Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Long ago, I recall reading a passage that claimed, truly or not, that the first class people in France went into government, and the first class people in America went into business, thus explaining a lot about both nations.

But when something like this comes up, it’s hard to say the Republicans are leaning into the old aphorism a bit too hard:

Laura Loomer refuses to accept her primary loss and declares "I actually am the Congresswoman in Florida’s 11th District, and everyone knows it," vowing to harass Rep. Dan Webster and "drive him into the ground every step of the way until he collapses in disgrace." pic.twitter.com/HUtyRX18EY

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 25, 2022

No, winning a primary is not enough, Mz Loomer. Not even close.

It’s this sort of mentality that really threatens to wreck Democracy. Some of these sorts have lived all their lives busily demanding all they can get without regard to fairness, penalties, or anything else outside of their narcissism. Some have watched the former President’s immoral ways and concluded they can imitate him and make their way to success. And some are just entertaining themselves, never having run into a brick wall before.

And so we end up with this frantic nonsense. No, nobody knows you traveled back in time and beat Webster in 2020, as well as his Democratic opponent, Mz Loomer, and you’ve been working in Congress ever since. Probably because it’s Webster cashing the paychecks.

A reader writes to correct my mistakes regarding the Colorado River – no doubt committed through sleepiness:

A correction to this statement: “In the map above, the olive and turquoise areas serve to illuminate the Colorado River basin, and it’s that area to which the Colorado River provides water.” No, the shaded areas are the areas _drained_ by the Colorado River.

The areas to which it _provides_ water are different, especially a significant amount of the water is pumped _out_ of that basin for use elsewhere. Those include:

• Water captured in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado just west of the continental divide in places like Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Lake Granby which is pumped over the divide to the Denver metro area and used by cities there.
• Water pumped out (I believe from Lake Havasu) and sent westward all the way to the Los Angeles basin to serve cities there.

Some further notes (as someone who has mentioned this disaster in waiting for decades, and who has lived in Colorado, Utah and California):

The vast majority of the water in that river system comes from snow melt, not rain. And most of that comes from snow melt in Colorado and Wyoming. Those other tributaries on the map, like the Salt River in Arizona, are tiny by comparison, although the Salt is also mostly snow melt from Arizona mountains.

And this is not new. But people have been doing everything they can to ignore it or imagine any shortages or droughts were just short-term blips for more than 30 to 40 years. I last visited Lake Mead in about 1974; it was completely full. I have not checked, but it’s likely that at some point shortly after that, it became less than full and has never regained that stature. More than that, historical climate evidence has shown that the period from about 1900 to 1950 was unusually cool, wet and heavy with snowfall for the Colorado basin. That is to say, when the states and the feds were divvying up the Colorado River water for users and guesstimating the future, they were using a baseline that was actually far wetter/plentiful than average. So even a return to average would have been a water shortage. Meanwhile, actual usage went way up (see how Las Vegas and Phoenix have doubled in size in Lake Mead was last full) and climate has not only returned to “average” but gotten drier and warmer.

I plead exhaustion. Old Age. Something bad. I should have recognized that was a drainage basin!

It appears both sides are certain of victory in November, albeit the the right comes from before the special election in New York, while the left comes after. First, the right is represented by my old favorite, Erick Erickson, in a post helpfully entitled Seasonal Polling Disorder is About to Run the Democrats Off a Cliff:

In 2014, Democrats took a lead in the generic ballot in the summer and surged in August. Breathless Washington reporters claimed the GOP was suffering with bad candidates like in 2010 when a GOP wave failed to grab the Senate. Obama had the wind at his back and the ship of state was sailing forward.

In November of 2014, the GOP had a polling average of about 2.4% and the actual election result gave the GOP over a 5% win.

If you go to Real Clear Politics and seek out their generic ballot archive, you’ll see that in August, the Democrats always get a noticeable bump in the polling average at this time of year. There are lots of theories why. My personal theory is that in August, Republicans — the demographic most likely to have large families — are either heading out on last minute vacations before school starts or they are already (as in my family’s case) going back to school and getting into the new school year’s routine. They aren’t talking to pollsters.

And this all means:

In Georgia, in 2014 and 2018, at this time of year, the Republicans were losing to the Democrats in both the gubernatorial and senatorial polling. That makes Kemp’s lead against Abrams right now even more remarkable and suggests a blow out for him in November and suggests a Walker win, despite a media narrative that Walker is too bad a candidate to beat Warnock.

In Pennsylvania, that means Dr. Oz still has a very good chance of winning and it makes J. D. Vance a shoo-in in Ohio and Adam Laxalt the most likely winner in Nevada.

That Erickson thinks – or at least is willing to say – that Walker is facing a malicious narrative rather than what anyone who cares to take the time to check can verify – that he’s badly misinformed at best, and speaks gibberish at worst, speaks to how much of this may be just propaganda to keep the conservatives together for November.

On the left, here’s Rule of Claw on Daily Kos: talking about polls after the special election in New York:

These polls add up to an average of R 7.6. Pat Ryan has won by about four. That is a, gasp, 11.6 miss. Take a look at the DCCC poll. Even that poll had it by 3 for Molinaro, although it showed the race within reach. If we assess this as the most accurate poll, it still missed by 7 points. Point of fact, were we to win seats Trump won by less than five, we would gain 30 in the House. By 7?

Seven is a Blue Tsunami. Now, this was a Biden plus 1.5 district, and an R PVI of 2 overall according to Cook Political Report. But this would still suggest the environment is 6 points more favorable to Democrats than neutral.

I don’t have time to check his or her sources or calculations, but the special election does speak for itself. I’ve been guessing a 10 seat gain for the Democrats in the House this November, but that’s a bit of blind guess based on the special elections in Nebraska and Minnesota, taking the unexpectedly narrow victories for Republicans to mean the independents have recognized extremists in office are a danger to their rights, and possibly even an existential danger.

But it’s interesting to see the clash in interpretations. So far I’d have to say that Erickson’s interpretation, based as it is on his understanding of behavior patterns, is inferior to Rule of Claw’s, which is based more on facts, but can’t account for unseen data.

So we’ll see.

And there’s a king-sized one out on the Sun:

[AR3088], which didn’t even exist yesterday, is inset in this Solar Dynamics Observatory map of magnetic fields on the sun. According to Hale’s Law, the sunspot’s magnetic poles should be arranged +/-, that is, positive (+) on the left and negative (-) on the right. Instead, they are rotated 90 degrees; positive (+) is on top and negative (-) is on the bottom.

This is a rare “perpendicular sunspot,” with magnetic poles orthogonal to the sun’s equator. What’s going on? Something unusual may be happening to the sun’s magnetic dynamo beneath the surface where this sunspot is growing. We’ll keep an eye on AR3088 to see what happens next. [Spaceweather.com]

Something to keep an eye on. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Yes, more, more. They never stop, do they?

• The final qualifier for the Senate seat race in Alaska is Buzz Kelley (R). In this RCV non-partisan primary, here are the rough numbers: Murkowski (R) 43.7%, Tshibaka (R) 40.4%, Chesbro (D) 6.2%, and Buzz Kelley (R) 2.2%. If Murkowski wins despite the endorsement of Tshibaka by former President Trump and the Alaska Republican Party, will the Party fade into irrelevance? This may be more likely than is first apparent, because the lone Alaskan seat in the US House is currently empty due to the death of the last seatholder, longtime Representative Don Young (R). The special election was held Aug 16th and is currently led by … Democrat Mary Peltola. But a lot of vote counting must still be performed. If Peltola wins the runoff for a couple of months of seat-filling, and then wins the regular election in November, has the Alaskan electorate given the Alaska Republican Party the big waveoff, basically telling the extremists to get out of town?
• The Kansas Reflector has an interview and profile of Kansas candidate Mark Holland (D).
• North Carolina’s contest between Rep Budd (R) and Cheri Beasley (D) is called “a dead heat” by the Civitas Institute, a conservative pollster. Each of the two candidates polled at 42.3%. This organization is not known to FiveThirtyEight, and so evaluating the poll is a bit difficult.
• A Trafalgar poll in Ohio gives J. D. Vance (R) a five point lead over Rep Ryan (D). Trafalgar is rated A- by FiveThirtyEight.
• A rated Fox News gives Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) a 50% – 46% lead over incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) in Wisconsin’s Senate race, which is within the margin of error. The consolation prize is that Johnson supporters are more enthused. Apparently, they want to lose their Social Security checks?
• Nevada’s Reno Gazette teams with Suffolk University to produce a poll showing incumbent Senator Masto (D) leading challenger Adam Laxalt (R) 45% – 38%. The last poll I saw gave Masto a three point lead, so this is a problem for Laxalt, who is Trump-endorsed. Suffolk is rated B+ by FiveThirtyEight. Masto appears to be benefiting from the Dobbs decision motivating Democratic voters. Is Masto safe yet? No. Trafalgar has released a poll showing Laxalt leading by three, 47%-44%. I’d wait until Masto, or Laxalt, has a twelve point lead before considering them safe.
• A rated Fox News gives incumbent Senator Kelly (R) of Arizona an eight point lead over Blake Masters (R), a considerable comedown from the fourteen point lead awarded by newcomer pollster Center Street PAC last week. That’ll learn me, darnit. But it’s still a lead outside of the margin of error in a purple state. In other news, though, another Republican+Independent group of forty leaders have announced their support for Kelly rather than Masters.
• It appears Rep Deming (D) has won the right in the primary to challenge Senator Rubio (R) for his seat in the Senate from Florida. The second place finishing Democrat didn’t exceed 10%.
• In Missouri John Wood (I) has ended his candidacy in the wake of Eric Schmitt’s defeat of Eric Greitens in the Senate primary.
• Oklahoma’s Rep Markwayne Mullin (R) will be the Republican’s nominee for the open Oklahoma Senate seat, as the Trump endorsee defeats T. W. Shannon with 65% of the primary vote. Does this signal a crack in the Republican voters? Probably not, but a poll would be welcome.
• In Washington McLaughlin & Associates claims the race between incumbent Murray (D) and challenger Smiley (R) is 49% – 43% for Murray, much tighter than other polls of this race. As I’ve noted before, this pollster is rated “C/D” by FiveThirtyEight, and in another negative note, RealClearPolitics, an aggregator of polls, does not appear to be willing to use this pollster.

A vague gesture of previous report & prediction here.

For those readers who don’t track special elections, a special election to fill an empty Congressional seat is often used to attempt to forecast the next general election for the entire country. Its usefulness depends on the nature of the district, the popularity of the individual candidates although appropriate adjustments can still yield prognosticatory … information.

So there was a special election last night in New York to fill the seat that was emptied by new Governor Hochul (D-NY) selecting Rep Antonio Delgado (D-NY) to be her Lt. Governor. Popular pundit opinion had it that Republican Marc Molinaro should beat Democrat Pat Ryan in a mildly close race.

The results? Ryan beats Molinaro, roughly 51%-49%. That’s stirred up the pundit class.

Marc Molinaro’s (R) On The Issues Summation.

But what does it mean for the November elections? Molinaro’s On The Issues page shows him to be an atypical Republican candidate, favoring abortion rights, and generally a libertarian, rather than what passes for a doctrinaire Republican these days. So this may suggest that the standard Republican base voters walked away from him, at least in part; the fact that he’s a poor match for the standard Republican voter may suggest that this special election is a poor specimen to use for forecasting the November elections.

But it’s also true that a lot of voters will simply see the Republican label and decide to vote against Molinaro, meaning he might have been better served running as a Libertarian! Teasing out the details from an election like this can be a tricky business.

So is this in line with the surprisingly close special elections run in Nebraska and Minnesota over the last few months? It’s probably good advice to both sides not to be complacent. It was fairly close one way instead of the other in New York. More detailed analysis of such factors as new voter registrations is not within my means, so I can’t take it any further.

Doppelgängion:

Here we have a number so ludicrously large that it is tricky to compare with any other numbers: 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 68 corresponds to 1 followed by 100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion zeroes.

It is a number I have named the doppelgängion, because it relates to the chances of there being another person like you, a doppelgänger, somewhere else in our universe. To be clear, we aren’t talking about doppelgängers in other universes disconnected from our own, as imagined in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, or any other multiverse theory. Instead, we are asking about our very own universe and the possibility that your doppelgänger is out there – same nose, same eyes, even the same thoughts. It is an idea that goes back to physicist Max Tegmark at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It might seem absurd. But ultimately it comes down to the probability that there is another bit of space, the same size as the one you occupy, in exactly the same quantum state, encoding the likely arrangements of all the particles that make up you. [“5 mind-bending numbers that could reveal the secrets of the universe,” Antonio Padilla, NewScientist (13 August 2022, paywall)]

For the record, Padilla’s number looks like this: 10¹⁰⁶⁸

And HTML renders it properly, too. I had my doubts.

I think the Republicans just won’t get it – collectively speaking – until it’s way too late:

The suggestion Thursday by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that his party could fall short of taking control of the chamber this fall — in part because of “candidate quality” — is not sitting well with some conservatives in his party.

Stephen Miller, a former senior aide to former president Donald Trump, said McConnell is the one to blame for prospects of a Republican takeover of the Senate that are “shrinking every single day.”

“We are witnessing in real time the greatest self-inflicted wound we have ever seen,” Miller said during an appearance on Fox News.

Miller asserted that McConnell has been focused on picking candidates that he thinks will help him stay in leadership and faulted him for not trying to create a national referendum on immigration and other issues. [WaPo]

McConnell, for all of his own flaws, comes from an earlier generation of Repubilcans, and at least is seeing the relationship between general characteristics of candidates and the expectations of the electorate, and speaking of it.

Those who are complaining about him? They’re the youngsters who were brought up sucking on former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s (R-GA) philosophy that winning elections is the end-all, be-all goal.

In other words, their metric is winning elections.

And that’s what they’ve been doing with the philosophy we’ve seen developed and implemented from the days of that quitter, Gingrich. Briefly, it consists of extremism, dismissal of expertise and experience and competency, single issue voting, and, paramount, the pursuit of power at the expense of everything else.

This synergy has worked in many geographical areas. The single issue voting over such issues as gun rights, abortion, taxation, and regulation provided the pivot around which extremism and incompetency could achieve office. Once in office, well, that was the goal, now wasn’t it?

Actual governing, which is the proper metric, was ignored. Anyone who observed the Trump Administration, and the GOP in the two Congresses of the same time period, knows this to be true. You don’t need to take my word for it, the reality is unavoidable. For even more examples, visit the GOP during the Bush II and Obama Administrations. It was party time, as they say.

But what of those complaining about McConnell? They are the conservatives brought up under the Gingrich political dictums, and, for most, it’s all they know. And they saw success using those rules, that philosophy, didn’t they?

And so they’ve been blinded by the wrong metric, that of winning elections, because the activities behind winning elections has resulted in both a changed electorate and candidates with different characteristics.

The electorate has seen Roe overturned by Dobbs, and the stories of the struggles of women forced to carry dead or terminally flawed fetuses to term, of raped little girls having to travel across State lines to get an abortion, all to satisfy the pretentious egos of politicos who think they know the mind of a divinity with which there has never been a verified communications. They’ve seen gun violence that had been falling begin to climb again, their children gunned down on the streets, ghost guns coming into use, and self-righteous and indignant gun owners proclaiming everyone should have one.

And the candidates are those who’ve successfully used the RINOing tactic to be rid of Republican moderates, where those moderates are yesterday’s radicals, now no longer in comparison to the religious zealots who can’t believe the Constitution has an Establishment clause, such as Rep Boebert (R-CO) and gubernatorial candidate Mastriano (R-PA). Their ranks have been growing for years: Gosar, Greene, Gohmert, and many more, all are familiar to those who pay attention to their absurd antics and recognize them for power-mad fools. I still like Greene’s Jewish Space Lasers.

The chemistry between candidates and audience has changed.

But these folks aren’t going to figure it out. No one likes to second-guess their own success. So McConnell will continue to take the flak for the mistakes of Miller, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), and many others who have clung to Gingrich’s precepts or Trump’s knees or their own overweening egos.

And, I suspect, they will go down screaming in November, screaming about cheating and McConnell and anything else but their own broken ideologies. They’ll be broken politicos, lost in their life vests as the American electorate takes a turn they didn’t expect and don’t understand.

While reading this WaPo article on imminent restrictions to the uses of the Colorado River, one of the most significant rivers of the American West, it occurred to me that I don’t really have a feel for its course or the cities it serves, unlike the Mississippi. The latter, I know without looking it up, starts a little north of the Twin Cities at Lake Itasca in Minnesota, goes through the Twin Cities, divides Minnesota from Wisconsin, Wisconsin from Iowa, Iowa from Illinois, serves Pepin, WI, which I only mention for its delicious restaurant, Harbor View Cafe, serves St. Louis and eventually ends up entering the Gulf of Mexico at NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana).

So let’s see a map!

The Colorado River
Source: American Rivers

Sourcing out of the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River flows through Grand Junction, CO, Moab, UT, the artificial Lake Powell on the Utah / Arizona border, all the while picking up contributions from tributaries. Crossing Arizona, it passes into Lake Mead, another artificial reservoir formed by the operation of the famed Hoover Dam and that I’ve alarmed over before, and near Las Vegas, NV. Heading south, it passes by some smaller cities and forms the border between Arizona and California, before passing into Mexico and, at one time, eventually feeding into the Gulf of California, that gulf on the west side of Mexico formed by Baja California and the Mexican mainland, as it were. Now I read it no longer makes it there.

But going over this by river only isn’t a wise course. In the map above, the olive and turquoise areas serve to illuminate the Colorado River basin, and it’s that area to which the Colorado River provides water. This includes most of Arizona, including Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Flagstaff. The Water Education Foundation states the Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000 square miles. American Rivers suggests the number is 36 million.

Not quite sure what that means? The recent US Census effort suggests the United States has a population of roughly 330 million people. That means, roughly, that 10%-12% of the US population has some sort of direct dependency on the Colorado River.

In other words, the water source for 12% of the United States population is at risk of becoming inadequate.

So what’s going on?

First, population has been growing. Macrotrends has the last four years’ population estimates for the Las Vegas metro area growing at about 2.7% annually. That’s not small over twenty years. Phoenix is growing at a similar rate, according to World Population Review.

Second, everyone wants water without paying for it. Face it, this is an American tradition. Speaking as a four-time visitor to India, it’s not a world-wide tradition. There you ask for bottled water and you may be charged for it. But here we tend to use water with little thought; we even talk about spending money like water to describe the profligate.

Third, as this WaPo article notes, the Colorado River is being starved of water due to a drought:

The root of the problem is an ongoing 23-year drought, the worst stretch for the region in more than a millennium. Mountain snowpack that feeds the 1,450-mile river has been steadily diminishing as the climate warms. Ever-drier soils absorb runoff before it can reach reservoirs, and more frequent extreme heat hastens evaporation.

“The prolonged drought afflicting the West is one of the most significant challenges facing our communities and our country,” Beaudreau said. “The growing drought crisis is driven by the effects of climate change, including extreme heat and low precipitation.”

Climate change that we had a chance to ameliorate and foolishly threw away that chance over the last, at least, decade. California is beginning to bend a bit, at least:

Grass is the single largest irrigated “crop” in America, surpassing corn and wheat, a frequently-cited study from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found. It noted by the early 2000s, turfgrass, mostly in front lawns, spanned about 63,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of Georgia.

Keeping front lawn grass alive requires up to 75% of just one household’s water consumption, according to the study, which is a luxury California is quickly becoming unable to afford as the climate change-driven drought pushes reservoirs to historic lows. [CNN]

Lake Powell is nearly not a lake any longer.

The remarks of the fishing guides interviewed by the journalist are more than a little unsettling. I hope there’s a special explanation for the huge implied drop in water levels at Lake Powell.

Of course, if you look hard enough it’s possible to find some lemonade. In Europe, if they can gather the gumption and money, they have an unexpected chance to clear part of the Danube River in Serbia of dangerous World War II debris:

This week, low water levels on the Serbian section of the Danube River exposed a graveyard of sunken German warships filled with explosives and ammunition. The vessels, which emerged near the port town of Prahovo, were part of a Nazi Black Sea fleet that sank in 1944 while fleeing Soviet forces. More ships are expected to be found lodged in the river’s sandbanks, loaded with unexploded ordnance. [WaPo]

But that’s a real weak lemonade. The point here is to ask whether we are willing to do what’s necessary to continue to live in those areas of the country, such as no more green grass lawns and irrigating farms, or if it’s just time to move out.

The Middle East continues to warm to cryptocurrencies:

Iran has reportedly registered its first import order purchased via cryptocurrency.

The Iranian news outlet Tasnim reported today that the crypto amount is worth $10 million.

The outlet left out numerous details on the order, including what the order is for and from whom, plus which cryptocurrency was used.

Cryptocurrencies will be used widely in Iran for foreign trade, according to Tasnim, which is linked to Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. [AL-Monitor]

UAE may not be a scary entity; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps definitely qualifies. So ripping them off may be less likely.

And cryptocurrency’s transparency has an impact on sanction evasion:

Cryptocurrencies is also still not used widely and its blockchain is publicly accessible. This makes it less plausible crypto will be utilized to evade sanctions to a significant degree, according to the Baffi Carefin research center in Italy.

Probably depends on how well an identity can be covered up.

They were hiding in rabbit holes, but now they use rhino holes.

• TargetSmart claims in a Tweet – so this that as you will – new voter registrations in States with poor abortion rights protections have surged among the young woman group. The implied raising of the importance of politics and governance in the younger portion of the electorate is not only significant for the 2022 election, but will carry forward into future elections. It may even apply to generations too young to vote in the 2022 election, but still paying attention. The SCOTUS conservatives’ “victory” symbolized by Dobbs may mark the beginning of a very long occupation of minority status by the Republican Party, regardless of its composition, in the United States. More analysis of TargetSmart’s claims by Laura Clawson on Daily Kos here.
• New Hampshire’s Senator Hassan (D), despite not having an opponent as of yet, does not do well in a Saint Anselm College poll. It’s more than a little difficult to see her losing to these far-right extremists, but I suppose anything is possible.
• A profile of Oklahoma candidate in the special election to replace the retiring Senator Inhofe (R), and former Rep, Kendra Horn (D) is here in Roll Call. Its descriptions of Oklahoma Republicans reminds me of those of Kansas Republicans, arrogantly certain of themselves even after their Constitutional Amendment was shot down. But that doesn’t mean Horn will be winning this fall.
• Colorado’s Senator Bennet (D) has an eight point lead over challenger Joe O’Dea (R), according to a poll by McLaughlin and Associates from a couple of weeks ago. That is not as good as the previous poll result of a twelve point lead for Bennet. The problem? McLaughlin and Associates gets only a “C/D” rating from FiveThirtyEight. The link to the poll notes that McLaughlin and Associates has ties to the Republican establishment, which may skew their results as they try to please their patrons. Even the linked article mentions this. I still think Bennet should win this race, but I’m not sure I’d accord this result much credibility. A WaPo report suggests O’Dea is a moderate Republican, which may make Bennet’s job a little tougher.
• Unlike the unknown pollster Center Street PAC, A- rated Emerson College Polling has J. D. Vance (R) leading Rep Tim Ryan (D) in Ohio, 45% – 42%, in its first poll of the Ohio Senate race, suggesting Ryan has a hill to climb and that the seat from Ohio remains in doubt.
• Incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) reportedly wants to invest Social Security funds in … the stock market! I don’t have access to the original article, but I just have to wonder what happens to those Social Security checks when the market crashes, and what would happen to the market if a large blob of money was invested. In fact, it all sounds like madness to me. However, don’t confuse this with the Bush 43 plan to privatize Social Security, which was explored in detail and rejected.
• Harry Enten, former FiveThirtyEight-ite now with CNN, confirms Senator McConnell’s fear that many Republican Senate candidates are disliked by the electorate using polls. Of course.

The previous book of Senatorial doom is here, right down that rabbit hole, two to the left. Right. Up.

This is certainly not rare.

But it’s nice clear pictures. I’ve put them on iNaturalist.

2.0 (2018). Environmentalist movie? Anti-environmentalist movie? Evil ornithologist, enraged by the murder of his birds, commits suicide in order to take revenge on, well, everyone via the Old Gods?

Via kaiju?

It’s weird, alright.

Oh, yeah. That has to be Elvis, right?

From the University of Minnesota’s News and Events newsletter:

Research Brief: Tracking invasive plants from space

No, they mean using satellites to identify and track invasive species. This has nothing to do with The Day of the Triffids (1962).

I wonder if they wrote it that way on porpoise.

Last year’s tactics may be this year’s anchors. Here’s a quick summary by veteran war observer Mark Sumner of Daily Kos:

Drones are playing an ever greater part in [Putin’s] war, and the various roles and types of drones are undergoing a fast evolution. It’s a very safe bet that the results in Ukraine are being carefully examined by every military in the world. From observation drones directing precision munitions, to large drones launching missiles at targets dozens or hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines, to loitering munitions with varying levels of AI, to drones like the “revolver” that can drop explosives straight down on enemy troops and vehicles, the battlefield is becoming ever more dangerous. How all this stuff works is changing in real-time, and the winner of this war may well be the side that is nimble enough to incorporate these technologies in the best way.

It comes down to technology, or the capabilities of your drones, and logistics, as in can you build and ship them to critical territories in sufficient numbers?

A lot like all those other wars, really. The trick is recognizing what’s revolutionary and what’s not. I recall reading somewhere that a couple of World War II American admirals, tasked with stopping a small Japanese convoy carrying an invasion force, and being unfamiliar with the radar systems installed on their cruisers and therefore didn’t use them, did in fact stop the convoy, but at a very dear cost.

If they had utilized the radar? Who knows, but the outcome might have been less painful.

But charlatans also flock to sell their crap to the military. An incredulous military is important, as the charlatans’ crap can get your people killed. The Brits are well-known for being taken in by a magical bomb detector during the Afghan conflict, losing a few service members to sheer and utter garbage. I think someone was arrested for that particular fraud, but I don’t recall enough of the details to look that one up. Oh, wait, here it is. Deeply shameful.

Impugn:

to cause people to doubt someone’s character, qualities, or reputation by criticizing them:
Are you impugning my competence as a professional designer? [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Trump has never been in so much peril. Nor has the GOP.” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

In an AL-Monitor Pro report (partial paywall), Ali Metwally has little but ill to speak of the future:

A global food crisis is well underway and, according to World Food Program chief David Beasley, it will be “beyond anything we’ve seen in our lifetime.” The situation is all the more alarming for countries that have traditionally depended on imports of key staple foods to meet their needs. This goes for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where food accounts for 13% of the region’s total imports, compared to 9% in the European Union (EU), 8% in Latin America and 7% in North America.

Long in the making, the situation has more recently been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted global supply chains and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that began earlier this year and which has further polarized and politicized the matter. Combined, these countries make up around a third of global wheat exports — a key food staple in most MENA countries — and are responsible for 32% of MENA’s wheat imports.

With food export bans now in place in many countries, rising shipping costs and a widening supply-demand gap, the crisis, if not adequately and urgently addressed, could see shortages of essential food items grow to levels that lead to a notable increase in hunger and malnutrition rates across the world.

I’ve been wondering if the tendency of Western food exports to disturb the fundamental economies of their customers is a disaster waiting to happen. That is, cheap Western food puts local farmers out of business. Then food gets cutoff by an event such as the Covid crisis, or something worse. With the local farming economy in ruins, or worse – think the Aral Sea debacle – is it going to end in mass starvation?

Immense profits do not justify mass starvation, at least not in my book.

For the minute-by-minute prognosticators who live for Election Night, Ranked Choice Voting may be a nightmare. We have an example up in Alaska, where the seat of the late Rep Don Young (R) is up for grabs, and assumed to be going Republican again. With Sarah Palin (R), the former governor, in the mix, it was thought to be a fight between Palin, representing the religious far right extremists, and Nick Begich, who had worked for the late Rep Young’s campaign.

So who’s leading?

Mary Peltola (D).

With two-thirds of expected votes counted in the special election for the House seat of the late congressman Don Young (R-Alaska), former Alaska governor and GOP vice-presidential nominee Palin surprisingly trailed a Democrat, Mary Peltola, 38 percent to 32 percent. The other front-running Republican, Nick Begich, was at 29 percent.

Where this goes from here, nobody knows. But Peltola far outperformed the primary results in June, in which she took just 10 percent of the vote. She appeared to benefit from the decision of independent/Democratic-aligned Al Gross to drop out of the race after the primary, making it a three-candidate contest with two Republicans and a Democrat. But even accounting for that, Peltola’s showing is strong. [WaPo]

And I agree with the article: who knows where this heads as RCV procedures are followed, along with the absentee ballots that haven’t been counted? The leader today may be middle of the pack tomorrow. Or worse.

And that’ll drive the prognosticators up the wall.

So be prepared. Popcorn, peanuts, that sort of thing. And I will only be surprised if the Democrat wins. If that happens then it suggests the Republicans are really being repudiated by the electorate. But I doubt that’ll happen. I think Begich wins, assuming he’s less extreme than Palin.

Good progress is being made in doing away with the experiment of privately run prisons, but it needs to move faster, as this story is outright horrifying and should result in the immediate outlawing of private prisons, nevermind the theoretical arguments advanced by myself and many others.

Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care. [AP]

And so we see private justice institutions influencing justice, in an illicit manner, in order to elicit more profits. And never mind the damage to the children !!!

It’s appalling and potentially highly damaging to society.

I do hope this quashes any more pro- private prison arguments.

Something bothered me about this story portraying a pastor as a greedy bastard:

A pastor in Missouri rained down a fiery sermon upon his flock one Sunday this month, scolding parishioners for failing to follow God.

The Rev. Carlton Funderburke condemned his congregation not because they had sinned too much, loved God too little or done too few good deeds out in the world. Instead, Funderburke rebuked the “cheap sons and daughters” of the Church at the Well in Kansas City for not “honoring” him with a luxury gift.

“That’s how I know you still poor, broke, busted and disgusted, because of how you been honoring me,” Funderburke told his congregation, according to a video. “I’m not worth your McDonald’s money? I’m not worth your Red Lobster money? I ain’t worth your St. John Knit — y’all can’t afford it nohow. I ain’t worth y’all Louis Vuitton? I ain’t worth your Prada? I’m not worth your Gucci?” [WaPo]

And, of course, that may be an accurate portrayal, as there’s just not enough information in the story and I’m, uh, too lazy busy to dig out more. Nor do I live in Missouri.

But it is true that groups, especially those defined in traditional pecking order groupings such as racial or religious groups, compete to move up and the social power ladder. It’s an important behavior because a group that is important, such as Catholics in Ireland prior to the realization of the abuse of children by the ICC (Irish Catholic Church) by the public, doesn’t suffer abuse, while Catholics in Protestant Britain, on the other hand, can suffer a certain amount of disadvantage, even when putative public policy is to disregard membership in such groups.

And part of establishing one’s place in that societal pecking order is the display of wealth. Wealth informs those who might initiate violence that vengeance could be likely, official or not, and while common criminals might not consider that to be important, an organized group presents too many vulnerabilities.

So Funderburke may be wishing to signal that members of his congregation are rich enough to gift him with luxury items, and thus he, and they, may have influence with official law enforcement – or his congregation might be armed, although I doubt that’s information that he wants to signal.

In the end, it’s possible that he wants to signal that, hey, he leads a group of financially stable people, so leave them alone.

Or Not. He could be just a self-centered bastard.

Mere speculation and completely made up guesswork: That’s how Republicans appear to be defending the former President. But enough of the sideshow, let’s go see the Senators! Can you tell the Minnesota State Fair is imminent?

• New Hampshire’s incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan (D) may not yet know her general election opponent, which will be determined in a Sep 13 primary, but if the three GOP candidates who showed up for a debate last weekend are the top candidates, and participant Don Bolduc, a retired brigadier general, leads the pack by quite a lot, then the New Hampshire Republican Party is unlikely to snap up Hassan’s seat in November. Brandishing far-right positions such as abolishing the FBI as well as the 17th Amendment, which would make the state legislatures responsible again for selecting Senators – evidently because trusting voters is too much for this crew – they are emblematic of a GOP that has been RINOing its way to the right in a blind fury of power madness and, I suspect, will go right off a cliff in November, screaming, yet again, of a stolen election, wearing their badge of righteousness on their sleeves, while leaving the cloak of humility in the closet. Ahem. Putting the soapbox away now. Sorry about that.
• In the first poll for any Senate contest I’ve seen since the FBI visit to Mar-a-Lago, University of North Florida reports that Florida incumbent Senator and Trump ally Marco Rubio (R) now trails challenger Rep Val Demings (D) by four points, 48%-44%, among registered voters; that 4 point gap is greater than the margin of error. University of North Florida polls are rated “A/B” by FiveThirtyEight, so there may be some credibility in this poll. I’d like to see several polls from different sources coming to the same conclusion before thinking Rubio’s likely to lose, but I will add Rubio to the list of endangered Republican Senators.
• Speaking of endangered Republican seats, Jennifer Rubin notes a report from  The New York Times that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is cutting advertising budgets in Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman reportedly has a large lead over Republican and neophyte Dr. Mehmet Oz, Arizona, where Senator Mark Kelly (D) is facing extremist and political neophyte Blake Masters (R) and reportedly has a fourteen point lead, and, surprisingly, Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson, whose sanity could easily be questioned, will be facing off against recently selected candidate and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) [later note: See more on Barnes vs Johnson below]. If the NRSC is ceding Wisconsin, that’s huge news and is beginning to make the potential Senate gains for the Democrats look shocking – and confirm my thesis that the American electorate has little patience for extremists, who now make up most or all of the Republican Party, regardless of where we are in the election cycle. Democratic would-be extremists, take note and shut up.
• Alaska’s primary has yielded the following promotions to the general election: incumbent and Trump-hated Senator Lisa Murkowski (R), Trump endorsee Kelly Tshibaka (R), followed at some distance by Patricia Chesbro (D) and a player to be named later. This is rather better for the Senator than predicted, strengthening my suspicion of a victory for her, barring black swans. Remember, this is a Ranked Choice Voting state (RCV), which works to moderates’ advantage, and Murkowski may be the most moderate Republican Senator out there.
• 

  Senator Thune’s (R) On The Issues summation. Yep, he’s about to fall off the edge of the world there, isn’t he?

  If I’m to believe this poll, South Dakota citizens mostly reject abortion extremists who try to outright ban abortion, although they may disapprove of abortion itself. It’s that nuance that makes me doubt this suggests this is trouble for incumbent Senator John Thune (R), regardless of the magnitude of his extremist measurement from On The Issues. Show me a couple polls with Thune trailing challenger Brian Bengs (D) and I’ll change my tune, although satisfying noted Thune-hater DJ Trump would be a bit galling.

• In the first poll in Wisconsin since primary voters selected incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) and Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) as the last additions to the 2022 Senate race in Wisconsin, and the first Wisconsin poll since the Mar-a-Lago visit by the FBI, Marquette University Law School Poll, an “A/B” rated pollster according to FiveThirtyEight, gives Barnes a seven point lead, 51%-44%. While this may fluster the timid pundit pool, it’s what I hoped to see when I wrote about the burdens Johnson is carrying: a history of conspiracy theories, possible dementia, and the overwhelming weight of the Wisconsin GOP, who appears to be exceptionally lost in the wilderness, probably not to return until most of the membership is ejected and former members invited to rejoin.
• It seems unlikely, but keep in mind that Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) seat will lack an incumbent defender in November, and his seat in red, red, red Oklahoma may be in danger if favored successor wannabe Markwayne Mullin (R), who has not yet won the primary runoff scheduled for August 23, continues putting his foot in his mouth with such statements as
  

  “We saw this media frenzy about supposedly classified information — where was this same media frenzy when there was 33,000 classified emails on a server in a bathroom with Hillary Clinton?” Mullin asked, indignantly. “Why didn’t they raid that bathroom?” [TPM].

  Since there were 133 classified emails and Secretary Clinton delivered the email server up on request, unlike the former President and his stolen documents, Mullin is now vulnerable to charges of lying by his challengers, primary runoff mate T. W. Shannon (R), and if he slips by Shannon, general election challenger Kendra Horn (D). As noted before, it’s worth keeping half an eye on this Oklahoma contest. I suppose a poll is unlikely until after the runoff. I’m such a member of the Instant Gratification Generation.

• Summarizing current Democratic status: Seats probably lost: None. Seats I currently consider to be in danger: None. Seats that had been thought to be in danger a few months ago, but now no longer so considered: Arizona, Georgia, Washington, New Hampshire. Not enough data: Colorado, Nevada.
• Summarizing current Republican status: Seats probably lost: Pennsylvania, Ohio. Seats I currently consider to be in danger: – Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Wisconsin. If things break just right, Republicans may also lose: Missouri, Kansas, Utah (to independent Evan McMullin), Kentucky. Not enough data: any seat currently held by a Republican for which no polls of relevance available. There’s blood in the water, folks.

More flubs concerning Senate races are here.

Erick Erickson’s particularly perturbed today, resulting in this shocking quote:

Biden promised us a return to normalcy and instead he handed Afghanistan to the Taliban …

Yes, because Americans think being at war is normal.

Or how about this one:

Yes, because Americans should abrogate all international agreements to which it is a signatory, and Trump signed this one with the Taliban.

One of those blurry shots of Nessie the Divinity.

Reading Erickson’s post is really quite wearisome because virtually every claim is, at best, debatable, many are deceptive, some are outright ridiculous … and all I can figure is that his God is not a good God, or that Divinity has a real bad frownie face right now.

I think The Lincoln Project has it right with regard to Liz Cheney:

Tonight, the nation marks the end of the Republican Party. What remains shares the name and branding of the traditional GOP, but is in fact an authoritarian nationalist cult dedicated only to Donald Trump.

While the demise of those truly in control of the Republican Party may involve fundamental neglect of national priorities and, indeed, violence from those who’ve been taken in by these leaders, it’s my belief that these same leaders are, much like the Axis leaders of World War II, really a pack of fourth-raters when it comes to politics and government. They may cover it with violence, as did the Axis leaders, but desperate clinging to ideological and theological tenets, even in the face of realities that disprove those tenets, is absolutely incompatible with effective leadership.

This was recently proven in Kansas in the rejection of a proposed Kansas Constitutional Amendment to permit anti-abortion legislation, but has been proven over the last few years with the rejection of climate change denying candidates in what would otherwise be considered Republican districts, and were experiencing extreme weather events.

I fear this won’t go swiftly, and the repair of damage done by the extremist Republicans loathed by The Lincoln Project may take decades, but progress will continue. My hope is that single issue voting will become a rejected, even disgusting, option, and finer grain discussions of political candidates will once again become a characteristic of the American landscape.

I’m looking forward to color commentary concerning the game pitting the Cuneiforms vs the Ideographs.