Unsightly Mental Blemishes

In case you were wondering about Judge Cannon’s ruling to bring in a special master, Lawfare provides analysis of the action, crowned with this:

Judge Cannon has been taking a bit of a beating all week for her decision. The criticism, some of it vituperative, has contained a lot of falsehoods and a considerable dollop of conspiracy theorizing, and it has often ascribed partisan motive for the ruling.

All of which might under normal circumstances tempt our contrarian hearts to try to defend the opinion.

But Cannon’s opinion actually defies defense. It is an epic mess, one that manages to do violence to a remarkable number of distinct areas of law in an admirable economy of only 24 pages.

Sounds like she’s the Trump Special – fourth-rate and, preferably, never served to real customers.

The Russia invasion of Ukraine that occurred this Spring, aka Putin’s War, poses the usual problem for someone who’s not an intellectual Superman, i.e., me, of how to evaluate and punditize on the phenomenon in question, whether it be war or climate change, and doesn’t want to be caught in Ryan’s Fallacy^[1]. How to go about it?

I have no military background, nor experience with Ukraine armed forces. Russia’s armed forces during World War II were very rough, employing the inmates of insane asylums as shock troops, but at least somewhat effective against fuel-starved German forces. But it was not clear if Russian military science had advanced since 1945 – and if it mattered.

But I can observe those who would put themselves forward as analysts and analyze them.

The first group are the experts consulting, or even writing, for the mainstream media. They, more or less, predicted Ukraine eventually falling to the onslaught. That hasn’t happened yet. In fact, Ukraine appears to be turning the Russians back.

As it happens, I also monitor former military folks at Daily Kos, and they’ve cautiously done better, giving Ukraine a chance at survival. There are several diarists covering Putin’s War on Daily Kos, and I don’t try to keep track of who writes what.

What I do gather, though, is that the Russian Army suffers from corruption leading to a lack of critical maintenance and production of advanced weapons, a lack of crucial esprit de corps, an inferior command structure compared to Western armies, from which Ukraine has borrowed judiciously, and a command staff lacking in grounding in basic military science. On the plus side, some of their lightweight tactics, such as the use of drones for both recon and munitions delivery at least exists, although I get the impression that Ukraine Army forces do it better.

All that said is, at least spiritually, much what historians write about the Tsar’s forces in their last war, that being World War I: an enormous Army crippled by corruption, eventually leading to the downfall and death of the Tsar and his family.

Back when it became initially apparent that Russia was in trouble, I mused, unpublished, on the possibility that China would invade Russia. They share a long border which is often in dispute, and Russia was displaying weakness. The main restraint is, of course, Russian nuclear weapons, although I have to wonder if they’re truly functional. Experts, meanwhile, were wondering if China might try to force reintegration with Taiwan, i.e., invade, which it has claimed to decades. Taiwan, for those readers not familiar with recent Chinese history, is the largish island where the defeated Nationalist forces of post World War II China retreated to after being defeated by the Chinese Communists, and they haven’t ventured forth since. China is quite sensitive to the thought of Taiwan becoming formally independent.

Taiwan, meanwhile, has built a raucous parliamentary democracy as well as an ace card and put the latter in its back pocket: critical industries such as semi-conductor plants manufacturing the most advanced mass produced computer chips on the planet are located in Taiwan.

All this comes together to suggest something: all the autocratic leaders of the world may be, unexpectedly, reluctant to exercise their aggressive tendencies. Russia has become the object lesson, not in its abilities, but in its disabilities. Corruption is, in my view, endemic to autocracies. Autocracies, regardless of variety, are built on the foundation of breaking the law. It’s definitional, isn’t it? First, in their founding, such as in Spain, and then in the repression of those who object to their dominance, it’s all about ignoring a devotion to justice in favor of acquiring and retaining absolute power. The corruption follows naturally, as the leaders must be satisfied, so whether you fill your artillery shells with sand, as in Tsarist times, or skim off maintenance money and thus neglect critical maintenance while reporting it’s been performed today, the chances that the status of a given military is adequate to the task of a war is … questionable.

Add to that the superiority of Western weapons systems, whether they’re Javelins, Stingers, or HIMARS, and China’s Xi Jinping has to be frowning at the thought of aggression. Xi is, after all, an autocrat, and he has to be wondering about his own military forces. Russia’s tough autocrat, Putin, has shockingly failed, looking exceedingly weak as he’s done so, and if Xi is smart – and you don’t get to be undisputed leader of China without being smart – he’s gotta wonder.

Add to that, you have to wonder if he really wants to go up against the American military? American President Biden has demonstrated an undisputed ability to build alliances and deliver weapons systems rarely seen in the world before. Is China really ready to go up against that?

Xi might not survive that. Not because the United States might find him and kill him, but because Xi’s own subordinates might eliminate him.

Just as Putin is probably facing right now.

Ukraine has used Western assistance to survive, and has, in the process, changed the world. Just not quite how I thought. It doesn’t look like China’s going anywhere.

¹ Ryan’s Fallacy, which I’ve not mentioned before, is the encouragement to the ignorant that their opinions are just as, if not more, valid than that of experts, as former Speaker Ryan (R-WI) said in a speech to Republican voters. A blot on his honor and a shame to his family, this encouragement doubtlessly led to a great deal of grief during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. However, he was merely continuing an old tradition, as scientist and famed writer Isaac Asimov observed decades earlier:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

I think I have to applaud these folks:

Several elected officials in Russia have been summoned by police after they called for the impeachment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a rare display of dissent in the country, local deputies from the Smolninskoye municipality in the St. Petersburg area appealed to the Russian Duma to impeach the President, for what they called crimes of high treason.

The author of the appeal, Dmitry Palyuga, posted it on Twitter, alleging Putin was responsible for “(1) the decimation of young able-bodied Russian men who would serve the workforce better than the military; (2) Russia’s economic downturn and brain drain; (3) NATO’s expansion eastward, including adding Finland and Sweden to “double” its border with Russia; (4) the opposite effect of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.”

Palyuga and fellow Deputy Nikita Yuferev later posted on Twitter a summons issued to them by the St. Petersburg police for their “discrediting of the ruling establishment”. [CNN]

Looking to peace rather than offensive war seems like a winner move for those who worry about morality.

And Putin, who appears to be facing imminent disaster as the Kremlin discovers the corruption endemic to Russian government for something near a millennia has also leaked into the military, really isn’t going to find this move funny.

But the world needs him out of power.

Here’s my telescope. It shows me visions of the future by staring at old images of stars.

• Susquehanna Polling and Research (SPR) suggests incumbent Marco Rubio (R) is leading challenger Rep Val Demings (D) by three points, 47% – 44%, for the Florida Senate seat. SPR is a B+ rated pollster, according to FiveThirtyEight, so this may be accurate. Margin of error is 4.3%, so this is exceedingly close. And the poll was taken prior to the most recent Trump news. Will the negative Trump news affect the race as we run towards November?
• Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) appears to be a flip-flopper – or has received orders from on high, as he’s no longer supporting the same-sex marriage bill intended to safeguard gay marriage that he earlier said he would support.
• Approval of President Biden will be a drag, or an uplift, in the Senate races. How’s he doing? The chart from Civiqs via Joan McCarter, there on the right, indicates Biden is becoming less and less of a drag. And with almost two months left, he still has time to improve further.
• Senate Candidate and State Rep. Krystie Matthews (D) in South Carolina has apparently been caught on a recording device disparaging her constituents. The South Carolina Democratic Party is calling for her to leave the race. While, granted, her odds were poor against incumbent Senator Tim Scott (R), who appears to be quite circumspect and is reportedly very popular in South Carolina, pissing on your constituents is the mark of an amateur lacking a vision of good politics. Matthews disputes the reports, claiming context has been stripped – one of my pet peeves, for new readers – so it’s hard to say if, in the end, what she said is all she said, or if there are mitigating circumstances. If the latter, circumspection is a skill she needs to learn.
• Pennsylvania continues to host the most broken Senate race this year as CNBC uncovers the fact that candidate Oz Mehmet (R) … owns stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a supplier of the drug hydroxychloroquine, and McKesson, a distributor of the anti-malaria medicine. As Mehmet touted hydroxychloroquine’s use for treatment of Covid-19 without evidence of efficacy, this casts grave doubts on his qualifications for public service. No doubt free market advocates would dispute the assertion that it’s inappropriate to tout treatments for which there is no evidence of efficacy under the outdated slogan, Let the markets decide!, but the fact of the matter is that even when employed outside of the public sector, aspirants to positions of public service are expected to exhibit moral behavior consonant with the positions they seek.
• Emerson College is confirming Trafalgar’s polling in Arizona, reporting Senator Kelly’s (D) lead over challenger Blake Masters (R) is 47% – 45%. Arizona’s long been conservative, but Masters is no John McCain (R), the esteemed late and long-time Senator from Arizona.
• Sometimes relying on Internet search engines isn’t good enough: back on July 19th, Chris Chaffee won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland. Color me third-rate, eh? Chaffee won with a mere 21.3% of the Republican votes, suggesting a weak candidate. Senator Van Hollen won his primary with 78.7%, which is not overwhelming, but still miles better than Chaffee. Incidentally, Van Hollen reported suffering a stroke back in May. No polls are in evidence, so I consider Van Hollen the presumptive favorite until notified otherwise.
• This Tuesday features the last of the primaries for this cycle, including the New Hampshire primaries for selecting the Senate candidates.

Older observations in expected appalling taste are here.

Cognizable:

Cognizable means capable of being known or considered. It means capable of being judicially tried or examined before a designated tribunal. A cognizable claim or controversy is one that meets the basic criteria of viability for being tried or adjudicated before a particular tribunal. The term means that the claim or controversy is within the power or jurisdiction of a particular court to adjudicate. That which is cognizable to a judge is within the scope of his or her jurisdiction. [USLegal.com]

Noted in “UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA WEST PALM BEACH DIVISION CASE NO. 22-CV-81294-CANNON“:

As an initial matter, Plaintiff has not shown that he had standing to seek relief, or that this Court properly exercised its equitable jurisdiction, with regard to the classified records. The classified records are government property over which the Executive Branch has control and in which Plaintiff has no cognizable property interest. See Exec. Order 13526, § 1.1(2) (Dec. 29, 2009) (classified information must be “owned by, produced by or for, or [be] under the control of the United States Government”); Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 527 (1988). Accordingly, even if (as the Court stated) Plaintiff has made “a colorable showing of a right to possess at least some of the seized property” sufficient to establish his standing to request that a special master review records that might potentially belong to him, D.E. 64 at 13, he categorically cannot make that showing with respect to documents marked as classified.

Adieu, tireless duty-filler. A much-ignored embodied lesson, I think, that many could have benefited from.

The spectacle of Judge Cannon acceding to former President Trump’s request for a special master with what has been labeled, on both the right and the left, as ludicrous legal reasoning has been a bit horrifying, but I didn’t notice this part here, of course, until Professor Richardson brought it to my attention:

If the Democrats were to pick up 16 seats in November, then on January 3rd, Congress’ next Inauguration Day, Judge Cannon could become former Judge Cannon, bounced out on her ear. And don’t get worked up over how unlikely it is that sixteen Republicans will lose.

Because, more importantly than whether this occurs, this has the potential to be the unstoppable nail in the coffin for the Republicans for this election, and possibly the end of the MAGA cult’s influence in American life.

Why? Because of this:

Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. [WaPo]

This is a national security issue. This disclosure of finding a top secret document concerning the nuclear capabilities of another nation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation has transformed this into a Rosenbergs-type situation. If you’re not familiar, the Rosenbergs gave American nuclear secrets, among other military secrets, to the Soviet Union, and were executed for their troubles.

Purely a metaphor.

If critical military and national defense secrets were transferred to other nations by Trump, then every politician considered his ally will be tainted. Some of those in Jovian, or greater, orbits may be able to disassociate themselves, but close orbit, i.e. Venusian or closer, allies such as Senators Johnson, Rubio, Scott, Paul, and those who did not vote to convict Trump in either of his trials, will be at risk of the ruination of their political career. In the House the usual names apply, even those who are no longer members: Jordan, Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Gohmert, Gosar, Cawthorn are just some of the names that come to mind.

I think, with proper Democratic messaging, even “safe” Republican seats in both the Senate and the House are now at risk. Every Republican defending the former President at this late stage, such as Rubio’s “Oh, it’s just a storage issue” defense, may be facing the demise of their political career. We may see a few commit suicide. Not political suicide, but existential suicide.

That’s the enormity of Judge Cannon’s decisions.

So the actions of Judge Cannon so far are a disaster for the MAGA Republicans. Senator McConnell (R-KY), the leading non-MAGA Republican, may be morbidly chuckling as his rival Trump appears to be self-immolating, but he’s now looking at a permanent position as Minority Leader, and make no mistake: the actions of “Moscow” Mitch McConnell have lead to these contretemps.

I don’t seriously believe Judge Cannon will be impeached. However, she may reverse herself in the near future, depending on the magnitude of her loyalty to Trump vs her love of prestige and position, even as damaged as it is, and will be through her association with Trump.

Will he be overwhelmed by piccolos or flutes?

Dead Again (1991) is fundamentally a story about revenge, the revenge of a young boy on his stepmother, the stepmother on her husband, the young boy on the stepmother again, and, I suppose, an artist on her critics.

Maybe.

I found my credulity strained by the hypnotic regression sequences in which we discover the artist, Amanda Sharp, was once piano virtuoso Roman Strauss, executed shortly after World War II for the murder of his wife, who, in turn, may be in the, ah, spiritual past of investigator Mike Church.

Put that way, it’s clear why I didn’t find it all that tolerable.

Which is too bad, because the acting is nice, and Church happens to be running around in a late 1950s/60s Corvette, which I always appreciate. But it’s not enough to get me around the inherent silliness of the plot, which involves hypnotic regression, an antiques dealer, the artist-as-mysterious amnesiac, the investigator scraping for bucks, and etc. The reality was that I kept trying to find a way to explain it without resorting to silly hypnotic regression and risible past lives explanations, and just couldn’t get there.

So I’d say see it if you’re a Kenneth Branagh or Emma Thompson or Wayne Knight completist. You say you don’t recognize Wayne Knight?

Think dinosaurs. Which would have been fun in Dead Again.

In case you were wondering if any of the January 6th insurrectionists would be barred from governmental elective office, Roger Parloff has the story of the first one:

A judge today removed a county official from office under Section 3 of the 14^th amendment, the hoary post-Civil War provision that bars certain people from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection” against the United States.

Judge Francis Mathew, of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, ousted Otero County (N.M.) Commissioner Couy Griffin, due to his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. According to lawyers who brought the case, it represents the first time a court has disqualified an official under Section 3 since 1869. (Congress refused to seat a U.S. Congressman, Victor Berger, under the Section in 1919.) [Lawfare]

While this part is unsurprising, it’s still interesting:

Importantly, Griffin proceeded pro se [he represented himself] at trial. (He was represented for a period during the pretrial phase.) As a consequence, he did not raise all of the legal arguments that a legal team might have. I have written about those very significant potential hurdles here.

It’s been observed, since the Web era began, that ignorant people often think they’re smart, the smartest folks in the room. I think it’s clear that’s what happened here. I wonder how many more of them will represent themselves before they get it figured out. I know at least several have done so in their criminal trials – and lost.

Longtermism:

Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts to reduce existential risks to humanity.

Sigal Samuel from Vox summarizes the key argument for longtermism as follows: “future people matter morally just as much as people alive today;… there may well be more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past; and… we can positively affect future peoples’ lives.” These three ideas taken together suggest, to those advocating longtermism, that it is the responsibility of those living now to ensure that future generations get to survive and flourish. [Wikipedia]

Uh huh. A deliberate purging of the chronological aspect of existence, sounds like, with a dubious helping of the same intellectual errors made by anti-abortionists, to wit, equating the a prior existence to a later existence of different things.

Noted in “Why ‘longtermism’ isn’t ethically sound,” Christine Emba, WaPo:

Longtermism relies on the theory that humans have evolved fairly recently, and thus we can expect our species to grow long into the future. The world’s current population is really a blip; if all goes well, a huge number of humans will come after us. Thus, if we’re reasoning rationally and impartially (as EAs pride themselves on doing), we should tilt heavily toward paying attention to this larger future population’s concerns — not the concerns of people living right now.

Depending on how you crunch the numbers, making even the minutest progress on avoiding existential risk can be seen as more worthwhile than saving millions of people alive today. In the big picture, “neartermist” problems such as poverty and global health don’t affect enough people to be worth worrying about — what we should really be obsessing over is the chance of a sci-fi apocalypse.

It rather makes me wonder which group of humans get the assistance. I mean, if not today’s suffering folks, how about tomorrow’s? Day after? Thousand years from now?

I wonder if they’ll be making a religion out of this, with your position in the sainthood determined by how many people you, ah, “helped.” Every once in a while they update the computer’s database of people with the data, just to give those so stored a bit of a thrill.

They said it was impossible, then another they crossed an elephant with an amoeba. No typo there, “another they” is right. And, now, in other news …

• Democratic pollster Impact Research , aka ALG Research, a “B/C” rated pollster by FiveThirtyEight, gives Rep Tim Ryan (D) a 50% – 47% lead over lawyer/author J. D. Vance (R) in the race for the open Senate seat in Ohio. This is within the margin of error. Make of that what you will. You’ll find the salt shaker behind the ersatz ketchup bottle.
• A working dude like me simply doesn’t have time to do eye opening research; I just mess around with a general sense of how the electorate is leaning, and how that electorate is perceiving, or will perceive, certain events of political significance, such as the Dobbs decision, the January 6th Insurrection, or Palin’s loss in Alaska. Therefore, I really appreciate this WaPo article by Jennifer Rubin on the chances of Cheri Beasley (D) in North Carolina’s Senatorial race. The contrast between her and her opponent, Rep Ted Budd (R), is instructive, and I hope his anti-veteran vote in the House becomes well-known in the State.
• An AARP poll gives Senator Masto (D) of Nevada a 44% – 40% lead over challenger Adam Laxalt (R), which is more or less in line with other polls. AARP polling is not known to FiveThirtyEight.
• Colorado’s incumbent Senator Bennet (D) has an 11 point lead, 46% – 35%, over challenger O’Dea (R), according to Public Policy Polling. This pollster gets an A- rating from FiveThirtyEight. It suggests Bennet has a solid lead with two months until Election Day.
• 

  Senator Todd Young’s (R-IN) On The Issues summation.

  A poll taken by Change Research for the McDermott (D) campaign shows him trailing incumbent Indiana Senator Young (R) by three points. As Change Research is only rated a B- pollster by FiveThirtyEight, it may not be sensible to take this poll seriously, especially in the absence of any other Indiana polls, and, as the Young campaign points out, it was an online poll, always a negative sign. On the flip side, though, Young won his 2016 race by roughly ten points, and defeated a member of the politically prominent Bayh family, for those of us who remember the late Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN). Challenger McDermott doesn’t have that kind of political pedigree, although he is a successful, longtime mayor of the city of Hammond, Indiana, and has the additional credential of being a Navy veteran. If we stipulate the poll to be accurate, a three point deficit (and 2.62% margin of error!) is indicative of something unexpected happening in one of the more conservative States of the Union. It suggests that the the question is whether Young’s vote for the recent gun control bill has him in trouble with far-right gun rights absolutists, or if his position on abortion has him in trouble with voters deeply troubled by the Dobbs decision. Young’s On The Issues summation suggests he’s one of the more moderate members of the Senate’s GOP caucus, but whether that’s bad or good in Indiana may depend on the weather in Indianapolis. In the end, I think, mostly because this was an online poll, it’s not worth getting excited just yet. It might have even been a fishing expedition, designed to draw in someone like A rated Fox News polling without actually paying for their service, or perhaps lure money from the national Democrats who hope to finance an upset win. We need a more authoritative poll before I speculate further.

• A- rated Emerson College Polling gives Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) a 48% to 44% lead over Dr. Mehmet Oz (R) in Pennsylvania, which is conspicuously less than other polls. Has something changed, or is this an outlier? Did the Oz campaign’s reminder to voters concerning Fetterman’s stroke just prior to primaries hit home?
• 

  Tiffany Smiley’s (R) On The Issues summation.

  Previous, if scarce, polls of Washington State’s Senate race of incumbent Murray (D) vs challenger Smiley (R) had shown Murray with an overwhelming lead over her moderate Republican rival, except for one outlier produced by a dubious pollster. But now Trafalgar has released a poll showing Murray leading 49.2% to 46.3%, which is within the margin of error. Trafalgar is rated A- by FiveThirtyEight, so it’s unlikely to be polling incompetence. Has Smiley’s moderate policy positions taken their toll on Murray? Possibly Smiley was unfamiliar to voters prior to this poll, but now they know and like her? The word went out to the far-right extremists that they support her or get out of the Republican Party? Or perhaps President Biden’s college debt forgiveness program, as predicted by some right-wing pundits, is negatively impacting Democratic opponents? It could, despite Trafalgar’s reputation, just be an outlier. Ah, so many options! The next couple of polls from respectable sources should be quite interesting. But if we’re to believe Smiley’s On The Issues summation diagram at right, she’s at least not a denizen of Clinton’s fever-swamp far-right. My buck-ninety-eight is on Washington voters discovering Smiley is not the MAGA-radical they expected the Washington GOP to nominate, with a consequent willingness to give her a chance. Murray, who has turned down debate invites, had better get off her ass and participate, or this will turn into an avoidable upset.

No, I don’t have a link for the amoeba story! Stop asking! Read this link to previous news, instead!

The tomato patch is bloomin’ with sunflowers!

Lots of noms there? These pics are from a few days ago, and some of these blooms (or inflorescence) have been picked off and carried away by critters unknown. But probably not this guy:

He’s just an audience member my Arts Editor spied and snapped.

Remember the news that nuclear power may not be anathema any longer for certain members of the left? Of course, Professor Lovelock has long backed nuclear power, but it takes more than one person to make such a concept fly.

Well, it seems to be flapping its wings a bit harder:

From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones. The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And it comes even as fears mount about another potential nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. …

The global reevaluation shows the extraordinary degree to which the war in Ukraine is reshaping long-held positions about nuclear power. Europe is bracing for a winter of energy shortages in which it may run out of natural gas supplies, potentially forcing it to shut down factories and leave citizens shivering. Worldwide, prices for fossil fuels have skyrocketed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, with Europe, the United States and a few other countries around the world significantly scaling back their purchases of cheap Russian oil and gas. [WaPo]

A little slice of life for a town that has cryptocurrency miners moving in:

It’s midnight, and a jet-like roar is rumbling up the slopes of Poor House Mountain. Except there are no planes overhead, and the nearest commercial airport is 80 miles away.

The sound is coming from a cluster of sheds at the base of the mountain housing a cryptocurrency data center, operated by the San Francisco-based firm PrimeBlock. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, powerful computers perform the complex computations needed to “mine,” or create, digital currencies. And those noise-generating computers are kept cool by huge fans.

“It’s like living on top of Niagara Falls,” said Mike Lugiewicz, whose home lies less than 100 yards from the mine.

“When it’s at its worst, it’s like sitting on the tarmac with a jet engine in front of you. But the jet never leaves. The jet never takes off. It’s just annoying. It’s just constant annoyance,” he said. [WaPo]

While wandering around the house this morning, it occurred to me to consider this term, mining, and how it functions in this context. Let me illustrate:

Image: Our State

Yes, that’s Murphy, NC, site of the cryptocurrency mine mentioned in the WaPo article. Outside of the tan-ish river flowing through, it qualifies for the adjective bucolic, at least in terms of appearance.

And then here’s an iron ore mine near Virginia, MN:

Image: International Mining

Having been through the area and visited the museum, the name of which escapes me, I can state that it actually looks much worse, even after cleanup.

Environmentalists have been diligent in their efforts to paint various mining techniques, as well as mining in general, as devastating to the environment, and not without good reason. But mines have a more nuanced history than Mines be bad! Beyond their use as casual and formal punishment (“Send him to the mines!”), mines have been the source, the beginning, of the effort to make life better through the extraction of the materials with which we create, primarily, metals, as well as coal. This foundational material is used in buildings, sheltering us from weather to wild animals. The environmentalists have had to fight an uphill battle against mining because there is a certain gritty romance to mines and mining and miners. Just ask a coal miner, and discover their pride in themselves and their families for going down into the mines to extract the ore used by the nation to build cities.

Cutting the rhetoric short, the use of mine in cryptocurrency is, to some extent, an example of the willingness of programmers to borrow terminology liberally from other industries to illustrate just what we’re doing, and, in an unknown percentage of cases, to borrow the goodwill accorded the sources of these metaphors by the general run of humanity.

And that will color our thinking, I suspect.

So when we talk about cryptocurrency mining, the operationality isn’t comparable to real mining, and while many advocates will argue, in some level of of vagueness, to the advantages of cryptocurrency, the case remains profoundly unproven. I suspect it’ll remain unproven, a solution inapposite to the problem they claim to solve. Because of this, I think mining should be disdained by cryptocurrency critics, and just called it coin-generation, which is value-neutral and far more accurate.

Rebus:

I’ll just let the Try Channel folks deliver the definition.

They’re rumored to be Lord of the Rings fans.

These are my Arts Editor’s doing, and I’d say they were done very well.

As expected, Alaska Republicans are infuriated at their unexpected loss in the Alaska special election to replace the late Rep Don Young (R), and are blaming it on ranked choice voting (RCV):

One of the most vocal critics has been Palin. On Thursday, she issued a statement saying this week’s ranked-choice results were “not the will of the people” and calling on the other finalist in the recently completed special election, Republican Nick Begich III, to end his campaign ahead of November’s general election in which the candidates will square off again for a two-year term. Palin also called for the state to provide more information on rejected ballots.

Begich on Wednesday issued his own statement portraying Peltola as out-of-step with most Alaskans and Palin as unelectable under the new system. He said the ranked-choice results made clear that in November, a “vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola.” [WaPo]

Finger-pointing galore – but making sure the Democrat who won, Peltola, is portrayed as being “out of step” with the electorate. It’s an insult to the electorate, really.

See, these Republicans are terrified. The Alaskan electorate has, through the mechanism of RCV, shown itself to be more of a moderate group than an extremist group, even if that’s ignoring the realities of special election voting, which typically feature lower turnout than normal elections^[1]. And that isn’t going to suit the extremists currently controlling the GOP; in a showdown between a politician wielding the magical phrase You are a RINO!^[2] and an RCV-implemented election, the magical phrase wielder will lose, as many have predicted.

The second prong of the trident attack of the Republicans on the electorate has been single-issue voting, and RCV will also have an effect on those voters. See, single-issue voters are apocalyptic voters, voters who believe that if enough of the wrong people are elected, their critical issue, be it abortion, or gun-rights absolutism, or what have you, will go the wrong way and the country will implode.

I’m not kidding.

So if such wrong folks are elected, promulgate policies, and the country doesn’t implode … some of those single issue voters will decide they were wrong. There is no smoking crater. That’s bending the prong of the trident, blunting the Republican appeal for votes.

And the extremists lose their appeal.

The above WaPo article told me something new: Nevada has a proposed constitutional amendment on tbe ballot this November to make RCV the law of the desert the election system for congressional, gubernatorial, state executive official, and state legislative elections. I see this as a looming disaster for Nevada Republicans, and possibly certain Democrats and other parties farther to the left.

The extremists recognize the threat, and they’ve chosen fear as their weapon of choice:

Despite advocates’ claims that ranked-choice voting is better for democracy because it would give voters “more options” on Election Day, such arguments ignore the extremely confusing nature of the process. While speaking with The Federalist, Zack Smith, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in Heritage’s Meese Center, explained the intricacies of ranked-choice voting and how the process oftentimes “obfuscates the candidates and their position” from voters.

Ranked-choice voting can potentially lead to “someone getting elected to office that only has a minuscule amount of support from the electorate,” he said. “If [candidates] have problematic positions, it can make it very easy to hide those [from voters].” [The Federalist]

First, yes, The Federalist Society did supply lists of judges to former President Trump for nomination to the Federal Judiciary, including SCOTUS Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Second, yes, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank. So, third, yes, this is conservatives talking to conservatives, not to neutral third party observers and analysts. Epistemic bubble time. They’re running around, hair on fire, flapping their arms in terror, and engaging in desperate mendacity – or just faulty analysis.

Or, in other words, No, RCV is not that complex. Ya got a favorite? Write them down here. Second favorite? Write them down here. Third? Put them there. Put the ballot in the machine. Done.

And, most importantly,

YOU DO NOT LEARN THE POSITIONS OF THE CANDIDATES WHEN YOU’RE MARKING THE BALLOT!

That comes earlier, from candidate materials, debates, gaffes, media reporting, and what have you – that does not change with RCV. Repeat after me, That does not change with RCV.

And it doesn’t hurt to tell the electorate they need to step up their game. In this case, it’s just not much of a step.

Why haven’t Democrats been pushing RCV harder? Well, for one thing, they inevitably have a salting of extremists who don’t like the idea that moderates may have more appeal. RCV does encourage cross-over voting in the secondary positions, doesn’t it? Better a conservative Democrat than an extremist Republican to the moderate Republican voter, for example.

It also gets rid of partisan primaries and caucus systems, both more susceptible to the party zealots; the open primary employed in most RCV electoral systems means anyone who can gather enough signatures gets to join the game. That favors people who’ve gained some fame or notoriety.

But I think the Democrats should push RCV harder. So far, no fundamental defects have emerged. Implementation can be a problem if computers are not available, resulting in several days delay for counting, otherwise it’s no big deal.

And for those of us who value moderates, who value humility, RCV is more likely to deliver the electorate’s honest choice.

¹ For example, in the late Rep Don Young’s (R) last election to this seat, a total of 353,165 votes were cast. In the recent special election to replace Young, which is the first of Alaska RCV voting and thus makes this comparison reminiscent of apples and oranges, 188,582 are listed as having been cast. Does this mean 188,582 voters participated? This should be clarified by Ballotpedia, my source for this information. But, as an afterthought, I would expect moderates to be less likely to show up for a special election than extremists, who, by definition, have more interest in politics.

² RINO is an acronym for Republican In Name Only, an epithet applied by right-wing power-seekers to those power-holders who get in their way. As I’ve said many times over the years, this is the mechanism, beginning probably with former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and in combination with team politics, aka voting straight ticket no matter what, and single issue voting, that has driven the GOP from a right-centrist party very capable of governance into a far-right collection of power-grasping fourth-raters, such as half-term Governor, for no particular reason, Sarah Palin (R-AK). In other words, yesterday’s wielder of this magical phrase can easily be today’s victim of same, with one of the most famous victims being former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). For some in the Republican Party, extremism is the primary measure of virtue these days, a fatal flaw in those voters.

Demonic pink eyes glowed in the darkness. Marcel offered an ointment for pink-eye, and it was hungrily grabbed from his hand and squirted violently into the monster’s eyes. The monster was … a ladybug.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), despite the date given to the film, is currently in theatrical release. This is your archetypal whimsical film in which documentary film maker Dean meets and documents the life of Marcel, a young, even child, shell creature, perhaps an inch tall. He and his grandmother live in a human house that Dean has rented, and they describe for Dean the life of a shell creature in this house, a creature akin to hermit crabs I’d say. From gathering food, to play, to watching 60 Minutes on the television, they seem have their own version of a full life.

But Marcel’s parents and, indeed, extended family disappeared when the previous human inhabitants had a fight and moved out, inadvertently taking most of the shell family with them. Marcel is devastated, yet firmly in control, caring for his Nanny. Dean represents an opportunity that Marcel doesn’t immediately recognize, but when Dean pre-releases parts of his documentary and attracts unexpected attention, Marcel realizes that perhaps he can search for his family via the Internet.

This leads to celebrity and all that implies – and then even more.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has some problems with the audio, or perhaps the theatre we visited did. As we were the only patrons on a Friday afternoon, it wasn’t a problem with other customers. The stop-action and computer-generated affects, however, were nearly faultless to my eye, though, and very appropriate to the subject. Please excuse the joke.

The charm does wear thin after a while, but the film does not extend too far beyond this point, and can be excused. A fun and witty show, it’s worth your time if you need a bit of gentleness in your life.

Recommended.

Inapposite:

inappropriate, not suitable for the situation [Wiktionary]

Hmmmmm. New one on me. Noted in “Trump aggravates the GOP’s national security and crime problem,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

Donald Trump walked right into it. His brain trust stupidly requested a “special master” to review the documents he took from the White House — totally improper since he does not own the documents and his claim of “executive privilege” is inapposite. (Executive privilege raised against part of the executive branch, the Justice Department, makes no sense.)

When it comes to the second choice of Begich voters in Peltola’s victory in Alaska on Wednesday, Aaron Blake of WaPo clarifies that their second choice is actually slightly worse for members of the Alaska Republican Party (ARP) than my interpretation suggested:

Almost as many Begich voters picked Peltola as their second choice (15,445) or didn’t rank one of the two finalists (11,222) as ranked Palin behind Begich (27,042). In other words, only about half of Begich voters were willing to also rank Palin ahead of a Democrat.

Which is very bad news for every extremist candidate fielded by the ARP. If a Democrat or someone else is better than the candidate bearing the ARP banner, the proud and famous candidate, then what about the far-right whose grasp on reality is, at best, dubious?

It remains true that ranked choice voting is a rare bird in American elections, but we can see that there’s a hesitancy, even wariness, to vote extremist when there’s a choice available. And Palin has her own set of unique political attributes – quitter and religious nutcase as well as an extremist, if you’re not in the mood for diplomatic language – to which many voters may have had a negative reaction.

But fighting ranked choice voting is moving up the list of dangerous issues for the current GOP.

Ever see a train with a snowplow attachment? This is sort of the same. Don’t think about that.

• “A-” rated Trafalgar’s latest poll in Wisconsin shows Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) leading incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) 49.4% to 47.1%, which is within the margin of error. That race is tightening up as the Republicans rally to the dude who spews conspiracy theories and dementia while talking about corrupting Social Security with investments in the stock market. Maybe they don’t like their monthly checks?
• Trafalgar has more news, saying that its latest poll shows incumbent Senator Kelly (D) of Arizona has only a 3.3 point lead over incumbent Blake Masters (R), 47.6% – 43.3%. I gotta ask, then, why is Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) Senate Leadership PAC withdrawing a lot of money from that race as if they’re writing it off?
• A temporary slump or is Georgia’s collective mental infirmity going to hold until the elections? A rated Emerson College Polling now has challenger Herschel Walker (D) up by two, 46% – 44%, ahead of incumbent Senator Warnock (D). This despite a history of mendacity on Walker’s part, possibly tied to his mental illness, last manifested yesterday, when he once again claimed to be a member of law enforcement, to the groans of the crowd.
• The race in Pennsylvania continues to be badly broken as Republican candidate for the open Senate seat Dr. Oz Mehmet plays on possible electoral concerns about Democratic candidate’s and Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s stroke in a debate proposal that included “concessions” such as an earpiece for Fetterman so he could be fed answers. While, yes, the offer was an insult, it’s on par with Fetterman’s jibes about Oz’s houses (just how many does he own?) and his lack of familiarity with Pennsylvania. It’s also very true that Fetterman’s stroke is relevant to the election. Just as is Oz’s endorsements of various snake oil cures over the years.
• Another week, another “generic Congressional ballot.” This time, The Wall Street Journal says Democrats hold a slight edge over Republicans, 47% to 44% … which is an improvement over earlier measurements. I contrast this with the right’s staple contention that the economy will wreck the Democrats. I see occasional citations, by Republicans, of Democratic consultant James Carville’s famous quip concerning the Clinton 1992 winning Presidential campaign in which he beat an incumbent President, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I’m beginning to think it’s a Republican, if not simply a political, habit to strip all context from everything. Carville’s context was the recession following the Gulf War, and it wasn’t entirely the economy, but disenchantment with President Bush (43) shattering his promise of Read My Lips, No New Taxes. Purist anti-taxation Republicans wouldn’t vote for Bush after that. Today? A pandemic that floored the economy, followed by a big recovery during the Biden Admin, including amazingly low unemployment numbers; the return of jobs from overseas as companies see the dangers of long supply-lines close up and personal; supply line issues slowly being resolved; infrastructure and other legislative wins for the Democrats, showing they can get things done; the Dobbs decision by the conservative wing of SCOTUS, threatening the autonomy of women regardless of political ideology; the January 6th Insurrection, never denounced by most of the Republican Party; extremist Republican election-denier candidates; and a former Republican President who has been caught with his entire head in the cookie jar, while screaming that the Presidency should be returned to him as if it’s a magical incantation, and he may be quite serious about the magic part. The context is both pragmatic and principled, and, while the pragmatic points are, I think, a slight inclination for the Democrats and still have two months to run, the principles are all, or almost all, good for the Democrats. Their blundering over the management of the transgender issue is a festering wound in their side, it’s true. But, in general, it’s been apparent from the moment Speaker Pelosi announced the January 6th bipartisan committee that there was a strong potential that the Red Wave theory of the November elections would manifest as the Republicans weeing in their diapers as committee members Representatives Cheney (R-WY) and Kingzinger (R-IL) kicked their unprincipled and immoral former Party members right in the head, and that has come to fruition, with more to come. The discovery of government documents at Mar-a-Lago is a gift to the Democrats, contaminating the Republican Party as a pack of lawless, power-grubbing fourth-raters. Senator McConnell (R-KY) may be anticipating being Majority Leader in 2023, but, for me, he’d better be praying really, really hard. There’s a potential for the Democrats picking up seven seats in the Senate, and a wild guess of 15 seats in the House, but that’s a best-scenario forecast. There’s plenty of time for both sides to disembowel themselves.

Previous snowdrifts here.

Back last week I mentioned, in one of my Senate campaign updates, that Mary Peltola (D-AK) was leading in the race to replace the late Don Young (R-AK) in the lone Alaskan seat to the House of Representatives, but election officials were waiting for absentee votes to be counted. Recall Alaska is using ranked choice voting (RCV), which I consider favorable to moderates.

The winner has been announced, and it’s Democrat Mary Peltola, says CBS News:

On Wednesday, the Alaska Division of Elections tabulated the final results during a public livestream, which showed Peltoa coming out on top with 51.47% after Begich’s votes were redistributed to his voters’ second choice candidate.

According to election officials in Alaska, 15,445 of Begich’s voters listed Peltola as their second choice while 27,042 put down Palin as their second option. The final tally showed Peltola with 91,206 votes to Palin’s 85,987 votes.

This is the latest in “Democratic overperformance” (they did better than expected) in special elections, and once again refutes the red wave theory, aka Republicans taking back the House and Senate in November, as touted by pundits up until a couple of weeks ago. What does it portend?

No red wave.

While Palin did pick up a majority of the second votes for Begich, who is presumably less extremist than the former Alaska governor known for her extremism, more than 1/3 of his voters chose to go with Peltola, which put her over the top.

To me, that indicates a sizable minority of Republicans do not buy into the long-held extremist proposition that Democrats are evil (“babykillers!”), as Peltola announces on her website that she is pro-choice. They recognize that the threat to the United States is not from Democrats like Peltola, who appears to be fairly middle of the road and focused on Alaskan issues, but from extremists like Palin.

Palin is running again in November for the same seat, as is Begich and Peltola. If Palin loses again, she’ll fade into the Republican extremist woodwork, showing up as a celebrity politician who makes extremist speeches and collects paychecks for doing so. Extremist politics is a grift.

Begich has something of a political background, and may be back.

And the Alaska Republican  Party (ARP)? This loss is a step towards their own political hell of irrelevance, as I said before. If Peltola turns this into a streak, there will be some serious upset in the ARP, and if archetypal moderate Senator Murkowski (R-AK) wins her reelection campaign, as I, and everyone else, expects, the ARP may just fly apart as moderates fight to regain control of a party that is becoming an extremist sandbox, to judge by their actions and not by any special knowledge on my part.

And, finally, if it wasn’t for the Trumpian debacle in Mar-a-Lago, RCV would be the target du jour of the Republican Party. RCV has the potential to be the bane of extremists on both sides of the aisle, so they’ll hate on it.

Until something distracts them.

It’s long been said in American politics that the third, fatal rail of politics is Social Security, because stirring up the old folks over their income will end your political career, and very quickly. Fear the people with walkers, eh? Something I read by Professor Richardson reminded me of that, and of what I think may be the future extension of this old aphorism:

While Biden is consolidating and pushing the Democrats’ worldview, the Republicans are in disarray. The revelation that former president Trump moved classified intelligence to the Trump Organization’s property at Mar-a-Lago has kept some of them sidelined, as they didn’t want to talk about the issue, and has forced others to try to justify an unprecedented breach of national security. Republican candidates for elected office who are not in deep red districts have been taking references to Trump (and to abortion restrictions) off their websites.

My amused bold. And, yes, you guessed it: the former President becomes the new third rail of politics. His divisive message and disregard for the law, much less norms of government, are just the beginning. His grasping, boastful, mean-spirited, self-centered ways, and his disregard for the value of simple truth will be perceived as deeply un-American, even by those Americans who have these character failings in abundance. These latter will scent the wind and adjust their sails accordingly.

And if Trump is accused by law enforcement of selling those government documents found at Mar-a-Lago to national adversaries? The amount of juice in our proverbial rail will go up by a magnitude. The only mention of Trump by American politicians will be as a synonym for failure and adherence to his Me! Me! Me! ideology, and that doesn’t work well with government, which is about helping out the people.

But let’s take this a step further: What happens if Chad Bauman did get this right and it’s all about Trump’s upbringing in a prosperity church? That the apparent madness of his repeated calls that he be restored to the Presidency, despite his manifest electoral loss as well as his  profound failure as a President, are the Name it and Claim it magical invocation of some Divine entity? Yes, that is his wand sputtering.

Consequently, and fortunately for us, we may see some holes in our cultural landscape where prosperity churches used to exist. Some may disappear, while others drastically shrink. Some prosperity church leaders – I hesitate to call them pastors or bishops or whatever title they’ve awarded themselves – will desperately try to keep the grift going, while others will head out to foreign lands to enjoy their gains. A few may meet untimely ends at the hands of angry followers.

And a lot of folks who lack Trump’s mental instability but are still burdened with the prosperity church teachings will need help.

And, meanwhile, this graph will continue its trend:

Source: Gallup

Evangelicals had celebrated Trump as Cyrus of the Bible, striding from its pages into their lives. It’s not looking that way now, and if I were them I’d have a chat about getting rid of the Biblical respect for Cyrus, who, as I understand it, is the guy who did bad things that benefited Christians, and so hey he’s blessed.

Remember Amanda “I’m Trump in heels!” Chase (R-VA)? She may be changing to flats.

Inter alia:

Adverb

1. – among other things [Legal Dictionary]

Noted in “Should Uncle Sam Worry About ‘Foreign’ Open-Source Software? Geographic Known Unknowns and Open-Source Software Security,” Dan Geer, John Speed Meyers, Jacqueline Kazil, Tom Pike, Lawfare:

We then used an open-source tool called GitGeo to analyze the contributors to packages and to predict, when possible, the country in which the developer resides. The GitGeo tool makes this prediction by using these developers’ GitHub profiles, a page similar to a Facebook profile where developers can optionally provide their location information, inter alia. We first look at the top 100 contributors to each package and then redo our analysis using only the top 10. “Contributors” to a package are those users who make changes to the package (that is, adding or subtracting code). The more changes an open-source software developer makes to a package, the arguably more central that developer is to the continued maintenance, health, and security of that package. Figure 1 displays the four graphs that resulted from this analysis. Each column of each graph represents one open-source software package and the stacked bar graph colors represent the different locations of developers associated with that package.