s atmosphere and is laying waste to North America with its 10 million degree (F? C? Does it matter at that magnitude?) trail, and nothing seems to stop it. But at Brookhaven Atomic Laboratories in New York City, the scientists, who are busy having babies and not getting married, might have a way to stop this disaster before it reaches the big city (so long, Ottawa!).

Don’t mess with this scientist and his girlfriend, or they’ll scientist all over you!

But only if they can get past the sneering ne’er-do-wells on the road between the labs and the launchpad. But they come to a properly heated end, so all’s well that ends well.

If you’re married.

Don’t waste your time on this one, there’s little to recommend it unless you like stock footage of early Cold War military aircraft trying out their weapons. Or if you don’t like Ottawa.

The Biden approach to governing so far, such as nominating relative unknown, yet highly experienced, Antony Blinken rather than former National Security Advisor and controversial candidate, at least among conservatives, Susan Rice for Secretary Of State, which disconcerted progressives:

“I’ve known him a long time, and I don’t think guns blazing is ever going to be his style,” said Biden friend and donor John Morgan. “He is an institutionalist. He’s friendly with both sides. And I think the reason he was chosen to be vice president was because of his relationships.”

As he has awaited formal recognition of his victory by the electoral college next month, Biden has showcased bipartisan meetings. Speaking to a group that included Republican governors, he vowed to marshal a bipartisan assault on the coronavirus. During a meeting with mayors, he declared that there are not “blue cities” or “red cities.” A panel of medical experts he named to advise him on the pandemic includes two former Trump administration officials.

Biden’s attempts at unity offer a direct contrast to the way in which Trump whooshed into the presidency four years ago, condemning the Washington establishment, making early Cabinet decisions that were highly controversial and working frenetically to undo the actions of his Democratic predecessor. [WaPo]

The first two paragraphs, above, actually play against the third. Keep in mind that, for many conservatives, and as Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) noted back in the 1960s, compromise is considered a dirty word:

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.

Biden is offering supremely qualified candidates who lack objectionable characteristics. Is it compromise? Not precisely – but Biden is placing Republican Senators who are up for reelection in 2022, and even 2024, in a bind. Do they vote to confirm, possibly enraging the arrogant portion of the Republican base who are convinced that any Democrat is evil? Or do they vote against qualified candidates for no good reason, risking alienation of independent voters who, in most cases, are the pivot point on which their reelection chances rest?

Recall that Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has been “Dr. No” for many years, thus setting the tone for the current crop of Republican Senators. Those who break the mold will have to be careful communicating to constituents, and that could result in a message that begins disrupting the Republican Party nation-wide.

It might even drive out the conservative clerics who have howled against Biden as if he were a hell-hound, and not a centrist who has called for unity and not divergence. These clerics benefit from the latter, not the former, regardless of whether they are Protestant or Catholic.

This is all very subtle, of course, employing mere shadows of carrot and stick. It’ll be interesting to see how such loud mouthed dead-enders as Cotton, Cruz, and Rubio respond, as well as the back-benchers such as Risch, Kennedy, and quite a number of others.

Nummy nummy in the tummy!

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) is a cut-rate effort at alien arachnid mayhem. A meteorite falls to the ground in rural Wisconsin, complete with mysterious geodes. Inside are what appears to be diamonds, along with spiders that are somehow not noticed, small and hairy and cute.

That grow big and ugly.

If you can get by the bad acting, this is a real hoot. We were laughing, hard, at some scenes, running them back to see them again. I really wonder who ended up with the big spider prop, which must have been carted around in a pickup truck. The plot’s actually not bad, and there’s a wee bit of social consciousness in that the local astrophysicist is a >gasp< woman, which is brought up rather pointedly.

A classic example of the SF horror genre: garish and confusing. I’d hang this on my wall. Downstairs. In the closet.

But that’s where the good stuff ends. I suggest being slightly bleary when watching this one. Or an arachnid fan.

Here I asked what had happened to the NRA in the last election, and moments later I ran across this from WaPo:

Bill Powers, the executive vice president for communications at Ackerman McQueen [the NRA’s former PR and advertising firm], said the financial statements lay out the NRA’s steady decline as the organization faced a raft of defectors questioning LaPierre’s leadership, and as more of its money went into scorched-earth legal battles to defend LaPierre. “You have just seen an election where the NRA was sidelined,” he said.

Their latest tax returns are summarized thusly:

The tax return shows membership dues falling 34 percent in 2019, to $113 million. [NRA spokesman Andrew] Arulanandam called those figures “dated information.” He said that donations and grass-roots support are “surging” and that the NRA added 300,000 members in the past six months.

Maybe someday the NRA will return to responsibility, as it was before LaPierre. Only time will tell.

Remember Michael Flynn, frantic to retract two guilty pleas, as aided by the DoJ’s decision, made after the ascension of William Barr to Attorney General, to discontinue their prosecution of Flynn for lying to the FBI?

It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020

My question is this: can someone be preemptively pardoned when the trial hasn’t terminated? I mean, pleading guilty sounds like the end, but he had not yet been sentenced, and with his attempt to withdraw his guilty pleas, it sounds like he’s now going to admit to being guilty anyways, even if it’s forced on him by Trump’s action.

If it’s valid.

I wonder if Flynn could file to repudiate the granting of the pardon as invalid as he’s not, in his pleadings, no longer guilty.

In any case, Trump just looks a little bit more corrupt. I wonder how Judge Sullivan will react. I would be deeply surprised if it’s not with complete contempt for Trump.

Ruth Hopkins of the Lakota Sioux summarizes the contributions of Native Americans in the recent election in Business Insider:

Natives make up about 6% of the population of Arizona, or 424,955 people as of 2018, and the Navajo Nation has around 67,000 eligible voters. This election, the Navajo had a 97% voter turnout. President-elect Joe Biden won the three counties that overlap the Navajo Nation with 73,954 votes. President Donald Trump received a mere 2,010 votes.

Most precincts located on the Tohono O’odham Nation were above 90% for Biden, and the territories of the Hualapai, Havasupai, White Mountain Apache, Gila River, San Carlos Apache, Pascua Yaqui, Cocopah and Colorado River Tribes were 70-90% for Biden. Biden currently leads in Arizona by 11,935 votes with 98% of the votes tallied — a margin slimmer than the Native voter turnout.

Tribes in Arizona also helped flip an Arizona Senate seat from red to blue as former astronaut Mark Kelly unseated Republican incumbent Martha McSally.

Hopkins points out that similar results apply in Wisconsin. I hope the Biden Administration begins the hard work of straightening out relations between the Native nations and the United States, which have been screwed up and murderous since before the United States came into being. The recent SCOTUS decision regarding criminal jurisdiction in Oklahoma is a start. I hope it continues.

And I might point out that the Native Americans seem to have a better grip on what it means to have a just democracy than does the White community, at least in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Rev. Warnock’s not afraid of flinging poo in his Georgia Senate runoff race:

I told you the smear ads were coming, but Georgians will see Sen. @Kloeffler’s ads for what they are. pic.twitter.com/0sgU8ndC63

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) November 24, 2020

Concerns about democracy being a viable governing system continue to flow:

Krzysztof J. Pelc, a political science professor at McGill University, said Trump’s refusal to admit he lost and the GOP’s reluctance to publicly rebuke him suggest that the Trump phenomenon will not end when he leaves office.

“The spectacle of the past weeks implies that even if the White House becomes more open to greater cooperation with its allies, it may simply be unable to act on those good intentions,” he said.

“The great lesson that U.S. allies have drawn from the past four years is that the American ideals of democratic freedom and openness rest on a fragile basis. American political institutions have proven more delicate than most international observers thought. As a result, we are always one election away from U.S. commitments coming undone.” [WaPo]

Add one part essence of Gingrich [Newt], two parts bad intellectual thinking [abortion], ten parts water, mix vigorously. Find Donald Trump at the bottom of the glass [worm], put in office with a host of enablers [Congress], despite overwhelming goodness of the water [3 million vote victory at the polls for Clinton].

Four years later, swear God told you Trump should be reelected, jump up and down, speak in tongues [Copeland, White, et al]. Foster outrage with lies. Compare symptoms of Democracy’s decay with arsenic poisoning.

OK, so that’s a little noir. Honestly, every governing system requires work, whether it’s Communism (see how hard China works to keep its citizens in line), monarchies (spreading the idea that the King has been touched by a Divinity), theocracy (which bloody-handed Divinity are we worshiping this year?), or Democracy (why should I respect the ideas of my fellow citizens when I’m so obviously right?).

But Pelc, above, has a point: if America is going to be changing course radically every year, then why should we be trusted? And, implicitly, isn’t this also possible for every other democracy?

For decades, the two big political parties worked together to lead the nation and the world towards shared goals of freedom and democracy. It began to fall apart when the Soviet Union broke up, no longer constituting an existential threat to the United States, and then Newt Gingrich began preaching power politics, and disaster has been befalling America ever since.

It’s just part of the job to refute the Gingrich Doctrine for those who believe in Democracy, I think.

It appears extending Professor Turchin’s secular (> 100 years) analysis of agrarian societies’ behavior in the elite part of society during the disintegrative phase to the post-industrial United States is roughly accurate:

Last week, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin went further to divorce the government from supporting the economy in this perilous time. He announced that he was suspending the Treasury’s lending powers at the end of the year, taking away a crucial backstop for businesses and local governments. He is also clawing back from the Federal Reserve about $250 billion appropriated under the original coronavirus relief bill in an apparent attempt to keep it out of the hands of the Biden team. That money will go back to Congress, which would have to reappropriate it in another bill to make it available again, which the Republican Senate shows no sign of being willing to do. Republicans have expressed concern that the Biden administration could use the appropriated money to bail out states and local governments, which by law cannot borrow to tide them over. [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

Welcome to the “internecine wars” among the elite that Professor Turchin observed historically occurred again and again. And, unless you are a member of the elite, you are the fodder. And if you are elite, you may still be the fodder. In many historical cases, the losing side of the elite didn’t just lose power, or even their status – they lost their lives.

And the Republicans really don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of government structure. Among the many roles of the Federal Government is that of managing and providing resources during times of national crisis. Think World War II – were the States expected to each provide a response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor? No, it’d be simply ludicrous.

Steve Mnuchin and wife photographed with their God.

Similarly, strong leadership and extra resources in the time of pandemic is the role of the Federal Government. Republicans who try to defend this move will be made to look foolish. Mnuchin’s maneuvering appears to be the blatant pandering of a weak, weak man. Professor Richardson isn’t the only one to recognize this damn sillinesss for what it is, as she notes:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce objected strongly to Mnuchin’s actions. In a public statement, it said: ““American businesses and workers are weary of these political machinations when they are doing everything in their power to keep our economy going. We strongly urge these programs be extended for the foreseeable future and call on Congress to pass additional pandemic relief targeted at the American businesses, workers and industries that continue to suffer. We all need to unite behind the need of a broad-based economic recovery.”

If the Republicans continue these political wars, they may find more and more of their allies are walking away. This may turn into a long and drawn out political suicide maneuver. The Chamber of Commerce is obviously worried, and, for that matter, what happened to the National Rifle Association (NRA) during the last election? I didn’t hear a thing about them. I have to wonder if they have effectively dissolved under the management of their long time leader, Wayne LaPierre. The actions of numerous sports teams to make their facilities available for voting in the recent election should also be a warning to Republicans that their social utility is under reevaluation by substantial portions of the corporate world – and may be found wanting.

Even moves in the last few years to downplay the primacy of investors and recognize the importance of workers and customers in the corporate world, contested as that rearrangement of priorities may be, signals that the Republican Party, and its allegiance to the almighty dollar, are becoming increasingly untied from the American mainstream.

This scorched earth retreat of the Republicans in the wake of their loss of the 2020 Presidential election may not work as well for them as it did for the Soviets in World War II.

In The Atlantic, Professor Eric Muller pulls apart the question of whether or not President Trump can preemptively pardon himself:

Article II of the Constitution says that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Did you catch that? The president has the power not to pardon people, but “to grant … Pardons” (emphasis added). So the question is not whether Trump can pardon himself. It’s whether he can grant himself a pardon.

That might seem like an odd way of putting the question, but it’s linguistically important. On the one hand, some actions can’t be reflexive—you can’t do them to yourself. Think of surrendering, relinquishing, or handing over something. These verbs entail a transfer to someone else; the actor can’t also be the recipient.

On the other hand, countless verbs do leave open the possibility of reflexive meaning. If, for example, the Constitution had empowered the president not to grant a pardon but to announce a pardon, one would be hard-pressed to insist that the president could not announce himself as a recipient.

And word choice is what the law operates on.

Assuming his lawyers find Muller convincing, I’m guessing there’s a good chance that Mike Pence, assuming he’s agreeable to a quid pro quo, will become President #46 and the shortest tenured President ever, and will be granting a preemptive pardon to his predecessor.

This will put Pence in a commanding position to run for any position available to him, as the Trump cultists will owe him big-time. He has, after all, been a supportive vice president all along, echoing lies and propaganda as required, and this will be a ticket to continued prominence, particularly if he were to be interested in a Senate seat from his home state of Indiana.

That still doesn’t protect Trump from State-level criminal investigations, but it reduces exposure to the point where Trump may feel safe enough to stay in the United States, and not light out for, say, the Seychelle Islands.

And that might work out well for state prosecutors.

The superb lyrebird:

Incidentally, I’m reading The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman at the moment.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons comments on the special fears he believes the GOP harbors concerning Rev. Warnock’s (D-GA) Senate campaign in Georgia:

But there’s a reason for GOP alarm. “Republicans see Rev. Warnock as a direct threat to their ability to hijack a gospel that prioritizes caring for and loving our neighbor no matter how or if they pray,” Sarah Riggs Amico, who ran for Georgia lieutenant governor alongside Stacey Abrams in 2018, told me. “Republicans are right to be scared: Voters of faith know authentic presentations of the gospel build up God’s creation rather than tear others down as Kelly Loeffler and the Trump GOP have done.”

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who has led the revival of Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign and has become the leading face of social justice-focused Christianity in America, told me that Warnock’s campaign is an example of moral fusion organizing, which addresses poverty and systemic racism simultaneously with moral language. This type of organizing, he believes “helps people see how the lies of divide and conquer tactics are used to pit poor and working people against one another so that the extremely wealthy — people like Rev. Warnock’s opponent — can stay in power and serve their own interests.” [CNN]

In other words, Warnock’s authenticity, his refusal to manipulate Scripture to generate distrust and even hate, a practice we saw in the last election in many places of the country, are thought to be recognizable by the electorate – much to the dismay of the conservatives involved in those efforts.

R. G. Ingersoll

Which, bizarrely, reminds me of 19th century free-thinker Robert Green Ingersoll, who, I read in the biography The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, by Susan Jacoby, was raised in a devoutly Christian family, but upon reaching his majority, became a free thinker and lawyer. His upbringing may have alienated him from his faith, but it also brought him mastery of the materials of Christian theology, and he became famous for his speeches in which he’d expose the contradictions of the Bible, as well as the plumb silliness it contained.

And he’d do this throughout the Bible-belt. Was he chased out of the towns and cities by outraged citizens?

No!

His speeches were sell-outs, and he was practically adored. He shone a light from a new angle on one of the central texts of their lives, and, I’m guessing, they appreciated the new angles – or, perhaps, his willingness to point out the flaws of a text that they, themselves, were too shy to do themselves, but were more than happy to discuss afterwards.

He may not have been a favorite of those clerics benefiting from the hierarchy, but for those earnest in the faith, who really wish to understand, Ingersoll provided knowledgeable material to chew on – even if he had himself given up on the faith.

And, in a way, Warnock is bringing his traditional, yet new, light to the text. Certainly, he won’t reach everyone, but given the apparently small gap between Republican and Democratic voters in Georgia and elsewhere, and the unhappiness I occasionally hear from the ranks of the Republicans’ religious flank, another, more authentic interpretation of the Bible, rather than the empty entertainments of this clown or that oaf, may be more than welcome.

And sway the votes.

Minnesota Public Radio rebuts Jennifer Carnahan:

Minnesota Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan claimed Thursday night that the state’s 2020 election showed “extreme abnormalities and statistical variations from Minnesota’s historic voter trends.” But her examples are either off-base, vague or flat-out wrong.

Carnahan begins with a general claim: It’s “unusual” that President Donald Trump did worse in Minnesota in 2020 than 2016, despite putting much more effort into winning the state this year. This is relatively vague, so it’s hard to firmly prove or disprove.

Still, while it’s true Trump put a lot more effort into Minnesota than he did in 2016, it’s also true that Joe Biden put more effort here than Hillary Clinton did. Combine that with a national collapse in support for third-party candidates, and national polling indicating that Biden as a Democratic candidate was more popular than Clinton was, and the idea that Biden might do better isn’t absurd.

MPR goes on with some discussions of long term trends, but, really, Carnahan and MPR are ignoring one signal event.

The 2018 election.

And all you really need to know are the names of these Representatives: Omar, McCollum, and Craig. These three women comfortably won their races, and for Craig, it was an achievement greater than simply oustering back-bencher Republican Rep. Jason Lewis. Minnesota’s Second Congressional District had been held by Republicans all the way back to 2000, which is far back as Ballotpedia goes.

And it wasn’t that Lewis had any new scandals attaching to him. It was that the Second District voters had had enough of the risible incompetence of President Trump, and Lewis did nothing to disassociate himself from Trump. He was a Trump adherent, having ridden in on Trump’s coattails in 2016, following the retirement of Rep Kline (R-MN). Craig’s win in 2020 indicates the continuing disgust with Trump present in the Second District.

The Twin Cities is the key to state-wide races, and Minneapolis & St. Paul had, by and large, become appalled by President Trump’s decisions and behavior. It made it easy to reject him by a large margin, as MPR points out.

Carnahan’s remarks may signal her strength of commitment to the Trump cult, but that doesn’t mean much when the cult leader is a pathological narcissist, and it gets worse when the realities of 2018 are resolutely ignored by Carnahan.

The MN GOP should immediately and forcefully require her resignation for its own good. And if it can’t bring itself to do that, it should take that as a signal that it is a broken and possibly irremediable organization, doomed to flounder more and more as the years pass and voters realize that their magical thinking does no one any good.

If you take this seriously:

Kenneth Copeland and followers put their hands on their heads, pray to God, "Bald spots I call you gone! Hair grow!" pic.twitter.com/EmDcda1rsH

— Christian Nightmares (@ChristnNitemare) November 19, 2020

However, at some point near the beginning I feel like he says “Here’s my latest schtick.” I’d hate to think he’s just sophisticated entertainment and not a grifter.

For those who can’t think of any reason not to have a theocracy, try this on for size:

Among the various ways a soul can be sucked out of a mere mortal, this one isn’t the worst.

Perhaps the worst part of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) is this ungainly title with which it is saddled, and, no, she does not have fifty feet. It is, otherwise, a noir karmic tale of what happens when a man listens to the devil on his shoulder and abuses a woman who loves him, and, in turn, what happens when a woman persists in loving a man she knows is cheating on her.

She becomes a 50′ tall woman and beats him to death. If only that happened more often.

Parts to look out for – and, in some cases, this is a warning – the papier mâché giant arm; the marvelously portrayed, even charming, giants; this guy with no sex appeal who’s being slobbered over by two women; the deputy sheriff who made my teeth itch; the escapee Rover from The Prisoner.

And the devil on the dude’s shoulder, who never pays for her evils. Which is rather how instigators of evil acts often end up – maybe disappointed, but punished? No, it’s the gullible who get the plunger up the kiester, don’t they?

Special effects range from bad to fab; the plot is good; acting is more than competent. I won’t recommend it, but this was far, far better than I was expecting.

Sidney Powell’s career is certainly up & down, isn’t it? Yesterday, she was linking Hugo Chavez and communist money to voting machines while working on the Trump Campaign’s legal team.

Today?

President Trump’s campaign said in a Sunday statement that Sidney Powell is neither a member of its legal team nor a lawyer for Trump in his personal capacity. [Axios]

Not precisely unemployed, but she appears to have lost a big client. Or never had him as a client. I’m going with the former, because she wouldn’t have allowed near the podium if she wasn’t a member of the team in the first place.

So what’s going on? Either Trump’s cult just couldn’t swallow that particular conspiracy theory – which I doubt – or Powell fufilled her role, and, in a classic passive-aggressive maneuver, she’s been discarded and the Trump Campaign, having injected yet more resentment into the cult, can now say that, no, they weren’t responsible, it wasn’t them, no no no.

I’m going for the second. I wonder if she received a bonus from the Trump Campaign – or was promised a bonus but won’t receive it.

I became curious as to how the popular vote gap vs Electoral College gap played out and charted it, starting with FDR’s last election:

First, I should note that the subjects of third party candidates and faithless electors are treated here by ignoring them for charting purposes, and removing their numbers for calculation purposes. In other words, all calculations are carried out with only those numbers won by the top two finishers. That said, there’s a surprising number of both in just the 20 elections recorded here.

So is there anything to learn here? Generally, the Electoral College acts as a magnifier of popular vote gaps; the Trump/Clinton contest, and to a much lesser extent, the Bush/Gore contest, are not a trend, but outliers. But it’s worth concentrating on them nonetheless, because they are also evidence that the Electoral College, slanted as it is toward giving smaller states more power than larger states through the inclusion of a mandatory two votes plus those votes for all Representatives, which can also be unfair in favor of the least populated states, should be replaced by a direct vote.

As this chart doesn’t track either Parties or ideologies, it’s hard to say if the electorate is changing over time all that much. Certainly, Reagan’s two elections were blowouts, but that appears to have been the high point of the Republican Party, and I doubt that it’s rational to suggest the Republicans of today would even recognize the Republicans of the 1980s as more than distantly related cousins – if that. I suspect that there’d be little respect for Republican President Abraham Lincoln, either.

And it’s fair to say that the Democrats have been on a Presidential hot streak beginning with the Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992. Since then, only Kerry’s loss in 2004 was a “real” loss. Clinton, Gore, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and now Biden have had substantial showings, which should have resulted in at least seven terms of the Democrats holding the White House – and the 2004 contest might have also gone Democratic if Bush (II) had lost the Electoral College in 2000.

That dwarfs the three Republican terms of Reagan and Bush (I).

Does this reflect an ideological shift in America, or lower-quality candidates offered by the Republicans? Trump certainly rings the bell for the latter category, but Presidential elections are not just about ideology, but swirls of personal reactions, religion, and many other factors make this a difficult analysis.

And one that I shan’t continue.

So, I made the chart mostly for my own amusement. If you extract something from it, let me know.

Mickey Kaus has run across an explanation for the divergence between Presidential election results and downballot results that is interesting:

Why did the Democrats win the Presidential vote but do so poorly in everything further down on the ballot — Senate, House, and state-level races? There are a lot of theories: a) Republicans liked Republicanism, and conservatism, even Trumpism, but they didn’t like Trump! b) Swing voters liked Biden but were turned off by left wing Democratic themes — “defund the police,” Medicare for All, cutting edge progressivism on gender dysphoria in 8-year olds, etc. c) Voters in general wanted Congress to be a check on a Democratic executive.

All plausible. But what if the explanation is something simpler and less profound — mechanical even? The essential idea was proposed by veteran campaign reporter Walter Shapiro. It’s based on the idea of “roll off,” the tendency of some voters to vote for candidates at the top of the ticket while leaving the nether regions of the ballot blank. Here’s Shapiro:

A tentative theory: Ballot-rolloff is greater than normal this year because the Biden campaign pushed early voting by mail — and a larger than usual number of voters didn’t feel that they knew enough about down-ballot races to vote on them.

If this is true, what more explanation do you need? Dems simply made a strategic mistake: They pushed early, mail-in and absentee voting, which may have won them the presidential election but which also brought them a bunch of voters who, in their rush to rid America of Trump, left the other parts of the ballot untouched — with the result that, below the presidential level, Dems got their clocks cleaned.

And that ties in with my own concerns that mail-in ballots that must, by law, arrive by Election Day in order to be counted are an impairment of voter’s rights in that those who can, and do, choose to vote at the election booth have more time to evaluate the candidates and whatever news comes forward late than do those voters who choose, or are constrained to using, mail for their ballots.

And, given my doubts that voters are that much into the political bloodstream, which Andrew Sullivan is unfortunately wont to believe, it’s more congruent with the facts on the ground than the grandiose reads of pundits of all persuasions. Voting one or two months before Election Day may make the Democratic challenger barely known, so when, say, Joni Ernst’s name pops up on the Iowan’s ballot, they know her as the incumbent Senator, while the challenger is hardly making ripples.

Despite what the polls say.

Combine this with tremendous turnout and answers that may have been random, and the down ballot disappointment for the Democrats may be better, if not perfectly understood.