Unsightly Mental Blemishes

If you’re a fan of the Grade-B horror and sci-fi films of the mid 20th century, Horrible Horror with Zacherle (1986) is an incredibly cheesy look at various scenes, trailers, and promos from movies across the genres. From The Giant Claw (1957) to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), the latter including outtakes of scenes in which the actors couldn’t hold it together, it’s a quick overview of a passel of bad, and sometimes good, horror films, hosted by the late John Zacherle.

It’s also good if you’re in a post-surgical recovery haze and need something to occupy the time but not the brain.

Boondoggle:

A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations.

Wikipedia

As in President Trump’s proposed southern wall, destined to be known as the Trump Boondoggle if it is ever funded and built.

These are endlessly fascinating as I contemplate how much effort must go into making them.

I found Cold Turkey (1971) to be a bit of a puzzle. A consultant convinces a fictional tobacco industry of the 1960s and 1970s to follow in the footsteps of Alfred Nobel, who, for those readers not up on their history, used the profits from his invention of dynamite to fund the Nobel Peace Prize, promoting peace and not war. The gig? The industry offers a $25 million prize to the town in America that can stop smoking for a month. The idea is to endear the tobacco industry to the world.

It’s not entirely clear why they think this should work, but then there’s a lot of skimming over weak points in this film.

The focus then descends on the depressed town of Eagle Rock, Iowa, which has seen both industry and government exit the town, leaving it primarily with churches and the wearily desperate. When the announcement comes, Rev. Clayton Brooks grabs the reins and leads the effort to cleanse the town of the devil tobacco, his wife swirling helplessly behind him. We see the unmitigated use of social shaming to force townsfolk into signing onto the pledge, extending even to the town doc, Doctor Proctor, helpless in his addiction. Even a new hospital dangling in front of him cannot break the Satanic hold.

And then comes Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. A “massage parlor” opens up, much to the relief of some of the smokers. Rev. Brooks, himself a former smoker who took the habit back up so that he could join the smokers on their month long abstinence, discovers his wife’s charms will distract him from the urge to smoke. Again. And again. And again.

As the days pass, though, the tobacco industry is becoming more and more nervous, because they as strong as the addiction of tobacco might be, their addiction to money is stronger. They pressure the consultant to find a way to shoot down Eagle Rock’s dreams. As he and his hired guns descend on the town to find cheaters, they run into the town’s own proctors, a self-deluded bunch who spout anti-communist and anti-government slogans, even as a military man appears with offers of possible industry return to the heartland.

Amidst the frantic chasing after the material prize, led by the good Reverend, Mrs. Brooks finally reprimands her husband for being a monster, but to no effect, for to him the Good Book always has the answer that affirms his essential rightness in the world. There is no self-awareness here as the dash for the cash consumes them all.

In the climax, the abstaining smokers hungrily await the clanging of the town clock’s midnight hour, the industry’s fixer attempts to entice the smokers into indulging too soon, President Nixon shows up to announce Eagle Rock will become home to a missile manufacturing plant, the anti-communist old lady’s gun gets loose in the guise of a cigarette lighter and proceeds to shoot Doctor Proctor, Rev. Brooks, and one or two other people (with an admirable lack of blood and gore), and the town dog proceeds to pee all over the wounded Reverend.

Yeah, take a big breath.

The final scene? The new manufacturing plant, belching copious amounts of oily pollution into the clear blue sky from its four stacks, is negating the benefits of the recent campaign, as if Earth itself wants to poison itself in search of the tobacco buzz.

This sort of story is out of a tradition of satire with which I have a certain lack of sympathy. Characters are motivated, true, yet they’re more like wind-up toys than self-aware creatures. They’re set on their courses with little chance of correction coming from introspection. Does Rev Brooks ever wonder if the $25 million prize is more of this world than the next? No, not really. Desperation has set him off, a more prestigious posting is dangled in front of him if he succeeds, and he’s off and running.

And I shan’t deny there’s a certain social good in such satires. The ability to be introspective, to recognize and correct errors in one’s behavior, is an important part of being human. It may be the most important part. Demonstrating that its lack can lead to absurd consequences is important. But I don’t have a great deal of patience with it.

But if my reader has that taste, this is not a bad example of it. Or, if you like the cars of the 1950s and 60s, this is also not a bad film to watch, as there are a number of attractive examples.

I have little to remark upon specific to yesterday’s decision by a Texas Federal Court to dismember the ACA, because, after all, I’m not a lawyer and cannot follow the arguments. Non-severability? But according to conservative lawyer Ted Frank, this is a terrible ruling:

Not a fan of ACA or King v Burwell decision, and usually a fan of Texas, but this is an embarrassingly bad decision, and if a liberal judge had issued something like it goring a conservative ox, conservatives would be rightly up in arms. https://t.co/wv46QioLK2

— (((tedfrank))) (@tedfrank) December 15, 2018

But I think this will lead to some interesting fallout in two areas.

First, the inevitable appeals will give us common citizens a feel for how radical this Texas court judge, Judge O’Connor, may be. The general rumor is that he’s an extremist, and that’s why the plaintiffs in this suit filed in this court. As the appeals progress, it’ll illuminate whether or not this judge has a good understanding of the law, or not. This may even lead to scrutiny of this judge by relevant Congressional committees. A single decision is hardly a case upon which to build an impeachment, but a pattern of partisanship, i.e., abuse, may provide sufficient motivation. Such a proceeding needs great justification, however.

And, second, this potentially returns the pressure of a national health plan back onto the GOP. A large number of Americans will lose, or see diminished, their health care. These are folks who may have never had health care and took advantage of it when available, people living off of disability, all sorts of people who couldn’t afford it until the ACA was developed. And, concerning everyone outside the clan of the independently  wealthy, Steve Benen says the pre-existing condition clause, forbidding the refusal of health care coverage based on pre-existing conditions, will also go away.

Republicans filed the suit. Will the Democrats use this lawsuit’s results to hammer the Republicans in 2020? Eric Earling on conservative site The Resurgent thinks they will, and that the Republicans are not ready:

Health care is a top tier issue for both the public and private sector. Future health care agendas are essential for good governance moving forward.

So what’s the conservative solution?

You’re not going to dramatically reduce eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid. A Republican President, Senate, and House, couldn’t even make relatively incremental changes to an already comparatively incremental law in Obamacare without major political fallout. If you think simply cutting Medicare or Medicaid are political winners, I invite you to enjoy your extended time in the Congressional minority.

Yes, Medicare and Medicaid will definitely require reform, even as addressing the issue of Obamacare’s problematic impact on the affordability of individual market coverage for middle class consumers is still necessary as well. Yet, a clear lesson of recent electoral politics is Republicans don’t have the combination of a winning message and a winning policy solution for health care. Not even close.

The next two years see a split Congress, and it seems unlikely any major health care plans will be written that are acceptable to both bodies, much less President Desperate Trump in the White House. My vague understanding of the decision for the plaintiffs in yesterday’s result was the fact that the individual mandate penalty had been “zeroed” out during the passage of the 2017 Tax Change (it wasn’t a reform) bill. We may see the Democrats passing a bill in the House that reauthorizes the ACA by activating the individual mandate, thus invalidating the ruling, and then beating the GOP about the head and shoulders when the Senate refuses to pass the same bill. This will then be used for messaging purposes during the 2020 elections. The Republicans don’t believe in affordable health care. Why should you vote for them?

I suspect this lawsuit result for the Republicans is a fool’s Pyrrhic victory.

If you were a fan of the cable TV series Dead Like Me (2003-2004), you may have been disappointed that this whimsical series about the lives of a Grim Reaper squad, and the youngest member in particular, George, came to an end after only two fairly good seasons.

But you may not have heard that there was a movie sequel, Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009). However, don’t let the fact that I’m mentioning it tempt you into running right to your TV and seeing it, because it’s inferior to the series.

First of all, Rube is gone, and the character who takes over as squad leader has the requisite accompanying mystery, but all the personal warmth of a squid wrapped around your face.

Second, the actress who played Daisy was replaced (due to other commitments), and her replacement simply didn’t have the same personal flair as did the original actress, Laura Harris, nor the chemistry that had been developed between Daisy and Mason. Most of the other supporting characters and their actors, including Reggie (but I’m not sure about Murray, who I always felt stole every scene in which he made an appearance), make return appearances.

But in the end, it came down to the story they were trying to tell. The charm of each episode of the series was the attempt to tackle a couple of problems in maturation, one applying to one or two of the squad of Grim Reapers, such as Daisy’s vanity, and one applying to a member of George’s now-grieving family. One can argue that the replacement of the squad leader, the primary problem in this movie, is another question of maturation, but it’s not handled in a manner that really inspires the proper reaction in the audience, and that’s because character logic broke down. Roxy, in her bring-in-living role as police officer, gets to meet and drink with the Police Commissioner, and when faced with her next reaping, saves the man instead. Why? Roxy was a strong by the rules character. No reason is given for her sudden change.

Delores and Mason really go nowhere, and Daisy has regressed. George cruises along, but reveals herself to her sister, Reggie, another big no-no.

But, worst of all, the directives from Upper Management, or whatever that entity might be called, are occasionally wrong. Is this deliberate miscommunication by the new squad leader? Something else? It’s never explained, not even hinted at, and while we could laugh at it as double-entendre deus ex machina, it’s deeply unsatisfying as a plot mechanism. The best plot mechanisms are organic to the characters and their situation, and this is like inserting a Predator into the movie and expecting it to make sense. Sure, there’d be a novelty element to a powerful creature discovering Reapers are unkillable, but so what?

Extremist apologist Hugh Hewitt thinks the pundit class is all wet when it comes to the threatened government shutdown and who will come out smelling like a rose – and perhaps he’s right.

A contrarian view is anchored by Gov. Doug Ducey’s (R-Ariz.) galloping victory in his reelection bid last month. Ducey talked about border security almost every day during his romp in “purple” Arizona. Not about illegal immigration, but always about border security and about keeping Americans safe from drugs, cartels and human trafficking.

Because more than 70,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2017, millions of people have at least brushed up against fentanyl or other opioids, and have often been terribly scarred by it. Some may know most of these killer drugs come via the mail, but they also know it flows like a vast river northward from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, and with it mayhem and death. Border security isn’t about the “dreamers” or hard-working undocumented people living for decades in the United States. It’s about security. And Trump has declared he is for this security, is willing to engage in budget brinkmanship to obtain it, and is staking the first confrontation in a two-year battle with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on it.

WaPo

Certainly, this is a key worry for American communities. Still, I have my doubts as to Hewitt’s wisdom in the matter.

• Apologist. I said apologist for a reason. Hewitt wants to push the acquisition of two red state Senate seats as a resounding victory, while the truth of the matter is that the Democrats had far more on the line than did the Republicans in the Senate. Nor is the flipping of 40 or more House seats to the Democratic side of the aisle any small matter. I delved into this acute intellectual error more here. Further, the denial of the border wall has not been a matter of the Democrats refusing to cooperate, but of the entire GOP-dominated Congress, meaning even Trump’s allies see through this campaign promise as useless – but Hewitt elides the point. Why does all this matter? Because it tells the careful reader that this is a head feint, and the balance of his reasoning needs careful assessment.
• Transport. From what little research I could do (kidney stones surgery yesterday, I’m a little shaky), it does appear that illegal fentanyl mostly comes in from abroad, although some is manufactured domestically. However, even if the entire supply is coming in over the southern border, which seems unlikely in view of the report that Canada is experiencing similar problems and believes the drugs are coming in through West Coast Asian crime syndicates, it’s important to understand that drugs are easy to transport, and we have so many ports of entry, not to mention lightly guarded coast lines, that building a border wall will have little effect on the supply. Remember the drug submarines used by the Mexican drug cartels? They’ll just build and use those. And if Russia or China were to choose the back the drug suppliers? That’s not unprecedented, see the Opium Wars of the 1800s.
• Supply. Hewitt’s argument is that the supply of illegal drugs is the problem. Few economists will find this a reasonable argument, because the true driver is the demand. Demand, demand, demand, repeat it over and over and you soon realize that fentanyl is not the problem, it’s a symptom of a deeper malaise in our society. Whether it’s the inevitable stress of a society transitioning from the arbitrary strictures of divinities to reasoned debate concerning ethics, morality, and law, or the stress caused by manufacturing moving overseas, or the stress of a populace that often does not push itself intellectually and now finds itself in an international competition where intellect is the key to success, it needs to be explored. It may not be a resolvable matter, as sad as that makes me, but it’s important to realize that cutting supply does not eliminate the problem. It’ll be like squeezing an unpoppable balloon, the symptom will just reappear in some other form. The core problem, singular or plural, needs to be identified and, if possible, addressed.
• Trump’s Reputation. Trump’s poll numbers have reflected the lack of respect that most Americans have for the President (latest Gallup has approval at 40%, disapproval at 56%, and I view Gallup as fairly conservative). The fact of the matter is that Trump spews lies, boasts, and misleading statements at a truly astounding rate, as documented by many fact-checkers. Certainly, some portion of that 40% is made up of the Trump cultists, and they will swallow anything Trump wishes to claim concerning a government shutdown. Trump is playing to his base with this gamesmanship, and they’ll be four-square behind him. But will anyone else? More and more, Americans have learned to distrust their President to provide anything resembling leadership. From the lack of substantial response to the Khashoggi outrage to tariff wars, they’re realizing that Trump is not driven by an urge to make the country better – but to enrich himself.

So how should Democrats play this? I think they could use the above as the kernel of a game plan. Emphasize the problem is not supply, but demand, and suggest that we need to explore why so many people are numbing themselves to their lives. Make this a mental health problem, not a drug problem.

And then use the phrase The Trump Boondoggle to fix in folks’ minds that this is a waste of taxpayer’s money.

The drama in Maine has a fine punctuation mark in which U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker, a Trump appointee, has rebuffed the lawsuit brought by Representative Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) concerning his loss in the mid-terms and the use of ranked-choice voting in that election:

U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker ruled that, contrary to the arguments of Poliquin’s legal team, the U.S. Constitution does not require that congressional elections be decided by “a plurality” of votes. Instead, Walker wrote that the Constitution grants states discretion to decide how to run elections, including whether to require the type of runoff elections triggered by Maine’s ranked-choice voting law.

“To the extent that the Plaintiffs call into question the wisdom of using RCV, they are free to do so but . . . such criticism falls short of constitutional impropriety,” Walker wrote. “A majority of Maine voters have rejected that criticism and Article I (of the U.S. Constitution) does not empower this Court to second guess the considered judgment of the polity on the basis of the tautological observation that RCV may suffer from problems, as all voting systems do.”

Press-Herald

The hand-recount continues, but it appears that challenger Jared Golden (D-ME) will emerge the victor.

While some may be amazed that a Trump-appointed judge ruled against a Republican, it’s worth noting that Judge Walker was recommended not only by Senator Collins (R-ME), but also Senator Angus King (I-ME, caucuses with the Democrats), and has prior judicial experience. Given the number of judicial seats the Republicans had recalcitrantly held open over the Obama years, and Trump’s lack of serious interest in such nominations, I think it’s inevitable that some good nominees will also leak through. Walker may be one of those.

Whether Poliquin will appeal is not known.

While I appreciate that this article must be brought into existence, I certainly wish the title CNN had assigned it had better reflected the substance of the article. The title CNN assigned it?

Senator purchased stock in defense contractor after pushing for more military spending

The content of the article?

Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, purchased thousands of dollars in defense stock after successfully pushing the Trump administration for more Defense Department spending.

Sounds terrible enough. But wait, there’s more!

Inhofe’s communications director Leacy Burke told CNN in a statement that “the senator was not aware of this stock purchase until it came through the system very early this morning.”

“All of Sen. Inhofe’s financial transactions are handled by a third-party adviser,” Burke said. “The senator has had no involvement in and has not been consulted about his stock transactions.”

Burke said that Inhofe told his financial adviser to reverse the transaction once he was aware.

To my sleep-sodden brain this is a reasonable scenario, a financial advisor not quite understanding how this all works. The Senator reversed the transaction immediately.

It’s important that these articles be published as a warning to ethically challenged members of Congress, but I have to deplore the title.

It is worth exploring why Inhofe is even aware of the stock purchase at all, since it’s within the realm of possibility that a committee chairman, given knowledge about the activities of his financial advisor, could manipulate government business to his own benefit.

Now, if there’d been a mention of the FBI investigating the Senator for corruption, the title’d make sense. But, so far as I can see, he’s just a Republican Senator who has a notorious connection to the climate denialists. I doubt he’ll be spoken well of in future history books because of that, and his membership in the current Congressional class.

But it’s no reason to use a misleading title on this article.

Paleontologists recently announced a new find, as Sci-News reports:

Named Lisowicia bojani, the ancient creature belongs to Dicynodontia (dicynodonts), a group of plant-eating, mammal-like reptiles.

“Dicynodonts were among the most abundant and diverse synapids — early four-legged land vertebrates that gave rise to modern-day mammals — from the middle Permian (around 299 to 251 million years ago) to the early Late Triassic (around 237 million years ago),” said Dr. Tomasz Sulej from Poland’s Institute of Paleobiology and Dr. Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki of Uppsala University.

“Fossils of Triassic dicynodonts are extremely abundant in African, Asian, and North and South Americans deposits but are comparatively poorly known from the other regions like Europe.”

Mammal-like reptiles, wish I knew a thing or three about cladistics. The remark might make more sense then.

At 9 tons mass, though, they would have been a bit of a bite for most predators.

This NWI.com article concerning a request by various civil society organizations to SCOTUS to continue constraining the implementation of an Indiana anti-abortion law brought something to mind.

Two Hoosier organizations committed to preserving the right of women to choose abortion are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand two lower court rulings that invalidated portions of Indiana’s 2016 abortion law, enacted by then-Gov. Mike Pence.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK) this week told the nation’s high court it should reject the state’s petition, filed in October by Republican Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr., that asks the Supreme Court to allow House Enrolled Act 1337 to take effect.

The law mandates that any pregnant woman who is motivated to obtain an abortion after learning her child will be born, or potentially born, with Down syndrome, another genetic disease or physical deformities that aren’t immediately lethal, to instead carry the pregnancy to term and give birth.

The statute also prohibits women from procuring an abortion due to the gender, race, color, national origin or ancestry of the fetus.

Let’s be honest: anti-abortion laws are, by and large, religiously motivated. Let’s even be more explicit – the primary religion are those sects that make up much of American Christianity these days.

When the United States, a secular nation, creates laws, they are not supposed to favor any particular religion, either by conferring power on a sect or group thereof, or by being sensible of their preferences. This is why we talk about Government interests, which is shorthand for If individuals are permitted to make decisions in this area unhindered, will this have a severely negative impact on society. Most current non-controversial laws can be seen as falling under this rubric. Consider laws against most homicides, which converts homicide to murder. Clearly, a society in which someone can kill you without official sanction leads to a society of paranoia, lacking that cohesion necessary to a vibrant and productive society.

Such societies are easy prey for other societies.

This is the bar over which anti-abortion advocates need to jump, and so far their hurdling capabilities have proven inadequate to the task. The facts of the matter is that many women, when pregnant, welcome their new family members happily, and when a miscarriage occurs, they are devastated. Second, we’re vastly overpopulated as it is. Third, a fetus is not a human, not yet. If a woman assesses her situation and believes a child, especially a disabled child, is not appropriate to her situation, aborting a fetus is a reasonable response. Raising a family in abject poverty benefits no one but the religious fanatic who won the argument to have a law against abortion.

But while I was reading the NWI.com article concerning the anti-abortion law, it occurred to me to wonder if there are even further arguments to be made against it. Consider: a number of societies around the world, some into the modern era, have practiced infanticide, the killing of infants, for a variety of reasons.

It’s not unreasonable to suggest infanticide is a cousin to abortion, so let me suggest that it’s also reasonable to conceive of a religion which made it not only acceptable, but even required to occasionally utilize abortion. It’s a religious precept.

So what would such a religious practicioner do in Indiana if that law was freed of the constraints imposed by the courts? Clearly, our hypothetical practicioner’s religious freedoms have been trampled by the American Christians who led the charge against abortion. How should SCOTUS respond to such a lawsuit, especially in the face of a finding that there is no overriding governmental interest?

Now, there may be interesting exceptions, such as not permitting abortions based on gender. If this is puzzling, see this New York Times article on the social unrest caused by Indian infanticide of female infants. But, in general, I see the anti-abortion laws as foolish.

My Arts Editor and I have been watching the old sci-fi series Babylon 5, and we’ve noted that some of its insights into the moral corruption of those seeking power on Earth have had chilling parallels to the activities we see in today’s American government and, particularly, the tactics of such organizations such as the Night Watch and its emphasis on loyalty to the government (vs Earth), compared to that of the GOP’s first loyalty to its President, rather than to the United States. Another facet has been the disregard for the truth, the willingness to say anything to get and keep power.

I agree with Steve Benen when he says,

Republicans who want to wait for additional information have taken a somewhat defensible posture. I’m not sure what more they want to know, but “we’ll just have to wait and see” isn’t crazy.

But willful apathy about allegations that the sitting president is a criminal is awfully difficult to defend.

But I think it’s explainable. Trump and his ilk are, almost by definition, emerging from the same social matrix as the GOP Senators and Representatives, and to a great extent he’s using the same tactics and intellectual practices that they have used, with the key difference that he’s never recognized limitations. Where they’ve stretched truths, he’s indulged in brazen lies; where they’ve dog-whistled very carefully, he stuck his entire hand in his mouth to summon the repugnant white supremacists and their various cousins.

If they choose to reject Trump, they also reject themselves. Instinctively, they won’t go there quietly. Some are asking for more information, which is a delaying tactic which may turn into a hand grenade for those using it, but it’s a reasonable response. Newsweek reports, however, that retiring Senator Hatch (R-UT) has decided to respond with the classic end justifies the means excuse:

CNN reporter Manu Raju revealed in a series of tweets on Monday that Hatch—a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and retiring Utah Republican—said “President Trump before he became president is another world. Since he’s become president this economy has charged ahead… And I think we ought to judge him on that basis.”

It’s evident that Senator Hatch has entered his dotage and hit utterances shouldn’t be accorded any further respect. However, I don’t doubt that the morally downfallen GOP is all set to line up behind that excuse. What will happen, however, if we were to then enter a recession?

One of the repetitious lessons of history is that the “how” we get somewhere is at least as important as that “somewhere” is itself. The GOP seems to be desperately ignoring that dictum, but I suspect this is going to be seen by historians as simply throwing gasoline on the flames that eventually will burn the GOP to the ground.

Panopticon:

Jeremy Bentham‘s ideas on how the greatest happiness principle should be applied were not always well-conceived. Bentham spent much of his time and fortune on designs for the Panopticon. The Panopticon (“all-seeing”) was a prison. It was designed to allow round-the-clock surveillance of the inmates by their superintendent. Bentham’s intention was humanitarian; but penitentiaries are not the best advertisement for a utilitarian ethic.

The Panopticon, Utilitarianism.com

Noted in “Green Christmas: How to have an ethical and guilt-free festive season,” Alice Klein and Chelsea Whyte, NewScientist (1 December 2018, paywall):

An extension of the ever-watchful threat is the Elf on the Shelf, a figurine that some parents place in their house that is said to be reporting to the North Pole like some kind of festive CCTV – [ethicist H. Peter] Steeves likens it to a panopticon.

Here’s a new way to track visitors to your website, as noted in NewScientist (24 November 2018, paywall):

The tool works by measuring subtle but unique differences in the way the quartz crystal in a computer’s clock behaves compared with crystals in other computers. These differences affect how quickly websites are processed by a computer, so they act as a digital fingerprint for a device.

When 300 volunteers made a one-off visit to a website using the tool, it could uniquely fingerprint around half of them. When combined with other techniques that measure how a computer processes a web site’s graphics, 80 per cent of devices could be identified.

“Our technique is far more reliable and practical than any existing fingerprinting technique,” says Sanchez-Rola. His team presented the tool at the recent ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Toronto, Canada.

So now I suppose browsers are going to have to offer an option for varying how quickly they process websites.

This what I call goofy shit.

In the United States, citizens often have a less than favorable view of the local utilities, whether it be the phone system or the power grid. I think it has a  lot to do with impingements on private property for utility right-of-ways, less than punctual service, and sometimes a perception that – in a capitalist country! – they’re in it for the money. I try not to get all het up about the utilities, but I see it around me.

So it was a nice local change of pace to see Ilana Strauss’ article on Treehugger:

For the first time in American history, a major utility company declared to dive fully into clean energy. Xcel Energy, a major utility company based out of Minneapolis, just pledged to go completely carbon-free.

“Our biggest energy source in a few short years is going to be renewable energy. We’re going to absolutely integrate as much of that as we can into the grid,” said Ben Fowke, Xcel’s CEO. That means more solar, more wind and less coal, among other changes. …

The company says it’ll be 80 percent carbon-free in 2030 and 100 percent in 2050.

It’s good, if inadequate, news for those customers who understand the seriousness of climate change. I hope Xcel will lay out a plan for achieving this goal. From Xcel’s publicly available information on electricity generation:

I doubt they’ll construct any more nuclear power plants, as they are expensive and tend to overrun cost estimates, and the environmentalists tend to be against them – although there has been significant dissent on that point. I would prefer Xcel not follow Germany’s lead and shut down its nuclear power plants unless they have significant physical vulnerabilities, until sufficient clean energy resources are available to replace the nuclear sources of power. In the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011, Germany began shuttering its nuclear power plants, and I worry that this is adding to the CO₂ in the atmosphere. However, finding solid estimates from reputable sources isn’t working so well this morning. I do see Environmental Progress has a chart for 2016:

Another article on Environmental Progress (EP) suggests nuclear power may be the right choice:

California and Germany could have mostly or completely decarbonized their electricity sectors had their investments in renewables been diverted instead to new nuclear, a new Environmental Progress analysis finds.

I’ve been unable to find anything to suggest EP is a nuclear power plant front, at least so far. I’d not go so far as to suggest further investment in nuclear power is a proper choice, but it may be worth considering; certainly, retention of current Xcel nuclear sources until other, more immediate sources of climate change gasses have been eliminated from their sources makes far more sense than the German approach, again absent significant physical vulnerabilities in those nuclear sources.

Electroaerodynamics:

Instead of propellers or jet engines, the plane uses electrodes on its wings to produce ions that push against the surrounding air. The team claims the plane is quieter and cleaner than any other powered aircraft.

“It really wasn’t clear that it would work,” says Barrett. “Quite a few colleagues said it had less than 1 per cent chance.”

The idea of producing aircraft thrust via an electric field, known as electroaerodynamics, was first explored in the 1960s. Electrodes are used to create an electric discharge that produces electrically charged atoms or molecules in the air. An electric field then accelerates these ions towards the back of the plane. Collisions with air molecules produce a thrust force in the opposite direction, pushing the plane forwards. [“Electric zero-emissions plane raises hopes for eco-friendly air travel,” Douglas Heaven, NewScientist (24 November 2018, paywall)]

What happens when little, tentative monsters run into a full-fledged monster? That’s the question presented by horror story cum morality fable Bad Samaritan (2018). Minor league thief Sean Falco is exploring whether or not he can build a stable and happy life while taking advantage of society when one of his escapades reveals that one of his victims, a man named Cale, is a monster himself. Sean has discovered a woman in Cale’s house, immobilized in leather and chains, and Sean is forced to leave before he can free her.

Cale, the big monster, discovers what has happened and now vengeance most foul is rained down upon Sean. Friends are hurt and die, his adoptive parents face ruin, and Cale must dodge fate itself.

But monsters tend to have egos in proportion to their commitment to being monsters, and so Cale plays with Sean. As Sean works to remedy his failure to free the mysterious woman, more and more horrible secrets come to the surface.

In a horrific finale, Sean is introduced to his future as a monster – as is the audience.

We found the pacing to be a little slower than we might have liked, but it’s not a bad little movie for its genre. If you enjoy seeing the darker side of human nature, especially of those who do not commit to the general rules of society, this movie may be for you.

A cousin to the usual e-mail comes across my desk today from my Arts Editor, who in turn received it from a member of the extended family. It’s not so much poisonous as, well, mis-informed and misleading. I’ll take it apart piece by piece this time ’round, but first let me note that, while surveying the web for precise answers to certain questions, I ran across other dissections. Regardless, I will continue with this as an example of recognizing and researching an exercise in triggering System 1 thinking, which is the fight or flight reflex, rather than rational assessment.

President Trump is asking everyone to forward this email to a minimum of 20 people, and to ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in the United States will have the message. This is an idea that should be passed around, regardless of political party.

The TRUMP Rules: Congressional Reform Act of 2017

I did some searches of the Web to attempt to verify President Trump issued this call to faux-sanity, but failed to find any indication that he does. That, of course, is not dispositive, but given Trump’s habit of using a trumpet for popular political messages, I’d have expected to see it as a prominent subject of discussion if he was backing this email.

So let’s go on to the meat of the subject.

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they’re out of office. And, no more perks go with them.

Let’s be picky, because that may tell us something about the author. Tenure has an interesting definition, according to Merriam-Webster:

1. : the act, right, manner, or term of holding something (such as a landed property, a position, or an office)
   especially : a status granted after a trial period to a teacher that gives protection from summary dismissal
2. : GRASP, HOLD

Clearly, no tenure suggests an absurdity, election to office without actual occupation of the seat, with respect to the first part of the first definition, while the second has no application to an elective seat. If this is indicative of the intellectual acuity of the author, it’s a negative, and readers should treat the balance of this anger-inducing screed with appropriate caution.

With regards to pension, Congress members receive a pension if they perform five or more years of service, so for the House of Representatives, they must win election to 3 terms, while Senators need only win one (assuming completion of terms).

But how about no pensions? This is an interesting question because it plays into citizen anger at Congress. It reinforces it because there’s no presentation of an opposing viewpoint. So let me present one to the open-minded reader:

The lack of pension for former members of Congress will lead to a more plutocratic membership. Former members of Congress don’t get free food & housing, they must find the funds to pay for them once they’re back in private life. Just like real people – because they are real people – they have to plan for a future in which their skills are outdated and they’re retired. If there is no pension, then the regular Joe may consider a run for Congress to be a mistake, because it’s difficult or impossible to work at your regular job when performing the public business. It wasn’t true in 1800, but these days the business of government is a huge undertaking that requires the full attention of both the bureaucracy and the elected overseers.

Think of being 6 years out of your regular line of work. Could you go back to it without retraining or updating? I probably couldn’t. Sure, a ditch digger could – but most ditch diggers aren’t going to win runs for Congress.

A pension can be argued as being a way to persuade the non-millionaires to take a shot at public service. We know the plutocracy of America has a strong interest in being in control of the United States government, because we see the huge donations from the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and many, many more than fly beneath the radar for the GOP, plus a smaller number for the Democrats, such as Tom Steyer. Then add in those who are directly in the front lines, such as Rick Scott (R), Senator-elect of Florida, or Senator Mark Warner (D) of Virginia. It’s not hard to see how removing pensions, which rich people don’t need, makes it easier to attain a seat in Congress. Now they need only beat another millionaire.

2. Congress (past, present, & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress must purchase their own retirement plan, just as ALL Americans do.

This has a couple of problems.

• Congress has participated in Social Security since 1984, according to AARP. This is not difficult to discover, really. This, in reality, is about inducing anger at Congress, fallaciously widening the abyss between OUR government and ourselves.
• ALL Americans purchase retirement plans? A ridiculous statement. Some do, some are too rich to do so. This vague statement serves to bind the angry reader with everyone else, the beginning of the assemblage of a cult.
• I presume “It may not be used for any other purpose” refers to Congress borrowing from the Social Security reserves without restoring the funds. In fact, I believed that at one time. But it’s not true. Here’s a Motley Fool article on the topic. For those unfamiliar with the Motley Fool, they are an investment advice website of some 20 or more years standing. They are a-political advocates, generally, for long-term investing. That requires investors to understand reality – not buy into political myths. Give it a read if you’re doubtful.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

While this is a topic that could be discussed from either side for hours, it makes more sense to step back and ask why is this brought up? Perhaps their salaries sound large, although it’s important to keep in mind that the members must find living quarters in Washington while also maintaining residency in their home state.

But, for me, if you’re going to talk about outrage at the money in Washington, then ask about the budget. The aggregate Congressional salary is, rounding up, $100 million (529 members @ $174,000 per, with rounding accounting for extras for Speaker and other special positions). Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? If you nodded, you’re not paying attention. The Federal budget is in the BILLIONS. Congressional salaries are out of control? Try military spending. Congressional salaries aren’t even an eye-drop.

In reality, I view this as just another wedge being driven into the granite of the United States citizens, generating outrage at our own Congressional members through income disparity. They have to travel, maintain at least sleeping quarters, etc etc, and yet we’re going to bear down on their salaries. While it may seem dubious to let them set their own pay, which is their responsibility under the Constitution, the truth of the matter is that we should be electing Congressional representatives that will be responsible with our funds in the first place. That’s OUR responsibility, and shirking it by requesting a law that would supposedly do that work for us is, well, shirking.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

According to this CNN article from 2017, lawmakers are required to use the same options all Americans do.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people (i.e. NO MORE INSIDER TRADING!!!).

Members of Congress are already required to do so. Thus, we have had various allegations and even indictments of members of Congress over the years.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts by and for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor and privledge NOT a career.

My first inclination is to proclaim puzzlement, as I don’t know what this babble is about. But then note the final line – NOT a career.

Look, it sounds all fine and grand to promulgate term limits as a way of stopping corruption and that sort of thing, but every time a Senator or Representative retires, resigns, or is defeated, a wealth of experience walks out that door. This is important. These people have learned how to get things done in the governmental context, and that is a context far different from, say, a business context.

Now, it’s true that, except for those who pass away, former members can still be available for consultation, and certainly their aides also have a modicum of knowledge. Many former members are, in fact, consulted as I understand it.

But it’s worth considering the flip side of this coin as well – the amateurs who fill the seats of those who leave. Over the last two years, as long time readers of this blog know, we’ve had a full-on display of Republican amateurism, and it’s been a dismaying example of the failings of a group of second and third raters who can’t be troubled to debate in public, to fulfill their responsibilities, to monitor the Executive, or do really anything effectively.

To a great extent I blame it on former leaders of the GOP being run out on a rail because they failed to pledge allegiance to a set of principles that became more and more extreme as the years passed. See my RINO reasoning.

If the performance of Congress has displeased my reader – and I differentiate between performance and adherence to ideological principle, which is an entirely different thing – let me suggest that entry into Congress is not the precipitating event of their incompetence.

I think it’s far more reasonable to suggest it starts with the party from whence they came. If you’re unhappy with a member of Congress for being a fumbling, rubber-stamping fool, consider the possibility that this is what their Party and its backers have wrought.

The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work … not get all kinds of freebies. NO WONDER THEY’RE FIGHTING EVERYTHING HE TRIES! Pass it on!!!!

Anyone watching Congress and Trump is well aware of the compliancy of the GOP members of Congress to Trump’s wishes. Hell, FiveThirtyEight runs a continuing monitor of Congress called the TrumpScore, which rates that compliancy for every member of Congress. Most GOP members rate over 90%, which is appalling given the incompetency of President Trump, both in terms of policy and operationality.

To suggest Congress is battling Trump is laughable.

Let’s help TRUMP drain the swamp!! Just hold your finger down then hit forward and send it to everyone you know. Let’s help trump get the country straightened out.

And so we find that this mail, of which various similar version have floated about since 2000, is an adaptation by someone trying to promote a Trump re-election in 2020. Sounding an official theme of his 2016 campaign, it seeks to cast the blame for one of the most corrupt Administrations in history on Congress. A Congress that was completely controlled by Trump’s own party for 2 years, and the Senate will remain under GOP control for the second 2 years.

It’s important for the reader to remember names like Zinke, Ross, Pruitt, Sessions, all members or former members of the Trump Cabinet, because Trump owns those names, and those names will go down in disgrace in history as objective assessments come to the fore. The Senate GOP approved them, but Trump put those names forward, and therefore, despite his efforts to disown some (and, no doubt, all of them at some point).

But, more importantly, this is another effort in the vein of alienating Americans from their own government. Assessed as one of the more successful forms of government world-wide, or at least so I think, that makes it a target for subtle campaigns such as this one, and it’s important for the casual reader to be aware that their buttons are being pushed by mail such as these.

Beware.

Long time readers who’ve followed the thread concerning political “tribes” are aware that, well, I’ve been using the word tribe. I don’t recall if I came up with it on my own, or picked it up from Andrew Sullivan, but I’ve been vaguely uncomfortable using it.

The reason is that it reflects unfairly on the Native American tribes (the First Nations of Canada, I think) because I use it as a faintly denigrative term. While the insult is unintended, it’s there, and I do regret it.

In its place, I think cult is a better term. Cults do not feature rationality, but rather a type of magical thinking often incompatible with reality, and that seems to fit a subset of the political types, especially in the extremist right-wing, quite well. Other points of congruence include the alleged supremacy of the leader, the critical nature of apostasy, the elevation of ideology over truth, and the preference for conspiracy theories to explain the hideous gaps and results of the overriding ideology over the more sane possibility that the ideology is fucked in the head.

I am aware that cult is, at least for some, a synonym for religious sect, or so it was thirty years ago. Some religious folks even find that equivalency offensive. Given the ascendancy of religious over non-religious people, though, I find it a little difficult to extend sympathy to the offended. 

I will try to use cult in the future, and my apologies for the use of tribe.

Homeostasis:

Homeostasis is the state of steady internal conditions maintained by living things.^[1] This dynamic state of equilibrium is the condition of optimal functioning for the organism and includes many variables, such as body temperature and fluid balance, being kept within certain pre-set limits (homeostatic range). Other variables include the pH of extracellular fluid, the concentrations of sodium, potassium and calciumions, as well as that of the blood sugar level, and these need to be regulated despite changes in the environment, diet, or level of activity. Each of these variables is controlled by one or more regulators or homeostatic mechanisms, which together maintain life. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Writer Automaton,” BBC.

Regarding the Acosta / Epstein affair, a reader writes:

The opinion piece simply lies. Epstein was not required to go to state prison; he got to serve his very limited in a jail of his choosing, and was out on work release much of the time.

It does sound like quite the cushy deal, even if he is required to remain on the sex offender registry. I suppose enough money makes that easily tolerable.

Michael Gerson has recognized something I’ve been talking about for a while, and that is the tendency to chase moderate members out of the Republican Party using the charge of RINO will be, well, self-defeating.

The class of departing Republicans includes a few who won’t be missed. (Hint: One has a last name that begins with “Rohrabache-”.) But many of the House losses came in suburban districts that required outreach beyond the Trump-intoxicated base. Nationally, Democrats won about 70 percent of votes cast in suburban House districts. This means the political grim reaper came for some of the most reasonable elements within the party. This process is the reverse of natural selection — call it the survival of the witless.

[WaPo]

Gerson’s a neo-conservative, and another of a group of conservatives that has little use for the current incarnation of the GOP. I don’t think much of neocons myself, as they seem somewhat unrealistic. After all, they did start & cheerlead the Iraq War. But it’s good to see another conservative recognize the pathological nature of a key GOP process.

Long time readers know I’ve occasionally commented on the crypto-currency phenomenon, although generally from the outside looking in. However, there’s a new wrinkle showing up in crypto-currency land, and I’m really baffled by it. From The Switch (WaPo), back on November 1:

There’s a new form of cryptocurrency gaining traction among fans of digital cash.

Unlike bitcoin, which has seen its price swing wildly from as high as $19,000 last year to its current level hovering around $6,200, this emerging class of cryptocurrency aims to maintain a stable price — one, single U.S. dollar — at all times.

A cryptocurrency whose price never fluctuates might sound nonsensical, particularly to entry-level traders who want to profit off a cryptocurrency’s appreciation. But many in the industry say the rise of “stablecoins” has in fact been instrumental for active investors — and could represent a crucial steppingstone to the future of money. …

“I don’t know whether the price of that crypto is going to go up or down, but it’s almost certainly not going to be the same as it is today,” said Josh Fraser, co-founder of the cryptocurrency start-up Origin Protocol. “That introduces the problem [for] either the buyer or seller . . . as part of that transaction.”

That’s why many in the industry now see stablecoins as a big opportunity that could fulfill much of bitcoin’s original promise as a medium of exchange.

I tried to do some research on stablecoins, but ran into a jungle of jargon that made little sense to me. I wonder if there’s a really good, readable explanation of how stablecoins bring anything positive to the table. The WaPo article has a lot more, including an early attempt at stablecoins:

But not all was well: In the past several weeks, Tether [provider of an version of stablecoins] has been hit by a massive crisis of confidence. On some exchanges, Tether began trading at well below a dollar, which is not supposed to happen for a currency whose sole purpose is to maintain a solid peg. While the precise reasons for the slippage remain unclear, investors have engaged in a sell-off, and Bitfinex — a major exchange that shares the same management as Tether — took hundreds of millions of Tether coins out of circulation. In one month, Tether lost almost $1 billion in its market cap.

This sort of result leaves me with a suspicion that a purely private form of digital currency may not be an optimal solution to the problem of providing a stable fiat currency. I may be wrong, perhaps a large enough provider can provide stability simply through size.

But it may turn out that the traditional source of fiat currency, government, with all its flaws and vulnerabilities, may still be the best solution. I don’t disagree with the originators of crypto-currency that government is sometimes really undesirable, given how inflation can destroy an economy when a pack of amateurs is running the government, but the winds of the free market may be even less beneficial for a currency.

Libertarians occasionally cite economist Joseph Schumpeter’s remark about creative destruction and how through that process, progress (however you wish to define it) is made. Somehow, applying this to the currency the economy runs on doesn’t seem like the wisest of decisions.