Eric The Blue

Twenty years ago

Yesterday's contribution to the accruing evidence of my antique status: news reports concerning how it's been twenty years since the United States invaded Iraq. Out of curiosity, I looked up the vote in House and Senate on the authorization for making war. Lots of these people are still around—for example, Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE—and it's interesting to see how they voted (Biden was a Yea). It's also interesting to see how things have changed.  On October 11, 2002, the day of the vote, North and South Dakota were represented in the US Senate by three Democrats and just one Republican. How did that happen? War authorization nevertheless prevailed among the Dakota contingent, 3-1, the exception being Kent Conrad, D-ND. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, of the Carolinas, were uprooted from their spots in the Wax Museum of Bigotry and escorted to the floor of the Senate, where, like almost all the Republicans, they voted in favor of authorization.  Those two are gone, of course—some changes are better than others. Susan Collins of Maine was already in the Senate, and she was a Yea, too. I imagine she mentioned her "concern" in a floor speech. 

The overall vote in favor of authorization was 77-23 in the Senate, and, in the House, a somewhat less lopsided 296-133. Hypothesis: the vote occurred less than a month before a midterm election, and after 9/11 the country was in an aggressive mood, but Democratic members of the House in safe districts were more apt to decide the case on its merits. Nancy Pelosi was a Nay, as was my representative, Martin Sabo. I've mentioned how Biden voted. Hillary Clinton, also with any eye on higher office, was another Yea, but it worked against her five years later.  By then, it was undeniable that the justification for war, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was chimerical. Before we invaded, UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq had uncovered nothing. Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense with side interests in logic and epistemology, overcame this inconvenient fact by arguing that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." You see how it was to be on the other side. Evidence would have proven his case, and the lack of it meant he must be right. In a children's joke, pink elephants hide in cherry trees so effectively that not one has ever been seen. 

At least President Bush got to don a flight suit and strut around on an aircraft carrier beneath the Mission Accomplished sign. The last Republican president had to be pretty bad to be worse than the one before him.  

Haiku for March madness . . .

. . . with apologies to Emily Dickinson:

There's a certain slant of light
In the second half of a 3 o'clock game
That illuminates all the dog hair
Where wood floor meets baseboard. 

My bracket goes bust
As I kneel on arthritic knees
Working a damp paper towel.

Dominion's motion for summary judgment; or, Fox's clown car

 

 

It's a couple hundred pages long, but Dominion Voting System's heavily redacted motion for summary judgment in its defamation case against Fox is here. I've spent enough time with it to be reminded of something that has puzzled me—the right-wing outrage over Fox having called Arizona for Biden on the night of the election. In Dominion's telling, which is supported by internal Fox communications, anger over the Arizona call delivered Fox viewers to even more ridiculous "news" sources, such as Newsmax, and Fox's credulous airing of absurd fantasies concerning Dominion's products was an effort to appease their customers, current and former. 

It's certainly true that Fox was being abused by former fans for calling Arizona for Biden. I remember, for example, that in the days after the election Scott Johnson, of the Power Line blog, directed his ire at Fox for the Arizona call—I've looked them up again and they're here, and here, and here. But all the spilled words never form a coherent story of treachery or even journalistic malpractice, considering that:

• Fox's call was correct. Biden did win Arizona.
• Suppose Biden hadn't won Arizona. He still would have won the election. To prevail, Trump needed a different outcome in at least two other closely contested states besides Arizona. 
• Is the claim that, by calling Arizona, Fox discouraged Trump voters from turning out in places where the polls were still open? But that would make no sense, because only Hawaii and Alaska were still voting when Fox projected Biden the winner in Arizona, and there's no way Trump was going to win Hawaii (or lose Alaska).
• Is the claim that, since Biden won Arizona very narrowly, Fox's call was premature? But how could it be both "premature" and correct? 

I feel a little awkward defending Fox and luckily don't feel obliged to keep it up for very long. It's almost humorous how, having called Arizona for Biden, Fox could also have been the first to call the election for Biden when it soon became clear that he was going to win Nevada, too. But they put off calling Nevada, which wasn't nearly as close as Arizona. Why? The New York Times reports:

But on Friday night, Nov. 6, when Mr. Sammon's [Decision Desk] team was ready to call Nevada for Mr. Biden, sealing his victory, [network president Jay] Wallace refused to air it. "I'm not there yet since it's for all the marbles—just a heavier burden than an individual state call," Mr. Wallace wrote in a text message obtained by The Times. 

The Times's reporting leaves little to the imagination concerning the source for the sudden onset of discretion:

On Nov. 16, [chief executive Suzanne Scott] and Mr. Wallace convened [a] Zoom meeting to discuss the Arizona decision. Mr. Sammon and Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Decision Desk, were included. Chris Stirewalt, the political editor who had gone on air to defend the call, was not. 

Ms. Scott invited Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum, "the face" of the network, as she called them, to describe the heat they were taking, according to the recording reviewed by The Times. 

"We are still getting bombarded," Mr. Baier said. "It became really hurtful." He said projections were not enough to call a state when it would be so sensitive. "I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer" so they could "think beyond, about the implications."

Ms. MacCallum agreed: "There's just obviously been a tremendous amount of backlash, which is, I think, more than any of us anticipated. And so there's that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor." For "a loud fraction of our viewership," she said, the call was a blow.

I love how when talking among themselves these hucksters sound like their own version of a liberal. The facts of the case—"the statistics and the numbers"—should probably be hidden beneath some gauzy "layer" since, if reported, it would prove too "hurtful" for the big-mouthed, small-brained snowflakes who don't want their nightly load of bullshit polluted by what people have begun calling, with a silent footnote acknowledging Kellyanne Conway, "true facts." Every accusation is a projection. Think of Jack Nicholson on the stand in A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" Farther down in the Times story one reads:

What no one said at the meeting was that Ms. Scott would not let Mr. Sammon's team risk the network's brand again. She decided to push out Mr. Sammon and Mr. Stirewalt, but fearing criticism for firing journalists who had gotten the call right, opted to wait until after [the Senate runoff elections in Georgia].

Mr. Murdoch was not keen on waiting. On Nov. 20, four days after the Zoom meeting, according to documents filed by Dominion, he told Ms. Scott, "Maybe best to let Bill go right away, which would "be a big message with Trump people." 

LOL, Fox's "brand" being tarnished by two guys who got it right. Fire them immediately! Big message to Trump people! We won't tolerate true facts! Just one of the many amusements contained within the unredacted portions of Dominion's motion linked to above. 

Kids talk

A month or maybe two ago, I was trying to help a 4th-grader with a math lesson. While we were at it, his classmates left their room to go to a "specialist"—art, or PE, or music, can't remember the details now. When we were done, I escorted him to the specialist, just to make sure he got there. As we walked along, he mentioned he was hungry and happy it was almost lunch time. I asked whether he ate the school lunch or brought one from home. He said he ate the school lunch, which he rated "just ok," and then, unprompted by me, added, I guess by way of explanation, that even though his mom had two jobs and was very busy, she'd probably make him a lunch if he asked. 

"So," he concluded, "that's why I don't ask."

Fourth grade!

Had almost forgotten that little incident from my life till yesterday it popped into my spotty memory while, for around the jillionth time, I was washing by hand those little plastic containers I use to put a little of this and a little of that into the lunches my kids eat every Monday through Friday because the hot one at school is "disgusting." Feeling crabby, I observed to the 6th-grader that it appeared she had eaten her PBJ and most everything else, including a mini Milky Way bar, but not, as far as I could tell, a single green grape. 

"Yes, dad," she said, "but the J stands for jelly, and there's fruit in jelly." 

Senator Rural, R-Vacant Land

Yes, it's a map of the Dakotas, but if you look carefully you'll see, in the middle of South Dakota, the label "Manhattan" and an arrow pointing at a brighter green sliver superimposed on the map just a bit to the east of the Missouri River. This shows how the area of Manhattan Island, which is about 13 miles long and 2 miles wide, compares to that of the Dakotas.

The site where I saw this map shows another, too: Manhattan, big enough now to be color-coded in order to depict a "North Manhattan," with a population equal to that of North Dakota, and a "South Manhattan," with a population equal to that of South Dakota. The east-west boundary between them bisects Central Park, and the northern boundary of "North Manhattan" doesn't extend to the northern tip of the island—because Manhattan's population is somewhat greater than that of the Dakotas, combined. 

Matt Coneybeare, proprietor of the site, doesn't say it explicitly, but I will: it's ridiculous that the Dakotas have four US senators while the residents of Manhattan share two US senators with around 6.5 million New Yorkers who live in the city's other four boroughs. And of course this somewhat understates the mockery of democratic representation—there are an additional 11-million-and-some New York residents who don't live in the city. 

Since New York isn't the biggest state, and the Dakotas aren't the smallest, the same point can be made with arguably more outlandish examples. Los Angeles County has a population of 9.83 million, which is more than that of 40 states. It's also more than that of the ten smallest states combined. While those ten smallest states have 20 US senators, the people of LA County share two with 30 million other Californians. 

"But the Constitution!" This would once have been an argument for the three-fifths compromise and the fugitive slave clause. It's not as if the framers never erred, and the world they lived in is gone. 

Wikipedia calls out a drinker

Because I "interact" with baseball posts on FB, a picture of the first pitch of the 1950 World Series appeared on my feed. No comment beyond "first pitch of the 1950 World Series." You couldn't tell—at least, I couldn't tell—who the teams were, let alone the pitcher and the batter. Looks like a breaking ball taken low and away for a ball—by Yankee left fielder Gene Woodling, it turns out, from Phillies pitcher Jim Konstanty, the National League's MVP that season. I was a little surprised never to have heard of a guy who won the MVP award in 1950. This was the Philadelphia team known as "The Whiz Kids." I'd have to research their identities, too. The Yankees swept them and you've heard of their stalwarts that year—preeminently, DiMaggio and Berra, but the AL MVP was their shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, and Whitey Ford was a rookie. 

But I wanted to flag something in the Wikipedia article about the 1950 Series. I love Wikipedia, partly because it is so often pleasantly quirky. The source of the quirkiness must frequently be the private obsessions of a co-author. In this case, you're reading along, it's all the runs and hits and errors, like box scores in prose, and then, suddenly, indent, new paragraph, almost certainly new author, and this:

In attendance at the game was Grover Cleveland Alexander, who had led the Phillies to their previous pennant in 1915. It was his first World Series game in 20 years. Ill from the effects of long term alcohol abuse, Alexander was generally ignored. He would be dead less than a month later on November 4, 1950, at age 63.

Not sure whether this is intended as a PSA on the evils of drink, or what. Next paragraph the colorless narration reasserts itself, but from now on, if anyone asks me about the 1950 World Series, I'm going to tell them the Yankees won and Grover Cleveland Alexander was a booze hound. 

Rereading Huck Finn

One thing about rereading books, you sometimes wonder whether you were sentient on previous perusals. Today, in Huck Finn, I came to the following description of a one-horse Arkansas town on the Mississippi River not long before the Civil War; somehow, it had never before penetrated the defenses I evidently raise while "reading":

All the stores was along one street. They had white-domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. There was empty dry-goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching—a mighty ornery lot. They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats or waistcoats; they called one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used considerable many cuss-words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch. What a body was hearing amongst them, all the time was—

"Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank."

"Cain't—I hain't got but one chaw left. Ask Bill."

Pretty sure I'll be dead before ChatGPT can equal that. While I was typing it in, the word processing tool used by this blogging platform inserted considerable many underlinings to indicate the phrases  and constructions needing the attention of an editor.

Spoiler alert: in the immediately following pages, the residents of this town and the surrounding rural areas are cast in an unfavorable light, especially if compared to the narrator and his friend, Miss Watson's runaway slave Jim. 

Preaching to the lunatics

The filings of plaintiff Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News make plain that some of the network's stars aren't stupid enough to believe their own bullshit, but they are venal enough to shovel it out to their nutty prime time viewers in order to enhance the bottom line—the network's and their own. Text messages show that Tucker Carlson thought many of the bizarre conspiracy theories advanced by Trump lawyers were fantasies and that Fox fact-checkers who said so should be fired before they dragged down the company's value. 

"Fact-checkers" at Fox News? It appears they are hired in order to be ignored. And then fired, if Tucker gets his way. Seems Fox could be a leaner corporation if they just didn't hire them in the first place. 

People like Hannity and Ingraham and Carlson are a problem, to say nothing of Trump himself, but we wouldn't have to know about any of them if it weren't for the large and ravenous audience to which they're serving up the slop. Did this audience recently come into existence, or is the means of converting mass delirium into dollars a recent discovery? I tend to think it's more the latter than the former, but what I know for sure is that, when subjected to the output of these media organs, I always wonder whether mental fog or bad faith accounts for the inanity. John Hinderaker, of the accidentally hilarious Power Line blog, was a top-flight trial lawyer, which tempts me to believe he can recognize a bad argument. So why does he make so many himself? Here he is, highlighting a Wall Street Journal piece that compares New York to Florida, "by the numbers." According to Hinderaker, the chart he reproduces "tells us pretty much everything we need to know about the relative merit of conservative and left-wing governance."

If you follow the link, you'll see that "pretty much everything we need to know" is captured in just nine points of comparison. Oddly, two of the nine relate to Medicaid enrollments and expenditures in the two states. I don't think this is commonly regarded as a key indicator of the general welfare and was not surprised to see that relatively few Floridians are on Medicaid: the state has a huge senior population, and there's usually no reason to be on Medicaid if you're on Medicare. The chart doesn't compare Medicare enrollments and expenditures, but it does reveal that New York has both a state income tax and state sales tax, whereas Florida has only a sales tax—which is higher than New York's. Other included comparisons are more transparently, laughably lame. For example, another line item, of the nine, shows that Florida's GDP grew by 17% over the period 2016-21, to just 8% for New York. Maybe wildly different base lines could have something to do with it? (If you start at 1 and grow to 2, that's a 100 percent increase, but going from 10 to 12 is only 20 percent growth.) Along this line, I'll just note that the nine points of comparison did not include GDP per capita, perhaps because of the 50 states Florida clocks in at #40 while New York is tops in the country. The 10 states below Florida include—I'll just name the bottom 5—the left-wing bastions of Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Idaho.